๐ค I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Aug 24 (Reuters) - Two U.S. electric grids may not have enough power to meet demand plus required reserves on Thursday as homes and businesses crank up their air conditioners to escape a brutal heat wave blanketing Texas and other U.S. Central states.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the grid for more than 26 million customers, projected a "reserve capacity shortage with no market solution available for Thursday ... which causes a risk for an (Energy Emergency Alert) event."
When a grid does not have enough resources to meet demand plus required reserves, operators can take emergency steps to reduce usage and increase supplies.
Those steps include imports from other regions, calls for energy conservation and - in a worst-case situation - controlled, rotating outages to avoid uncontrolled blackouts.
Texas residents have worried about extreme weather since a deadly storm in February 2021 left millions without power, water and heat for days as ERCOT struggled to prevent a grid collapse.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which oversees the grid serving 45 million people in 15 states from Minnesota to Louisiana, also projected it might not have enough resources to meet forecast demand on Thursday.
Saved 60% of original text.