Texas and Other US Power Shortages 11

[Mbrooke]

Seems like a lot of people are losing power from the cold:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/winter-fury-unleashes-freeze-over-022658884.html

Any idea what is causing all this? Besides the weather of course.

 

[cranky108]

Most utilities don't think like the "do you really want to repair your downed lines right now so you'll be forced to buy power at $1000/MWh and then sell it to your customers at the agreed price of maybe $120 MWh?". Most think like the JD Powers ratings.
REA's may think like that, but are likely waiting for cheep money to fix things (as in FEMA money).

Most power plants, are owned by a utility or government, so the cost of freeze proofing is regulated, not an exacting decision by the plant owners. If the regulators don't allow the cost to be fixed to customers, then it is not done. It's just that simple.

But the interoperability between gas and electric has been documented in WECC, but has not been translated to gas regulations on wellhead freeze proofing.

This will trickle down to higher prices in fuel, food, insurance, homes, etc. You will see.

 

[dpc]

cranky108,

The situation in Texas is much different than other parts of the US due to the near total deregulation of the electric power industry and lack of FERC/NERC oversight. I was being only slightly facetious regarding disincentives for the retail utilities. I'm sure there are a lot of people working hard to restore damaged power lines. But economically, that's reality in Texas at the moment. All power generated is sold on a wholesale market. The old vertical integration of electric utilities is gone. Power distributed within ERCOT is not subject to FERC regulation.

 

[dpc]

I'm still confused though. How is it that power plants in New England and Canada don't freeze?

Because they spend the money to design and build for cold weather. In Texas, no one wants to invest in winter reliability so they don't bother and then this happens about every 15 years or so.

 

[cranky108]

And you believe all FERC and NERC regulation is good?

Most of those regulations are things the utilities should be doing already, except the added paperwork that NERC and FERC add to the work as far as record keeping.

Also there are several NERC and FERC regulations that don't improve reliability, such as system monitoring standards.

It's a mixed bag, and more costly for utilities that have already have been doing those things.

And if the utilities are not allowed to recover the costs of Winter proofing, they won't.

And it is difficult to generate electricity, if there is no fuel.

 

[Fischstabchen]

I find it kind of annoying that people think that the Texas grid is run in some adhoc manner when it follows the same NERC standards that everyone else does is watched by the TRE, the RE for the Texas Interconnect. The market may have made it hard to get people to invest in peaker generation with the cap being around $9,000 per MWH but there really isn't anything with the grid in of itself. Some capacity was lost due to wind turbines and plants freezing up but the bulk of the capacity lost has been due to wells and natural gas pipelines freezing up. There isn't anything special or particularly unusual with the grid in the Texas Interconnect. I have a lot of strong suspicions that much of the criticism is political in nature due to Texas being a red state or this idea that all of Texas is run by wild cowboys. While, it would be easy to say that it is Texas's fault for not interconnecting to the eastern or western interconnects, you would never get the eastern or western interconnects to join even the grid east of the rockies but west of the eastern interconnects board is extremely isolated and weak due to politics and likewise, you will never see Texas fully tying itself with the outside for the same reason. Even in europe, the ties between sections of the grid are DC, so as regions have control of their own regions. But even at that, like I said earlier, this isn't a grid problem but a fuel supply issue.

 

[Mbrooke]

Am I the only one who is angered by reporting like this? Its not fair to blame ERCOT for generators they do not own. Second the system is indeed tied via AC-DC-AC. Third there is little to no 500kv and 765kv at the borders of Texas... the sheer amount of power that would have to be imported into Texas to compensate for all the lost generation would not be possible even if the system had been interconnected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvredgJPgi8

 

[cranky108]

As I said "But the interoperability between gas and electric has been documented in WECC, but has not been translated to gas regulations on wellhead freeze proofing."

I agree it is political, and news media driven.

 

[Mbrooke]

Am I correct to say that if the Texas Grid was interconnected via AC lines, nothing would have been different?

 

[Turn_of_the_Screw]

I don't think the problem is that Texas is on its own grid. The problem is that Texans could have invested in resources that would have prevented this from happening and chose not to. This was a choice that was made to save money, which is fine. If you ask me, I'd rather pay a few more cents for electricity, knowing that it won't shut off when I need it most. You may just hear that call from more Texans now.

Chris

 

[Fischstabchen]

Mbrooke,

The Texas Interconnect does have AC ties to the other interconnects' to aid in blackstart. Those types of ties are limited in number just like the DC connections. I suspect that the few power plants that roll back and forth between the interconnects based on the market have a bigger impact than all the dc ties put together. MISO quit a few days ago exporting power into ERCOT due to having its own problems with the weather.

