Crazy Texas cold snap ?

[Choices]

Well I guess the experts need to understand the big picture.

There are three grids in the US. East, West, and Texas. They do interconnect in a few places with Texas, but not for power distribution, more for monitoring.

The two federally guided grids operate at a shortage of two to three percent of demand. Texas operates usually at three percent overage.

This gives the Texas grid a lot of capacity for petrochemical plants and pumping stations to come on and off line anywhere in the state. So instead of just burning excess gas or refinery waste, it is now sold to the grid.

So we are at 103%, and we lose our wind turbines in South Texas, that is about 5%. Then Entergy, a federally guided Eastern grid utility that has operations in Texas shut down one of their plants for who knows what reason, right before the storm, with the intention of their Conroe plant picking up the load. Monday morning as gas supply dipped, the operators of the plant made a series of errors, and crashed the plant. They have done this before during a hurricane. Remember federally guided.

So now Texas is at a loss of 10% normal production, with demand going up 25% or more in less than eight hours, on a Sunday night.

There are other factors also in play, but those were the ones that started the spiral. The wires and poles were not a factor. The winterization BS is just that. The problem was human error, just like when the Eastern grid crashed in the north east.

Ercot was knocking all industrial users off line that they could. The data center behind my house handles Exxon and United, and it went to generators. That was how I found out how bad it was. You can't just turn off a cement plant, refinery, or hospital. But you can have an orderly shutdown.

Texas is mostly deregulated. So you can pay 12cents a kwh or market rate. If you were not in a fixed contract you got problems, if you are you pay a little more for your increased usage.

There will be many lawsuits over this. The biggest factor will be to keep wind as a cushion since it is not dependable.

Jerry Jones made money in gas, selling it to California. They made their problem and he profited from it. T Boone Pickens made his in oil and water and lost alot of it in wind.

The beauty of the Texas grid is that anyone can sell power to it. Homes, refineries, solar arrays, etc. But that does come at a price, which is the moron that watches CNN and Oprah is turning dials at a power plant at three in the morning.

 

[Retired. Crabber]

I'm Getting an education every time I sign on this forum. Sure glad there is so many well informed experts here to guide me through any matter.[/QUOTE

Sums it up there lol

 

[cardude01]

Well I guess the experts need to understand the big picture.

There are three grids in the US. East, West, and Texas. They do interconnect in a few places with Texas, but not for power distribution, more for monitoring.

The two federally guided grids operate at a shortage of two to three percent of demand. Texas operates usually at three percent overage.

This gives the Texas grid a lot of capacity for petrochemical plants and pumping stations to come on and off line anywhere in the state. So instead of just burning excess gas or refinery waste, it is now sold to the grid.

So we are at 103%, and we lose our wind turbines in South Texas, that is about 5%. Then Entergy, a federally guided Eastern grid utility that has operations in Texas shut down one of their plants for who knows what reason, right before the storm, with the intention of their Conroe plant picking up the load. Monday morning as gas supply dipped, the operators of the plant made a series of errors, and crashed the plant. They have done this before during a hurricane. Remember federally guided.

So now Texas is at a loss of 10% normal production, with demand going up 25% or more in less than eight hours, on a Sunday night.

There are other factors also in play, but those were the ones that started the spiral. The wires and poles were not a factor. The winterization BS is just that. The problem was human error, just like when the Eastern grid crashed in the north east.

Ercot was knocking all industrial users off line that they could. The data center behind my house handles Exxon and United, and it went to generators. That was how I found out how bad it was. You can't just turn off a cement plant, refinery, or hospital. But you can have an orderly shutdown.

Texas is mostly deregulated. So you can pay 12cents a kwh or market rate. If you were not in a fixed contract you got problems, if you are you pay a little more for your increased usage.

There will be many lawsuits over this. The biggest factor will be to keep wind as a cushion since it is not dependable.

Jerry Jones made money in gas, selling it to California. They made their problem and he profited from it. T Boone Pickens made his in oil and water and lost alot of it in wind.

The beauty of the Texas grid is that anyone can sell power to it. Homes, refineries, solar arrays, etc. But that does come at a price, which is the moron that watches CNN and Oprah is turning dials at a power plant at three in the morning.

Thanks for that detailed explanation.

