Why Texas Has Its Own Power Grid: the Electric Reliability Council of Texas

Slate ^ | August 18, 2003 | Brendan I. Koerner

[new cruelty]

Blackout postmortems have noted that America's electricity system consists of just three regions—the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection. Why does the Lone Star State have its own power grid?

Partly because of a historical desire for self-sufficiency and partly because of that famous "Don't Mess With Texas!" attitude. The majority of the state's residents live within the region regulated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, an "island" that generates and supplies all its own electricity—unlike, say, New York City or Detroit, whose residents found out the hard way that lots of their power comes from Canada. (A small sliver of Western Texas gets its juice from the Western Interconnection, while a few customers in the north and the east are hooked into the Eastern Interconnection. Still, ERCOT handles 85 percent of the state's electricity needs.)

The local utilities that comprise ERCOT have pledged not to sell their power to interstate customers. As a result, the interconnection is exempt from most regulation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Beltway agency that governs the transmission of electricity from state to state—say, by mandating transmission standards, or requiring that prices be listed in public forums. ERCOT's resistance to federal regulation plays well in President Bush's native land, where meddling from Washington, D.C., is generally abhorred.

The isolation of the Texas grid also has roots in World War II, when ERCOT's precursor, the Texas Interconnected System, was created. At the time, the state was home to several factories vital to the war effort. The state's electricity planners—anxious to keep the assembly lines running and concerned about the reliability of the power supply—felt that a Texas-only system would be more dependable than one that harnessed electricity from distant states. Texas' isolated arrangement worked largely because of the state's abundance of homegrown natural resources, particularly coal (Texas currently ranks fifth in annual production) and gas (first, with 24 percent of the nation's proven reserves).

There has been relatively little agitation to integrate ERCOT into the national systems, primarily because Texas doesn't really need the help. The state uses more electricity than any other, 44 percent more than runner-up California. Much of this is used by industrial customers such as petrochemical plants and oil refineries. Despite Texas' massive thirst for electricity, ERCOT has been able to provide cheap power with few service hiccups. In fact, Texas electricity is cheaper, per kilowatt hour, than the national average.

[_Jim]

And do you realize how little some areas produce?????

Simplistic view. Means nothing.

Most of the NE imports from Canada, California sucks from the North West and Mid West.

A statement of the obvious - what's your point?

THE REASON the power is IMPORTED fom those areas is BECAUSE that is HYDRO POER and VERY LOW in cost.

Fourth, require local grids produce no less than 70% of their demand locally.

You will solve nothing ...

[_Jim]

Electical System design (power grid/generation) with an eye towards 'reliability' falls in the category of 'moving target'; correct one aspect of 'system failure' and, given time, another un-addressed facet will rear it's ugly head ...

Why is this so? We continue to build larger systems and more interconnected systems as well as experience different circumstances thrown at us from mother nature's direction, both in terms of events (like ice storms, electrical storms, ion storms) but also from the unpredictability of how materials/equipment react sometimes in adverse and severe environment as when stressed during unforseen circumstances

From: http://eetd.lbl.gov/certs/pdf/Dobson_4.pdf

Blackout Mitigation Assessment in Power Transmission Systems

Electric power transmission systems are a key infra- structure and blackouts of these systems have major direct and indirect consequences on the economy and national security. Analysis of North American Electrical Reliability Council blackout data suggests the existence of blackout size distributions [are proportional or related with] with power tails [system size or complexity]. This is an indication that blackout dynamics behave as a complex dynamical system. Here, we investigate how these complex system dynamics impact the assessment and mitigation of blackout risk.

The mitigation of failures in complex systems needs to be approached with care. The mitigation efforts can move the system to a new dynamic equilibrium while remaining near criticality and preserving the power tails. Thus, while the absolute frequency of disruptions of all sizes may be reduced, the underlying forces can still cause the relative frequency of large disruptions to small disruptions to remain the same.

