Posted on 02/18/2021 5:06:56 PM PST by beancounter13
After winter storms continued to barrage the state Tuesday night, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the body overseeing the grid that serves 90 percent of the state’s homes, couldn’t offer a timeline for when power for every Texan would be restored. Over the long weekend, the council had advised local utilities to shed energy use with rolling outages in order to maintain the reliability of the electric system after a surge in demand, or otherwise risk uncontrolled blackouts that will take longer to reverse. Some four million homes in the state had been left in the lurch without energy in the bitter cold—many for over fifty hours—and as of Wednesday morning, 2.7 million homes still lacked power.
As Texans have fled for hotels, bunked with friends and family, or, without options, hunkered down in their homes watching pipes burst and the water in toilet bowls freeze, lawmakers have questioned whether the council has mismanaged the response. On Tuesday, Governor Greg Abbott said the situation was “unacceptable” and called for the council’s leaders to resign. State legislators are now planning to investigate what led energy generation to drop off when Texans needed it most.
To help make sense of what led to ERCOT’s trouble handling this energy crisis, Texas Monthly spoke with Joshua Rhodes, an energy guru—who was also frozen out of his South Austin home and had temporarily relocated to a warm location in Dripping Springs. Rhodes is a founding partner at IdeaSmiths LLC energy consulting firm and a research assistant at the University of Texas at Austin whose work focuses on the area of smart grid and bulk electricity systems. The interview has been edited for clarity.
(Excerpt) Read more at -texasmonthly-com.cdn.ampproject.org ...
“The preppers of the world made it through just fine.
I know I did. Buy it also revealed some weak spots that will be shored up soon.”
Funny how those “once in a lifetime” events can make a conservative out of you to make sure you’re ready for tough times. Almost like the folks that normally keep a stock of toilet paper they bought on sale in case a once in a lifetime pandemic is right around the corner... :-)
“Could It Have Been Prevented?”
Now that is a really stupid question. Ignorance, and Progressive ideas led to this disaster.
A couple of thoughts:
1) Texas is a deregulated market for generation.
2) Not sure on wind subsidies, but if wind were more expensive, then fossil plants would have a better chance of having their plants win the bidding process.
At present, wind pretty much bids, ‘free’ so they are allowed to supply as much power as the grid can receive. Nuke plants can bid low because once they start, they don’t stop. Fossil plants are at a disadvantage because they have to pay for the commodity AND the Clean Air Regulations. At some point, it becomes more economical to shut the plant than have it be on standby when it will not likely receive any income.
Green New Deal will make this situation worse because fossil plants will get hit with a carbon tax driving up their operating cost. Thus, only wind and solar are left.
I have seen commentary about batteries, but that is not sustainable.
I’m a BIG fan of sine-wave inverters.
They seem to have a wide range of system interfacing and are a moderate expense to drive needed electrical and electronic devices compared to other single devices.
They seem to have a wide range of uses
That is a general problem in DC though, they load everything up with porkulous type spending.
In order for some americans to get the $600 relief check, DC loaded it up with foreign spending so the hunter bidens of the world can go around and collect it for their “big guys”
A good analytic framework.
Conditional availability of sources needs to be included in the economic pricing.
But they would still be bidding against all the other fossil plants, and those that didn't invest in reliability would have a cost advantage.
I'm not saying wind subsidies are good, just that you'll never have infrastructure prepared for a rare event in an unregulated generation market.
The problem that caused the reaactor to trip and shut down was reported to be a disruption in feedwater pumps 11 and 12. And that disruption was caused by some equipment that hadn't been hardened for the extreme cold temperatures that occurred this week, despite warnings that such extreme weather was going to hit.
The details are in the Washington Examiner article, "How and why a nuclear reactor shut down in Texas cold snap when energy was needed most," and NRC EN Revision Text: AUTOMATIC REACTOR TRIP DUE TO LOW STEAM GENERATOR LEVEL.
Yes - less subsidized wind gen would likely have increased investment in parts of the thermal gen supply. More upside to run if your competition is not subsidized means more investment in being able to run...
