State urges consumers to reduce energy consumption, if possible

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is urging all consumers who
can reduce their energy consumption to do so at this time.

Severe weather has led to the loss of more than 50
generation units - more than 7,000 MW, and additional units are continuing
to trip offline due to the extreme cold temperatures.

ERCOT
Grid Operations has asked the utilities/transmission providers to
implement rotating outages until the load is reduced through
conservation and restoration of generation units.

Conservation is very critical at this time to reduce the load on the
system. Rotating outages are controlled, temporary interruptions of
electrical
service initiated by each utility when supplies of reserve power are
exhausted. Without this safety valve, generators would overload and
begin shutting down to avoid damage, risking a domino effect of a
state-wide outage.

As of noon, 2000 MW of the rotating outages had been restored, and 2000 MW
remains under rotating outages.
One megawatt is roughly enough to power 200 homes in extreme temperatures.

Mid-morning update:
Last night around midnight, the ERCOT grid began experiencing numerous
forced outages of generation due to the cold weather. As of 9 am, more
than 7,000 MW of capacity was still out of service or not producing at its
expected level.

Rotating outages were implemented around 5:30 a.m. this morning to shed
4000 MW of load. The rotating outages are continuing as this time,
although the amount has been reduced to about 3000 MW.

We expect the rolling outages to continue until a sufficient amount of
generation is back online. We are continuing the appeal for energy
conservation.
Further updates will be provided when additional information is available