Moreover, in some cases, efforts to mitigate small disruptions can even increase the frequency of large disruptions. This occurs because the large and small disruptions are not independent but are strongly coupled by the dynamics.

...

In this paper, we focus on the intrinsic dynamics of blackouts and how complex system dynamics affect both blackout risk assessment and the impact of mitigation techniques on blackout risk. It is found, perhaps counterintuitively, that apparently sensible attempts to mitigate failures in complex systems can have adverse effects and therefore must be approached with care.

[taxcontrol]

As to my supposed simplistic approach, and your guessing at doubling the cost, I can only comment that I have actually performed cost analysis for a major western utility.

What drives cost is the production of new power plants. This would be driven by item number four in several areas until such plants were constructed. Power plants have a long life cycle and can begin to charge for electricity as soon as production has started.

It would also have the net effect of extending the life of the long haul power lines as less power would need to be moved long distances. It would further have a savings in the elimination of power loss that happens when you try to push power long distances. In case you have not noticed, I'm an advocate of smaller power plants but more in number.

So other than the increase in power production facilities the only real capital investment would be the creation of redundant grids at the local level. This is a long term capital improvement and has a working lifespan of about 25 years.

The net of this by taking a look across three different locations is that the price of electricity for the consumer would go up about 20% in most areas. Less in some areas (Texas comes to mind) more, perhaps 30% to 35% in other areas (LA and NY).

Of course I would be willing to listen to your cost analysis methodology.

[_Jim]

Sorry, but I'm not going to play this simple little game -

- I don't think you have ANY concept of how much reliabilty we have in the current 'systems' around the country -

- nor do you have any idea of the plethora of CIRCUMSTANCES that arise to 'take down a system' as has heppened in past years; in both the east coast and the he west coast grids; proposing SOLUTIONS without knowing the specific PROBLEMS (both human/machine and the combo of the two) is simply unfocused conjecture and a total waste of my time ...

[MissAmericanPie]

We have all the makings of a fine nation all by ourselves. Oil, gas, coal, seaports, our own air force, agriculture, water, resources, industry, Big D and Ft Worth for party time, Houston for mopping up all the lottery winnings, San Antonio for picturesque vacations along with Padre, ruby red grapefruits and oranges from the valley, great hunting, fishing, fat cattle and fine horses, and a church on every corner. God blessed Texas, no doubt about it.

The only thing we need is to oust the liberals from Austin. Clean that nest of cock roaches out, refuse to allow Demoncrats citizenship and we will finally have something to crow about.

[taxcontrol]

I must have not explained the proposal in a manner you could understand - especially since you are so far off in your understanding of what I propose.

Creating two grids does NOT require a doubling of capacity nor does it require double the number of tranmission lines. It does require ISOLATION, so that a fault in one grid does not impact the other grid. Such isolation is acheived by equipment at the substation. At most, all that would be required would be to take the existing number of lines (for example lets say 10) and isolate them into to seperate grids of 5 lines each. Then split the load 50% to each grid.

No change in lines yet. If needed, lines could added as demand required. Lets say that folks were paranoid and decided to add 1 extra line to each grid for a config of 6 + 6. This gives a standard N+1 configuration that is commonly used in fault tolerant designs. The point of two grids is to prevent faults at one grid from impacting the other grid.

I'm very much aware of what is right and wrong about the Texas grid. Would it supprise you to know that Texas utility companies are having to replacing entire power transmission towers in locations? The reason is that the towers are about to fall down. Would it supprise you to know that the SCADA control and transfer trip controls of the grid will loose their commuications paths in less than 18 months? And that the power companies are having to scramble to find alternative means of communications for the vital functions.

Don't cast stones Texas - you are living in a glass house. The PRIMARY advantage that you have over the rest of the grid(s) is that you are smaller in size - which is the very thing I have been advocating.

[taxcontrol]

Why is this so? We continue to build larger systems and more interconnected systems

---

Funny, the very thing that my comments would drive would be smaller systems, each with the ability to back each other up. It would further drive each local grid to get local power first, then get it's additional power from elsewhere as a second option.

