Blackouts in Texas as Big Freeze Upends Energy Markets

[Steeleballz 7,550]

46 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

 

 

I did a little digging on this and apparently they are using hot water for deicing, so this tweet is slightly misleading, but they do need oil to run the oil burners to heat up the water which takes about 7 hours for 44 cubic meters of the dihydrogen monoxide. 

 

  Slightly? I think it's intent was to mislead.

 

  As far as energy shortages, there was just an article last week about how the energy industry in Texas wastes enough methane into the atmosphere to power 7 million house holds a year. That would be a good place to start.

[Crtcl Rice Theory 2,432]

Texplainer: Why Does Texas Have Its Own Power Grid?

 

Basically, Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with — you guessed it — the feds. But grid independence has been violated a few times over the years — not even counting Mexico's help during last week's blackouts.

 

https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/

[TBoneTX 45,918]

ERCOT wasn't expecting such demand on the grid.  Their fault.

Some providers' equipment froze, and they can't transmit power.

Something like 1.2 million customers in the Houston area alone are without power.

It's predicted that they won't get it back for more than 24 hours... in this cold.

Anchorage, Alaska (22 F.) is warmer than where I am (16 F. and heading south).

Still have both power and water, at this writing.

[Dashinka 24,735]

6 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

ERCOT wasn't expecting such demand on the grid.  Their fault.

Some providers' equipment froze, and they can't transmit power.

Something like 1.2 million customers in the Houston area alone are without power.

It's predicted that they won't get it back for more than 24 hours... in this cold.

Anchorage, Alaska (22 F.) is warmer than where I am (16 F. and heading south).

Still have both power and water, at this writing.

A good advertisement for standby generators at least for those that live in single family homes.

[Crtcl Rice Theory 2,432]

16 hours ago, Ban Hammer said:

apparently that's not true..........

 

https://www.skyhinews.com/news/frozen-wind-turbines-could-cause-power-outages-in-grand/

You are missing the part where Texas has chosen it's own power grid unconnected to the rest of the country.

[Dashinka 24,735]

9 minutes ago, CanAm1980 said:

You are missing the part where Texas has chosen it's own power grid unconnected to the rest of the country.

And their over reliance on unreliable power sources.

[Crtcl Rice Theory 2,432]

3 hours ago, Dashinka said:

And their over reliance on unreliable power sources.

Wouldn't be an issue if they were connected to the grid. 

[Dashinka 24,735]

42 minutes ago, CanAm1980 said:

Wouldn't be an issue if they were connected to the grid. 

Depends.  Regardless, the nationwide grid system is quite haphazard at best, and the Texas grid does have ties to the Eastern grid as well as a tie with Mexico.  Overall though, the real issue was that the baseline power supply was not adequate to cover the unreliability of some of the other sources.

[Crtcl Rice Theory 2,432]

[Crazy Cat 42,062]

11 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

ERCOT wasn't expecting such demand on the grid.  Their fault.

Some providers' equipment froze, and they can't transmit power.

Something like 1.2 million customers in the Houston area alone are without power.

It's predicted that they won't get it back for more than 24 hours... in this cold.

Anchorage, Alaska (22 F.) is warmer than where I am (16 F. and heading south).

Still have both power and water, at this writing.

I feel very fortunate.  I live about 30 miles NE of Dallas.  There have been rolling blackouts in our town (serviced by multiple electric companies) and in neighboring towns......but my power company, Farmers Electric Cooperative, hasn't initiated any of them yet....... It was -2 degrees F here this morning......

[Neonred 3,632]

22 hours ago, Dashinka said:

 

 

I did a little digging on this and apparently they are using hot water for deicing, so this tweet is slightly misleading, but they do need oil to run the oil burners to heat up the water which takes about 7 hours for 44 cubic meters of the dihydrogen monoxide. 

I heard that stuff is deadly

[yuna628 9,700]

As a northerner I scratch my head at all of it. Of course I remember blackouts in the inner city back in the day during stifling summer days, it wasn't extreme... though we were too poor to even have heat or air for a while.

 

Seems to me the power companies have screwed something up.

[Crtcl Rice Theory 2,432]

It looks like frozen wind blades weren't the biggest issue....

 

   
Extreme energy demand and overloaded frozen utility plants amid an unprecedented deep freeze in Texas are among the factors that led to nearly 4.5 millions customer without power in the Lone Star State on Tuesday, experts say.

Outages spread across Texas left millions in the dark and bitter cold amid single-degree temperatures and a winter storm that buried the state in snow and ice in recent days.

Power outages across Texas

"No matter which way you cut it, this is a massive failure for a grid and a state that holds up energy and electricity as a shining example," said Varun Rai, the director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

During a Tuesday press conference, representatives from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), said there are 45,000 megawatts offline. Of that, 15,000 megawatts are wind and 30,000 are gas and coal. Between two and three million customers were without power as of early Tuesday evening.

 

First, some power plants may not have been operational due to routine maintenance, Cohan said. Peak demand typically occurs in the summer, so it's not unexpected for a coal or natural gas plant to be offline in an effort to tune up for the warmer months.

