Eclipse Power Prices Hit $471/MWh
Tracking the Texas grid during The 2024 Total Solar Eclipse
Summary:
Tracking The Grid During A Total Solar Eclipse: The 2024 total solar eclipse lasted approximately two hours and completely obscured sunlight for roughly 4.5 minutes inside the path of totality. Despite grid operators ' advanced planning, Texas system-wide power prices surged past ERCOT’s day-ahead forecast to $471/MWh. April 8th’s generation trends are a microcosm of planning challenges in a complex grid.
Read Time: 3 min.
A Closer Look At Power Generation During The 2024 Solar Eclipse
The 2024 total solar eclipse demonstrated the challenges of resource planning in an increasingly complex generation environment, as Texas’ system-wide power prices surged past ERCOT day-ahead forecasts to $471.87/MWh at peak obscuration (despite months of advanced planning).
Read: Grid Operators Flag “Immediate and Serious Grid Reliability Challenges”
Solar Generation’s Performance
The eclipse totally blocked roughly 6.5 GW of utility-scale solar generation in the path of totality for approximately 4.5 minutes. Sunlight was partially obscured on another 84.8 GW of solar capacity at varying rates for approximately two hours.
Texas’ grid provides a clear look at system-wide generation during the eclipse.
ERCOT’s real-time data shows solar generation reaching a peak of 13,763 MW at the moon’s first contact, followed by a sharp decline down to a trough of 800 MW at 1:36 pm CST, peak obscuration.
April 8th’s eclipse is a microcosm of a more significant problem that grid operators face when accommodating variability in intermittent renewables.
Renewables are a valuable tool in the overall generation stack. Still, they require equivalent capacity from dispatchable resources — a common misconception in today’s energy policy landscape that adds financial and regulatory barriers to traditional energies.
When wind and solar generation fails, grid operators turn to the foundations of the Hierarchy of Energy Needs: reliable, predictable, and scalable resources.
During the eclipse, that meant scaling up roughly 9,000 MW of natural gas-fired generation, 1,100 MW of coal-fired generation, and 1,000 MW of battery storage.
Still, advanced planning didn’t prevent prices from jumping at peak solar obscuration. ERCOT’s day-ahead forecast called for a peak of $101/MWh, yet system-wide prices surged to $471.87/MWh at 1:30 pm CST.
While this year’s eclipse analysis is a one-off example, traditional energy and power industry stakeholders should note the opportunities unfolding in the new era of U.S. electricity consumption.
Hyperscale data centers, such as those used for artificial intelligence, typically require steady-state power. Intermittent renewables present a considerable hurdle for Big Tech, whose electricity demand is on course to equal that of Japan (the world’s 12th largest country by population) in two years.
As AI-driven data center usage grows, so will the demand for reliable, scalable, and predictable power generation — qualities ideally suited to natural gas-fired generation.
A deep dive into the opportunities and risks of Big Tech’s power demand is available here:
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