DALLAS - The thing about electricity is, we expect it will always be there. But Wednesday’s Power Warnings showed us how thin supplies can get. In fact, the state asked utilities to fire up old power plants to add more power.
Until Tuesday and Wednesday, the Spencer Generating Station has been off-duty for more than a year.
"We hadn't operated any of that equipment in over a year,” said Tom Hancock of Garland Power and Light.
But when Texas called, Garland answered.
ERCOT covered the $2.4 million cost of re-starting the plant. Then Garland scrambled to open it.
"Absolutely it'd be much easier not to go through the trouble, have the folks have to work overtime, have to hire temporary labor, etc. But it's the right thing to do and that's why we're doing it,” Hancock said.
57 percent of the power we use comes from plants that use natural gas. That's followed by coal at 23 percent of the plants. Wind is 12 percent. Nuclear is just half that. And a sliver of the pie is from energy generated by water.
The power from the mothballed Garland plant is outside those totals, and its capacity helped prevent a Power Emergency.
But because it's only used during a Power Warning, the electricity that came from Garland is also the most expensive you can buy. It costs $3000 per megawatt hour, compared to the $50 dollars per megawatt hour that electricity was trading at on Thursday.