 

[Fischstabchen]

Turn on the Screw,

There was an event back in 2011 where a bunch of plants froze due to not being winterized in Texas. That was gotten through with rolling blackouts. This event is a 200 year weather event and of a different magnitude. The freezing of the wells and pipelines was only exacerbated by the fact that there has been a shift to a greater portion of the generation using natural gas due to how cheap it is.

Here is FERC's report on the 2011 event.

https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-report.pdf

I thought these parts were telling why the producers didn't want to winterize the wells.

"In Northern regions of the country this equipment is normally part of the original well design and installed as a matter of necessity along with all other production equipment. On wells that can cost
well in excess of $1 million each, these costs are not as significant as when compared to a retrofit after the well has been placed on production. This investment needs to be weighed against the impact and ramifications of the reduction in gas flow, power reductions and outages during this time period. (Ref4, 19, 20)"

"Producers suggest that even improved winterization of the wells would not
prevent a significant portion of production declines, since other problems, such as icy roads that prohibit hauling off water (which, if not done, shuts down the well),are also commonly encountered. "

 

[cranky108]

It's strange that you would say you would pay a few more cents, most people would not. Then again I am also befuddled at the number of people who always sign up to pay extra for green power. I wonder how those people think that we can route the green electrons to only their homes.

When given the chance, most people will show up to oppose any rate increase, and demand only green energy be provided.

The same people proposed that a local power plant make the consate from the cooling towers rotate with added colors, and to be light up at night.

But what if the problem is with the fuel, and not with the power companies. How do you suggest we increase the reliability? How do you translate the added cost to the producer?

 

[Fischstabchen]

Cranky,

FERC is going to descend on the industry with a phonebook of new regulations like how the northeast blackout gave birth to NERC.

 

[cranky108]

Yes I believe that to be true.

How much of that cost will out rate payers bear? 100%.

 

[Fischstabchen]

All of it but it doesn't matter because after this fiasco, it will be obvious that "cheap electricity" wasn't cheap.

 

[Mbrooke]

In an alternate reality we are talking about a complete ERCOT blackout:

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/

 

[FacEngrPE]

Mbrook the alternate reality of ERCOT seems to overstate the time required to restart a power grid. I grant it is much hard work.

Comparable blackout (a real one) to compare with the texas averted blackout
This one occurred during summer so none of the cold weather problems.
Northeast blackout of 2003

The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and the Canadian province of Ontario on August 14, 2003, beginning just after 4:10 p.m. EDT. Most places restored power by midnight, some as early as 6 p.m.Wikipedia
Duration:Between 2 hours - 4 days, depending on location
Date:2003-8-14–2003-8-16 (2003-8-14 – 2003-8-16)

 

[Mbrooke]

Yup- Ironically because the system was interconnected. And they did not shed enough load fast enough at First Energy.

I think folks (and the media) need to give ERCOT a break. Any part of the world that loses 185 (yes, one hundred eighty five) generating stations or 46,000MWs of generation in a 500 mile diameter circle will experience forced load shedding if not voltage collapse and large scale cascading black-outs. Lines would overheat and trip trying to draw power from the rest of the interconnection while voltage would sag locally to the point of collapse unless enough load was shed fast enough.

As far as I see it not having the system interconnected along with ERCOT's quick action was the lesser of two evils.

Regarding interconnection being able to prevent outages- unless Texas had four dozen 765kv transmission lines well anchored into the central US the outages would still have occured with the typical AC interconnections.

 

[cranky108]

I think people don't understand how much energy can be exchanged in a 0.1 Hz difference in the grids of the size of the three grids we have in the US.
Tieing the eastern and western grids has been tried several times, and all met with failure because of the large power and var flows. The AC-DC-AC ties are the only way to make a tie that works, and that method is costly, and complicated.

One AC-DC-AC tie has about the capacity of one power plants worth of energy for exchange.
So if ERCOT lost 185 power plants, about how many tie will be required?

 

[Fischstabchen]

Cranky,

Frequency differences don't cause powerflows. Angular differences do. It is doable but you have to either move generation to the eastern side of the rockies or uses variable frequency transformers or quadrature transformers. You have a whole bunch of wind generation down the corridor of the midwest that flows to the east and if any connection was made between the interconnects, a very significant portion of real power would flow west. Var flow would also flow west unless caps were put in place because the part east of the rockies in the western interconnect would want to hang off of the eastern interconnect. While there are politcs involved that would make it hard for any sort of merger, one of the biggest benefits would be being able close inefficient power plants due to not needing to keep them available for capacity due to being able to share capacity amongst a large region. t.