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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?

#521

Post by oivey »

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…

The legislature could have done something, but the private utility companies could have also decided to provide a quality, reliable product. In the old days they may have considered it their civic duty. This is just another example of why private utility monopolies don’t work.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#522

Post by joe_the_user »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #266
dv_dt wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure what you mean by "people expected".

The power companies muscled into place a system where they could scrimp in improvements and pocket the savings.

The disastrous result was devastating fires. The system of civil courts still existed so they wound-up liable for their despicable maneuvers and has to pay a bit back from gains. So their next maneuver was turning off their lines when winds got high rather than engaging in the now even great expense of repairing them.

PG&E is a literally criminal enterprise, found criminally (not civilly) liable for the death of more than 100 people (29 gas explosion, 85 fire, etc).

The well-known Judge Alsop rightly denounced their vicious chicanery but sadly failed to put them in receivership and forfeit the value of their shareholder's assets (IMO, shareholder assets should be forfeit and previous dividends clawed back but natural they can do that to people in nursing homes and Madoff shareholder but they can't do it to these shitheals).

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/05/28/regulators-appr...

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#523

Post by cat199 »

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.

Strangely, the TX grid also wasn't impacted the multiple times that CA couldn't manage it's own portion of the western grid...

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#524

Post by txlpo78 »

blake1 wrote: post #442
txlpo78 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

AC transmission absolutely does work over large distances. It’s just not a point-to-point system. Imagine four cities in a row, all connected with AC. City A generates extra power, which gets sucked up by city B, whose power goes to the next city down the line, to city Z. Sure, it’s not actually that simple, but when was the last time NY literally had no power? They benefit from being highly connected. TX is paying f…

> when was the last time NY literally had no power? They benefit from being highly connected.

Do you not remember the blackouts of 2003? Multiple entire states went dark for hours, and the “highly connectedness” was a huge part of the problem. The only reason it wasn’t even worse is specifically because grid isolation stopped it from propagating further, just like what’s happening here.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#525

Post by ihaveajob »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #479
ip26 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if you think about it almost all of the heat from the fire goes right up the chimney. The brick of the firebox & chimney are generally built outside the building envelope for safety reasons, so any heat in the brick doesn't warm the house. The only heat that actually makes its way into the house is the radiant heat cast from the fire itself, which is small. The smoke is poison, and unlike a furnace, gas firepl…

It takes very, very specific conditions (you'd have to go out of your way to minimize radiant heat transfer) for a fireplace to put less heat into a room than it removes with airflow. Back in the day (i.e. 1700s) everyone heated with fireplaces. And many of them (e.g. 2nd floor ones) weren't that big.

The problem, in my experience (grew up spending significant time in a 3 story country house made of stone with only one fireplace for heating), is that it gets warm close to the fire and whatever is touching the chimney, but the rest of the house gets colder because of the cold air drawn in by the fire. So very likely a net gain, but depending on where you sleep, it could get interesting at night.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#527

Post by superduperuser »

liamwire wrote: post #473
svnpenn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try not to let the situation turn you into such an asshole.

Texan here. This is great advice and have been constantly reminding myself of it the past couple of days

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#528

Post by chasd00 »

My sister lives in Rockwall and she’s been without power since Sunday with no service expected until Friday.

I’m in Dallas and thought I made it through unscathed. Power and inet have been stable with gas furnaces doing their best. However today at about 430pm a water pipe burst in an exterior wall. I shut off the water, found the break, cut a hole in the wall all set to repair. I get to home depot and they closed early! Closing a hardware store early during a major weather event seems wrong to me.

I called a couple plumbers but they’re booked for weeks (not surprising)

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#529

Post by cydonian_monk »

newbie789 wrote: post #415

Can somebody explain as if I were a kindergartner why exactly natural gas is down by such a large amount in the state? Did the pipes freeze? Does natural gas not burn efficiently in snowy conditions? How will raising the spot price dramatically help with these physical conditions of the pipelines/other power production/distribution apparatus in such a way that providing power becomes available more quickly (if at all…

The way the natural gas issue has been explained to us over the last two days is there are two issues. First: natural gas is prioritized for home usage, which has understandably skyrocketed over the last several days. There was not enough left in the gas market for the standby power plants to buy up to burn; and what was available was inaccessible due to price and price caps. Second: The standby generating plants themselves suffered failures due to excessive cold. This also affected coal and nuclear plants (one of the reactors at the South Texas plant shut down automatically after the intake water in its cooling pond froze).

The emergency charges for the spot prices changes from that order are recent news that I've not had time to digest yet and as such can't reply to.

Apologies for not providing sources - barely have cellular data service at the moment and have only had electric back for a handful of hours. (Edit: And I jinxed myself there... back in the cold dark again.)

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