Texas power issues. Wind farms getting iced up (Part II)... 38

[dik]

Because it's largely responsible...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[1503-44]

I think socialists and communists are equally skilled at damaging the environment, but since there are no shareholders that you can single out, your only alternative is to blame all the people, so politically that doesn't look great. Its easy to blame the shareholders. However it isn't the shareholders fault, most of them want better environment and have little control over what CEO do anyway. We are thereby forced to blame those "shareholders" that have enough influence on the boards to be green. And who are they ... those guys on Wall Street ... THE CAPITALISTS that do anything they want in cooperation with the CEO and boards, so everybody gets BIG BONUSES. Works for me.

 

[human909]

Self interest and negligence towards the rest of society is this issue. It is pretty evident that this can exist regardless of the political/economic structure of a nation.

Unbridled capitalism is the form of political economy that champions putting self interest first and with minimal regulations to prevent harming the greater society.

The US embraces unbridled capitalism much more than most OECD countries. The are better ways forward but US democracy has been corrupted to benefit the needs of the 1% over the vast majority.

 

[Fischstabchen]

This 'unbridled capitalisms' in this thread is just a mask of 'not enough environmentalism'. 'Unbridled capitalism' is as vague and cliche as 'crippling socialism'.

 

[RedSnake]

Trying to get back to the technical part of this discussion.

Unfortunately, I can not come into ERCOT's website so the only information I have is from second sources.

We have found that ERCOT did end up in a very difficult situation due to previous decisions outside there control.

But something I have seen and thought about that could have made the situation better is that at 7:51 PM on February 14, ERCOT got ok to exceed the emission levels if they went to Energy Emergency Alert 2 or EEA 3.

According to NERC's regulations, EOP-002-3.1 what is written only "guidelines"

Energy Deficient Entity foresees or has implemented procedures up to, but excluding, interruption of firm load commitments. When time permits, these procedures may include, but are not limited to:

Whether ERCOT has agreed to follow this or not, I do not know.

It also seems that their own guidelines are a bit different according depending on where you look.

Emergency Alerts
ERCOT - Emergency Alert Level 1
Level 1: The first EEA level is Conservation Needed.
ERCOT issues this alert when operating reserves drop below a target threshold.
This level puts providers on notice to take preliminary measures to curb demand before the situation worsens.

ERCOT - Emergency Alert Level 2
Level 2: If conditions worsen, ERCOT will next issue an EEA Level 2 – Conservation Critical.
At this level, providers are permitted to reduce their power load by interrupting supply to large commercial and industrial accounts.
The contracts these clients sign stipulate that such measures may be necessary in an emergency.

https://magicvalley.coop/ercot/

There is no mention of reserve levels must be below a curtain level before alerts can be issued and in their own checklist they are only written as comments.

EEA1 are when operating reserves drop below 2,300 MW.
EEA2, the operating reserves are less than, 1,750 MW

Regardless, it is not possible to write rules in stone for situations like this, because the variables are infinite.

What could then have been done differently.

If they had chosen to issue EEA 1 and EEA 2 already during the day instead of waiting until 00.12 and 01.07 15 Feb, they would have had access to more energy.
The EEA3 come at 01.20 15 Feb
And possibly the nuclear power plant would not have tripped.

I do not know if I read anywhere what caused this?

https://georgetown.org/wp-content/u...3/March-11-Electric-Townhall-presentation.pdf

During the day, there had been reports that gas wells had stopped working.
They should reasonably have had access to sufficiently good weather reports 24 hours ahead to have known that it would be colder.
So in my opinion they hade the input data to se this coming.

It was only 1 hour and 8 minutes between EEA 1 and EEA 3
So why did they wait to perform EEA 1 and 2 and not issue them earlier?

They did not have enough routine to realize what was going to happen?
No one hade the guts to take the decision to go outside the guidelines?
They did not want to make the decision to shut down certain industries?
They toke a chance, that they would make it until the evening peak for households would go down after midnight?

