Posted on 02/03/2011 2:43:48 PM PST by NorwegianViking
Houston, February 3, 2011 — Federal regulators will investigate why about 50 electricity generating units in Texas failed during the past week's snowstorms.
The power plant failures caused demand to exceed available power, leading the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to order planned rolling blackouts that affected hundreds of thousands of people.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. told reporters that they will investigate the adequacy of current cold weather preparations and safeguards used by plant operators in Texas.
It is not unusual for power plants in the northern U.S. to be more thoroughly weatherized against the cold than plants in the South — whereas Southern power facilities are typically better equipped to handle summer heat.
The more than 50 power units that went offline or ran at impaired capacity levels represented about 7,000 MW of generating capacity. The plants became unable to operate Wednesday when snowstorms hit and temperatures dropped below freezing.
ERCOT operates the power grid for 22 million Texas customers, representing 85 percent of the state's electric load and 75 percent of the state's land area.
In the interests of accuracy— no “50 of our Texas plants” did NOT go off line. Some went off line, but others were operating at a reduced capacity. Accuracy.
Thanks for your post. Please share your source.
They didn’t vote (D)?!! Duh!!!
Except that will bring the Texas grid -- which neither imports nor exports power and has been the most reliable grid for decades -- under federal regulatory authority.
Not something to be wished for...
From another post, I read that in NM they will now have to reset, and re-pressure/ check all the homes before turning the gas back on. If that is correct, what a pain that will be.
http://newmexicoindependent.com/68766/gov-declares-state-of-emergency-due-to-gas-shortage-cold
Yes, God turned down the thermostat. We have had several days of teens temps. and 30 mph winds. No antifreeze in their lake cooling waters. The last time we had these temps the small plants were not built.
We could speculate that one of the coal fired plants that dropped offline interrupted power to natural gas pipeline pumping stations, precipitating a cascade failure of peaking plants through fuel starvation. That would imply a problem of rerouting other generating units to support the pipeline, or restarting the pipeline pumping stations became an issue. Anyone have evidence either way?
Three grids in the US. East West and Texas (ERCOT). At the present time only small amounts of power can be sent from one grid to another. One of Texas’ problems is to much wind power. Baseload plants cannot get on line fast enough in emergency situations. Even Pickens finally seen the light. Quit the feel good energy policy snd go back to coal...problem solved.
“Having had significant inside knowledge of ERCOT, I know what happened.”
You sound like one of the “experts” who will be doing the “pile on” for the Operators who were following their procedures.
59.58 Hz is what I have seen from PI data just prior to the load being shed. The load was shooting up, while resources were being lost.
It was the only option.
Showing the ERCOT boundaries [in blue] where the rolling blackouts occurred.
ERCOT in relation to the rest of the US as far as electric grids are concerned. Texas chose to remain instate with their grid with no major ties to the outside grids to keep the FERC out of controlling the grid.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/7412300.html
Power outages unlikely, but not impossible
begin snip
Wednesday’s rolling blackouts were not caused by a failure to predict demand accurately or to keep enough plants online, Doggett said, but by a widespread mechanical failure of more than 50 power generating units all over the state.
There was no single reason for the failures and no particular location, plant operator or type of power plant behind the problem, he said.
Re-evaluating procedures
Frozen water pipes burst in some instances, but many of the problems emerged as ice locked up equipment that sends signals to valves, pumps and other devices, Doggett said.
Most power plant operators in Texas winterize their plants to handle cold snaps, but it’s clear that more could be done, he said.
“We will be looking at whether tighter restrictions should be applied on those plants,” he said.
end snip.......
Don’t know how cold it got in Texas, but diesel doesn’t do well in Extreme cold...I have a hard time imagining temps got cold enough to affect diesel fuel in Texas. Where I live, we have winter diesel...higher kerosene content and it lowers the gel temp.
Thanks for posting the grid map. It made it much easier to visualize what was/is happening. Thanks also for the clarifying information that you posted on #33. Having access to good information is so important. Thanks again.
same here with the fuel but it made no mention of fuel problems...
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