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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?

#301

Post by reportingsjr »

txlpo78 wrote: post #204
mike_d wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. Because the Texas grid is isolated, the frequency is not synced with the two other major grids and cannot import electricity at any meaningful capacity. (See http://fnetpublic.utk.edu/frequencymap.html ) Frequency conversion is a costly and difficult to scale problem. If Texas was part of the Western grid they could be drawing excess hydroelectric power from the pacific northwest right now for ex…

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…

This does not seem to be true at all. If you look at a power outage map of Texas you can actually see exactly where the ERCOT boundaries are. Everyone else in Texas that's on the other, federal, grids, are not experiencing widespread power outages.

https://poweroutage.us/area/state/texas http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/landing_pages/89373/ERCOT-I... https://poweroutage.us/area/state/oklahoma

Per your comment about long distance transmission, that doesn't matter in a situation like this. If you're on a large grid you don't necessarily need to transmit power to Oklahoma all of the way from the PNW.

You need the areas surrounding OK to supply excess power to them, then those surrounding areas can get whatever excess they may need from slightly further areas. This needs less and less excess as you go further since every area is over provisioned.

Eventually at some point, yes, the PNW may be supplying excess power to states around them as a result of Oklahoma having outages, but that power isn't going straight from PNW to OK.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#302

Post by dwohnitmok »

ip26 wrote: post #285
dwohnitmok wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 firepl…

Ah the only heat exchange being radiant makes total sense. Thanks!

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#303

Post by s0rce »

mikesabbagh wrote: post #270

It is surprising that windfarms are freezing. Here in Quebec, we have windfarms that have more than 6 months a year of snow and temperatures much below the freezing point. How can they freeze? they dont use water or gaz or oil. It is only a fan and dynamo. Did water seep inside and freeze it?

Different choice of lubricants? I have no idea really, I also read they have wind power generation in Antarctica so its not a fundamental problem just a result of certain design/engineering choices.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#304

Post by cobookman »

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…

There is little to no fine for stopping service during the high wind events.

The incentive pushes them to shutoff, its simply cheaper than repairing the grid.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#305

Post by jcims »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #280
jcims wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the issue is that the draw of the heated air up through the flue creates a negative pressure inside the home, which gets made up through all the little nooks and crannies around the house. As a result, the room where the fireplace is will be warmer but the rest the house is typically colder.

Oh interesting. So you're saying it actually accelerates net heat loss to the environment?

Probably to a small extent but the more pronounced effect is the heat gradient. The rest of the house becoming quite a bit colder just sends you back to the fireplace, which is generally not a bad place to be, so overall it's not a major issue.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#306

Post by rconti »

mikesabbagh wrote: post #270

It is surprising that windfarms are freezing. Here in Quebec, we have windfarms that have more than 6 months a year of snow and temperatures much below the freezing point. How can they freeze? they dont use water or gaz or oil. It is only a fan and dynamo. Did water seep inside and freeze it?

I would assume they use different technology for different climates, or use different maintenance regimes, or simply their operating procedures have different parameters. (that is to say, it might be "safe" to operate them, but they're not "allowed" to). But those are all just guesses.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#307

Post by brandon272 »

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?

I doubt this net-loss is the case for most new gas fireplaces with direct-vent exhaust systems, in which case the combustion air comes from the outside. This is what I have. Not sure how common these would be in Texas. It can also be used in the event of a power outage. (Minus the fan) [1]

[1] https://www.heatilator.com/owner-support/troubleshooting-and...

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#308

Post by Talanes »

toast0 wrote: post #176
gruez wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it hasn't been deregulated enough? From the article >Wholesale electricity sold are near the $9,000-per-megawatt hour maximum in power markets across the state Monday as the system struggled to meet demand, according to ERCOT. Why bother spending millions on preparing for a once in a century event when your upside is capped? This is further compounded by the wholesale rates not being passed to consumers, whi…

> Why bother spending millions on preparing for a once in a century event when your upside is capped? This is further compounded by the wholesale rates not being passed to consumers, which removes a lot of backpressure from the system. If turning on the heater costs $100/hr to run you're going to find alternatives (eg. co-habiting with your inlaws). If it's a once in a century (or once every 10 year) event, consumers…

Especially given the household dynamic I see most, where only the person who actually pays the energy bill is actually considering the cost of heating.

Compound that with the fact that, unless utility billing has changed a lot in the last decade (I haven't been a master tenant in a while), people won't see how much more expensive that power is until after they've used it.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#309

Post by dang »

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…

Please don't take HN threads further into regional flamewar. We're trying for something opposite to that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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