it's 12deg here right now... it'll be about -5 when i get up tomorrow morning
Posted on 03/05/2014 3:39:13 PM PST by dickmc
For many people in the U.S., me included, this winter has been miserable. The polar vortex, which I'm fairly certain was a term only meteorologists had heard before this winter, has wreaked havoc in much of the country. ... This type of weather affects few, if any, industries more than electricity providers.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which is responsible for balancing the state's electricity supply and demand, reported an all-time high winter peak demand Jan. 7 and was required to issue an alert the day before when some 13,000 MW of generation--3,700 MW of forced outages caused by weather--were unavailable from midnight to 8 a.m. ERCOT brought all available electric generation online and deployed all demand response programs that it had contracted. Even with these measures, available generation capacity did not meet demand ...
Other independent system operators such as PJM and MISO experienced problems, too--some because coal plants that were heavily used have been retired. (Their owners can't afford to meet environmental regulations.)...
This brief summary is well worth reading. It appears the grid was in more trouble than commoonly known. There detailed article is here.
A much longer article covering the same thing in the same Magazine with respect to natural gas is is here.
Both are worth reading.
(Excerpt) Read more at elp.com ...
it's 12deg here right now... it'll be about -5 when i get up tomorrow morning
Ah! It’s like in the mountains. I can get there if I’m willing to drive four hours. I’m not.
It’s 80 here now, going down to 52 (Brrrr!) tonight.
(I paid my dues. I’m from MI, and moved out when I was 20)
i hear ya, and i'm not really bitching, it's just been a loooong winter this year since it pretty much started at the end of October...
Lord save us! It’s Cthulhu!!!
I grew up in Flint,,,but it took me until I was twenty three to leave...
Flint? Oh geez....
Glad you came out West, young Mikey.
The interuptibles they speak of are electricity users.
The gas transmission companies can and do limit gas fired generation when it gets too cold.
I could have put 580mw to the grid during the last cold snap, but couldn’t due to lack of gas. (Both high price and availability)
Even during a declared emergency by a grid operator, requesting all available generation, we couldn’t run/generate.
NO gas
This winter of all winters proved the wisdom of escaping “ The Little Motor CIty”
The relative value of the EPA has gone to zero when it became corrupted into a political machine for the benefit of the democRATS.
I was on the opposite side of it a time ago.
We were doing a Natural Gas Storage facility with Electric Drive Compressors. We got a dirt cheap rate on electricity based upon interruptible power.
The facility needed to store so much in a month, typically known in advance by contracts.
If we got shut down for a half a day, no big deal.
I'm not sure it makes sense to do the same with generated power that will be needed right now.
Pennsylvania = blue state, blue governor
Jersey = blue state, repubbie (greenie) governer who the demo's want to look good
Maryland = blue state, gov’ment workers, blue unions
Texas ??? red state, red gov, Bush state, red voters, no unions
Were you there for ‘78? A laff-riot.
PJM is several companies in the northeast.
EPA has forced retirement of older coal fired generators.
Gas turbines have traditionally been peaking units.
Summer extended use of them has become economical for obvious reasons.
Nope I left in 1971 and have only returned there once since then back in 1989.
A lot of this is T. Boone Picken’s fault, for pushing a combination of wind (from which he profited) and natural gas as its backup (from which he profited).
I used to consider my college degree:
B.S. bull s***
M.S. more s***
Ph.D. pile higher and deeper (Never did get this one.)
I BET he is even richer than the King of Saudi Arabia.
Pickens wouldn't really EVER say how much he's worth, which makes him even scarier. Yikes.
PJM is not a 'power company.' It is a grid operator for all of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio with parts of 8 other states thrown in.
It's sole function, and a highly regulated one at that, is to balance supply of power with demand and do so at the lowest possible price. It buys power from regulated utilities, independent power producers and even industrial generators when necessary. It really has little dependence on 'trendy, subsidy sucking' sources since it is located in an area of the country where there is virtually no solar and very little in the way of wind power.
Take coal plants out of the equation, and PJM has a major problem in delivering enough kWh when there are harsh weather conditions such as we had this year.
I'm retired now after 40+ years in the electric generation industry, and I fear what will happen to this country if the Democrats win this war on coal. We will be in a world of hurt if they do.
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