So wind turbines are 22% of Texas power. 50% of those went down. That's only 11% of power. The rest is because of other problems.
It's even less in reality because wind power is a lesser share in the Winter by default. I believe I saw that, at one point, Texas had lost 4 GWatts from Wind and 20ish from Natural Gas. That number is outdated now, but my understanding is that wind has outperformed other major sources of energy during this crisis. If we had a bigger share of renewables, the problem would likely be less bad.
Good thread. So essentially, from what I'm reading the majority of Texas is the only state with it's own grid and therefore in emergencies cannot draw from other areas to meet demand like the rest of the country does. Combine this with the regulations in Texas being lax around winterization it leaves the power companies with the choice of whether to "weatherize" against bitter cold temperature. Most didn't or didn't do enough due to the costs involved and we have the situation where ALL forms of fuel for power generation were disrupted. (Wind farms not turning, Coal plants unable to burn frozen solid coal, Natural Gas pipelines incapable of keeping pressure due to lack of insulation, Nuclear plants shut down as cooling ponds froze, Hydro plants unable to run as water freezes, etc). In other words ALL of this was completely avoidable and foreseeable. ERCOT and local and state governments have a lot of explaining to do.
Brother we shampoo our hair while others gorilla glue their hair So a bunch of people are dying of carbon monoxide for sitting in their car in their garage Education is important Especially when we grew up
Dear ERCOT, CO SERV AND ONCOR. I am letting you know that due to the economic strain on my money grid I will only be giving you partial payments known as “rolling payments.” I’ll tell you when you’ll get the money but you might not for hours, months, days or even ever. I knew that this financial strain was coming but I carried on like there was nothing wrong with my financial structure. Sincerely, TEXAS Resident
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/ Ok I was still leery of buying ERCOT's excuse of a lack of gas but according to the link the problem is natural gas production was disrupted because of cold weather. So electricity generating plants don't store natural gas. Natural gas tends to never be stored from my memory of the market. There are storage areas of gas operated by producers but gas does tend to get extracted, then processed, then shipped then used with no stoppage. So even large purchases of gas come from well to end user with no stopping.. So ERCOT is laying the blame at power producers but digging further the natural gas producers were the entities that failed. All that being said the attacks on wind by Abbott and the promotion of more gas are really ignorant. I'm not anti gas but this wasn't natural gas's best moment
I read that pipe to carry natural gas were frozen shutting down a number of power generators. This op Ed go into that and others... nothing drastically new but a good summary of the problems, and type of future planning needed to prevent repeat, which we should not so easily just assume it’s extremely rare due to the changing climate. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/future-proof-texas-grid.html A Plan to Future-Proof the Texas Power Grid The state’s massive blackouts are the result of a failure to insure against extreme weather. By Jesse Jenkins Dr. Jenkins is an assistant professor and an energy systems engineer at Princeton University. Every source of power generation — wind turbines, natural gas plants and nuclear reactors — has been hammered by the winter storm. But Texans rely on natural gas for two-thirds of their winter electricity supply, and failures across Texas’ natural gas system are the biggest cause of current outages. While pundits and politicians pounced on early reports of wind turbines icing up, renewable energy outages are the least significant factor in the blackouts, according to a senior director for the Texas grid operator. Wind and solar provide valuable energy throughout the year. But grid operators know not to count on these resources for much output during tough conditions, and these energy sources represent just 11 percent of Texas’ winter capacity needs. In short, wind and solar are reliably unreliable. Two-fifths of the generating capacity of Texas’ thermal plants (a category that includes natural gas, coal and nuclear plants) has been offline since Sunday night, accounting for the bulk of supply shortfalls. Texans were counting on these plants to be there, and they failed. The problems start out in the Permian Basin, where gas wells and gathering lines have frozen, and pumps that are used to lift gas from the ground lack electricity to operate; this has cut gas field production in half. At least one nuclear reactor near Houston also went offline Monday when a safety sensor froze; it was restarted Tuesday night. It is possible to weatherize energy infrastructure to protect against these outcomes. After all, more extreme weather conditions are a regular part of life in many parts of the Midwest and New England. Pipelines can be buried deeper to insulate against the ground’s cold surface. When gas supplies are disrupted, dual fuel power plants can switch from gas to petroleum stored on site. Wind turbines can be equipped with heaters to keep blades free of ice. Sensors, valves and coolant intakes can be protected against freezing. Long-distance power lines can connect to other regions’ power systems and draw from their supplies during times of need. All of this is possible but costly. Preparing for extreme events is like buying home or health insurance: it costs you every year and you hope you’ll never use it. But when a crisis strikes, paying the premiums can look like the perfect decision in hindsight. The problem, of course, is that we have to use foresight, not hindsight, to identify the kinds of crises that we wish to protect against. The calculus should come down to both the frequency of such events and, when they do occur, the severity of their impacts. A once-in-a-decade cold snap that causes a few hours of rolling blackouts, as occurred in 2011, may be tolerable. But several days without heat during below-freezing temperatures are not. When the power returns, a thorough inquiry can determine what steps could have been taken to protect Texas’ electric and gas systems from such failures. Texans will have to determine just how much insurance is worth taking out. Texas’ crisis also raises important questions for energy system operators and infrastructure planners across the country, as extreme cold is not the only weather threat we face. While scientists are still analyzing whether these polar vortex cold snaps are related to climate change, we do know that climate change increases the frequency of extreme heat waves, droughts, wildfires, rain and coastal flooding. Those extreme events test our systems to the breaking point, as they have in Texas this week. The changing climate means the past is no longer a guide to the future. The entire country must get much better at preparing for — and insuring against — the unexpected.
A KXAN analysis of ERCOT’s board revealed a total of five members do not live in Texas. https://www.kxan.com/investigations/5-ercot-board-members-dont-live-in-texas-one-from-canada/
Until hurricane season later this year when we get another 100 year event and all of this happens all over again.
ERCOT needs to shut up about this. Their job is to ensure the reliability of the grid network. Maintaining the supply of natural gas to power plants is part of that mandate. For the last two decades, ERCOT has just issued "voluntary guidelines" around everything while simultaneously pushing price competitiveness in the wholesale market. Why would a single producer ever invest in weather proofing production or transmission when ERCOT refuses to mandate it and simultaneously encourages a race to the bottom in order to reduce wholesale prices. ERCOT is beyond useless and is an absolute failure. And for them to continue to parrot excuse after excuse when they knew this could happen is just a joke. The feds gave ERCOT a list of recommendations to prevent this from happening after the 2011 freeze and all ERCOT did was make voluntary suggestions to producers. Because El Paso is excluded from ERCOT and not tied to the deregulation of production, they could just weather proof without fear of some sort of competitive disadvantage. But every other producer in the state has to deal with the reality that they'll create a price disadvantage for themselves if they invest in reliability. It's a perfect example of how worthless regulators are in Texas. ERCOT is basically yet another regulator that is paid for by the industry it is supposed to regulate. If Texas were willing to abolish ERCOT and join the federal grids, I guarantee that Congress would find a way to pay for the whole transition. They'd probably even pay to weatherproof the state. But Texas's pride and ego around having its own grid will probably get in the way of that.
