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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?

#281

Post by [deleted] »

gregw2 wrote: post #213
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…

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…

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Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#282

Post by ctdonath »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #251
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.

> My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder Why is that? EDIT: Oh are you saying that the rate of heating provided by the fire is less than the overall rate of heat leaving the entire house?

Yes. You’ve got a big hole in the wall/ceiling with a pressure differential blowing most of the heat up & out while sucking cold air in. Balanced improperly, you get a radiant heat area with rest subject to cold air.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#283

Post by cowboysauce »

tpmx wrote: post #109
brohoolio wrote: post #15

Did the utility companies ask for voluntary reduction in power consumption ahead of time? We had a situation here where extreme weather and a natural gas pumping station that exploded caused real problems in our natural gas supply. The utility asked everyone to lower their consumption by turning their heat down to 65. Luckily, that was the extent of the rationing.

Afaik, the way abnormal situations like these are handled in northern Europe is that the grid suppliers have agreements with the very large industrial consumers (think aluminium smelters) who agree to shut down immediately when the grid frequency goes below a certain trigger level. The way I understand it, this is useful both in time-critical emergencies (like keeping the grid at 50 Hz when a nuclear plant suddenly g…

ERCOT does have shutdowns agreements in place, but there’s a limit to what you can do when simultaneously facing record demand and having ~30,000 MW of capacity go offline. For comparison, on Sunday evening demand was roughly 70,000 MW.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#284

Post by foxtr0t »

gregw2 wrote: post #213
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…

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…

>Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it.

This is extremely problematic. Power going out for periods of time less than 48 hours is one thing, losing water from the utility is a problem 3rd world countries have. You sure these people's pipes didn't simply freeze.

If its the utility, shame on Texas.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#285

Post by ip26 »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #251
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.

> My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder Why is that? EDIT: Oh are you saying that the rate of heating provided by the fire is less than the overall rate of heat leaving the entire house?

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 fireplace, firebox, or wood stove, there is no heat exchanger, so you can't capture any of the heat out of the flue gasses.

It's counter-intuitive, I know. But this is why everybody congregated around the hearth in the days of fireplaces.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#286

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

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".

Houston right now, haven't had power, nor water since yesterday. My room is sitting at 20ish degrees and has been all day. I've quite literally been snug under a load of blankets with my wife all day just to stay warm.

My office back in Dallas which is not normally open offered to let people stay the night since they happen to be on the same grid as a hospital and I seriously considered trying to make it there today

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#287

Post by shagie »

ghaff wrote: post #226
da_big_ghey wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had power out for over a day and am fine. I would not pay any more money to avoid this once every thirty years, or even once a decade, for a few days. Mostly because paying the cost to prepare for one of these is reasonable, but preparing for all of them would be very expensive and I will trade cheap power for the occasional inconvenience.

The real issue is frozen pipes which can be pretty expensive/catastrophic. As someone in New England, if it weren't for that, I wouldn't find a power outage all that big a deal--at least for a couple days. But frozen pipes can lead to $10K's of damage.

There's a .gif on Imgur - https://imgur.com/gallery/yvIAcvB

Its... yea. That's going to be rather expensive.

Also, part of the power problem is frozen pipes - and not just water pipes: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/texas-pow...

> Operations in Texas have stumbled because temperatures are low enough to freeze oil and gas liquids at the well head and in pipelines that are laid on the ground, as opposed to under the surface as practiced in more northerly oil regions. The big question now is how quickly temperatures return to normal.

For nuclear... the cooling ponds froze: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/town-squar...

> First, Representative Gene Wu, Texas House of Representatives District 137, walks us through the “cascade” of problems that caused multiple generators to go out without back-ups in place. Including, water vapor inside natural gas generators that condensed and froze shutting down the machines and nuclear power plants whose cooling ponds froze, setting off automatic shutdowns. Rep. Wu also advocates turning off all non-emergency electronics to reduce the strain on the energy grid.

Imagine the fun of having those pipes freeze (this is the cooling loop - not the reactor loop so "just" power down the reactor - it's not the loop that deals with the water that passes through the core).

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#288

Post by senectus1 »

Dobbs wrote: post #191
cccc4alll wrote: post #153

Nuclear is the cheapest, cleanest, safest form of electricity generation. Do some research into who pushed FUD propaganda about Nuclear industry, (Big oil) and who paid off the shrill environmental FUD lobby, (Bug oil). Nuclear power is used safely in aircraft carriers and submarines for decades. It's time to build more nuclear power and build the cleaner, safer, cheaper electrical energy future.

Nuclear power plants in Texas are down due to the cold.

plant. singular.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#289

Post by hotsauceror »

gregw2 wrote: post #213
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…

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…

We had an incident early this AM and of the eight people we paged, only one had power. I’ve been without power, heat, internet, water, or septic more than 90 minutes at a time for two days. My house was 44 degrees this morning when I woke up. Sunday night we were without power or heat for seven and a half hours. Our DR plan didn’t really account for all of our staff being on the same power grid!

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#290

Post by 13of40 »

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…

Maybe it's changed lately, but most of the medium sized gas heaters (thinking fireplace inserts, fake wood stoves, etc.) have a feedback loop where the pilot light heats a thermocouple that opens the pilot light valve, plus a thermopile for opening the main valve when the thermostat switch closes. The fan won't run, but you'll still get radiant heat without main electricity.
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