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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?

#261

Post by bdcravens »

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.

The issue is that the plants weren't built to handle these temperatures, and the deregulation and political climate in Texas makes it difficult to incentive those plants to make those changes. (Pre-pandemic) you'll see some random electric company setup outside of a grocery store asking everyone who walks in what their rate is, and offering to beat it.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#262

Post by jshevek »

_jal wrote: post #199
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…

> a highly consequential long-tail event Hip jargon aside, planning for low-probability events was invented a long time ago. Unfortunately, so were politicians, who will operate within the parameters they are given. If you want real resilience, you want better governance.

That "hip jargon" is concise, specifies characteristics, and clarifies meaning.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#263

Post by ip26 »

bdamm wrote: post #253
ip26 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A tight wood stove in the hands of an experienced user is a remarkable thing. The amount of heat that can be extracted from a large oak log is nothing short of remarkable. Sadly, most wood stoves are not tight, nor are most users experienced.

This is 50% of the reason why pellet stoves were created, with the other 50% being you can burn scraps instead of large oak logs that could be used for furniture etc.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#264

Post by refurb »

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…

That goes both ways. It seems like you can’t live in CA without shitting on the middle of the country despite the govt here being in worse shape generally.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#265

Post by JonathonW »

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…

The big issue isn't just the control board-- most forced-air furnaces (at least, of the type used in the southern US) use an electric blower to actually distribute hot air to the rest of the house.

End result's the same, though-- no electricity = no heat, regardless of natural gas supply. (But, at least in this case, a relatively small generator can provide enough power to get the furnace up and running and heat the house; the electric furnaces and heat pumps that are most common in places like Texas would need something quite a bit beefier to run without grid power).

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#266

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

dv_dt wrote: post #218
joe_the_user wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If California is a guide, the "optimization" is for share holder dividends. PG&E in particular, in the last twenty years in particular, gutted needed repairs, a gutting which has lead to periodic shutdown due to different bad weather (high winds). I don't know the exact situation of Texas but if this is a similar situation, I would be unsurprised. All of this is somewhat conditioned by advancing global warming, which…

In southern california too, once So Cal Edison discovered the risk of liability for fires, power has been shut down more and more for frequent high wind events.

I don't know what people expected. You provide an entity with certain incentives and it will tend to follow those incentives to their logical conclusion. If you make fires much more expensive for power providers, and you prevent them from charging any more money for the service they provide, they are going to have to reduce risk elsewherre. They'll do this either by cutting service when fire risk is the highest or by doing more maintenance, whichever is least expensive.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#267

Post by Gwypaas »

com2kid wrote: post #230
lurquer wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you people for real? What did people with children, elderly, and pets do 150 years ago? If your house is 25f, put on a couple sweaters and a coat and have a beer. It’s not the end of the world. As far as the kids go, they’re outside building snowforts. In short, you make do. It astounds me that the typical HN poster can whip up a C++ compiler, pontificate about solutions to every social-ill, purport to speak inte…

> If your house is 25f, put on a couple sweaters and a coat and have a beer. It’s not the end of the world. Houses were designed very differently 150 years ago. Lower roofs, fewer windows, huge thick drapes or tapestries on the walls, animal skins or carpets on the floors. 9 ft windows (double pane or not) on all walls is going to leak out a lot of heat. Most importantly, fireplaces. Houses had fireplaces, and rooms…

Nope, simply bad housing standards leading to no isolation. Passive houses work in the Scandinavia. This is coming from a Swede who lived for a while in Texan suburbia.

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

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#268

Post by bdamm »

_jal wrote: post #206
majormajor wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Isn't it reasonable to expect people reliant on powered medical devices to include a plan B in case the grid goes down? It's not like the grid is perfect. Even in high-reliability countries like the USA there are unforseen events.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#269

Post by bassman9000 »

hahahahe wrote: post #245

Can someone explain how the ninth largest economy in the world where it is dominated by the largest energy companies in the world failed so miserably? This is all self-inflicted.

Simplistic, but:

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/181766/IntGenbyFuel20...

1/4 of the mix is wind, and turbines were frozen. Maintenance in extreme condition not done, because either they didn't think it was needed, or because they didn't want to pay for it.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#270

Post by mikesabbagh »

It is surprising that windfarms are freezing. Here in Quebec, we have windfarms that have more than 6 months a year of snow and temperatures much below the freezing point. How can they freeze? they dont use water or gaz or oil. It is only a fan and dynamo. Did water seep inside and freeze it?
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