KXAN reports that ERCOT’s board is expected to discuss the increase in data centers and crypto mining facilities opening in Texas, sparking concerns over rising load growth and grid reliability. Matthew Boms, Executive Director of the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance, encouraged these facilities to bring on their own generation to help reduce grid strain and offset ratepayer costs.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — A growing number of facilities that require huge amounts of power to operate — such as crypto mining facilities — continue popping up in Texas. They’re offering the state’s power grid a new challenge.
Next week, ERCOT’s board is expected to discuss a surge in data centers and crypto mining facilities opening in Texas, driving record demand on the grid and raising concerns about reliability.
“Generally speaking we want load growth because it helps with economic development and we want that in our state. The problem is about the speed, the uncertainty and the management of that growth,” Matt Boms, executive director of the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance, said.
Documents for the board meeting show that since 2023, ERCOT believes these types of facilities went offline 26 times during what’s called normal voltage disturbances. When they shut off suddenly, ERCOT says it can cause frequency shifts on the grid significant enough that power plants or loads could also trip, which has the potential to trigger cascading outages.
“Really large data centers and crypto mining facilities are generally sensitive to voltage or frequency fluctuations so what can happen is during a normal grid disturbance a facility could just drop offline instantly and that means that hundreds of megawatts could disappear in seconds,” Boms said.
To deal with this, ERCOT is proposing new rules for “large electronic loads.” That’s any load above 75 megawatts, where at least half of the power is used for computing — like in data centers.
The new requirements would force these facilities to “ride through” normal voltage and frequency events. In other words, stay online during small disturbances if they want to stay connected to the grid.
Boms says one way to do that: have data centers bring their own energy generation.
“That means that they’re not overloading the grid, it means that they’re not forcing rate payers to pay for their upgrades and it means that they can ride through those voltage disturbances instead of tripping offline,” Boms said.
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