This article seems to say that lack of winterization WAS part of the problem.

The Two Hours That Nearly Destroyed Texas’s Electric Grid https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-02-20/texas-blackout-how-the-electrical-grid-failed

 

[Benthic2]

No electric utility could have a crew large enough for every local "disasters".

Utilities bailing each other out is the norm , and the workers love it as the overtime is grand.

.

Absolutely agree and that's a great system. The problems start when the "for emergency use only" options become part of the regular operational plan. Texas has been down this road before ( 1989 & 2011 ) and the utilities have chosen not to prepare, and the citizens have chosen not to force them to prepare. The utilities are selling half as much electricity at 200 times the price !!! This is the best thing that ever happened to them!! People love to complain about government regulations, but there is a reason that the rest of the U.S. can make power when its cold and Texas can't. With such a strong disincentive to fix the problem in the insane price increases, I suspect we will be having this discussion again in 5 or 10 years.

If take my boat out to sea until I run out of gas and then call the Coast Guard for a tow, should they help me ? Should they keep helping me if I do it over and over again ?

 

[Alaskan Sea-Duction]

God bless our Linemen. They work in nasty conditions in a very dangerous career. Day, night, rain, floods, hurricanes etc.

They help each other no matter what. They keep the lights on.

God bless our lineman.

 

[Alaskan Sea-Duction]

What linemen do.....

 

[angus99]

Well I guess the experts need to understand the big picture.

The two federally guided grids operate at a shortage of two to three percent of demand. Texas operates usually at three percent overage.

Can you help me understand what you mean by this? The two grid operators I worked for are part of the Eastern Interconnection. They both have more installed capacity than their historic or projected peak loads. Real-time minimum reserve margins are baked in by both regulation and best practice and provide 99.999% reliability in normal operating conditions. I’m thinking you must mean that scheduled supply is two to three percent above expected demand across the entire Eastern and Western Interconnections but Texas has greater potential demand than it can theoretically handle. Asking because I’m not familiar with ERCOT operations.

In extreme conditions, as I know you know, the grid is designed to ship power to wherever it’s badly needed from the areas that have surplus capacity notwithstanding transmission constraints and line losses. This keeps utilities from overbuilding to serve a once-in-a-decade power crisis in any one part of the system. It will be interesting to see the root causes of this debacle, but we can be sure of two things: it will be more than one single cause and the science won’t respect anyone’s politics.

I imagine there will be some serious soul-searching in Texas. The grid operators there likely would’ve given significant parts of their anatomy to have more than the limited DC inter-ties they currently have with other systems.

And I agree that linemen ARE the true heroes in this and every outage. When stuff hits the fan, quality of life—and often life itself—depend on them.

 

[Alaskan Sea-Duction]

Well if you are in the 'Trades', plumber, electrician, painting, dry wall etc pack your tools and head to Texas!!! You could retire early, get a yacht.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Mr. 99. "...the science won’t respect anyone’s politics." I expect the politics won't respect anyone's science either.

 

[cardude01]

Well if you are in the 'Trades', plumber, electrician, painting, dry wall etc pack your tools and head to Texas!!! You could retire early, get a yacht.

Especially plumbers.

 

[angus99]

Greetings,
Mr. 99. "...the science won’t respect anyone’s politics." I expect the politics won't respect anyone's science either.

Depends on who we listen to, RT. They don’t make as many headlines but there are still folks who operate on facts.

 

[psneeld]

Depends on who we listen to, RT. They don’t make as many headlines but there are still folks who operate on facts.

Yeah????...who has the facts ????....so far in the last decade or two or three...I have been truly lucky to sift through a lot of info and get very few "facts".

 

[angus99]

Yeah????...who has the facts ????....so far in the last decade or two or three...I have been truly lucky to sift through a lot of info and get very few "facts".

It’s called “data,” Scott. You get it from instruments and other devices and it gets recorded, analyzed and interpreted—in the case of a power grid from many thousands of inputs. And then intelligent people who are trained to understand it often can come to conclusions. Then the conclusions, with the underlying data, get circulated or published and other trained, intelligent people can challenge the conclusions—not out of cynicism, but because they actually want to get to the truth and think it’s worth trying. Eventually, there are published reports that contain enough agreed-upon facts, based on data, to explain what most likely happened to any but the most suspicious. Not perfect but so much more productive than throwing up our hands and giving up.

