CORRECTED-Texas grid ERCOT strengthens efforts for upcoming winter season

(Corrects in Dec 4 story the name of storm in paragraph 4 to Uri from Elliott, adds date of Elliott in paragraph 5 to clarify)

Dec 4 (Reuters) - The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said on Monday that inspectors will be deployed to examine electric generation units and transmission facilities to strengthen efforts to prepare for the approaching winter season.

"The winter preparedness efforts made by market participants, reinforced by ERCOT weatherization inspections, continue to strengthen the reliability and resiliency of the ERCOT grid,” said ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas.

More than half of the U.S. and parts of Canada, home to around 180 million people, could fall short of electricity this winter owing to a lack of natural gas infrastructure, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) warned last month.

The Texas grid operator has been concerned about extreme weather after Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 left millions without power for days as ERCOT fought to prevent a grid collapse due to the suspension of an unusually high amount of generation.

Also, Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022 brought sub-freezing temperatures and extreme weather warnings to roughly two-thirds of the U.S., prompting generators to add more power to the grid, while power prices in Texas spiked to $3,700 per megawatt hour.

The grid operator announced earlier this month that it had canceled the procurement of an extra 3,000 megawatts (MW) of winter power reserves after receiving bids for only 11.1 MW of capacity. (Reporting by Sherin Elizabeth Varghese and Rahul Paswan in Bengaluru Editing by Marguerita Choy)