I agree - the regulatory structure doesn’t drive cold weather reliability, but name one thermal generator that didn’t want to be making $9K/MWhr. And how much winterization would that pay for?
ERCOT blew it because their reserve margins didn’t account for such a storm. But this was more of a one in a ten year miss instead of a one in a hundred year miss - they should have been ready for it - at least to some extent.
That said - false pricing the generation with subsidies distorts the market.
Still not sure I’d it’s true that wind mill blades are different in cold weather regions than warm, but if so - same shirt sightedness distorting the market prices...
Reactor one of the STP that tripped offline did not go down for maintenance. STP reactor one had a boiler feed line sensor freeze up and the automatic safety systems turbine tripped the reactor and initiated a shutdown and core cooling event as it was designed too. Those reactors ware never designed nor hardened for freezing temperatures. The last time that area got below freezing was 1989 and barely this time they got a hard freeze. Im in the energy industry I have live data access to ERCOT and Oncor data I watched STP one trip and also watched in horror as the grid lost 30,000 megawatts in a few minutes which caused the grid frequency to drop to 59.2 Hz which should have collapsed it we came within seconds of kissing the whole grid having to black start the grid would take WEEKS to spin up, frequency synchronise and phase match all the generation and sub grids its never been done before because no one in their right mind would test the procedure.
They were only getting that because it was costing them $8,950 to provide.
Still not sure I’d it’s true that wind mill blades are different in cold weather regions than warm...
North Dakota gets 20% of its electricity from wind.
I think that was mentioned in the article. Texas, however, decided we did not want to pay generators to have assets sitting idle.
Is that something that needs to change? If so, who would get to determine a fair rate for idle assets?
Not disagreeing with you there. That is why I question the cost. Do we really want to go back to a regulated industry?
Seems to me these are reliability issues. Do they have battery storage of some type to store what’s produced by wind turbines?
Thanks for the post. I did not know that.
I am sure someone at NRG will pay for that. They will have lost a fortune because of the short-sightedness.
We will not get to know who.
“OK, if they are only counting on 10 percent of the wind power being available (and it was about half that) how do you get to the alleged 40 percent of the energy loss being attributed to wind?”
People keep confusing power CAPACITY vs power PRODUCTION. Capacity is measured in megawatts it’s a unit of power flowing for one SECONDs time. Power production is measured in megawatt hours as in one megawatt produced for an HOURS time period.
Ercot expects wind to be 10% of power CAPACITY in the winter time. Over a 24 hour period it’s possible and expected that wind would also be 40% of power PRODUCTION as well. How can that be. Well Texas during the winter has 80,000+ megawatts of power CAPACITY of which 10,000 of that is expected to be wind. During a 24 hour period Texas will use 45,000 megawatts per hour for peak hours and under 20,000 during not peak hours. Wind is the last to curtail generation only solar has a higher priority on the grid so as demand drops every megawatt of.Wind is used if there is surplus capacity on the grid then gas plants shut down first , then coal, nuclear is last. So as demand falls more and more of the percentage of power consumption measured in Mwh is wind due to it being the last to shut down. There are times during low demand where 100% of power consumption is wind while wind in only 15% of the total 80,000 of available capacity at that instant. The other plants are idle waiting to spin up if needed.
Texas has more than enough power CAPACITY to shut down every wind turbine and solar panel in winter that would drop the power pool from 80,000 megawatts to 65,000 or so. Typical demand is around 45,000 megawatts in winter or less what we saw was a all time record of 69,000 megawatts had the gas grid no nearly collapsed and the nuclear plant not lost 1200 megawatts Texas would have had more than enough to.cover that 69,000 even with zero wind. As it was wind helped at the critical time with 5600 megawatts.
Thanks for the post!
Fascinating job you have!
Absolutely
http://www.propane-generators.com/
I had a Sam’s Club 5000/7000 watt unit before we got out generac the best kits tri fuel , petrol , natural gas and propane.
It’s a deregulated market, and energy companies are looking for an edge. That said, I am sure they are working on the economics of batteries. Might be difficult to justify for a once per decade deal.
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