 

[BruceK]

 

[psneeld]

It’s called “data,” Scott. You get it from instruments and other devices and it gets recorded, analyzed and interpreted—in the case of a power grid from many thousands of inputs. And then intelligent people who are trained to understand it often can come to conclusions. Then the conclusions, with the underlying data, get circulated or published and other trained, intelligent people can challenge the conclusions—not out of cynicism, but because they actually want to get to the truth and think it’s worth trying. Eventually, there are published reports that contain enough agreed-upon facts, based on data, to explain what most likely happened to any but the most suspicious. Not perfect but so much more productive than throwing up our hands and giving up.

Unless one has a specific interest in a particular subject, hearing the final outcome, at least temporarily, doesn't happen easily.

And often the agreed upon conclusions in my experience are still looking at things through a straw.....there is almost always more to the story unless satisfied with a very concise set of conclusions.

 

[angus99]

Unless one has a specific interest in a particular subject, hearing the final outcome, at least temporarily, doesn't happen easily.

And often the agreed upon conclusions in my experience are still looking at things through a straw.....there is almost always more to the story unless satisfied with a very concise set of conclusions.

First, sorry if I over-reacted. And I totally agree that there is always more to every story. There is always more to learn and we never know the full picture with 100% certainty. But we can get close and when it comes time to make a decision and act on it, we do the best we can. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the army you have.

Good data and honest, competent interpretation limit the opportunity for errors, accidental or intentional. In my experience in the electric power business, things are done to exacting standards and coverups are almost impossible (unless you’re Enron). But $hit still happens. If you don’t learn the root cause of a blackout, you’re doomed to repeat it which causes death, injury and economic loss on a massive scale to the public—not to mention the loss of careers and potential incarceration at the utility. That’s why I said there are still people who operate on facts. You may not know them personally, but every time it gets brighter after you flip a light switch you can bet they’re on the job.

 

[MurrayM]

I don't know if anyone has linked the federal report done after the 2011 winter storm event, but here's the first two paragraphs of the executive summary and a link to the full report below:

The arctic cold front that descended on the Southwest during the first week of February 2011 was unusually severe in terms of temperature, wind, and duration of the event. In many cities in the Southwest, temperatures remained below freezing for four days, and winds gusted in places to 30 mph or more. The geographic area hit was also extensive, complicating efforts to obtain power and natural gas from neighboring regions.

The storm, however, was not without precedent. There were prior severe cold weather events in the Southwest in 1983, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2008, and 2010. The worst of these was in 1989, the prior event most comparable to 2011. That year marked the first time ERCOT resorted to system-wide rolling blackouts to prevent more widespread customer outages. In all of those prior years, the natural gas delivery system experienced production declines; however, curtailments to natural gas customers in the region were essentially limited to the years 1989 and 2003.

https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/...estColdWeatherEventfromFebruary2011Report.pdf

Didn't read or even skim it...got stuff to do this morning.

 

[rgano]

It’s called “data,” Scott. You get it from instruments and other devices and it gets recorded, analyzed and interpreted—in the case of a power grid from many thousands of inputs. And then intelligent people who are trained to understand it often can come to conclusions. Then the conclusions, with the underlying data, get circulated or published and other trained, intelligent people can challenge the conclusions—not out of cynicism, but because they actually want to get to the truth and think it’s worth trying. Eventually, there are published reports that contain enough agreed-upon facts, based on data, to explain what most likely happened to any but the most suspicious. Not perfect but so much more productive than throwing up our hands and giving up.

And then the fools rush in asking which political party the analysts affiliate with. This reminds me of what my Naval Academy roommate told me when he was tired of arguing with me over some matter. "When you are arguing with a fool, two fools are arguing!" But of course, I was right, and he was just wanting to get out of it.

 

[rgano]

So why, specifically, did the wind power have issues? So far, all I see is that on a percentage basis, its rate of failure was not greatly different than the other sources.

 

[MurrayM]

So why, specifically, did the wind power have issues? So far, all I see is that on a percentage basis, its rate of failure was not greatly different than the other sources.

