What if Texas’s grid wasn’t independent?

[smokingman]

Not to worry you can keep the electricity on at your 700sq ft apartment for the low low price of $8162 a month(up from 387 last month). You can even charge a Tesla once for only an additional $900. That is if you are one of the lucky few with power.

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

It is not just Texas. Check your electric rate at this time per KWH last year,and current.

 

[JCSR]

I worked electrical/instrumentation at a large (AEP Rockport) coal fried facility. Every outage we had in cold weather was due to service water freeze up or transmitter freeze up. Turbine/generators and boilers make their own heat but without seal/cooling water or controls you're down. Heat tracing and insulation (when maintained) do good job in our area but it's my understanding the Texas units had none.

 

[femurphy77]

I worked electrical/instrumentation at a large (AEP Rockport) coal fried facility. Every outage we had in cold weather was due to service water freeze up or transmitter freeze up. Turbine/generators and boilers make their own heat but without seal/cooling water or controls you're down. Heat tracing and insulation (when maintained) do good job in our area but it's my understanding the Texas units had none.

Good point about the preparedness level. Sifting through all of the garbage that seems to be the root cause; they built the system to withstand the weather they normally experience. It's hard to fault them I guess but would they be better off if they too had to meet federal guidelines?

My understanding is that since their system isn't interstate they are not required to follow federal guidelines for many things including pricing, number of plants, distribution weakness/robustness, etc. Anybody have any more in depth knowledge?

I was speaking to a sales rep based in Dallas yesterday and he just chalked it up to living in the free republic of Texas; most of the time you win but DAYUM when you lose, you LOSE!

 

[BugI02]

Reality no longer matters once they've decided on a fairy tale they would like to chase.

Click your Emerald Slippers together and say 'There's no place like the green new deal'

 

[Jaybird1980]

Good point about the preparedness level. Sifting through all of the garbage that seems to be the root cause; they built the system to withstand the weather they normally experience. It's hard to fault them I guess but would they be better off if they too had to meet federal guidelines?

My understanding is that since their system isn't interstate they are not required to follow federal guidelines for many things including pricing, number of plants, distribution weakness/robustness, etc. Anybody have any more in depth knowledge?

I was speaking to a sales rep based in Dallas yesterday and he just chalked it up to living in the free republic of Texas; most of the time you win but DAYUM when you lose, you LOSE!

They have experienced this before in far southern areas, and chose not to mitigate the problems. More than likely because they figured why spend the money when it is a rare occurrence. Maybe this time they will change their minds, but I'm doubtful, showing more profit almost always wins out. The early push to green energy before it is capable will only exasperate the problem.

 

[T.Lex]

Sorry I just found this thread.

Truly an interesting case study in de-regulation or self-regulation.

To be clear, none of the current elected officials bear much responsibility for this particular fiasco. The only hook they could technically be tied to would be that after the cold snap a few years ago revealed some deficiencies, there wasn't much followup on worst-case scenarios.

But, this snowball (pardon the pun, perhaps) started rolling downhill when Texas decided to do their own thing back in 1970.

 

[HoughMade]

I get it- the power should not have been out for as long as it was and it should not have been this widespread.

However, a little personal responsibility and forethought could have saved lives and pipes.

It's time to stop designing dwellings on the assumption that you will never see freezing temperatures. I don't care that grandpappy's house had pipes running outside. My house can have the power go out below 0 and the pipes won't freeze for days if I do nothing.

Which brings me to my second point- alternative heat. Everyone should have a plan for enough heat not dependent on the power grid to prevent freezing temperatures and death. There are several options, some that are not that expensive. I have 4 non-power grid heat sources and 2 that do not use natural gas. Have a plan or suffer the consequences. No one should care more about your family and home than you and that care should translate into plans.

"But what about apartment dwellers?" Go on Amazon and type in "propane heaters".

 

[T.Lex]

I get it- the power should not have been out for as long as it was and it should not have been this widespread.

However, a little personal responsibility and forethought could have saved lives and pipes.

It's time to stop designing dwelling on the assumption that you will never see freezing temperatures. I don't care that grandpappy's house had pipes running outside. My house can have the power go out below 0 and the pipes won't freeze for days if I do nothing.

Which brings me to my second point- alternative heat. Everyone should have a plan for enough heat not dependent on the power grid to prevent freezing temperatures and death. There are several options, some that are not that expensive. I have 4 non-power grid heat sources and 2 that do not use natural gas. Have a plan or suffer the consequences. No one should care more about your family and home than you and that care should translate into plans.

"But what about apartment dwellers?" Go on Amazon and type in "propane heaters".

I have kin in Texas and yeah, there's some cognitive dissonance about what the risks are for that kind of weather event.

