HOUSTON (KIAH) — This past Wednesday and Thursday, energy consumers received emergency conservation notices asking consumers to conserve energy between the hours of 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.

ERCOT, also known as The Electric Reliability Council of Texas manages the electric power flow for most of Texas and more than 26 million Texas customers. The conservation appeal comes now with rising hot temperatures, high demand, low wind and declining solar power generation. Energy companies have been sending alerts to consumers to avoid power generation outages.

If the ERCOT grid is overloaded and continues to worsen, ERCOT may require the transmission and distribution of utilities from energy companies to control outages.

Octopus Energy US’s CEO, Michael Lee says with customer demand flexibility, we could see a difference with lower costs and grid reliability. “Our big advocacy is we want more batteries on the grid, we want more demand response on the grid..all of these things will reduce customer bills–yes they will make the incumbents less money but it will massively transform the grid and enable us to be more agile to adapt in any situation..I don’t think there’s a situation where we don’t fix it but the fix comes with the incumbents having to change.”

Here a few tips to help you conserve energy and possibly save money:

• Raise thermostat by a degree or two if safe.
• Avoid using large appliances during peak hours.
• Consider demand response advocacy-depending on your provider, you could be compensated for precooling your home in advance to conserve your energy.