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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?

#291

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

lurquer wrote: post #214
cvhashim wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, what are people with children, elderly, or pets doing.

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…

We’re not ready for this kind of weather here in Texas. I’d you’re so smart you should know people 150 years ago lived differently and built their houses differently

Are you without power? I don’t think so. Real easy to talk shit when you’re warm and comfortable. It’s not like you built any infrastructure or built your house, so don’t take credit for keeping it warm

What’s more is that it’s not only hackers and engineers in this situation. There’s a lot of elderly people, sickly people, families with babies, small animals, and so on, that are far more at risk. I made it the two days but I know some of my neighbors didn’t

The real question is why are so many people rubbing their nuts till they pop with schadenfreude, it’s not just you

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#292

Post by s0rce »

martinald wrote: post #148
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?

TX grid is connected via HVDC, but keep in mind that even if it was "fully" connected there is no hope in hell it would be much better. There wouldn't be enough transmission to transfer 40GW+ from the East or West coast grids to TX. It's an enormous amount of power to go offline. I don't think California for instance has more than 10GW of transmission north to south. Basically, no amount of grid infrastructure can re…

Seems like CA might has 15-20GW of spare NatGas generation capacity. Looking back at the summer peak (9/6/20) I see 25GW generated at the peak, while we are currently only needing to generate about 8-9GW from NatGas (looking over night when solar drops off).

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#293

Post by rconti »

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".

Indoors??

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#294

Post by mrfusion »

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…

My gas fireplace had a place you could put in D batteries to run it. Pretty cool feature if the power goes out.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#295

Post by oivey »

danans wrote: post #128
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.

> 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…

They aren’t that expensive, seeing as probably most states can operate their power grid at reasonable cost at these temperatures. They definitely aren’t expensive compared to the economic damage of an event like this every 15 years.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#296

Post by comeonseriously »

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?

Vote?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#297

Post by leesalminen »

MSM wrote: post #119
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…

I’m definitely not saying renewables are a bad idea, but I think there are some flaws in your comparison. For one, the delta from 32F (right around freezing) to 65F (heated home temp) is much less than 0F to 65F. Second, I’d imagine that buildings in Denmark are designed for this kind of cold. Unlike Texas where many homes have much less insulation because it rarely gets this cold. Both of these issues would compound the energy demand issue Texas is seeing right now.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#298

Post by ebilgenius »

tw04 wrote: post #259
spamizbad wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governing is hard. Owning the libs/cons is fun and easy! Anyway seems like this storm is so bad Texas would be in trouble no matter what, but letting utilities under-invest in winterizing and not joining either of the major grid corridors just made a bad situation 100x worse. The good news is this is fixable going forward, and hopefully Texans will demand their politicians address it.

>Anyway seems like this storm is so bad Texas would be in trouble no matter what, but letting utilities under-invest in winterizing and not joining either of the major grid corridors just made a bad situation 100x worse. The weather in Texas is in the single digits. The weather in Minnesota is in the double digit negatives. Texas would not be in trouble "no matter what" if they had bothered to spend the money on wint…

From what I understand the average low temperature in Texas around this time usually doesn't go below 30-35 degrees. Meanwhile the average high temperature around this time doesn't get above 20-35 degrees in Minnesota.

To demand every state spend the same resources that Minnesota does to winterize their infrastructure is completely unrealistic.

>This type of weather isn't some 1,000 year storm.

Not according to this professor of meteorology:

>“We’re living through a really historic event going on right now,” said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, pointing to all of Texas under a winter storm warning and the extent of the freezing temperatures.

https://apnews.com/article/2-dead-texas-subfreezing-winter-w...

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#299

Post by stefan_ »

txlpo78 wrote: post #209
aardvarkr wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have absolutely 0MW capacity that they would be willing to put online to earn millions an hour? Seems unlikely.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#300

Post by slfnflctd »

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…

I have a gas-only fireplace less than 20 years old that does not require power to function. There's a mechanical spark generator for lighting the pilot, but in colder months I keep the pilot on all the time. I believe the opening/closing of the valve for the gas to the main flame area is powered by a thermopile once the pilot is on.
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