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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?

#111

Post by amluto »

maxerickson wrote: post #62
falcolas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US, licensed hospital beds are pretty heavily regulated. https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/con-certificate-of-need... And then Medicare won't pay any old place for services (which is something that would impact many potential hospital sites).

This regulation utterly defies economic common sense. It’s like saying that, if we allow too many people to sell groceries, the cost of groceries will go up. That’s not how a functioning market works.

Of course, medicine in the US is not a functioning market.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#112

Post by yellow_postit »

worker767424 wrote: post #94

The Texas-only grid was definitely part of it, and should be a lesson to people who thought the lesson from Covid is "do more locally." No, having stronger, longer distance connections is what makes you more resilient, at least when there are local problems.

Agree on the point about Texas extreme stance on having their own power grid. I don’t known if there’s enough micro grids in Texas to determine how well, or not, they worked in these conditions.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#113

Post by jimkleiber »

worker767424 wrote: post #94

The Texas-only grid was definitely part of it, and should be a lesson to people who thought the lesson from Covid is "do more locally." No, having stronger, longer distance connections is what makes you more resilient, at least when there are local problems.

The irony is that longer distance connections is also what spread covid from one community to another. I think it's often just a combination of things that gives us resilience. Both longer distance grid connections could help, but so could more off-grid solutions. Maybe just designing more fail safes at various levels.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#114

Post by kzrdude »

svnpenn wrote: post #105
UncleOxidant wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The comment is just hoping that they have some degree of warmth in their apartment and not way below freezing. That's not dumb.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#115

Post by txlpo78 »

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…

This current problems wouldn’t be fixed if Texas wasn’t on its own grid. The Texas grid does have connections to the other grids, and even right now is importing power from both the East and West interconnections.

The problem is that this is a truly regional event and not just isolated to Texas. The entire central US is struggling right now. The SPP (which manages electricity for Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, and other states) has been struggling with forced blackouts over the last several days as well. They don’t have enough power for their own grid, let alone enough to share with Texas.

If Texas was more interconnected with the SPP, the end result wouldn’t be Texans all having their problems solved. Many Texans would still be without power, but so would many more Oklahomans. The fact that the Texas grid is separate is the only thing keeping OK from having even worse blackouts. Which makes sense, because the entire point of grid isolation is to keep issues localized and not cascade over the entire network. And that’s working to Oklahoma’s benefit right now, but Texas is getting the short end of the stick.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#116

Post by pkulak »

teraflop wrote: post #83
pkulak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Texas does have connections to other grids. But the problem is that since the grid frequencies aren't synchronized, you can't just plug one into the other. Transferring energy between grids requires either converting it from AC to high-voltage DC and back using solid-state electronics, or converting it via mechanical energy using a variable-frequency transformer. With either approach, you need bulky and expensive equ…

Thank you! I didn't think about the AC synchronization.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#117

Post by gregw2 »

What went wrong is that the Texas legislature which owns Texas-specific grid process to avoid interference from the Feds didn't figure out how to also ensure Texas generator companies got compensated for weatherizing (and ensuring it was done).

How many of the 24+6 recommendations from the NERC/FERC review of last time this happened in Texas (hint:2011) were taken up by the legislature or those at ERCOT they delegated responsibility to or the power generation providers?

https://www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/ea/ColdWeatherTrainingMaterials/...

The eye opener to me from skimming the 2011 recommendations is that there was no explicit rating/SLA for a power plant's acceptable temperature operating that could be used by planners for assessing the risks of an upcoming weather event by policy planners. It'd seem pretty basic to be able to ask "How many plants do we lose when temperature drops below X"? Dunno whether they fixed trying to create such a basic measurement for Texas plants, but it doesn't seem like it.

If you want to know some of the specifics about what "winterization" means in practice for a power plant including natural gas ones, you can read some of the details in that report. It's kinda interesting.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#118

Post by jimbob45 »

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".

Austin here, staying at a colleague’s place who’s in an over-55 community on the hospital grid (unlikely to be taken down).

Agreed that they’re misusing “rolling outages”. We got an hour of power a day for the last two days and don’t foresee getting even an hour today. I don’t know who they think they’re fooling because everyone here knows exactly that these outages aren’t rolling and is out for ERCOT blood.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#119

Post by MSM »

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…

There are a number of countries with very high renewable usage that are in cold climates. Denmark comes to mind, where, on average, it's right around freezing for months at a time. Hell, they have turbines in the extremely corrosive oceans, getting blasted by freezing rain and they make it work.

Last I saw they got something like 50% of their power from wind.

Anyone who is using this event to say that renewables are a bad idea is selling a completely false narrative.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#120

Post by gruez »

soulofmischief wrote: post #106
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.

>Also: I live in Texas and have 100% renewable energy

Are you living off the grid, or living on the grid but paying for a "100% renewable" provider? If it's the latter it's likely that you're only being 100% renewable on a net annual basis, and still using non-renewable sources during peak hours. https://energy.stanford.edu/news/100-renewables-doesn-t-equa...

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