This is from an email form the Texas Scorecard this morning: With millions of Texans freezing and 24 dead, five members of the board that manages Texas’ electrical grid don’t have to endure the consequences of the power grid’s mismanagement. Why? They live outside of Texas.
As Joshua Pierce reports, the Energy Reliability Council of Texas’ board of directors consists of 16 seats. The board’s chair and vice chair, Sally Talberg and Peter Cramton, are among the non-Texans nonetheless managing Texas’ electric grid. Talberg lives in Michigan, where she was a Michigan Public Service Commissioner before joining the ERCOT board. Cramton is a professor at the University of Michigan and the University of Cologne in Germany, though his social media account says he resides in Del Mar, California. Another board member, Vanessa Anesetti-Parra, lives in Canada.
According to ERCOT bylaws, these out-of-state appointments are legal, with Texas residence merely “preferred.” New ERCOT board members are chosen by a nominating board consisting of current ERCOT board members.
Next week, Texas legislators –acting at the behest of Gov. Greg Abbott – will hold hearings aimed at browbeating ERCOT for its mistakes in mishandling this crisis.
Will any of the lawmakers have the gumption to admit that ERCOT is overseen by the Public Utility Commission and state legislature? Or that the PUC’s members are appointed directly by the governor?
Energy policy expert Bill Peacock finds most of Texas’ power grid was probably about as prepared as could be expected for this record storm. However, he writes, one part of the grid was mostly unprepared: renewable energy generators.
“Because of market distortions created by renewable subsidies, when Texas ran low on electricity Monday night, the grid operator had nowhere to turn. Reliable natural gas plants that could have shouldered much—if not all—of the heavy load were nonexistent because they had not been built, thanks to renewables subsidies.” – Bill Peacock
Weak, cowardly King Abbott has much to answer for. We need an intelligent conservative with critical thinking skills to run the Texas Republic. It's not this fool who, by his edicts for the casedemic, destroyed so many lives .
The historic power failures in Texas this week amid a major cold snap there appear to have been driven in no small part by the failure of the state's wind turbines to keep up with a spike in demand, according to energy data from federal sources.
Once-in-a-century cold weather in much of Texas this week sent energy demands skyrocketing, placing major strains on power grids and leaving millions of residents without power for extended periods of single-digit weather. Weather data show that temperatures throughout the state began plummeting sharply late Saturday, Feb. 13 and throughout the next day. In areas such as Fort Worth, the temperature has hovered around zero at times. February average lows in that area are around 40 degrees.
A statewide blame game has accompanied the crisis, with numerous industries and commentators alleging that, variously, wind, solar, natural gas and coal failed to meet the surge in heating demand accompanying the cold snap. Yet federal data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicate that, of the state's major energy sources, wind experienced the sharpest drop-off in energy production
The plunge in temperatures led to both a surge in heating demand and the concomitant power outages. -- excerpt, rest at link above --
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Yes, articles trying to defend and protect "green" energy.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Quote: Sanguine wrote in post #94Yes, articles trying to defend and protect "green" energy.
Beatoff O'Rourke surfaced yesterday slamming Republicans. Of course he wasn't asked what his plan would have been, but we can guess-more wind and solar, LOL!
I'm listening to my dishwasher run and it's just about the sweetist sound I've heard all day!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Quote: Tinker wrote in post #97Mayor of Houston currently on TV extolling the virtues of government!
Sounds about right...for an idiot.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Quote: Tinker wrote in post #97Mayor of Houston currently on TV extolling the virtues of government!
Sounds about right...for an idiot.
In my 72+ years on this globe, I have had one thing seared into my brain. The" thing is "There is nothing so F'd up that government cannot figure out how to make it worse!"
We lucked out... enough of a thaw today that the water started flowing to the house... the one split pipe that I replaced yesterday was fine, only needed to force a problematic shutoff valve to the washing machine to stay "shut!" and we are underway with running water....
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent people.” ― George Orwell
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
This was forwarded to me via email. Really good read:
There are a few narratives floating around about the cause of the electricity shortage in Texas. As an engineer that closely works with Texas energy production and infrastructure, I want to offer my preliminary analysis of the situation we are in. I say preliminary because I know people want answers, but true answers rarely come out as any event is unfolding real time. This is long and will address other narratives at the end.
First and foremost, my heart really breaks for those in dire straights rights now. Rest assured after analyzing the data, I see extra electricity is coming online, and I think this problem is avoidable in the future. It is simply unacceptable for anyone to be without electricity in Texas. Below I will analyze why this happened and some solutions for avoiding this in the future. No politics. No agenda. Just simple answers from an engineer.
