Are we about to get a repeat of the 2021 power crisis in Texas... 1

[JohnRBaker]

While it's not an issue yet, this weekend, and into next week, could be a test for the Texas power grid:

Will the Texas grid hold up in the freeze? Experts give their confidence scores

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/...-freeze-experts-give-their-confidence-scores/

An excerpt from the above item:

As an Artic blast heads toward North Texas, bringing with it below freezing temperatures, ERCOT said it's prepared to handle potential record breaking electricity demand.

But for many across Texas, the cold front is blowing in flashbacks to the February 2021 power grid failure.

During that historic storm, much of the state lost power, in some cases for days. The outages caused pipes to bust, homes to flood, and killed more than 200 people.

In the three years since the storm, more power plants have been winterized, natural gas producers have been put on lists to ensure their power stays on, and the overall electricity capacity in the state has increased.

But has it been enough?

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[3DDave]

As long as they can charge up to $20,000 a day for a typical house based on spot market prices, I'm sure ERCOT will be just fine.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Now if it's just North Texas (not sure if that means the panhandle or includes places like Wichita Falls and Dallas/Fort Worth), it might not take down the entire state, like in 2021. Our son lives near Houston and he was without power for three days and had a pipe freeze in his garage (no damage to any living spaces). His biggest problem was three of the restaurants that he's responsible for in the Houston area lost power and it wasn't cold enough to actually protect the food. After three days, they couldn't take any chances and eventually had to dump everything.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[cranky108]

With the new NERC cold weather rules, if it does happen again, I am sure there will be many fines issued, and loads of Federal investigations.
I am not in Texas, but I hear plenty of the NERC cold weather rules.

I also think there are some gas regulations on this same subject.

 

[hokie66]

Is Texas having problems like this?

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technol...freezing-cold-a-bunch-of-dead-robots-out-here

 

[3DDave]

That's not an electrical system problem. It's a manufacturer design problem. It's unlike the previous Texas fiasco that resulted in nearly 250 deaths, with 2/3 from hypothermia, many more from carbon monoxide from trying to run generators. The price gouging alone ran in the tens of billions of dollars for the utilities.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

the batteries lock out when the voltage drops due low temp. And they need a dealer battery reset test cycle to get them back online again. Where I am it costs over 300 dollars and takes 36 hours to do a low voltage reset on a tesla.

 

[dik]

It's likely that as the poles warm, the polar jet stream will become less stable resulting in more of these 'odd' weather conditions.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

Likely is such a confident word when nothing else has been predicted correctly.

 

[1503-44]

I thought I had landed on GPT CHAT 1.0

All those failed predictions make it a little strange that ERCOT has mandated such a comprehensive winterization program.

ERCOT says there is currently a 15% chance of winter power outages in TX. Noting also that lawmakers have left loopholes allowing gas companies to avoid winterization and have also limited funds making it impossible for EARCOT to completely implement their program.



--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[JStephen]

Well, the power hasn't gone off here at the house...yet.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Whatever happens we can watch it here - ERCOT Dashboards

https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

 

[1503-44]

Hopefully you will only see it on the screen.

It's usually not much, but winter here might miss us entirely this year. It's been 10-15°F higher than normal temperatures since September.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[davefitz]

One item that appears to be making these winter crises worse is the push to have everyone convert to a heat pump and away from a gas-fired heating furnace. The heat pump heater is about 3 times more efficient than resistance heating , but for the majority of cases that use ambient air as the heat sink this is a large vulnerability. Below an ambient air temperature of about 33 F ( 0.5C) the ambient air will cause frost to build up on the outdoor heat exchanger, rendering it useless on those colder days. This forces the homeowners heating system to switch to resistance heating on those colder days, which implies a surge in electric demand occurs as soon as the 32 F bottom limit occurs.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

Our heat pump goes into a defrost cycle to prevent buildup when it occasionally gets below freezing here. But the coldest lows I have endured are the mid 20's so I can't speak for performance issues below that.

-AK2DM

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"It's the questions that drive us"
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[1503-44]

It doesn't sound like a grid issue. More of an individual crisis. But if that could be a problem, just hang onto that gas heater until you are confident the new heat pump proves out.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[LionelHutz]

davefitz - I agree, the cheaper heat pump systems expected to be used in mostly or almost always above freezing climates so they don't have the ability to run a defrost cycle themselves. A co-worker put a cheap one in his shop. We went through a week of temperature right around freezing with high humidity which were the perfect conditions to quickly freeze the outside coil solid. The defrost could be achieved by manually running it in AC mode. But, his was already well frozen and the building getting cold by the time he could manually intervene and once it's defrosted it'd have to be run heavily to warm the building leading to it just freezing up again.

Even with a better system with outside coil monitoring and an automatic defrost cycle, I could see the system calling for extra heat to keep the building warm during times of heavy frost build-up on the coils.

 

[EdStainless]

There are heat pumps out there now that will give you full heating capacity down to 5F, 80% at -5F, and 70% at -10F.
But since we just go through 3 1/2 days of sub 0F weather I am glad to have NatGas.

Solving the power grid issues is straightforward, just that ERCOT has no guts.
Plants that don't fully meet the cold weather standard should suffer a penalty on their power price all year around since they are not a 'fully reliable producer'. Grid controllers have done this for decades.

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P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[dik]

or they want to maximise profits at the people's cost.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[EdStainless]

The penalty change what the customers pay, it just penalizes plants that cut corners.
If the plant only runs for peaking then they don't care, but if they run year round they should care.
The money usually ends up going to transmission reliability projects.


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P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed