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What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

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Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#551

Post by jcranmer »

nickysielicki wrote: post #419
jcranmer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to be clear about what I'm claiming, I'm saying that if Texas invested in coal instead of making the large investments they made in solar and wind, this never would have happened. I don't see how anyone can dispute that. If I remember the statistics correctly, there is more coal power offline right now than wind power offline. If that is true, that rather debunks your theory, doesn't it?

What I'm interested in, and what I'm talking about, is judging each method of power production from its total current output relative to nameplate capacity. All I'm really arguing is that non-renewables are able to accommodate bursty and unpredictable demand much better than renewables. For every dollar spent on solar and wind, if that built X amount of coal or NG plants, they would have such an excess of capacity th…

As I understand the situation, the problem is that several coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants had to shut down because it was too cold. It's not that there isn't sufficient baseload capacity to deal with the demand, it's that the baseload capacity wasn't sufficiently winterized to handle the situation. Many wind farms were also insufficiently winterized to handle the extreme cold.

With the exception of natural gas (where some plants shut down to allow the pipeline capacity go to people who heat their homes with natural gas instead), the primary driver of the lack of capacity appears to be a failure to winterize for what is objectively a pretty rare situation, combined with an unwillingness to draw the power from those places where production isn't so heavily impacted by the weather.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#552

Post by zero_deg_kevin »

Animats wrote: post #546
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…

Would customers be willing to pay 20% more for electric power to prevent a once a decade event?

Are customers being asked to pay 20% more? 20 whole percent more?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#553

Post by enraged_camel »

Animats wrote: post #546
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…

Would customers be willing to pay 20% more for electric power to prevent a once a decade event?

After experiencing that event? I think so. A lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum are very pissed right now. The state of Texas and its Republican rulers have been embarrassed in a big way, as the sham that is “free market” has been revealed for all to see.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#554

Post by bob1029 »

masklinn wrote: post #8
vondur wrote: post #4

Maybe having more nuclear power plants instead of wind would have helped? It sounds unrealistic for the energy generators to sell electricity at a loss over a 10 year period. It would be nice to see some of the data that the professor is referring to.

> Maybe having more nuclear power plants instead of wind would have helped? No. Most of the missing production was not wind, and several nukes went out (unclear whether that was because the grid was dying though). What would have helped was proper standards (avoiding emergency being much of the reason why Texas still has its own grid) and properly winterising. The wind thing is just a bullshit excuse, the vast majori…

Gigawatt scale nukes would need to go down in an unreliable grid. They have virtually no demand response compared to LNG and other fossil fuels. Frequency stability is the ultimate constraint.

I think a really good question to ask: Why was there missing generation in the LNG and other fossil fuel plants? Was it because they all froze over at the same time, or was it because the price of LNG went to the moon on Sunday night? Was this price increase caused by natural supply-demand mechanics, or was there an artificial component as well?

The way I see this - LNG generation providers shutdown to avoid incredibly expensive fuel costs, which they were unable to pass onto the customer. PUCT did make a change last night to try and alleviate this market model issue. Fundamentally, the whole thing is broken. I was looking for some historical precedent for all of this, and you would probably not be surprised to know this has happened before and would certainly not be surprised to find out which company was involved:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%9301_California_ele...

Now, I am not alleging that the current situation has any sort of malicious or criminal element, but there are some direct quotes from sources in that above article that trouble me as a Houstonian going through this exact kind of hell right now:

https://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/enron.tapes/

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#555

Post by autotune »

I got caught in the storm and have been without power 24 hours and counting. Thankfully there is a hotel downtown that has their own power generators for the same amount of time that I've been staying at and have been staying safe. My thoughts and prayers to those without power who have not been able to find shelter in these trying times.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#556

Post by golemiprague »

cromwellian wrote: post #455
cavisne wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious to look back on this HN post and the top comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14630650 Exactly the same thing happened in South Australia in 2016 1) Renewables % of generation mix grows (wind + solar) 2) Base generation sources get pushed out by economics and regulation (coal) 3) Peak generation sources get squeezed by the economics of wind + solar over summer (lots of wind, lots of sun) and b…

Sorry, but no. A 2011 FERC report cited problems in Texas gas/coal/nuke plants for failing to weatherize. They didn't fix the problems, and gas and sensing lines froze, taking gas/coal plants offline too. 2/3rds of the power that went offline from the storm was fossil. Moreover, Texas's independent grid (not connected to the rest of the US) makes it difficult for them to import power from neighboring states. Stop try…

I do have a feeling though that putting too much attention and funding into renewables, which Texas did, takes some attention and funding from other issues like "weathering" which is basically either warming or cooling or anything in between.

It also raising the question about funding climate change initiatives when we don't know what exactly the "change" is going to be in any given year. I am not saying renewable is bad or dealing with warming or anything like that, but maybe a more conservative and humble approach which takes into account the assumptions that we can't exactly predict the future, is more appropriate.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#557

Post by texasbigdata »

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…

Hate to be an insensitive jerk because people are suffering, but kinda agree.

There was a 3 hour long line at trader Joe's in downtown Austin today. Uber eats has been down maybe 24 hours.

Like....the human body can absorb a 3 to 5 day water only fast reasonably well in most cases and its even becoming trendy in certain longevity circles.

On one hand it points to society getting soft. On the other hand who knows maybe in this pandemic some people really got hit at bad time. As long as no one dies it will all be fine.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#558

Post by blabitty »

kelnos wrote: post #502
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…

In 1996 (or thereabouts), I lived in Maryland, and my family lost power for 6 days due to a snow/ice storm that took out a ton of power lines (water froze on them and the added weight pulled them down). We had no natural gas service, and our running water was provided by a well in the backyard that had an electric pump. So no electricity, heat, or running water for 6 days in ~20-30°F weather. (Fortunately we'd prepar…

I remember that storm! Week off of school and you could skate right on the sidewalk.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#559

Post by snowwindwaves »

s0rce wrote: post #292
martinald wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The parent said there is not enough transmission capacity not generation capacity. Generation needs to be near loads. If not then transmission lines are required to bring current from generators to loads. Transmission lines have fixed capacities, like your internet connection can only transmit so much data/s, they can only transmit so much power.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#560

Post by sjg007 »

texasbigdata wrote: post #550
pier25 wrote: post #541

Because of what happened in Texas, the higher demand of gas affected electricity generation in Northern Mexico which has been without electricity too. As as I understand it, not only the price of Gas wet up 5,000% but also there were shortages. The federal government has started doing electricity cuts in most Mexico to control the gas reserves and distribute energy to the Northern states. Edit: Here is an article abo…

One of my smartest Austin friends predicted the outages by watching nat gas spot prices as early as last friday. Weird world

Next time you need to buy nat gas futures.
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