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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?

#601

Post by jcranmer »

foxtr0t wrote: post #284
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…

>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.

Having worked at a water treatment plant in the past: if the power is out for a sufficiently long time, then your water is going to go dry. The time it takes is dependent on the distribution system (and time of year, you consume about twice as much water in summer as in winter), but where I worked, it was about 12 hours.

Also, we had no generators. Why? Because a) power outages of that length are extremely uncommon (2 in 70 years, IIRC) and b) the power draw of a large water treatment plant is insanely high. The water company was literally the largest consumer of power in the entire state, and turning on some of the pumps require the power company's permission because it draws that much power. It's not very feasible to keep a backup power system for such a large facility when the need for it is so very low.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#602

Post by tharkun__ »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #437
foxtr0t wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Even if your pipes didn't freeze, the upstream pipes could have frozen, or enough of your neighbors' pipes could have frozen, burst, and gotten thawed again, allowing water to flow freely out of the system.

Funny you mention that. Quebec is used to cold weather.

Aging infrastructure. There's not a single winter that you don't hear about water main breaks ;) Seen a few parking lot lakes myself over the years.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#603

Post by qbasic_forever »

hotsauceror wrote: post #561
qbasic_forever wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck, and here's some advice from a midwesterner that has dealt with cold, ice, and snow forever. If it's cold enough to start freezing things inside then make sure you have some water flowing in your pipes. Keep your kitchen sink running on a low (very tiny) dribble. Maybe even keep a shower/bathrub running at a very low rate too. You do NOT want to be dealing with frozen, broken flooding pipes on top of no pow…

Also, leaving water trickling when you’re on a septic system can ruin your grinder pump because it stirs up the solids in the first separating tank. And, as I learned the hard way this week, even if all the faucets are dripping, there’s no way to trickle a toilet. The supply lines for both of our toilets froze while the sink next to them kept right in dripping. And then there’s the question of how to keep your water…

Ooph, yeah this is going to be a nightmare for home insurance to unwind it all and deal with everything at such a big level.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#604

Post by jmkb »

hotsauceror wrote: post #561
qbasic_forever wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck, and here's some advice from a midwesterner that has dealt with cold, ice, and snow forever. If it's cold enough to start freezing things inside then make sure you have some water flowing in your pipes. Keep your kitchen sink running on a low (very tiny) dribble. Maybe even keep a shower/bathrub running at a very low rate too. You do NOT want to be dealing with frozen, broken flooding pipes on top of no pow…

Also, leaving water trickling when you’re on a septic system can ruin your grinder pump because it stirs up the solids in the first separating tank. And, as I learned the hard way this week, even if all the faucets are dripping, there’s no way to trickle a toilet. The supply lines for both of our toilets froze while the sink next to them kept right in dripping. And then there’s the question of how to keep your water…

> there’s no way to trickle a toilet

If you have a tank toilet you might be able to adjust the floater (bend the rod upwards) so it never quite turns off the supply valve. Failing that, you can just manually prop the flap open with something.

If you have a flushometer, remove the nut over the valve and adjust the screw underneath until the valve never quite shuts off.

Warning: Take careful note of exactly how things were before. A toilet that never stops running can be just as hard on the spirit as a toilet that doesn't work at all.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#605

Post by myself248 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #395
mjevans wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parts 15 and 16 of that PDF are, in polished up polite speak, particularly scathing in terms of what's being recommended. The summary is: Regularly inspect and maintain your equipment, here are the obvious things that must be done. (Unstated: We feel a need to say this, because obviously it didn't happen in at least one place...) Probably got cut by the bean counters and a cut-throat market that didn't require safety…

Given the current crisis, it seems like they weren’t scathing enough.

If the penalty for ignoring scathing words is hurt feelings, then there's no reason to be scathing or not. (Well, except it might look good in an investigation someday.)

What's needed is real incentives, carrots and/or sticks, with real enforcement and follow-through. Speak softly, and all.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#606

Post by sfeng »

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.

Unfortunately Austin has not done a very good job of designing it's grid. There are many sectors which can't be rotated as they contain one or more critical services, even as they also contain many consumers who are not critical. This means that instead of being able to rotate amoungst the ~80% of non-critical power users, they are only able to shut down about 45% of the power.

Unfortunately in a situation like this that means that 45% have remained off for the past 48 hours (no rotation is possible), while many empty buildings are fully illuminated. It is a technological failure of their ability to shut down specific power users.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#607

Post by mjevans »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #507
newbie789 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I could for a 10-20 year contingency, particularly if lost property and lives were my liability (which they should be for this case).

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#608

Post by doggodaddo78 »

Animats wrote: post #484
qbasic_forever wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck, and here's some advice from a midwesterner that has dealt with cold, ice, and snow forever. If it's cold enough to start freezing things inside then make sure you have some water flowing in your pipes. Keep your kitchen sink running on a low (very tiny) dribble. Maybe even keep a shower/bathrub running at a very low rate too. You do NOT want to be dealing with frozen, broken flooding pipes on top of no pow…

That's not recommended for some areas of Texas. There's low water pressure and water has to be conserved.[1] (Edit: Houston only.) [1] https://www.wfaa.com/article/weather/if-dripping-faucets-sav...

Two units in my apartment building already flooded because they didn't trickle their water. Trickle means a tiny trickle of drops, not leaving the tap running. Use common sense, not FUD.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#609

Post by 8note »

cavisne wrote: post #463
bbreier wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might have missed this important line: > Most of the power knocked offline came from thermal sources, Woodfin said, particularly natural gas.

backup generation (gas) is not working. As mentioned. When your only on-demand source of generation is only profitable in peak periods its a recipe for disaster.

It sounds like in texas's case, the backup generation (renewables) aren't built up enough to take over for when traditional power goes down

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#610

Post by tharkun__ »

yellowait44 wrote: post #566
tharkun__ wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cold climate here (Quebec) and we heat with electricity usually. Many people have an electric furnace (forced air) or even baseboard (what I have for example). We also have a heat pump (heats the upstairs very well until about -15C and provides awesome AC for the entire house in summer). For Power outages and also coz its just awesomely warm: propane fireplace. All the benefits of a wood fireplace with none of the do…

LPG or Propane is awesome down until -42 celsius. Then it’s basically useless as it won’t vaporize. Live in Quebec too and my backup is a dual fuel generator. Propane and then regular fuel if it’s too cold or I’m out of propane. Never too careful!

You do have us on the regular fuel backup :) don't have that but we also don't have a backup generator in general. I wanted to last time we had a >12 hour outage but couldn't get the expense approved by the "finance minister" (i.e. the SO). When the electricity goes out for more than an hour or so the neighborhood is suddenly very loud though coz several next door neighbors go and bring out their generators so I'm not too worried about our survival and there's always the firewood pile in the backyard.
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