On the cusp of summer, the electric power grid manager for most of Texas on Monday issued its second conservation alert since the deadly February blackout, calling on users to dial back energy consumption through Friday to avert an emergency. The Energy Reliability Council of Texas said many forced generation outages and record June demand has squeezed the power supply. ERCOT predicted a peak demand load on its system of 73,000 megawatts, far above the June record of 69,123 megawatts set between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. on June 27, 2018. However, about 11,000 megawatts of the grid’s 86,862 megawatts of generating capacity was offline Monday, ERCOT said, leaving a razor-thin margin of reserve capacity of about 3,000 megawatts. Wind output was expected to be 3,500 to 6,000 megawatts between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. Monday, about 1,500 megawatts less than what is typically available for […]