Posted on 02/19/2021 5:45:32 AM PST by Hojczyk
I understand the drop of wind power due to frozen windmills; but WHY was there a drop in Natural Gas production? They give a reason for Wind power, but no reason is provided for everything else.
Yes, but that's for peak wind output and not for this time of year. They expect to get about 9 percent this time of year. And, it dropped to almost nothing.
The demand went way up, and the existing coal and NG plants didn't carry the load. Funny how my providers' coal and NG plants did just fine. Of course, they're not managed by ERCOT.
Texas is the number one producer of NG in the country, supplying approximately, 1/4 of the nations NG. This storm wasn’t just an unusual event for Texas, but the cold temperatures covered much of the country. I wonder how much NG was flowing out of TX this week, while TX suffered. Yes, ERCOT failed miserably in not properly planning for such an event, but I suspect when this event if fully understood, the rest of the country will owe Texas, an apology for all the insults thrown it’s way, and then a big thank you for averting disaster in other states.
“Texas needs to cut wind/solar down to less than 15% of the energy production.”
Not only that, the people in charge of Texas Electric Market need to make sure all electric suppliers have the infrastructure to perform under critical conditions, have the financial wherewithal to survive the market in critical conditions and have binding contracts that force the suppliers to perform one way or the other.
Government regulators insist that capital equipment is run at a high level of utilization to justify service rates charged to rate paying users. Telco voice switches are generally sized for ability to handle the peak demand on Mother's Day. Clearly, the Texas power grid needs to have a better understanding of loads and peaks as well as buying equipment that can withstand weather extremes.
Oh, this is totally on ERCOT. But there has been a plan to move away from reliable generation to unproven technology. Wind and solar maybe ok if there was a method of storing their output for the non generating time. But massive Electricity storage does not exist. This is one reason a dam is so great, all that potential energy stored just behind the dam.
China had just bought a bunch of those wind turbines.
We were fairly lucky so the local hydro electric plant sent river water downstream to help.
Because TX didn’t vote for Slow Joe.
We didn’t have the money to winterize because we’d spent so much building brick walls around substations after 9/11 so passerbys couldn’t see terrorists jacking with the equipment. Dumb and dumber.
FEMA sent in emergency diesel generators, not more windmills. just saying.
8 years of savings. not a bad run.
I don’t think the problem is not enough natural gas fired generating plants. The problem is that the natural gas wells, delivery systems, storage and pressurization plants aren’t winterized and studies show that those systems need BILLIONS to winterize them.
Natural gas well and delivery systems undercut each other on price during non-impacted time as they are fighting against artificially low wind energy costs financed by federal preferences. therefore they can’t generate the billions to pay for their own fuel’s winterization.
Free market hamstrung by the federal market interference.
No significant winterizations of the well head to pressurization segments of the gas suppliers to the natural gas generating plants. Billions needed and they can’t get that in their costs due to artificially low prices of wind energy due to federal price propping of the wind energy.
I understand the drop of wind power due to frozen windmills; but WHY was there a drop in Natural Gas production?
According to a report from ERCOT, solar accounts for only 3.8% of the state's power capacity throughout the year. Wind energy accounts for 10% of Texas's winter energy capacity and throughout the entire year it is able to provide 24.8%, the second-largest source of energy in the state under natural gas, which accounts for 51%.
While key questions remain as to the extent these recommendations were implemented across the state, at least one Texas city took precautions that might have paid off. Following the freeze of 2011, El Paso winterized its power plants and this time, the city experienced minimal outages compared to the rest of the state.
Wind turbines can be equipped with different devices that heat and de-ice parts of the turbine along with other measures like water-resistant coatings to help keep them operational in severe cold. Some wind turbines can function in -22 degrees Fahrenheit -----
Also,
Texas power grid was ‘seconds or minutes’ from a total blackout that could have lasted months, ERCOT says CEO Bill Magness defended controlled outages, saying they safeguarded the grid from disaster.
Texas’ electrical system was “seconds or minutes” from collapsing and plunging the state into the dark for months, the power grid’s operators said Thursday while defending their decision to initiate controlled outages. “Our frequency went to a level that, if operators had not acted very rapidly … it could have very quickly changed,” said Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency that oversees the grid. Starting about 11 p.m. Sunday, generation units started knocking off “in rapid succession,” Magness said. Several big units could have gone offline by the minute if officials had waited. He said controlled outages were the only real choice because a true blackout would leave the entire state without power for an indefinite amount of time — possibly months. But Gov. Greg Abbott had harsh words for ERCOT during a news conference Thursday afternoon. In calling for reforms, he said that what happened in Texas “can never be replicated again.” - https://www.dallasnews.com/news/weather/2021/02/18/oncor-ends-controlled-outages-thousands-of-north-texans-still-without-power-due-to-equipment-damage/ ---------------
And,
Massive Power Failure Could Finally Cause Texas to Connect with the Nation’s Power Grids Energy from neighboring states could have helped Texans survive their extreme winter storm
Texas is rich in fossil fuels, renewable power and political power, so for many decades it has run its own power grid, freeing it from federal oversight. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), a nonprofit corporation, manages the network of electrical suppliers, called the Texas Interconnection, which serves 90 percent of the state. ERCOT and Texas have resisted invitations and outright appeals to connect with the nation’s two other power grids: the Eastern Connection, which links suppliers and customers east of the Rockies, and the Western Connection, which links power west of the Rockies....
In some ways that has let Texas be a really interesting experiment in operation of electricity markets. Some say it’s a utopia. It controls both wholesale and retail sales of power, without federal regulatory oversight. That has been praised because Texas doesn’t have to worry about any tension between federal and state jurisdictions. Some blame that tension for the power system failures in California with its market policies. But in Texas you’ve got one regulator, one person that you can point finger at. In some ways you can see that as a more effective approach. - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/massive-power-failure-could-finally-cause-texas-to-connect-with-the-nations-power-grids1/
An analysis of ERCOT (the Texas grid operator) data by Joshua D. Rhodes shows where Texas gets its energy from. The highest share came from natural gas in 2020 at 46 percent while wind accounted for nearly a quarter at 23 percent, quite a rise on 8 percent a decade ago. The remaining share comes from coal (18 percent), nuclear (11 percent) and solar (2 percent).
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/how-texas-generates-its-electricity/ar-BB1dL051
Yes, but in the Winter and at this time it was much less. Which is a problem with Wind and Solar.
Texas demand during the freeze was twice normal at this time of year. Any loss of generation from the yearly output was the problem. It does not matter if wind power normally at this time of year is low, we needed maximum output from all sources and wind could not contribute! So it was a major part of the problem.
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