Smaller systems
Local control
Local production
Regional backup

Those are good things.

[taxcontrol]

I don't think you have ANY concept of how much reliabilty we have in the current 'systems' around the country

---

Well Sir, there you are simply wrong.
Risk analysis of complex networks be they financial instututions, telcommunication carriers, equipment manufactures and yes, utilities, is what I do for a living.

Click on my name for more information.

[thackney]

I understand very well. I have worked for electric utility companies in Ohio, Philadelphia and Houston. That includes working in engineering planing department and modeling transmission lines for short circuit analysis.

True isolation of grids requires both grids to have spinning reserves and standby reserves for generating capacity. Although many large substation already have multiple transmission lines feeding them, the majority of the substation in the United States do not.

The majority of the transmission line corridors do not contain multiple circuits. Although many do exist, there are more miles of single circuit corridors than multiple. The single line corridors would require build-out to do as you suggest.

I do not know what experience you have in protective device coordination and transmission line distance relaying, but what you suggest is a staggering expense with little improvement. Breaking the US into smaller isolated grids without adding redundancy will increase the number of power outages. Unscheduled line failures from tree limbs, vandals and fatigue do happen. When you reduce the ability to reroute power through a large connected grid, you increase the number and duration of outages the customer will see.

I am not surprise that towers get replaced. Steel, even galvanized steel with a sacrificial anode system will see some corrosion. As Houston was the third city in the world to install an electric distribution system, some of it is old.

Some SCADA systems have their communication fail quickly, some are using systems over 40 years old.

[taxcontrol]

And do you realize how little some areas produce?????
Simplistic view. Means nothing.


So let me get this straight. The FACT that millions of people in the US MUST import substantial portions of the demand from other locations "means nothing"????. Perhaps you have forgotten that moving that much power requires transmission lines that run for hundreds of MILES? That these lines can and sometimes are overloaded and thus fail, because the demand is too high? That these lines are subject to all kinds of outages and failures?



THE REASON the power is IMPORTED fom those areas is BECAUSE that is HYDRO POER and VERY LOW in cost.

NO - the REASON that power is imported is because the local power production can not meet the demand.



Fourth, require local grids produce no less than 70% of their demand locally.

You will solve nothing ...

What it will do is require more local production of power and REDUCE dependance on these overly large and unduly complex trans-state power grids.

[thackney]

The PRIMARY advantage that you have over the rest of the grid(s) is that you are smaller in size - which is the very thing I have been advocating.

No, the primary advantage we have is we build the generation sufficient to carry our load with enough reserve to handle unscheduled combined with planned outages. So far, the NIMBY crowd has not forced us to rely on other to meet our own demands, unlike CA and much of the Northeast.

[TexasCajun]

"I moved my family from Texas to NY because of this trend.

Geezzzzz, what whining!

I wish more non-Texans like you would take your lead.

It's toooo Hot! Wahhhhh

[taxcontrol]

Ok, I agree, true isolation would require spinning reserves etc.

Ok, I agree, single line corridors would require additional lines. The utilities I have worked with have required two line and two paths.

What I don't understand is why you think fault isolation and redundant grids would not improve reliability. I also do not see where I would be reducing the ability to reroute power. Please explain.

I also do not understand why you think such a configuration would not add redundancy. Perhaps this is a difference in design but all of the substations that I have worked were either already redundantly connected or such redundancy was being reworked/restored (single leg till tower was replaced, RTU upgrades, normal O&M stuff, etc.)

[TexasCajun]

Water is kind of important for survival, as is electricity.

I hope you & your new liberal friends in NY don't run out of heating-oil this winter!!

New York will run out of heating-oil way before Texas runs out of water!

I will admit to a shortage in the valley due to MEXICO not RE_PAYING for water the USA provides them! But the last 2 weak hurricanes provided much needed relief.