But, there is also the undeniable reality that the utilities weren't prepared at the infrastructure level for the weather. A nuclear reactor went offline (which didn't account for much of the power capacity, but that's still a little crazy)!

The natural gas generators had about every thing go wrong that could.

 

[Jaybird1980]

I have kin in Texas and yeah, there's some cognitive dissonance about what the risks are for that kind of weather event.

But, there is also the undeniable reality that the utilities weren't prepared at the infrastructure level for the weather. A nuclear reactor went offline (which didn't account for much of the power capacity, but that's still a little crazy)!

The natural gas generators had about every thing go wrong that could.

And the reliance on green energy to be available, while the others were in maintenance. You don't plan your electrical needs based on best case scenario, which is the direction we are headed.

Will anyone take notice, and see the real problems at hand? I doubt it, it's just a blaming game now.

 

[T.Lex]

And the reliance on green energy to be available, while the others were in maintenance. You don't plan your electrical needs based on best case scenario, which is the direction we are headed.

Will anyone take notice, and see the real problems at hand? I doubt it, it's just a blaming game now.

Yeah, the wind/solar thing is interesting in this case.

There was some reliance on it, and enough of it went down to be noticed. But it also revealed glaring problems with the "traditional" energy sources. More accurately, with the delivery of the raw material to the production facility, then from the producer to the customer. Every stage of it was impacted negatively by that weather event.

 

[Jaybird1980]

Yeah, the wind/solar thing is interesting in this case.

There was some reliance on it, and enough of it went down to be noticed. But it also revealed glaring problems with the "traditional" energy sources. More accurately, with the delivery of the raw material to the production facility, then from the producer to the customer. Every stage of it was impacted negatively by that weather event.

Relying on the green energy to be available is what led up to having to many "traditional" power producers down for maintenance at the same time. If they weren't counting on it to be there they would stagger the outage maintenance schedules of all the "traditional" sources throughout the year like the rest of us do.
Green energy is a supplemental power source at best right now. The push to be dependent on green energy will only exacerbate the issue.
Of course there were other issues going on, but they have been aware of those for many years and have chose to ignore. Probably because it leads to more profits.
A lot of the other issues are issues that are mostly unable to be stopped, line issues from trees and ice, switchyards freezing, animals seeking warmth,etc.

 

[foszoe]

Scheduling outages is also such an evolving mess.

It used to be there was spring and winter "outage seasons".

Now just about the entire year is outage season and I say that with only a small amount of dry humor.

TOPs and GOs used to schedule outages based on serving the native load. Now they rely more on the markets they are in to decide that for them.

 

[Jaybird1980]

Scheduling outages is also such an evolving mess.

It used to be there was spring and winter "outage seasons".

Now just about the entire year is outage season and I say that with only a small amount of dry humor.

TOPs and GOs used to schedule outages based on serving the native load. Now they rely more on the markets they are in to decide that for them.

This is very true, we used to go into an outage every 3 months. You finish one outage and roll to the next unit coming down. Usually we don't start any in the summer unless something big fails and the unit is going to be derated for a significant time or out of service, and then that usually changes the future outages.

 

[BugI02]

Sorry I just found this thread.

Truly an interesting case study in de-regulation or self-regulation.

To be clear, none of the current elected officials bear much responsibility for this particular fiasco. The only hook they could technically be tied to would be that after the cold snap a few years ago revealed some deficiencies, there wasn't much followup on worst-case scenarios.

But, this snowball (pardon the pun, perhaps) started rolling downhill when Texas decided to do their own thing back in 1970.

Sigh. Do airplanes still crash?

When you find a utility that has completely eliminated all risk of failure, you invest in it. We'll wait

I think 50 years is a pretty good run, nor am I aware of it ever having a problem until it was required to integrate unreliable power sources

 

[BugI02]

I have kin in Texas and yeah, there's some cognitive dissonance about what the risks are for that kind of weather event.

But, there is also the undeniable reality that the utilities weren't prepared at the infrastructure level for the weather. A nuclear reactor went offline (which didn't account for much of the power capacity, but that's still a little crazy)!

The natural gas generators had about every thing go wrong that could.

Many of those power sources, including the nuke, dropped off the grid to prevent frequency instabilities from damaging their equipment, not because of any inability to continue generation. That can't be blamed on the individual facility, it is a grid-wide resilience issue

 

[T.Lex]

Of course there were other issues going on, but they have been aware of those for many years and have chose to ignore. Probably because it leads to more profits.
A lot of the other issues are issues that are mostly unable to be stopped, line issues from trees and ice, switchyards freezing, animals seeking warmth,etc.

These are the things that are problematic for self-regulation. States that are part of the federal grid have also been hit with intense weather anomalies (even the same ones) without the same tragic effect, in part because of the federal standards and the willingness to enforce them.