Let me start with a graph showing our electricity generation by source in the days leading up to and including the electricity shortage.
You will see on Feb. 4th roughly 20,000 MWh of electricity came from wind and roughly 5,000 MWh from each natural gas, coal, and nuclear. After Feb. 8th, wind produced very little electricity, bottoming out at a negligible number on Feb. 15th when we needed it most. Coal about doubled electricity generation and nuclear stayed about the same. Natural gas on the other hand, went from less than 5,000 MWh to more than 30,000 MWh in this time span. So, natural gas increased 600%, coal increased 100%, nuclear stayed relatively steady and wind tanked almost 97%. Wind, by nature, is fickle. It comes and goes. We cannot control it. With the facts laid out, lets discuss what went wrong.
Wind was a big failure, but that is to be expected. It is an unreliable source of electricity. I will not get into why wind failed. Quite frankly there are many reasons that go outside of my expertise. For whatever reason, wind failed us just when our demand was highest. There should be (and are) plans for what to do when it fails. Our solution when wind fails is to crank up natural gas and to a lesser extent coal. In theory, that is a good plan. However, six coal plants have been shut down over the past three years in Texas. Coal and nuclear are easily the most reliable sources of electricity because coal can be easily stored on site at the power plant and nuclear does not need refueling. Coal plants have been steadily replaced in Texas by wind on the back of federal subsidies and federal regulations to disincentivize coal. The Texas baseline electricity generation went down due to a reliable source being replaced by an unreliable source. In order to counterbalance an increase in unreliable electricity, the market demanded an increase in natural gas based electricity. It was not hurt as heavily as coal by federal regulations. However, natural gas power plants have trouble competing against the heavily subsidized wind rates. Also, the economics don’t work as well when they are only used when wind fails. While wind fails often, there is just no way of predicting it when putting together an economic case for building a natural gas power plant. Even with that being the case, natural gas power plants are still being built trying to catch up with demand due to coal plants shutting down and the highly variable wind power. Compared to three years ago, coal power has been reduced by 37%.
So, what went wrong this week? It was wind failure plus a decimated coal infrastructure. Texas has a natural gas power plant capacity of roughly 34,000 MWh. At its peak on February 15th, natural gas power plants operated at about 125% stated capacity. When ERCOT instituted rolling blackouts on Feb. 15th, natural gas plants immediately reduced electricity generation to a bottom of 80% capacity. Coal also went down to 80% capacity. Wind’s bottom during that period was 3% capacity. The same situation happened in Scotland 10 years ago. Their wind production plummeted to 4% capacity during a blistering cold front, leaving a massive strain on natural gas power plants. Today, natural gas power plants are up at 92% capacity, while coal is still at 80% and wind is limping along at 16% capacity. While we no longer have as much demand for electricity in Texas, it is clear natural gas fared better than any other form of energy and pulled us out of a very difficult situation. The next question is then: why did natural gas power go down to 80% capacity? The natural gas power plants in Texas are incredibly efficient, routinely performing over 100% capacity every summer. This is the first time demand for natural gas spiked so high during an almost uniform freeze across all of Texas. Frozen roads meant trucks could not journey the roads as they normally do to pick up oil from many of the wells across Texas. If the trucks do not pick up the oil, the well gets shut in. If the well gets shut in, natural gas production stops for that well. That happened across New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and now Louisiana. Therefore, the only gas production supplying the natural gas power plants came from oil wells where the oil had not yet filled the tanks, the oil is not trucked out but rather sent through a pipeline, or brought in from an outside pipeline. This meant gas supply to power plants was constrained.