Pls tell us where you are originally from, certainally not a southerner, the way you cut and run because it's too hot!

[taxcontrol]

No, the primary advantage we have is we build the generation sufficient to carry our load with enough reserve to handle unscheduled combined with planned outages

---

I would say that is a function of smaller grids. Perhaps that is a point of view difference. Perhaps we can agree that one problem faced by others is that they require a significant portion of their load to be imported?

This dependancy on others to produce power inherits risk and thus makes their systems more vulnerable.

[thackney]

Ok, I agree, single line corridors would require additional lines. The utilities I have worked with have required two line and two paths.

Where does this money come from? This a very important first step to your plan.

fault isolation and redundant grids would not improve reliability. I also do not see where I would be reducing the ability to reroute power. Please explain.

Your first premise did not include major new construction, adding redundant lines will reduce outages, but where does the money come for this, again, this is an ENORMOUS expense. A large grid has a greater ability to instantaneously reroute power without any break in power. Depending on redundant, ISOLATED grids means a short break in power to switch to the other grid. At many manufacturing facilities (such as an extrusion process, refinery, etc) a 10 cycle break in power means tens of thousands of dollars and plant down time up to a day.

[thackney]

This dependancy on others to produce power inherits risk and thus makes their systems more vulnerable.

I agree this is a problem of their own creation. But your suggested solutions do not address this reality. How will Connectict, RI, CA and New York get their power under your solution?

[taxcontrol]

"Your first premise did not include major new construction" - ok, I can see where your comments would arise.

As for the money - yes it would be expensive. The cost of which would need to be evaluated against the %of annual failure times the average cost of failure both in terms of lost revenue and in terms of financial risk from inheritance (loss of life, cost of repair, lawsuits or insurance to cover, etc.). This is standard risk analysis stuff. Lastly, the % of failure or uptime should be compaired to public policy. If the grid requires 99.90% uptime and that is already being met, then no changes would be required.

Initial capital can be raised in any number of ways - including traditional bonds, with cost recovery coming from rate increases. In short, the final person to foot the bill would be the consumer.

However, in my prior analysis the build out cost were not as extreame as you propose. Perhaps that was a unique situation. The sample "grid" did not have any single leg substations. I will admit that such may have tainted my cost model and distorted the final costs.

I would find it very concerning though to have a single leg substation. There would be a very high failure risk due to the lack of redundancy. If multiple such stations existed in the grid, the overall risk factor would be, relatively speaking, very high.

You mention that a large grid has the ability to switch power. I agree. My comments would not reduce the geographic foot print of the grid, but it would reduce the amount of power per grid.

Given my test case, it would have been possible to create Grid A and Grid B, each with 1/2 the lines. In a redundantly connected substation, you end up with 4 possible paths.

Grid A: path 1 & 2
Grid B: path 1 & 2

What I'm hearing you say is that this is not typical of most substations??? That would be very concerning.

[taxcontrol]

My item 4 was a first step towards this. By requiring that no less than 70% of their power come from within their smaller "local" grid. Perhaps others would like to see even a higher percentage. In truth, I don't think California and NY would be able to meet the 70%.

This also has a net impact in the strategic allocation of resources in war time. Right now, a handfull of conventional missles striking a few select locations could wreck the grid for a long time. Imagine a 1,000 lbs bomb or incendary striking the power station at Hover dam. I think you could see what 15 to 20 such strikes could do to the a grid. Heck, just take out one of the transmission towers on the main N to S line between the North West and California.

Oh, in truth, it does not take a missle. Say 30 terrorists who are willing to kill and be killed to get close to these substations could wreck a lot of havoc. This is the stuff that I look at from a security perspective.

But at the end of the day, it is all opinion. And anyone who things that my comments on this message board are going to change anything needs a solid reality check.

[jonalvy44]

lol


I'm a Buckeye...UT grad 1990

We use gas for heat...and firewood. Lots of trees to chop down. Hook Em!