Yeah, its fun to bitch about federal regulations, and how absurd some of the standards are, but when the 100 or 500 year event happens and it "isn't that bad" because of those standards, it is hard to value that.

There's also the related issue of allowing people to opt-in to billing practices that track the wholesale rate. That's straight up gambling. (Like using reddit for stock forecasting.) Yeah, 99% of the time, the consumer might save a buck, but when that 1% equates to a 300% increase in (scarcity) pricing, then that's a problem.

 

[Alamo]

I've lived in Texas for 15 years, about 40 miles east of San Antonio. Last week was certainly a unique event in that time, the most unusual part of it being the length of time that it was severely cold. We've gotten snow storms and ice storms before this far south, but none of them has lasted more than a couple days, and even when it was cold for a week, the night time temps were in the 20s, not in the teens or below like last week. Not quite a black swan event, but 100 year flood maybe. How much insurance (ie. better insulation for pipes and infrastructure and all that) do you invest in for the one-off event? Maybe a lot if it affects a lot of people, but how much of "a lot."

I had one pipe freeze because it was part of an old yard sprinkler system and approached the ground surface closer than the rest of the piping. I'm probably not going to dig up the rest of the pipe system just because that one stub froze (I just buried that part deeper). I did go for max insulation on my house when I had it put up three years ago, because of the summer heat, but that worked well in this case.

As far as the separate grid goes: one of the things that let Texas grow a really big windfarm out west fairly quickly was the fact that it controlled its own grid, and the Legislature and the regulatory agencies could make changes that allowed the transmission lines to be built to bring all that power from west no-where to where it was needed. From what I've read many windfarms have suffered because there is not the infrastructure in place to move the power they generate, and the regulatory and coordination hoops to get it put in are severe because it's buried deep in bigger management structure. Also from what I've read the Texas wind turbine project is the only one that has come close to giving a return on the investment made (albeit I suspect with big subsidies from Uncle Sam), and one reason for this was Texas's ability to coordinate the building of the turbines and the transmissions lines in relatively short order. Other places with big wind turbines like Spain the electricity generated has come no where near being enough to justify the huge amounts spent. Oh, and California.

I still think it (wind) will be a bust without subsidies, it's too erratic and subject to variability, we should be building nuke generators instead. But I don't see anything that would justify requiring the Texas grid to become part of either of the eastern or western grids. As others have pointed out the western grid regularly tanks in the summer, most noticeably in California because of the population, but it also crashes in the east as well. There have been many large scale blackouts and brownouts in NYC, Boston, and other eastern areas over the years in both summer and winter. If you dig into it there are a lot of warnings about how fragile those grids are. Texas has one bad week and it's time for the feds to take over? No thanks. Insert "COME AND TAKE IT" Emoji here with electron on white background.

 

[amboy49]

Many of those power sources, including the nuke, dropped off the grid to prevent frequency instabilities from damaging their equipment, not because of any inability to continue generation. That can't be blamed on the individual facility, it is a grid-wide resilience issue

We had our monthly board meeting today for the G&T board I am on. We reviewed the Texas situation from an engineering standpoint. Notwithstanding the “why“ of the generation failure, the bottom line was that the operators knew they had to shed load when the system started getting overloaded. The experts have determined that the system was literally five minutes away from completely failing. That would have meant a total blackout of all of Texas. And. . . . . . .had that occurred it would have taken weeks to fully reenergize the grid. The operators did their job. There will be plenty of time to lay blame for the generation problems. And it will occur. As of now there is plenty of blame to go around. What remains to be seen is how much the federal government will become involved.

 

[foszoe]

Many of those power sources, including the nuke, dropped off the grid to prevent frequency instabilities from damaging their equipment, not because of any inability to continue generation. That can't be blamed on the individual facility, it is a grid-wide resilience issue

I think the nuke came off due to feed water problems, not underfrequency.

 

[T.Lex]

We had our monthly board meeting today for the G&T board I am on. We reviewed the Texas situation from an engineering standpoint. Notwithstanding the “why“ of the generation failure, the bottom line was that the operators knew they had to shed load when the system started getting overloaded. The experts have determined that the system was literally five minutes away from completely failing. That would have meant a total blackout of all of Texas. And. . . . . . .had that occurred it would have taken weeks to fully reenergize the grid. The operators did their job. There will be plenty of time to lay blame for the generation problems. And it will occur. As of now there is plenty of blame to go around. What remains to be seen is how much the federal government will become involved.

Yeah, I don't think there's any real issue with the decision to go to the controlled rolling outages. That's kinda like setting controlled fires to avoid a wild fire.

The real issue is what led to the rolling outages being necessary. That is, why wasn't enough of the rest of the infrastructure prepared for something that, while unprecedented, was fairly predictable. It should've been part of worst case scenario planning.