What went wrong with the Texas power grid? • Hacker News Board

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#581

Post by quickthrowman » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #400

mythrwy wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No electricity = no heat, regardless of natural gas supply." For the furnace yes. The gas fireplace and gas ovens/stoves though probably don't need electricity.

I haven't seen a gas oven that can work without electricity. A gas stove, yes, you can simply turn on the gas and quickly use a kitchen lighter to ignite the gas manually and hope not too much poisonous gas escaped the stove. But ovens? How?

The gas oven in my apartment has a pilot light that is always on, no electricity needed.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#582

Post by synergy20 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

Plan B:

    1. generators, generators with plenty oil.
    2. satellite internet
    3. water tank or large container
    4. food for two weeks.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#583

Post by bdamm » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:31 AM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #446

bdamm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's a good place to learn the art, do you know? I'm not in Texas, but I have two woodstoves now, and my one experiment with them thus far has taught me only that I have a lot to learn.

The trick is to start it up hot and then reduce down the airflow to near zero. The knowledge was passed down in the tribe, so I don't know where one learns the art.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#584

Post by 8note » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #572

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.

Seems like they should divert a small part of their output to keeping a small battery backup just in case of emergencies. Then in an emergency the battery could reignite the system and run the blowers with the furnace again diverting some output to keeping things charged.

Or like a standing bike?

Ride the bike to start the heater in a blackout

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#585

Post by lghh » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

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…

They died, you fucking ghoul. People rely on things now to live that people would have just died without 150 years ago. They had warmer clothes 150 years ago. They had houses with fireplaces and blankets and coats. We can't deal with this because we are not set up to function when this happens any more. People didn't have the same pets 150 years ago we have now. Reptiles or birds? Dead. I just can't imaging the callousness of this comment. People are literally dying and you're telling them to toughen up. Fucking fool.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#586

Post by skybrian » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:33 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #560

texasbigdata wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spot prices are up dramatically. Futures seem to only be up slightly.

Maybe a natural gas supplier that was prepared could have done something, but could an investor have profited from this without being able to do physical delivery?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#587

Post by VonGuard » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:33 AM UTC

blabitty wrote: post #558

kelnos wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember trees encased in beautiful ice. Freezing rain, basically encased everything in that ice: powerlines, trees, roads, it was a monster.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#588

Post by woeirua » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:33 AM UTC

landemva wrote: post #375

t0mbstone wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frozen wind turbines aren't the problem. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-...

Natural gas doesnt really freeze, so something else is going on here. Misleading text in linked article: "We didn’t run out of natural gas, but we ran out of the ability to get natural gas. Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation – so things were freezing."

Natural gas doesn't freeze, but the pipelines that supply the gas have valves and other control components that can and do freeze during severe weather. Also, the wells supplying the natural gas can suffer temporary shut-ins due to the commingled water freezing and effectively shutting in the well. That drops overall supply.

Natural gas wells and pipelines in other parts of the country are designed to handle extreme weather so they don't have these problems. This is entirely a problem caused by Texas' unwillingness to regulate that wells, supply lines, and generators be able to handle extreme cold.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#589

Post by snowwindwaves » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #188

hokkos wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At worst wind provided only 2% of its capacity, 40GWh would be gone in minutes, please count on TWh.

It was just an offhand number, there's already 17GW of storage in ERCOT's interconnection queue for the next few years, which is 40GWh - 70GWh. By 2035, the soonest we could expect to see a new nuclear reactor powering on, we will have many multiples of 70GWh. Not sure if TWh will every be needed for a grid that only peaks at 80GW. The cheapest solution will be a tradeoff between excess renewables capacity and storag…

70 GWh of battery storage would have kept the lights on for an extra 2 hours during this event - assuming the batteries themselves aren't affected by temperature. While battery storage might be nice to increase the capacity factor of a solar or wind farm it isn't going to make a difference in an event like this where a weather system moves in for a week.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#590

Post by woeirua » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

TedShiller wrote: post #420

Cold weather. It’s not always someone’s fault.

No, it really is someone's fault this time. Texas has had these events occur multiple times in the past, and they had grid failures in almost the exact same way. This happened because the Texas legislature decided to put their head in the sand and avoid doing what was necessary to ensure that their grid, and subsequently their constituents, would be safe in these kind of storms.