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

It is possible that the rapid rise of alert level occurred because something that ERCOT did not expect to happen did happen sometime between level 2 (providers are permitted to reduce power load by interrupting supplies to commercial and industrial users) and level 3 alerts. I can easily imagine that was the same time when some gas producing and processing facilities went dark. It was reported that at least some of these facilities were not considered to be critical parts of the infrastructure making it possible to curtail their power supply. Oops!

 

[RedSnake]

It might be so, Oooppsss

But that does not explain why they didn't go to EEA 1 at 08.00 and EEA 2 at 09.00 Feb 14, then they would have hade the possibility to call in more power over emission rates and hade more of there own left to use.
And hade bought them self more time to handle the situation.
They would even have hade time to realize that this Oppss !! hade happened and done something about it, if there was an Opppss.

All this EEA:s are there to never get to EEA 3 so with the knowledge of more cold weather, already freezing gas wells, more power needed for heat, it should have been an easy decision.

How musch it would have helped in the end I do not know, since it is not easy to find any numbers of how much power would have been taken offline at the EEA 2 alert and it only hade a duration of 13 minutes before EEA 3 came.
So how the guidelines for when alerts are to be issued is to narrow.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

I've seen estimates that over 10MW of gas fired generation was lost. Probably a lot more. 20?

I'm still trying to get gas production numbers. They have not been published in any detail yet that I know of.

 

[Fischstabchen]

1503-44,

The amount of generation lost would be around 30-40 GW. I am assuming you meant GW and MW. Your number might be actual generators that tripped out.

Redsnake,

The amount of additional reserve capacity called up during EEA steps is around 2.8 GW and is meant for frequency excursions and not systemic failure that are amounting to 30-40 GW in lost capacity. The deficit would be that minus whatever was voluntarily shed which would still be a lot. It would be like putting a band aid on a severed arm. There is be no system in the world that is designed from a capacity point of view that has 40+% on hand reserve. Responsive Reserve is to be able to come online in 30 minutes or less and would have been all online normally before EEA 3, load shed. When the report comes out, it is very likely that those operating the grid knew this was all coming because they train for it but it was all too late to do anything about it and all you can do is try to limit the impact with mitigations.

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/219692/EEA_Tools_One_Pager_Winter_2021_2-13-2021.pdf

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/ke...gent_Board_of_Directors_Meeting_2-24-2021.pdf

 

[RedSnake]

Fischstabchen
As I wrote earlier I can't get in to ERCOTs home page :-(

Best Regard A




“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[cranky108]

I know our company has a critical service rate, for customers that need a higher service level, like data centers, and such. But it has a cost that we pass on to customers.
However, there are other customers that refuse to pay for that higher service level, and they don't get it, but they complain about every little blink.

So I would believe that gas producers would not want to self identify as critical because they do not want to be charged for that. Or to add on site backup.
Also gas production tends to be in rural areas, which has more outages anyway.

Besides if you are only getting market rates for your product, why go the extra mile to make it better?

 

[1503-44]

It would appear beneficial to the electric company to consider their fuel supply critical and perhaps not charge extra for it, given that it is to their benefit too. If I was the gas co and had to pay extra so I could deliver to the electric co, I'd include that charge in their bill, or maybe just report an insulation failure on their delivery line.

 

[cranky108]

Do you actually believe every gas producer has a gas line directly to there customer? Most gas producers may not know who their customers are. They sell into the market, and some marketer will sell a block, or part of the gas to the highest bidder at that time.

The same with the electric utility, they have no idea where the gas comes from, who is selling. They buy a block from this producer, and another block from that producer.

There maybe some exceptions for long term contracts, but then again, the contracted gas may come from several different fields, and not include the whole field. Again, the gas producer may not know all the customers.

In the middle between the producer and the buyer, is the plant that blends the gas, and removes things, and then there is the pipeline company.

So the freeze proofing is of all of these.