Second, some power plants may have failed to operate in the cold, Cohan said. "Plants are optimized to run under our typical and our extreme summer conditions but they aren't as well prepared and engineered for extreme cold," he said.

According to Rai, if plants operate for too long in too extreme of conditions, it could be too costly to operate as well as cause damage to the equipment, which could further exacerbate the outages for longer periods of time.

Third, some natural gas plants may not have been able to get adequate supply of gas to be converted into electricity, Cohan said. Unlike a coal plant that has an  ready stockpile, natural gas plants don't store as much on site, meaning any disruption at the supply source will lead to a disruption in turning on the lights.

Carey King, an assistant director and research scientist at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, said it's possible that power outages at natural gas production sites lead to failures in the electric compressors that move the gas.

 

Are frozen wind turbines to blame?
Some have pointed to freezing on wind turbines as a potential cause of the widespread outages, arguing the renewable energy source was not reliable, but Cohan said these arguments were "a red herring."

According to Rai, there are times of the year when wind is an extremely important energy sources for Texas, powering half of the state's electricity supply.

However, this week, operators knew and planned for much less wind capacity, in the range of 1,000 to 3,000 megawatts, Cohan said.

So called "firm resources" such as gas, coal, and nuclear, failed to supply around 30,000 megawatts, which contributed to the bulk of the problem, Cohan said.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/02/16/texas-weather-power-outage-rolling-blackouts-leave-millions-dark/6764764002/

[Boiler 45,945]

38 minutes ago, CanAm1980 said:

It looks like frozen wind blades weren't the biggest issue....

 

   
Extreme energy demand and overloaded frozen utility plants amid an unprecedented deep freeze in Texas are among the factors that led to nearly 4.5 millions customer without power in the Lone Star State on Tuesday, experts say.

Outages spread across Texas left millions in the dark and bitter cold amid single-degree temperatures and a winter storm that buried the state in snow and ice in recent days.

Power outages across Texas

"No matter which way you cut it, this is a massive failure for a grid and a state that holds up energy and electricity as a shining example," said Varun Rai, the director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

During a Tuesday press conference, representatives from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), said there are 45,000 megawatts offline. Of that, 15,000 megawatts are wind and 30,000 are gas and coal. Between two and three million customers were without power as of early Tuesday evening.

 

First, some power plants may not have been operational due to routine maintenance, Cohan said. Peak demand typically occurs in the summer, so it's not unexpected for a coal or natural gas plant to be offline in an effort to tune up for the warmer months.

Second, some power plants may have failed to operate in the cold, Cohan said. "Plants are optimized to run under our typical and our extreme summer conditions but they aren't as well prepared and engineered for extreme cold," he said.

According to Rai, if plants operate for too long in too extreme of conditions, it could be too costly to operate as well as cause damage to the equipment, which could further exacerbate the outages for longer periods of time.

Third, some natural gas plants may not have been able to get adequate supply of gas to be converted into electricity, Cohan said. Unlike a coal plant that has an  ready stockpile, natural gas plants don't store as much on site, meaning any disruption at the supply source will lead to a disruption in turning on the lights.

Carey King, an assistant director and research scientist at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, said it's possible that power outages at natural gas production sites lead to failures in the electric compressors that move the gas.

 

Are frozen wind turbines to blame?
Some have pointed to freezing on wind turbines as a potential cause of the widespread outages, arguing the renewable energy source was not reliable, but Cohan said these arguments were "a red herring."

According to Rai, there are times of the year when wind is an extremely important energy sources for Texas, powering half of the state's electricity supply.

However, this week, operators knew and planned for much less wind capacity, in the range of 1,000 to 3,000 megawatts, Cohan said.

So called "firm resources" such as gas, coal, and nuclear, failed to supply around 30,000 megawatts, which contributed to the bulk of the problem, Cohan said.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/02/16/texas-weather-power-outage-rolling-blackouts-leave-millions-dark/6764764002/

In Colorado we got down to -15F last week in Denver, there was an inversion, warmer in the Mountains.

 

There was not widespread failure of the system. But theses type of temperatures are not unknown, I have seen -40F so you incur the costs, now I do not know the details of Texas but it would appear that it may well be similar to where I grew up in the UK, you do not spend money on dealing with a generational event.

 

I do not think I ever drove a 4WD vehicle before I came to the US, pretty essential where I am. How many people in Texas have a set of winter tires for their vehicles?

[Crtcl Rice Theory 2,432]

10 minutes ago, Boiler said:

In Colorado we got down to -15F last week in Denver, there was an inversion, warmer in the Mountains.

 

There was not widespread failure of the system. But theses type of temperatures are not unknown, I have seen -40F so you incur the costs, now I do not know the details of Texas but it would appear that it may well be similar to where I grew up in the UK, you do not spend money on dealing with a generational event.

 

I do not think I ever drove a 4WD vehicle before I came to the US, pretty essential where I am. How many people in Texas have a set of winter tires for their vehicles?

 when you moved to Colorado did they ask you what type of AWD you drove as part of the driver's license exam?

Edited February 17, 2021 by CanAm1980