Another question would be; how many wind power stations were around in 1989 (slim to none I bet) when massive blackouts also happened?

This tells me that those quick to blame wind power are not looking with a clear understanding, or maybe motivated by a pre-determined agenda?

 

[rgano]

Another question would be; how many wind power stations were around in 1989 (slim to none I bet) when massive blackouts also happened?

This tells me that those quick to blame wind power are not looking with a clear understanding, or maybe motivated by a pre-determined agenda?

Yup, that's why when FXNWS brings out "experts" to attack TX wind power failure with a clear political bias or CNN says it saved the world, I ask questions like I did. Maybe it did fail, and maybe it did not, but I go multi-source ASAP when this sort of nonsense hits the airwaves, and then I believe 1/10 of what I read and hear. The second the conservative or liberal bias shows its ugly head on an important topic, TURN IT OFF/Stop reading!

 

[MurrayM]

Yup, that's why when FXNWS brings out "experts" to attack TX wind power failure with a clear political bias or CNN says it saved the world, I ask questions like I did. Maybe it did fail, and maybe it did not, but I go multi-source ASAP when this sort of nonsense hits the airwaves, and then I believe 1/10 of what I read and hear. The second the conservative or liberal bias shows its ugly head on an important topic, TURN IT OFF/Stop reading!

You, my good sir, are not one of the sheeple

 

[catalinajack]

So, what does federally guided mean? Is a Federal employee making on-site operational decisions?

Well I guess the experts need to understand the big picture.

There are three grids in the US. East, West, and Texas. They do interconnect in a few places with Texas, but not for power distribution, more for monitoring.

The two federally guided grids operate at a shortage of two to three percent of demand. Texas operates usually at three percent overage.

This gives the Texas grid a lot of capacity for petrochemical plants and pumping stations to come on and off line anywhere in the state. So instead of just burning excess gas or refinery waste, it is now sold to the grid.

So we are at 103%, and we lose our wind turbines in South Texas, that is about 5%. Then Entergy, a federally guided Eastern grid utility that has operations in Texas shut down one of their plants for who knows what reason, right before the storm, with the intention of their Conroe plant picking up the load. Monday morning as gas supply dipped, the operators of the plant made a series of errors, and crashed the plant. They have done this before during a hurricane. Remember federally guided.

So now Texas is at a loss of 10% normal production, with demand going up 25% or more in less than eight hours, on a Sunday night.

There are other factors also in play, but those were the ones that started the spiral. The wires and poles were not a factor. The winterization BS is just that. The problem was human error, just like when the Eastern grid crashed in the north east.

Ercot was knocking all industrial users off line that they could. The data center behind my house handles Exxon and United, and it went to generators. That was how I found out how bad it was. You can't just turn off a cement plant, refinery, or hospital. But you can have an orderly shutdown.

Texas is mostly deregulated. So you can pay 12cents a kwh or market rate. If you were not in a fixed contract you got problems, if you are you pay a little more for your increased usage.

There will be many lawsuits over this. The biggest factor will be to keep wind as a cushion since it is not dependable.

Jerry Jones made money in gas, selling it to California. They made their problem and he profited from it. T Boone Pickens made his in oil and water and lost alot of it in wind.

The beauty of the Texas grid is that anyone can sell power to it. Homes, refineries, solar arrays, etc. But that does come at a price, which is the moron that watches CNN and Oprah is turning dials at a power plant at three in the morning.

 

[sunchaser]

This recent cold spell in the US lower Midwest is not a sign of global warming, climate change or other popular wordsmithing. It is a sign of normal weather extremes that the US has enjoyed forever whether in 25, 50, 250, 10,000 etc year cycles.

How industry chooses to prepare for seasonal changes and near term extremes is a business decision, lost on TX utilities apparently but not neighboring states.

Few people are aware that not that long ago Chicago had a mile of ice on top of it. The Texas Gulf Coast was a frigid icebox at that time with native populations gravitating to the coasts or residing in present day Mexico.

 

[KnotYet]

This recent cold spell in the US lower Midwest is not a sign of global warming, climate change or other popular wordsmithing. It is a sign of normal weather extremes that the US has enjoyed forever whether in 25, 50, 250, 10,000 etc year cycles.