So, what do we do to prepare for the future? Texas has more wind infrastructure than any other state, at a usable capacity of roughly 21,000 MWh. I have been proud of that fact for a long time. However, we cannot rely on it. Not even at 50%, 20%, or 5% capacity. On a good wind day, we can reduce natural gas consumption if we like, but as we saw this week not even the worst weather event in 100 years can depend on a single MWh of electricity from wind. In the last 3 years Texas has shut down 6,500 MWh of coal power plants, replaced by 2,300 MWh of wind. Texas is scheduled to shut down an additional 5,000 MWh from coal plants. The federal government subsidies for wind amount to 2.3 cents per kWh, putting it well below the cost of coal and natural gas. A free market does not exist between these sources of electricity. As a starter, the coal plants need to remain. They are too reliable to discard. Additionally, Texas needs to increase the baseload electricity, that is the nuclear, coal, natural gas mix that is always functional. Federal wind subsidies need to be counter balanced in Texas in some way to make a fair market for natural gas to compete. Perhaps the state should tax the wind farms at the same rate the federal subsidies are set. Or subsidize natural gas by guaranteeing a certain fraction of the baseload for natural gas. It doesn’t really matter, but the market needs to be balanced. Fourth, we need to address the natural gas supply to the power plants. Natural gas storage may be a solution. Storing gas is difficult, but doable. A strategic reserve would be useful. Or perhaps requiring oil production facilities that also feed natural gas to a pipeline to maintain oil storage capacity of one week or more. One other idea is to lay more oil and natural gas pipelines. Underground pipelines are much less likely to freeze and are much more reliable than trucks. Last, Texas needs more natural gas, coal, or nuclear power facilities. Demand is increasing with more residents flocking to the state and wind is too unreliable to count on satisfying the demand. Unfortunately, we have let it become too high of a percent of our power in Texas. Just as Scotland learned in 2010, wind was not there when it was needed most. Sadly, we learned that lesson the hard way. Texas cannot allow politics to outweigh the science. We cannot shut down 11,500 MWh of reliable electricity and think wind will always be there to balance it out. Sometimes it will be able to, but not always.
To address some other narratives floating around:
Natural Gas was the Failure: This narrative relies on quotes from a few people in high places trying save their skin. The data does not support it. Right before ERCOT instituted the blackouts, natural gas power plants were operating over 100% of their design capacity. ERCOT artificially constrained demand with the blackouts. Only after that did the natural gas power plants move to 80% capacity. There is some truth to natural gas supply to the power plants going down due to logistical constraints with the freezing weather (addressed above). Perhaps ERCOT was anticipating reduced generation from these plants, but that remains to be seen.
Wind Actually Produced More than Projected: At times this is true. However, at the most critical time wind only produced 650 MWh and averaged under its projection for the blackout days. Remember, wind produces what can. It is not limited artificially like natural gas is. Natural gas fills what wind is not able to produce, whatever that needs to be. However, the ERCOT projection was off by about 10,000 MWh for consumer demand. No matter the projections, Texas did not stand a chance with wind, an average of 20% of Texas electrical generation, operating at just 3% capacity.
The Texas Grid is an Island, not Connected with Other Grids: This is not true. Texas has agreements to sell to or purchase electricity from two neighboring grids. Texas had been a net exporter to the two grids for many years until mid 2018, the year Texas shut down several coal power plants. Now Texas is a net importer of electricity. However, those two grids also experienced the same weather as Texas and cut off their electricity supply to Texas to service their own demand (as they should).
One final thought:
ERCOT underestimated demand by more than 10,000 MWh. This was likely a higher demand than Texas had ever seen, even during the heat of the summer. The only way it could have worked is if everything we had was firing on all cylinders. With two natural gas power plants down for routine maintenance, natural gas supply issues, reduction in coal capacity, and fickle wind, it is unlikely there would be a case we could avoid blackouts without a baseline increase to natural gas, coal, or nuclear power generation. Don’t read this as a case against wind as much as a case for more reliable power generation. If Texas still had the 6,500 MWh of coal power it shut down, I bet the blackouts would have been delayed, shortened, or even avoided. There is no way to know for sure, but I know all of us that had no power would have loved those six power plants that were shut down over the past three years to be running this week.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
What Caused The Texas Energy Crisis? Published on February 19, 2021By Jesse Stiller https://politicrossing.com/what-caused-t...-energy-crisis/ Questions arise regarding the failure of the Texas power grid as the state continues to recover from a historic winter storm. The Current Texas Crisis New reports from the Texas Tribune on Friday suggest that the state was “Seconds and minutes” away from a “catastrophic” blackout that could have lasted months if grid operators did not take action to stop a massive drop in energy supply.
Unseasonably cold temperatures knocked natural gas and coal plants offline as well as froze wind turbines. As a result, operators had to resort to rolling blackouts to stop the surge in demand from overwhelming its circuits.
