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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?

#241

Post by sokoloff »

notatoad wrote: post #225
sokoloff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "proper winterizing" for a state where the 99th percentile design temperature is mostly 25-30ºF? Properly sized heating systems should run 24 hours a day when the temps are well below the design temp. If almost all of those systems are electric (because they are simple and cheap to install and don't get a ton of use), you get a lot of constant demand for electricity. Smart load-shedding (to dump large 240VAC…

as long as they're an independent grid, optimizing for the 99th percentile isn't really acceptable. that's only two nines. if you have a contingency plan for winter storms, then it makes sense to skip the winterization. but it appears their plan for a winter storm was just to fail.

You’re conflating two things. The 99th percentile design temp for winter heating systems only implies a steady load would be imposed on the grid. Optimizing HVAC systems for the 99th percentile load is proper engineering. A higher powered electric resistance heating plant would make the grid problem worse right now (as houses could draw enough energy in a day to maintain temp rather than only drawing enough energy in a day to not quite maintain temp).

It doesn’t mean you design the grid to only sustain the loads 99 percent of the time. This is going to turn out to be a grid implementation problem, not an insulation or a renewables problem.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#242

Post by ip26 »

gregw2 wrote: post #213
gregw2 wrote: post #117

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 delegate…

Anecdote: All 7 developers in my Houston team (semi-geographically scattered in the city) lost power; half for >24 hrs (it's 10-25 degrees F here for the last 2-3 days). Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work t…

Gas furnaces need power for the circuitry & blower.

My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder, but you can warm yourself with radiant heat while it burns. Freestanding wood stoves on the other hand are very capable of warming a large space.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#243

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #127

A social political decline is what happened and continues to happen. When California encountered power issues, it was easier for Texas politicians (and many of their followers) to espouse malicious soundbites about Commifornia than to empathize, offer support and self reflect on what lessons can be learned and applied locally. Now that Texas is reaping its own fruits of decades of anti-"other side" politics and polit…

Couldn't agree more. It's like "where can I vote for a political party that just wants government to work." I know that's kind of an amorphous statement, but I do feel like both sides are more interested in tribal warfare and ideological battles than functioning government. Republicans have long derided "government is the problem", until they find out citizens really want government to work when it comes to things like ensuring reliable power delivery or distributing vaccines during a pandemic. On the flip side, I feel like Democrats are so keen on social justice issues that they ignore policies most people actually want to keep in their cities, like a functioning police force and streets not covered in homeless encampments.

It's just so depressing that the extremes control more and more of the political discourse.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#244

Post by klyrs »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #215
ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #127

A social political decline is what happened and continues to happen. When California encountered power issues, it was easier for Texas politicians (and many of their followers) to espouse malicious soundbites about Commifornia than to empathize, offer support and self reflect on what lessons can be learned and applied locally. Now that Texas is reaping its own fruits of decades of anti-"other side" politics and polit…

What can we, private citizens with entrepreneurial skill and talent, do to combat this partisan schadenfreude?

besides getting a government job and not participating in partisanship?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#246

Post by roughly »

windthrown wrote: post #35
masklinn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "100 year winter" storms It’s like the third time in 30 years.

"100 year" is shorthand for probability. In reality, these are storms that have a 1% chance of occurring in any given year.

How's the line go? If a coin comes up heads twice in a row, that's normal. If it comes up heads ten times in a row, it's abnormal. If it comes up heads a hundred times in a row, it's probably not a fair coin.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#248

Post by redisman »

cccc4alll wrote: post #153

Nuclear is the cheapest, cleanest, safest form of electricity generation. Do some research into who pushed FUD propaganda about Nuclear industry, (Big oil) and who paid off the shrill environmental FUD lobby, (Bug oil). Nuclear power is used safely in aircraft carriers and submarines for decades. It's time to build more nuclear power and build the cleaner, safer, cheaper electrical energy future.

I'm all for more nuclear as a stopgap but they had to shut down large parts of their nuclear energy in TX because the water froze.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#249

Post by eropple »

hristov wrote: post #122
ashtonkem wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it really weird that everyone is jumping to blame wind here, but totally ignoring all the natural gas plants that are turned off.

It is even weirder than you find it. When you read towards the end of the article, it says "Most of the power knocked offline came from thermal sources, Woodfin said, particularly natural gas." So natural gas and other thermal sources (i.e., coal and nuclear) created most of the problem. Wind power is actually potentially a very good solution for occasional cold spells, because extreme colds usually comes with high w…

> Of course you have to design your turbines not to freeze.

While true (and I'm not saying you don't know this, more just pointing it out), wind works great in cold climates. We've done our homework on this one already.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#250

Post by gregw2 »

tw04 wrote: post #232
gregw2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: All 7 developers in my Houston team (semi-geographically scattered in the city) lost power; half for >24 hrs (it's 10-25 degrees F here for the last 2-3 days). Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work t…

>I don't think any lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. I'm curious how they didn't lose heat. Any furnace built in the last 30 years, even gas, has an electronic control board in order to ensure it doesn't accidentally turn on the gas without a functioning pilot light and/or heating element (whi…

Good question. I am unclear about heaters but I do think some of them are out for some team members and you may be right on that. Ovens also are commonly gas but ones since 1990 require an electric light. But... stovetops which are gas do not require electronic ignition. The risk is of course carbon monoxide poisoning; hopefully you have such detectors as part of your in-home fire detectors.

The problem is not so much the deliberate rotating blackouts who can get restored after a time, but large groups of people for whom power is out due to some other weather-related outage issue; there are large swaths of them in Houston at least according to the Centerpoint Energy outage map which distinguishes between the two (but does seem to be not the most timely updated data per various people I have talked to whose status has changed during today: http://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/ )

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