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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?

#201

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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…

Just about every sentence in your comment is wrong:

> First, Texas has its own independent grid as a matter of physics.

Except that every state directly north of Texas is either on the East or West interconnects. ERCOT having its own grid is solely a matter of political desire.

> One top of that reduced capacity, not all equipment is prepared for ice storms because it doesn't really happen here.

Except a very similar event happened in 2011, and a specific set of recommendations were made by FERC to winterize power producers, and the recommendations were promptly ignored. Better discussion on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/ll2slh/texas_failed...

> And finally, the wind farms are not handling the ice well

Yes, this is true, but this is almost insignificant. The grid is already designed to handle windless days: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/frozen-wi...

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#202

Post by windexh8er »

azernik wrote: post #182
windexh8er wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in MN. We have a lot of solar and wind here. In fact solar gets a boost from ground cover snow based on the reflective property. Do panels lose out on snowy days or some accumulation? Yes, but there's a solar farm a mile from my house that covers probably 40 acres with solar - and I've never seen the panels covered. As for the wind turbines - they work fine in cold weather. It's just that with ice build up on th…

Huh. Hadn't thought of the snow-reflection boost. But yeah, cleaning off solar panels is a totally doable bit of maintenance in snowy conditions, or even just tilting and coating them so snow falls off. A human with a broom could make rover solar panels work for decades on Mars , we can do it in Minnesota.

I've never seen anyone cleaning them anywhere. Pretty sure the solar farms either have slightly warmed panels that will reduce the friction of any coverage enough to leverage the panel tilt - or since a lot of the installs will follow the sun anyway they probably have a mode of operation to "dump" the panels clean.

I have someone coming out to go over a solar quote I had done, so have some new questions to ask!

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#203

Post by enraged_camel »

azernik wrote: post #186
ausbah wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the weather patterns induced by climate change are novel though

They make weather extremes more common, but those weather extremes have always existed.

No, the extremes not only get more frequent, but also more intense.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#204

Post by txlpo78 »

mike_d wrote: post #158
txlpo78 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oth…

This is not correct. Because the Texas grid is isolated, the frequency is not synced with the two other major grids and cannot import electricity at any meaningful capacity. (See http://fnetpublic.utk.edu/frequencymap.html ) Frequency conversion is a costly and difficult to scale problem. If Texas was part of the Western grid they could be drawing excess hydroelectric power from the pacific northwest right now for ex…

Nothing I said in my comment is incorrect. Texas has 5 different connections with the other grids and can import/export through them. But they are irrelevant right now because the other grids do not have enough spare capacity to send to Texas.

>If Texas was part of the Western grid they could be drawing excess hydroelectric power from the pacific northwest right now for example. Texas also could have contributed to help the California power shortages last year.

No. That’s not how the grids work. Just because Oklahoma and Washington are part of the same interconnection, that does not mean that people living in Tulsa can pull power as needed from a dam in Washington, which is why Oklahomans are struggling with power outages today as well. Most power still must be generated locally. Long distance transmission is difficult and inefficient, and often requires converting to DC just like a grid-to-grid connection requires, so you have the same issues as you have when you’re on separate grids.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#205

Post by saghm »

fastball wrote: post #178
gruez wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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...

Seems like an unnecessary quibble. If everyone was using a "100% renewable" provider, would non-renewables be consumed?

It sounds like GP is saying that at current capacity, there isn't enough renewable energy to supply all of the demand 100% of the time.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#206

Post by _jal »

majormajor wrote: post #198
da_big_ghey wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had power out for over a day and am fine. I would not pay any more money to avoid this once every thirty years, or even once a decade, for a few days. Mostly because paying the cost to prepare for one of these is reasonable, but preparing for all of them would be very expensive and I will trade cheap power for the occasional inconvenience.

"I wouldn't pay any more money to avoid this" is a remarkable low cost tolerance. I would love to know just how much we'd be talking about per-customer. Ten cents over ten years? A dollar over ten years? Twenty dollars? More? Without knowing that "I wouldn't pay any more" seems foolhardy.

Well, one thing you know is that poster knows no one reliant on powered medical devices.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#207

Post by 7thaccount »

txlpo78 wrote: post #115
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 oth…

I tried to say the same above. When the entire south is low on capacity, being fully AC interconnected probably doesn't help much even if the DC ties had more capacity.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#208

Post by gregimba »

epage wrote: post #131
jeffbee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolling outages work when you need to shed 1% of your load, not when you need to shed 80% of it. If Austin is down to critical loads only (hospitals or whatever) there may not be anything left to rotate.

From what I hear, only about 40% are on non-critical circuits. There is room for improvement.

This is essentially the crux of the problem, multiple friends/and coworkers are staying in islands of power that have been interrupt free due to proximity to Fire/Police/Hospitals and others have been without power for extended periods of time, if 60% of a grid is essential you can't roll non essential loads because simply maintaining the critical loads takes up 100% of capacity. More granular control could significantly help alleviate this issue which is specific to Austin Energy.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#209

Post by txlpo78 »

aardvarkr wrote: post #145
txlpo78 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oth…

FYI the Texas grid runs on a different frequency than the other two grids and as a result incurs MASSIVE efficiency penalties for that hubris. If I recall correctly it has to be converted from AC to DC then back to Texas’ AC.

Yes, that’s correct. Texas has 5 ties to the western/eastern US interconnections as well as with the Mexico grid. But none of that matters right now because those grids don’t have excess capacity to send to Texas anyway.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#210

Post by worik »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #149
danans wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates. The technologies can work, but only if measures are taken to make them work that way, and those measures are expensive. Texas' grid, like most of the nation's grid, is optimized to keep prices low for consumers and profits steady for generators and distributors, and it's worked amazingly well at that. But "running lean" is great and everyone wins…

I've had power out for over a day and am fine. I would not pay any more money to avoid this once every thirty years, or even once a decade, for a few days. Mostly because paying the cost to prepare for one of these is reasonable, but preparing for all of them would be very expensive and I will trade cheap power for the occasional inconvenience.

It is a valid point of view.

It may be true in a lot of places that we should step back from 100% coverage as the cost is just too high, and it is better (cheaper) to put the resilience in housholds than in utilities.

But your anecdote is just that - a anecdote. We need to carefully weigh those options.

Elected politicians have a bad reputation for making these trade offs sensibly. I have heard it said (by a fictional character I think - no source) that (in popular opinion) the present trumps the future every time

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