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What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

houstonchronicle.com

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Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#101

Post by vondur »

jeffbee wrote: post #66
ranrotx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is the thing no one is talking about. Dallas has easily added 10k apartment units in the past 5 years. Almost all of them are all electric (no gas heating). Considering it’s more energy efficient to cool with Air Conditioning on the hottest summer days than it is to heat with electricity in the winter, it’s no wonder the grid collapsed when the region was below freezing for several days and some generating…

Pretty sure you are off by a large factor. It looks like Dallas added almost 300k apartments in the last 5 years.

I think Texas as a whole has seen a huge growth in population in the last 10 years.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#102

Post by hangonhn »

pkulak wrote: post #44
magnawave wrote: post #18

The result was "an electrical island in the United States," Bill Magness, CEO of ERCOT, said. "That independence has been jealously guarded, I think both by policy makers and the industry." https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/16/texas-power-... Maybe it’s time to rethink that. HaI has an interesting take on something similar: Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo88zA5nq4Q Running your own grid seems cool…

How hard can it be to have your own grid, but also have inputs on the edges to draw from? Or would that no longer be independent?

The Tres Amigas Super Station is, ironically, being built in TX. If it was done, it could help the situation a lot. 30 GW of capacity!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#103

Post by arberx »

WorkingDead wrote: post #82

What a horrible article. First, Texas has its own independent grid as a matter of physics. Electricty travels at the speed of light so a continuous grid from coast to coast would get out of sync on phases just by travel distance. Texas just happens to be physically in the middle and large enough to have trouble by being supplied by either east or west grid. Second, ERCOT manages when utilizes can take assets out of c…

To your first point, it's not about supply, it's about borrowing during periods of scarcity. There are plenty of wholesale markets that are "in the middle". Texas simply chose to not be apart of it.

https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/us-electricity-grid-markets

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#104

Post by ashtonkem »

jdkee wrote: post #69
i_am_proteus wrote: post #63

Lots of folks in these comments seem to want to use this event to litigate wind vs. solar vs. gas vs. nuclear vs. coal, but it seems like, across the board, power generation facilities in Texas were simply unprepared to operate in such low temperatures. All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates.

Solar panels don't work well under a foot of snow.

Turns out you can actually design around that. Heck, my solar panels cleared themselves of the foot of snow we received (Idaho) without any intervention on my part. If necessary I could’ve gotten up there with a broom and ladder.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#105

Post by svnpenn »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #55
svnpenn wrote: post #20

Dallas suburb here (Las Colinas). No power since Monday 6am. I had to get room at holiday inn. I actually got the room yesterday, but the hotel lost power after an hour, so I had to go back home and sleep in 5 degree apartment. Don't believe anything you read about "rolling outages". It's only rolling, if you define that as "out until it's not freezing anymore".

Hopefully that's 5C and not 5F.

Why would it be celcius? I made it very clear that I'm in Dallas, and we don't use Celcius.

That's not a knock against Celcius, frankly it's just a knock on you for the dumb comment.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#106

Post by soulofmischief »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #63

Lots of folks in these comments seem to want to use this event to litigate wind vs. solar vs. gas vs. nuclear vs. coal, but it seems like, across the board, power generation facilities in Texas were simply unprepared to operate in such low temperatures. All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates.

Also: I live in Texas and have 100% renewable energy, so I feel sidelined by such comments.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#107

Post by gruez »

falcolas wrote: post #7
daenney wrote: post #2

Choice quote from the article: “The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. “It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.”

Which confuses me, as it follows a statement about how energy has been deregulated. Of course, deregulation would also reduce some of the incentives for maintaining preparation for "100 year winter" storms. Much like how hospitals reduced the number of beds based on their average case loads, not the uncommon-but-not-unheard-of peaks.

Or maybe it hasn't been deregulated enough? From the article

>Wholesale electricity sold are near the $9,000-per-megawatt hour maximum in power markets across the state Monday as the system struggled to meet demand, according to ERCOT.

Why bother spending millions on preparing for a once in a century event when your upside is capped? This is further compounded by the wholesale rates not being passed to consumers, which removes a lot of backpressure from the system. If turning on the heater costs $100/hr to run you're going to find alternatives (eg. co-habiting with your inlaws).

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#108

Post by judgemcjudgy »

jussij wrote: post #86
disgrunt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather isn't climate... or something..

The reason this might be 'climate change' related is because the warming Arctic is impacting on the jet stream, which then leads to these unexpected hot/cold events: https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/03/07/climate-change-may-... The slowing of the jet stream, therefore, could cause weather patterns to remain in place for longer, resulting in prolonged heat waves or cold snaps.

That's only a "just so" story.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#109

Post by tpmx »

brohoolio wrote: post #15

Did the utility companies ask for voluntary reduction in power consumption ahead of time? We had a situation here where extreme weather and a natural gas pumping station that exploded caused real problems in our natural gas supply. The utility asked everyone to lower their consumption by turning their heat down to 65. Luckily, that was the extent of the rationing.

Afaik, the way abnormal situations like these are handled in northern Europe is that the grid suppliers have agreements with the very large industrial consumers (think aluminium smelters) who agree to shut down immediately when the grid frequency goes below a certain trigger level.

The way I understand it, this is useful both in time-critical emergencies (like keeping the grid at 50 Hz when a nuclear plant suddenly goes offline for some random safety reason) and when things are moving a lot slower, like during periods of extreme colds and extreme electicity demand from heating houses.

So, this approach is useful in removing the need for rolling blackouts, at least until demand reaches some very extreme level, but it does require ahead of time investments in shutdown agreements.

Perhaps Texas hasn't been in this extreme situation before, and they simply don't have enough industrial shutdown agreements in place?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#110

Post by barbacoa »

bsder wrote: post #37
the_duke wrote: post #14

This whole episode also reminds us how far we are from going 100% renewable. In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious. I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we…

Renewable wasn't the issue. The renewables are outperforming what was expected. However, renewables are like 4% of the total energy generation. ERCOT lost about 40% of its total generation capacity. Almost all of the ERCOT shortfall was loss of thermal generating capacity--mostly natural gas. The natural gas was shunted to heating because those contracts are fixed and higher priority (market failure). Also, some of t…

>renewables are like 4% of the total energy generation.

Wind power is close to 25% of ercot grid.

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