Several factors have been blamed for the sudden and severe energy crisis, with fossil-fuel proponents blaming frozen wind turbines and other alternative energy that was frozen over, BBC suggested. Others such as the New York Times have blamed natural gas pipes freezing and pointing responsibility on to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
However, there has been one component of the U.S. power grid that has not been looked into: The equipment itself. China And The Electrical Grid An April 2014 report from the Department of Energy found that there were only six domestic manufacturers of power equipment in the United States, while China had 30 manufacturers.-- excerpt, rest at link above --
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Quote: Sanguine wrote in post #103This was forwarded to me via email. Really good read:
There are a few narratives floating around about the cause of the electricity shortage in Texas. As an engineer that closely works with Texas energy production and infrastructure, I want to offer my preliminary analysis of the situation we are in. I say preliminary because I know people want answers, but true answers rarely come out as any event is unfolding real time. This is long and will address other narratives at the end.
First and foremost, my heart really breaks for those in dire straights rights now. Rest assured after analyzing the data, I see extra electricity is coming online, and I think this problem is avoidable in the future. It is simply unacceptable for anyone to be without electricity in Texas. Below I will analyze why this happened and some solutions for avoiding this in the future. No politics. No agenda. Just simple answers from an engineer.
Let me start with a graph showing our electricity generation by source in the days leading up to and including the electricity shortage.
You will see on Feb. 4th roughly 20,000 MWh of electricity came from wind and roughly 5,000 MWh from each natural gas, coal, and nuclear. After Feb. 8th, wind produced very little electricity, bottoming out at a negligible number on Feb. 15th when we needed it most. Coal about doubled electricity generation and nuclear stayed about the same. Natural gas on the other hand, went from less than 5,000 MWh to more than 30,000 MWh in this time span. So, natural gas increased 600%, coal increased 100%, nuclear stayed relatively steady and wind tanked almost 97%. Wind, by nature, is fickle. It comes and goes. We cannot control it. With the facts laid out, lets discuss what went wrong.
Wind was a big failure, but that is to be expected. It is an unreliable source of electricity. I will not get into why wind failed. Quite frankly there are many reasons that go outside of my expertise. For whatever reason, wind failed us just when our demand was highest. There should be (and are) plans for what to do when it fails. Our solution when wind fails is to crank up natural gas and to a lesser extent coal. In theory, that is a good plan. However, six coal plants have been shut down over the past three years in Texas. Coal and nuclear are easily the most reliable sources of electricity because coal can be easily stored on site at the power plant and nuclear does not need refueling. Coal plants have been steadily replaced in Texas by wind on the back of federal subsidies and federal regulations to disincentivize coal. The Texas baseline electricity generation went down due to a reliable source being replaced by an unreliable source. In order to counterbalance an increase in unreliable electricity, the market demanded an increase in natural gas based electricity. It was not hurt as heavily as coal by federal regulations. However, natural gas power plants have trouble competing against the heavily subsidized wind rates. Also, the economics don’t work as well when they are only used when wind fails. While wind fails often, there is just no way of predicting it when putting together an economic case for building a natural gas power plant. Even with that being the case, natural gas power plants are still being built trying to catch up with demand due to coal plants shutting down and the highly variable wind power. Compared to three years ago, coal power has been reduced by 37%.
So, what went wrong this week? It was wind failure plus a decimated coal infrastructure. Texas has a natural gas power plant capacity of roughly 34,000 MWh. At its peak on February 15th, natural gas power plants operated at about 125% stated capacity. When ERCOT instituted rolling blackouts on Feb. 15th, natural gas plants immediately reduced electricity generation to a bottom of 80% capacity. Coal also went down to 80% capacity. Wind’s bottom during that period was 3% capacity. The same situation happened in Scotland 10 years ago. Their wind production plummeted to 4% capacity during a blistering cold front, leaving a massive strain on natural gas power plants. Today, natural gas power plants are up at 92% capacity, while coal is still at 80% and wind is limping along at 16% capacity. While we no longer have as much demand for electricity in Texas, it is clear natural gas fared better than any other form of energy and pulled us out of a very difficult situation. The next question is then: why did natural gas power go down to 80% capacity? The natural gas power plants in Texas are incredibly efficient, routinely performing over 100% capacity every summer. This is the first time demand for natural gas spiked so high during an almost uniform freeze across all of Texas. Frozen roads meant trucks could not journey the roads as they normally do to pick up oil from many of the wells across Texas. If the trucks do not pick up the oil, the well gets shut in. If the well gets shut in, natural gas production stops for that well. That happened across New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and now Louisiana. Therefore, the only gas production supplying the natural gas power plants came from oil wells where the oil had not yet filled the tanks, the oil is not trucked out but rather sent through a pipeline, or brought in from an outside pipeline. This meant gas supply to power plants was constrained.
