Tell you what
Posted on 02/17/2021 6:13:45 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
WASHINGTON — A devastating winter storm that has plunged Texas into an electricity crisis offers warning signs for the U.S. as the Biden administration seeks to prepare for a future in which extreme weather is a greater risk and America is almost entirely powered by renewable energy.
Energy generation is one challenge. But an equally daunting task centers on storing power from renewable energy for extreme events like the one hammering Texas.
Wind and solar, still fairly small slices of the state's energy mix, played only a minimal role in the sudden power shortage, utility officials said — contrary to a wave of conservative critics who tried to falsely pin blame for the situation on renewable energy.
Still, the Texas crisis is a wake-up call that exposes how the U.S. electric infrastructure may not be fully prepared to absorb steep climate-related spikes in demand for power. The challenge is likely to grow deeper as the U.S. relies more on wind and solar power.
Electric grid regulators said the U.S. will have to develop vast supplies of power storage — such as gigantic batteries — that rely on emerging technologies that have only recently started becoming economical and feasible on a large scale.
The picture of what went wrong in Texas is incomplete. But while some wind generators did go offline as turbines iced over, the state's largest grid said the shortage was driven by a failure not of renewable sources but of traditional "thermal" sources: coal, nuclear and especially natural gas.
Although no single weather event can be attributed solely to climate change, the deadly cold that slammed Texas was the latest reminder of how weather extremes can push the delicate web of power generators and transmission lines that make up our electric grid past its breaking point.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
They weren’t operating at capacity. because the Greens said so:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pollution-limit-waived-texas-power-194004318.html
Scoop up the angry squeegee men at intersections and put them to work.
What is the difference between ‘GAS’ and ‘GAS CC’?
Tell you what
We may have climate change alright, but the trend is towards getting colder and not warmer and I am afraid that this will continue for some time to come.
I used to think Texas was sort of cool.
Here in frozen Michigan you only have to dig a few feet down to protect against freezing regardless of how bad the winter. In your 100 - 130 degree Texas I'll bet you don't freeze one or two inches under.
A combined-cycle power plant uses both a gas and a steam turbine
together to produce up to 50 percent more electricity from the same
fuel than a traditional simple-cycle plant. The waste heat from the
gas turbine is routed to the nearby steam turbine, which generates
extra power.
So both types of plants require natural gas as the feedstock. Am I correct?
Even nuc power output dropped.
Unexpected.
Thanks for posting the article. I went snooping around for how it is done in the midwest. We use depleted aquifers and a few smaller depleted reservoirs. They fill them up before it starts getting cold, then draw them down when it is cold. Looks to be roughly a 6 month cycle. I sure there have been some lean times when the gulf gets shutdown because of hurricanes, but it looks to me they keep plenty in reserve if that should occur..
Correct. CC is more efficient, enough so that they’re categorized separately.
So were pipeline compressor stations all electric for cost savings, or because of environmental regulations?
And if electrical, it’s mind boggling they wouldn’t have a natgas engine generator as backup.
That’s a good graphic. At least these gov’t orgs produce something of value.
Pipe line.compressors switched for.NOx compliance the.gas engine’s are.diesels that put out good amounts of.NOx gases to.clean.that you need SCR amd.Urea systems which add a new.consumable the liquid Urea and $$$$ its.cheaper to just put a electric motor on it but then you lpse the self pumping capacity which as we.all.can see now.is a terrible idea
Great example of how gov’t regulation had a hand in this.
A power plant can trip for any number of reasons at any time including cold weather. Yes, it could be operator error or a design error but these are about the least likely causes. Power plants consist of many mechanical, electrical and electronic components that work in harmony to keep everything in balance. Cold weather pushes some of these comports towards the outer edge of design tolerances thus a trip becomes more likely.
The key to power supply reliability writ large is redundancy. This lack of redundancy that is plainly obvious has been driven by political forces that first drove coal out of the energy mix and more recently forced wind and solar into base load reliance. Wind and solar are worthless for base load purposes much less emergency surges. You can't push a button to make the sun to shine or wind to blow just right.
I worked for a number of years at a huge chemical complex in TX. We had three 1500 megawatt cogeneration power plants on site that supplied 100% of our steam usage and had excess electricity that fed into the TX grid. IIRC, it was something like 500MW normally into the grid.
A small electrical short in some wiring caught insulation on fire, the fire moved through cable trays and eventually the whole port plant plant was blazing.
The TX grid had spare generating capacity idling and absorbed the hit without dimming a light locally or anywhere in the state.
Relying on wind and solar for some 25% of grid capacity is nuts. I've read claims that 50 to 90 something percent of the wind and solar were knocked offline. I have no idea what the actual number is but whatever the amount offline, there doesn't appear to be sufficient conventional generating capacity + backup to handle mass demand surges. Another piece of the problem is that natural gas production deceased due to the new energy policies and this cascaded into a fuel shortage. This falls on political forces. And of course, I fully expect those political forces point the finger at everyone and everything except themselves.
It has been reported that the cooling system at the nuclear plant had freezing problems. That sounds ridiculous, but may be possible.
“the cooling system at the nuclear plant had freezing problems”
My first thought.
There could have also been transmission and loading problems limiting output. Who knows?
Looks like “Capacity [of generation]” is conditional for all power sources.
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