 

[1503-44]

I said gas company, not gas producer. The gas company, local distribution company, LDC, the ones with the pipes connecting the gas to the gen building. Many large quantity gas consuming companies buy directly from producers, as do LDC's, bypassing the middlemen gas brokers entirely, but ... that was not my point. The LDC's must be considered as the most critical part of the gas supply chain, because there are many producers, but (usually) only one LDC that brings gas to the building.

Even if you buy directly from a producer, the pipeline transmission companies virtually never deliver that same gas to the customers that bought it. In fact there not even need be a connection from a gas producer's well to the end user at all. Gas is not like oil. Oil can vary considerably from field to field. Gas, all pipeline quality gas, is CH4. If you live in California, you can buy gas from a Gulf of Mexico producer who connects to a Williams/Transco pipeline going to NYC. Transco will do a like for like swap with El Paso Gas Transmission Company, who takes a different producer's gas from west Texas to Southern California and dumps that into Pacific gas and Electric and you actually burn west Texas gas. There may be slight differences in Btu content per ft3, but that isn't a problem, because those deals are done and metered in mmBtus, not ft3. You see, its really just a virtual gas world. Heck, you can probably even buy gas storage space in Minnesota.

I know one guy that's working on a block chain method to record the deals and pay in bitcoins.

 

[Lou Scannon]

Actually, there is significant variation in pipeline gas composition, but it is of little consequence for most applications, reciprocating engines being the exception. If the raw gas is way off nominal, it can be blended with inert gas to bring it close to nominal. As an extreme example, look up propane-air peak shaving. Another useful concept to look up is the Wobbe Index.
If you're not aware of the reason reciprocating engines are sensitive to gas composition, look up Methane Number, and Gas Engine Knock.

"Schiefgehen wird, was schiefgehen kann" - das Murphygesetz

 

[CWB1]

Unless you're talking about gathering lines, no, there isn't significant variation in gas composition hence the common reference to "pipeline quality" - 85MN all day long! Making a recip run on pipeline gas is dead simple bc of it, calibrating for wet field or digester gas OTOH can be tricky by comparison.

 

[1503-44]

I've had 40% nitrogen coming out of gas wells. Oil, water, sand, condensate, butane, propane, natural gasoline to asphaltene, H2S, CO2 ... I could filter and pour some Colombian oil directly into a diesel generator. Otherwise its kind of like opening up Mother Nature's 100MM Yr old lower intestines.

 

[cranky108]

I agree that at the well head there is a good deal of differences in the gas, and I don't know what you call the plants, we called them helium plants, as that is one of the things they take out of raw gas. I also know they take out CO2. But the output of those plants should be pipeline gas.

Yes I have seen an air-propane plant for a gas distribution system, to be used when gas is in short supply. But there are concerns about this output being used for input for a CNG truck facility.

Still, most electric power plants don't have a storage of fuel, like a coal plant would. Maybe a few days burn, but that's it. It is just a fuel volume thing that limits the storage.

 

[1503-44]

There are z lot of helium wells in the tx panhandle and a special pipeline system to collect it. It is skme kind of gov program. They used to be part of a Navy strategic project to fill derrigibles during WWII or something. You have to capture helium from wells. Any that gets to the surface by itself floats off to near outer space.

Large scale power gen just takes a lot of gas, so they save big money if they dont build cryogenic tanks. You just can't keep enough on hand unless it is liquefied. Large high pressure tanks at normal temperatures are just too expensive. Cool it off and it shrinks 600 times.

The best solution can be to build multiple pipelines to the generators. The last project I did in the States (1990) was to design and built a second direct pipeline connection, plant control and metering station to Austin City Power Co's Decker Creek Station, just east of Austin. It seems to have kept it running.

 

[cranky108]

Or use a dual fuel unit like gas/fuel oil. Then again, a unit like that of about 150 MW will burn through a tanker truck of fuel in half an hour. Likely need to keep a large tank of fuel, and maybe a rail head to import the secondary fuel.
It is also possible to have a dual fueled combined cycle plant, which is more efficient.

Although, I have recently seen articles on burning ammonia as a fuel. Sort of bad as it would need to be without water, and a leak would be a big problem.