So, what do we do to prepare for the future? Texas has more wind infrastructure than any other state, at a usable capacity of roughly 21,000 MWh. I have been proud of that fact for a long time. However, we cannot rely on it. Not even at 50%, 20%, or 5% capacity. On a good wind day, we can reduce natural gas consumption if we like, but as we saw this week not even the worst weather event in 100 years can depend on a single MWh of electricity from wind. In the last 3 years Texas has shut down 6,500 MWh of coal power plants, replaced by 2,300 MWh of wind. Texas is scheduled to shut down an additional 5,000 MWh from coal plants. The federal government subsidies for wind amount to 2.3 cents per kWh, putting it well below the cost of coal and natural gas. A free market does not exist between these sources of electricity. As a starter, the coal plants need to remain. They are too reliable to discard. Additionally, Texas needs to increase the baseload electricity, that is the nuclear, coal, natural gas mix that is always functional. Federal wind subsidies need to be counter balanced in Texas in some way to make a fair market for natural gas to compete. Perhaps the state should tax the wind farms at the same rate the federal subsidies are set. Or subsidize natural gas by guaranteeing a certain fraction of the baseload for natural gas. It doesn’t really matter, but the market needs to be balanced. Fourth, we need to address the natural gas supply to the power plants. Natural gas storage may be a solution. Storing gas is difficult, but doable. A strategic reserve would be useful. Or perhaps requiring oil production facilities that also feed natural gas to a pipeline to maintain oil storage capacity of one week or more. One other idea is to lay more oil and natural gas pipelines. Underground pipelines are much less likely to freeze and are much more reliable than trucks. Last, Texas needs more natural gas, coal, or nuclear power facilities. Demand is increasing with more residents flocking to the state and wind is too unreliable to count on satisfying the demand. Unfortunately, we have let it become too high of a percent of our power in Texas. Just as Scotland learned in 2010, wind was not there when it was needed most. Sadly, we learned that lesson the hard way. Texas cannot allow politics to outweigh the science. We cannot shut down 11,500 MWh of reliable electricity and think wind will always be there to balance it out. Sometimes it will be able to, but not always.
To address some other narratives floating around:
Natural Gas was the Failure: This narrative relies on quotes from a few people in high places trying save their skin. The data does not support it. Right before ERCOT instituted the blackouts, natural gas power plants were operating over 100% of their design capacity. ERCOT artificially constrained demand with the blackouts. Only after that did the natural gas power plants move to 80% capacity. There is some truth to natural gas supply to the power plants going down due to logistical constraints with the freezing weather (addressed above). Perhaps ERCOT was anticipating reduced generation from these plants, but that remains to be seen.
Wind Actually Produced More than Projected: At times this is true. However, at the most critical time wind only produced 650 MWh and averaged under its projection for the blackout days. Remember, wind produces what can. It is not limited artificially like natural gas is. Natural gas fills what wind is not able to produce, whatever that needs to be. However, the ERCOT projection was off by about 10,000 MWh for consumer demand. No matter the projections, Texas did not stand a chance with wind, an average of 20% of Texas electrical generation, operating at just 3% capacity.
The Texas Grid is an Island, not Connected with Other Grids: This is not true. Texas has agreements to sell to or purchase electricity from two neighboring grids. Texas had been a net exporter to the two grids for many years until mid 2018, the year Texas shut down several coal power plants. Now Texas is a net importer of electricity. However, those two grids also experienced the same weather as Texas and cut off their electricity supply to Texas to service their own demand (as they should).
One final thought:
ERCOT underestimated demand by more than 10,000 MWh. This was likely a higher demand than Texas had ever seen, even during the heat of the summer. The only way it could have worked is if everything we had was firing on all cylinders. With two natural gas power plants down for routine maintenance, natural gas supply issues, reduction in coal capacity, and fickle wind, it is unlikely there would be a case we could avoid blackouts without a baseline increase to natural gas, coal, or nuclear power generation. Don’t read this as a case against wind as much as a case for more reliable power generation. If Texas still had the 6,500 MWh of coal power it shut down, I bet the blackouts would have been delayed, shortened, or even avoided. There is no way to know for sure, but I know all of us that had no power would have loved those six power plants that were shut down over the past three years to be running this week.
I do not know who actually wrote this but I do know that whoever did has their head screwed on entirely straight! Excellent, Excellent! Excellent!
Please see that your state legislators get a copy!
Unfrozen Cave Water Cooler
2
The Unfrozen Cave
Print view
Fri Feb 19, 2021 10:28 am
reply
