Posted on 02/18/2021 5:06:56 PM PST by beancounter13
I understand how public electric utilities work. We used to have those in Texas. We don’t anymore.
Retail electric providers are not regulated. They are free to sell electricity to anybody that wishes to buy from them.
Electricity generators are not regulated. They are free to sell as much electricity to the grid as they wish.
Only the Transmission companies remain regulated. Getting the power from the plants to the end users requires specialized equipment, and it would be difficult to duplicate in an efficient manner.
ERCOT merely manages the grid and maintains the market places where generators can work with retailers.
I appreciate your concern and your expertise. Please understand that we now live and operate in an entirely different electricity market than the rest of the U.S.
There is obviously a huge mismatch due to ignorance and piss poor planning. ERCOT is not doing what is necessary to keep the grid up.
A couple of thoughts:
1) The grid, fortunately, did not go down. We suffered rolling blackouts, and some substations did not reset and come back online like they should have leaving many residents with a long-term power loss. Others, were inconvenienced with having power for 2 hours and darkness for 1.
2) ERCOT did manage the situation reasonably well. It issued the warning, informed the TDSPs to reduce load, and managed to keep the grid operational.
That said, there is room for improvement. I will be paying attention to see how ERCOT responds so that this doesn’t happen again.
Proof you are wrong is in front of you. Embrace your “rolling” blackouts.
Not sure what you are talking about.
The rolling blackouts lasted for three day ... Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. By Thursday, the grid was stable, and by Friday the grid was back to normal.
This is Free Market Texas where business can react fast because money is involved. It is not Regulated California where the commission has to decide what gets turned on and when.
“Someone selling on the spot market did reap a windfall but it wasn’t the company billing the consumer.”
It was the generators - whether wind, coal, nuke, or anyone in between. If they could have put juice on the grid they would have made bank. Maybe mitigated for NG units when NG prices spiked, but even the $9K/MWhr is huge.
They had every motivation to be and get online.
A lot of people got screwed in this, but the market signals to the generation assets was sell sell sell.
No argument there, but as I understand it the consumers who got hit were those who purchased their power via firms like Griddy who just passed through their wholesale costs of power.
When the wholesale spot market prices spiked Griddy had no option but to pass them on to the consumer. These are the bills that the federal government will end up paying.
The companies actually generating power may have made bank selling any excess but they couldn't have soaked their main customers since they were under contract.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3936255/posts
Your city gas company takes gas from high-pressure interstate and intrastate gas pipelines. The gas then moves to customers through its lower-pressured gas distribution pipes. The gas pressure decrease as it as moves to the customers. Normally the utilities’ inlet gas pressure is more than enough for them to supply gas safely.
With 1989 gas production down dramatically and demand exploding, the high-pressure gas system could not supply enough gas to meet demand. This resulted in decreasing line pressures in the high-pressure supply system, lowering the gas utilities’ inlet gas pressure.
The utility’s inlet pressures were so low, and dropping, that soon the distribution system pressures would be below atmospheric pressure. Air could then flow into the gas pipelines. Typically, back-flow valves stop that. Since many of the furnaces were old and converted from prior fuels (oil, coal), proper valving was a big problem.
Oxygen in natural pipelines is incredibly dangerous. Whole city blocks could be destroyed in an air/gas explosion.
To maintain safe gas pressures, the operators wanted to shed load with localized gas shutoffs. Since all non-critical gas loads had already been shutoff, only critical loads were left. This included houses and hospitals. To save the gas grid, the operators had to cutoff gas to a very large number of customers.
Whose gas to shut off?
Before options were presented to senior management (this call was getting kicked way upstairs), the operators tried to figure out what would happen to the areas that lost gas. Here’s what they came up with.
After the gas was shut off:
The houses without gas would rapidly lose heat and quickly become unlivable.
Anyone who had any kind of electric space heater would plug it in.
That would blow the electric grid.
An electric utility call confirmed a sudden, albeit short-lived, increase in electric load for space heaters would probably blow the already critically strained electric grid.
The electric grid in areas well beyond the gas shutoff area probably would be blown also.
Widespread blackouts would impact not only shut off gas customers. It would kill the electric blowers in furnaces that could still get gas. How many? No way of knowing.
Lots and lots of people are in the cold and in the dark.
more at link
“Wow. Your post is full of inaccuracies.”
Actually it’s other way around. You couldn’t come up with a solution that made sense, so, as I predicted, you’re in favor of the status quo and the disaster it caused. Tell your fellow Texans who have had to leave their home deal with broken pipes and contaminated water that it’s just like the toilet paper shortage. I’m sure they’ll feel very comforted.
Glad to hear that you have been to China, so I’m sure you agree with me that it’s anything but an anti private property communist regime. To see that you have to go to Cuba or NK.
Though we do agree that you can’t have one-way free trade, that it has to be something where both sides benefit. And I don’t blame the Chinese for taking advantage of us, I blame are idiots in Washington for letting the Chinese walk all over us. Or maybe they’re not idiots, just incredibly corrupt scums on the take, like the current white house resident.
“That is a heck of a lot cheaper than a backup battery and you have three different fuel types to choose from.”
Yep. Paid about $500 for the generator (9 kw) at Costco and an electrician to hook it up.
I’ve had to use it only once so far, and it was just like being connected to the utility. Worked like a charm.
Don’t worry. We can make adjustments. Always remember:
1) The rolling blackouts only lasted 3 days; not weeks on end like in CA
2) We did not hit any capacity limitations on our grid; we only had plants that did not perform; this can and will be addressed
3) I see no benefit to joining the ERCOT grid with one of the other two grids in the contiguous U.S.; such a move pits our unsubsidized generation plants against subsidized generation plants and that is not free trade
Peace.
The electric grid may be largely recovered, but the longer term problems are still huge. The broken water pipes and water damage over a very large region are going to take time & money to repair. And apparently, many refineries’ operations went down and are slow to restart:
(dated 2/19)
Good post about the refineries, here:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3936683/posts?page=6#6
Now, that said, gasoline prices in the region mostly supplied by Texas refineries have not shot past most of the rest of the US, so, I’m guessing low demand is modifying the shock?
https://www.gasbuddy.com/gaspricemap?lat=38.822395&lng=-96.591588&z=4
“No argument there, but as I understand it the consumers who got hit were those who purchased their power via firms like Griddy who just passed through their wholesale costs of power.”
You are right they got skewered since they were not under contract and had no other options other than freezing. It was their cal, to play the market, but the situation they ended up in was unfortunate.
When the wholesale spot market prices spiked Griddy had no option but to pass them on to the consumer. These are the bills that the federal government will end up paying.”
Unfortunately I think you are right. While I think that those who want to play the game should be able to cover their bets I doubt it will happen here. They wanted the lowest cost option and that doesn’t include designing and implementing costs to avoid a once in a decade or more event. Those Griddynusers expected the rest of society to cover reliability so they could save money.
“The companies actually generating power may have made bank selling any excess but they couldn’t have soaked their main customers since they were under contract.”
True to some extent. But in ERCOT there are plenty of merchant plants, peakers etc, that have no customers. They are just there to sell on peak to the market with no obligation to a captive rate base - same reason people can sign up for Griddy and roll the dice. They still got paid, The entities delivering the power under contract had to pay it. They will increase costs in the future to make that up so in the end the customers will pay.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.