Posted on 05/20/2024 8:52:36 AM PDT by george76
With seven people killed and close to a million losing power, the recent storms hit Texas hard. Restoring electricity may take days and may not be completed by Wednesday.
The isolation of the Texas power grid has become a symbol of the state’s independent streak and resistance to federal oversight in recent years. The massive outages during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 were a wake-up call to the vulnerabilities of Texas’ system. But Texas hit the snooze button, resulting in repeated crises in Summer 2022 and Winter 2023. Now it seems Texas is sleepwalking into another avoidable crisis
...
ERCOT is regulated by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and is responsible for meeting about 90% of the state’s energy demands.
The flaws of ERCOT were put on full display in February 2021 when a perfect storm of disastrous conditions emerged: just as the cold caused energy demands to spike, natural gas production and power plants were buckling, knocked out by weather conditions that energy providers and weather forecasting services had underestimated. ERCOT reported that demand peaked at 69,000 megawatts, far exceeding any planned worst-case scenario. As a result, over 4.5 million homes lost power, and at least 200 people died from conditions caused by the storm.
...
An isolated grid also creates persistent problems even when no foul weather impacts the state. Spot wholesale electricity prices in Texas are $175 per Megawatt-hour (Mwh) for August, up from $90.18 in August 2023. Price increases of this magnitude are not consistent across the United States. California’s spot electricity prices for August are trading for $80 per Mwh, 30% below last year’s average. By allowing these issues to persist, average Texans will continue to bear the brunt of growing costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Remove the unconstitutional federal regulations and Texas will be just fine.
Yeah. This is not a good look.
Hello Texas legislature - are you there?
February 2021 — cold caused energy demands to spike, natural gas production and power plants were knocked out.
Climate change did it, right? The state was broiling and the high heat knocked out fuel supplies and took down generators, right?
No, record COLD did that.
Of course, we all know record cold is caused by global warming..
Lol. When power failures are caused by storm damage having available power from elsewhere is pointless. It has to go through the same transmission lines.
ERCOT is ENRON all over again. Power outages in Texas were completely unknown unless the lines were down from a storm. Then the Texas GOP/Pickens/Perry and other Bushies found a way to centralize it all and pork out.
ERCOT is filled with financialization every greens from Minnesota, Germany and all over. Combine this with the DC drive to connect Texas to the national grid.
When it was Reddy Kilowatt and local power companies, Texas was great. Note it’s just a globalist hog trough for electricity.
As Milton Friedman said, put the government in charge of the Sahara desert, and in 10 years you’ll have a shortage of sand. And electricity shortage in Texas is the most shameful thing I can imagine.
Abbott’s fault. If only we had elected beto
...said no one, ever!
Before the energy reliability council of Texas, ERCOT, Texas had something else… Reliable energy.
The Texas GOPe, the piggies on Wall Street, and the socialist central planners in DC all want Texas power destroyed to grab money and control.
And let me guess, the way to save taxes is through more renewable and through connecting Texas to the national power good. Did I guess right?
What did it was shutting down coal plants all across Texas and way overbuilding windmills and solar plants because people like T Boone Pickens, and the other Bush/Perry Nomenklatura got to gorge at the government trough with tax rebates.
Solar and windmills have no ability for surge, and they get killed by cloudy skies and an ice storm. Natural gas plants had vulnerability because of pipelines. A pile of coal on the ground works just fine no matter the weather. It’s an absolute national embarrassment for Texas I have an energy shortage. The only thing that causes this is government miss management. And not all from DC. Help a lot of it from Austin.
the recent storms hit Texas hard
Yes, but with the exception of a single high-voltage transmission line, the outages were all local. Here in Houston, Centerpoint is addressing the problem circuit by circuit, and it's mostly fixed as of this morning.
Power was out all over Los Angeles for days after the Northridge quake, and I don't recall any recriminations about the "grid" then. Whatever flaws ERCOT has aren't the point of these legacy media hit pieces, it's all just an opportunity to throw stones at a red state, and a Republican governor.