How industry chooses to prepare for seasonal changes and near term extremes is a business decision, lost on TX utilities apparently but not neighboring states.

Few people are aware that not that long ago Chicago had a mile of ice on top of it. The Texas Gulf Coast was a frigid icebox at that time with native populations gravitating to the coasts or residing in present day Mexico.

Sadly, the latest and best science does not support your opinion.
Historic weather variation and present observations can and do have different causation.

The last ice age preceeded human habitation in North America but your statement works for the animals.
The humans actually advanced from the north southward as the ice retreated, keeping to the west coast.

One's leg can become wet from different moisture sources.

 

[Alaskan Sea-Duction]

Well, I belong to a secret society called 'Alaskans for Global Warming!'

We would like to see Alaska return back to the tropical paradise it once was!

Time for me to contribute to my part for global warming. Run my smokey 3208s for an hour.

 

[ksanders]

The Texas power grid failed because Texas wanted to be seperate from the National Power Grid. Because of this their system was built to less stringent standards and without the robustness to operate in the cold weather. Notice that all the power generation facilities in El Paso are functioning fine. El Paso is not on the Texas grid, but is on the US Grid.

Texas wanted to be free from Federal regulations and they are now reaping what was sown.

That s complete bull.

Even If Texas was part of the western, or eastern interconnect there would not have been the infrastructure in place to handle this cold weather.


This was not just power producers not being able to operate their generation in this cold weather. This was gas suppliers not being able to supply fuel so the problem is not just electricity related.

Even If Texas was connected, the fact is that there was not excess energy available on either interconnect due to the nationwide cold snap. There was nothing to sell to Texas. Even if it was available there would have had to have been bulk energy transmission facilities in place.

The entire energy delivery infrastructure IE gas, electric is just not set up for these cold temperatues, and frankly 99.999% of ther time the residents of Texas benefit from this in lower rates.

This very same non cold weather tolerant systems is demonstrated visibly throiughout Texas. Just drive through the state and look at the water wells, with outside piping to get an idea of the challenges that occur during an extended cold snap.

If ERCOT wants to have a cold weather tolerant interconnect, they can do it, but it's going to cost every rate payer in Texas, every month, forever, and the cost will not be just a few dollars a month, and it's going to take years to make the changes.

Then you have the other issues that are related to the ice. ERCOT is responsible for Generation and Transmission in Texas, but local utilities are responsible for Distributing that energy. That distribution infrastructure is what created days long outages Vs "rolling blackouts" caused by bulk energy shortages. Ice builds up, and causes lines to sag into each other or break. Trees snap and fall into lines when they are ice loaded. Lots of bad things happen during a ice storm, and dam few of them have anything to do with federal regulation.

If this were simply a shortage of energy as some incorrectly claim then folks would have experienced rolling blackouts lasting X number of hours followed by a different area or areas being in the dark.

This is from a professional power grid operator and engineer.

 

[MurrayM]

Well, if the infrastructure isn't going to change, then building codes should.

Our roofs are rated for 90 pounds per square foot for snow...new construction walls are 2x6, insulated, with very carefully done vapour barrier on the inside...water lines enter the house via an interior wall and are buried 4' deep in the ground, etc.

Sufficient building codes would help a lot.

We have a small wood cook stove that burns a combination of pellets and wood that easily keeps our house warm and provides hot meals when the power goes out. The longest spell was three days after a record snowfall put many dozens of trees across the power lines.

During real bad cold snaps we keep a tap running all the time to prevent freezing, just in case.

If I lived down there, I'd be looking into cisterns...

 

[OldDan1943]

I learned some differences between the northern climate and southern climate.
The distance between power poles is less than the distance in the southern areas not prone to snow and ice accumulation.
In Georgia, a decision was made not to use insulated wire on the transmission lines. I guess it was a money saving effort.

 

[ksanders]

I learned some differences between the northern climate and southern climate.
The distance between power poles is less than the distance in the southern areas not prone to snow and ice accumulation.
In Georgia, a decision was made not to use insulated wire on the transmission lines. I guess it was a money saving effort.

FYI... No overhead transmission lines use insulated conductors.

They typically use ACSR

Aluminum Conductor Steel Reinforced. The cross section is a number of aluminum conductors wrapped around a steel core.