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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?

#501

Post by oasisbob »

p1mrx wrote: post #450
hotsauceror wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

What does "without septic" mean?

Some septic systems require power for a lift, essentially a pumping station. When the ground is too flat, you need to pump the waste higher than the drain field.

If you've ever seen a septic system with an audible alarm, this is probably why.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#502

Post by kelnos »

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…

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 prepared by buying many gallons of drinking water, and filling up bathtubs and buckets with water earlier in the week.)

We had two fireplaces in the house, one each in the living room and master bedroom, so we kept all doors closed and all slept in the master bedroom. They did a decent enough job keeping us somewhat comfortable while wearing several layers and winter coats at all times, and sleeping in sleeping bags and with extra blankets. (An oddity of our house was that the chimney ran through the middle of it, not outside an exterior wall, so even some of the heat going up it would warm the house a bit.)

After 4 days my dad felt the roads were clear enough for us to go to a motel where we could shower and experience some heat. Going back to the house after that (before power was restored) was in some ways worse than enduring the first 4 days.

Granted, the reason for that outage was very different from what happened in Texas, but I just wanted to highlight that our power grid everywhere is still very susceptible to bad weather. (Well, ok, this story is 25 years old, but I suspect things haven't changed all that much.)

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#503

Post by abathur »

bdamm wrote: post #253
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.

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.

Surprising amount of erotic energy in this comment. :)

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#504

Post by snypher »

koolba wrote: post #474
xxpor wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have sewer service, you'll usually have a septic tank instead. It's basically a mini waste treatment plant in your backyard, eventually the water will flow into the ground. Modern systems have pumps and such that depend on electricity to function.

I’ve never heard of a below ground septic system that required pumps. The only pumps for drainage are for sub level bathrooms such as in basements. There is a significant overlap of septic installations and wells and most modern wells run on electric. But if you’re toilet’s basin is full, it doesn’t need any power to flush and drain. It just won’t fill again.

They're common used in multi stage septic systems that have a perc field above the tank level. If this pump is without power for a significant time, it will cause quite a problem. However usually your tank will have enough free capacity for some hours. You don't see pumps in single tanks very often due to solids blocking the intake.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#505

Post by sounds »

geoduck14 wrote: post #467
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…

Texan here! This weather is CRAZY, I've NEVER seen something quite like this. I've seen it dip down to the teens, before, but I haven't seen: sub 20, with snow, for more than 2 days... across the entire state. I'm not entirely certain why we are sucking hard at making electricity, but here is what I've heard: Nat Gas pipelines "close to the well" are "freezing" because they have a lot of impurities (like water) that…

Thanks for this insight.

I would suspect that Coal and Natural Gas generation plants use a lot of water for cooling. When the plant is designed to dump as much extra heat as possible, as cheaply as possible (for 100-degree days and ~200-degree hot water), things start to fall over when the cooling water freezes in the uninsulated cooling lines.

Or, it's pretty much lack of winterization and lack of a plan for this kind of cold.

Just speculating.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#506

Post by bluGill »

jeffbee wrote: post #96
gregimba wrote: post #48

Currently in ATX we haven't had power for over 24 hours, wood fireplace is saving the house from completely freezing but the whole city of Austin needs to evaluate how they setup their critical infrastructure to allow for rolling blackouts instead of having parts of the city with power and parts without for the entirety of an outage.

Rolling outages work when you need to shed 1% of your load, not when you need to shed 80% of it. If Austin is down to critical loads only (hospitals or whatever) there may not be anything left to rotate.

True crtical loads have backup generators up to this task, or the maintenance people should be fired for incompetence. Though they could get a break for some failures of the system, but only a handful statewide

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#507

Post by throwaway0a5e »

newbie789 wrote: post #458
ceejayoz wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... > The systems that get gas from the earth aren't properly built for cold weather. Operators in West Texas’ Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil fields in the world, are particularly struggling to bring natural gas to the surface, analysts said, as cold weather and snow close wells or cause power outages that prevent pumping the fossil fuels from…

So, to answer my specific questions 1. So basically, this is the worst winter in the history of Texas to such an extent that nobody could have possibly predicted this? That sucks. 2. Can you answer my question about the spot price increase? What does that accomplish in immediate terms? As a sub-question, the article that I'm asking about says that electricity generators haven't been able to make money for over a deca…

>So basically, this is the worst winter in the history of Texas to such an extent that nobody could have possibly predicted this?

More like "to the extent that people who were actually accountable for how money was spent couldn't justify spending the money to hedge against it".

Could you justify to your boss spending 5% per year on a project to hedge against something that happens every 50-100yr and has a 10% chance of really screwing you when it does? Exactly this but applied across every utility in an entire state.

Know-it-alls on the internet, love to tell other people how to spend their money but the real world is more complex and doesn't have the luxury of hindsight.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#508

Post by ashtonkem »

cavisne wrote: post #482
cromwellian wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The heavy reliance on natural gas is not traditional. Its a side effect of 1)

That doesn't explain why coal and nuclear plants failed. Or why gas power plants in other states are still running. All of which is in line with the 2011 report about TX not winterizing their power plants properly.

Frankly, it seems like you've decided that the issue is renewables and you're searching around for an argument to justify a conclusion you've already come to. Because what you're saying is simply not actually supported by the evidence or consistent with the current situation.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#510

Post by bouncycastle »

I wonder if this is related to bitcoin mining? (https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-farms-in-texas-offli...)

Sure, they claimed that they turned it off, but there will always be someone who doesn't turn it off, especially when the bitcoin prices are going up astronomically. Rising electricity price doesn't matter.

Also, they hold up the "floor price" for electricity and push it up, meaning that electricity prices will never be cheaper.

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