It’s not possible to connect Texas directly to the national grid. While both grids are 60hz in name they are not 60hz in reality they are 60-59.5hz and not in the same phase relationship. The only way to synchronise them is to bring one grid down to a black start condition then start the grid on external phase signal bringing each generator online to the new phase relationship. To black start ERCOT would be a weeks long process. This nearly happened in feb 2021 when the gas grid went down with wellheads freezing plus electric gasline pumps not being on critical grid lines. Then gas plant after plant went off line. The grid dropped to 59.2hz and nearly went black. It would have taken weeks if not months to black start the grid. The only way to connect ERCPT to the Eastern or Western interconnects is via HVDC to HVDC back to back inverters.
The Texas ice storm was not a problem with lines being down. It was a problem with not enough power to put into the lines and them having to selectively shut down areas because the solar, the windmills, and the gas plants could not operate. The gas plants were taken down because the pipelines require electricity at the pipeline pumping stations.
Texas decided to tear down it’s coal planned infrastructure
Well stated. But that is the goal widely pushed by DC and Wall Street. And I believe they would happily shut down the Texas grid and do a black start. Probably taking advantage of a black out condition in Texas after a storm, or some such. They couldn’t care less how it affects people. One, they get the wonderful fun of managing what they call an emergency situation, too, they achieve their goal. Good details you provided there.
One thing for certain. Before centralization of electricity markets in Texas and solar and windmills. Power outages were unknown in Texas unless a storm physically took the lines down. In the 60s and 70s, there was no such thing as a power outage unless there was physical damage. As in, “it’s flooding down in Texas and the powerlines are down “.
As of 2022 Texas had 31% of its power generated by solar, wind and other renewables. Anytime you move the electrical grid above 15% renewables you are going to have problems.
If people want inconsistent, unreliable and expensive electricity that renewables provides, then let them have it. I’d rather have consistent and reliable (coal and nuclear) electricity that’s cheap.
But the Winter 2023 power outage is something that's hard to prepare for. IIRC, that's from many frozen tree limbs falling and taking down power lines.
Back to the Summer 2022 power outages in Texas...just like Texas as a state is proud to be grid independent, perhaps Texas homeowners should also try to be more self-reliant with their homes. It takes some homework to make sure solar is best for your situation, and then more homework to make sure you get just enough of each component to optimize your investment without going too far and spending too much fighting the law of diminishing returns. But every homeowner who lives in the south should at least consider it. That is, if it's important to you to insulate your family from the left's warmageddon cult and their stupid energy policies, especially with their policies always jacking up energy costs.
Unfortunately, even red states aren't immune from federal regulations impacting both cost and reliability of power. I see it as my home state of Alabama gives us some protection from federal regulation overreach, then I provide my family more protection from it.
“But the Winter 2023 power outage is something that’s hard to prepare for. IIRC, that’s from many frozen tree limbs falling and taking down power lines.”
It was because of the record cold. Only nuclear and coal will sustain you in a situation like that, but Texas is moving more and more of it’s power generation capacity to solar and wind, which can’t deliver in high demand situations. If Texans want more inconsistent, unreliable, and expensive electricity, then Texas should continue to increasing the percentage of their electricity generation to renewables. It’ll just mean more grid crashes.
“To accommodate the growing energy needs of the state, Texas needs to end the fantasy of ERCOT standing isolated from the rest of North America.“
Yeah…that would fix everything.
The writer is a globalist in the Atlantic council.
ERCOT on a national scale is not the answer. And he’s beating that energy in California is cheaper? Laughable. The DC and Wall Street globalist pigs want their hands on Texas grid so bad they can taste it. Hint. They don’t care about low prices or abundance.
Look at the Board of Directors for ERCOT and you’ll see what the Texas problem is.
It’s all about nationalization and giving more money to interests outside the state. Do you really want someone in New York making power decisions for Texas?
I wonder what that will do to the already abysmal illegal situation there.
Crime, break ins, violent assault, etc.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.