Texas power issues. Windfarms getting iced up. 67

[Alistair_Heaton]

That's a lot of capacity that's been lost. Must admit being Aberdonian we always associate Texas with hot and humid... Not snow storms.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...nd-turbines-texas-power-outages-b1802596.html

 

[waross]

The owners of the Keystone project really screwed up.
They lied, gave inaccurate forecasts, and tried to mislead regulators.
Their flawed submissions resulted in their permits being successfully challenged by First Nations and environmentalists.
The failed shortcuts cost millions.
Then the market shifted from crude and synthetic crude to bitumen.
You cannot pump bitumen without either heating it or diluting it.
Collection lines from SAGD projects must be heated but long pipelines pump DilBit.
Diluted Bitumen.
Depending on the choice of diluent the diluent may be 30% to 50% of the mix.
The diluent is typically returned to the source for reuse.
RailBit is only diluted 15% to 20%.
DRUBit is Diluent Removed Bitumen. No diluent.
DilBit is pumped to the loading facility and the diluent is removed and the DRUBit is loaded into the rail cars.
There are claims that rail transport of DRUBit is more economical than pumping DilBit.
I am sure that the XL managers are quite happy that Biden has bailed them out of a losing position.
Now they can blame Biden and the Democrats rather than having to face their shareholders and explain the millions lost on a venture that may have been a financial albatross in the event that the pipeline had been finished and they had to operate at very slim margins or at a loss to compete with rail and DRUBit.
By the way, Trump approved the pipeline when only four days in office.
XL had four years before Biden cancelled the permit.
(Disclaimer, There may be a little spin in this, but not much.)



Bill
--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[1503-44]

All quite precisely true to my knowledge.
You can also pump it as an emulsion with hot water, but it gets really messy.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Adding insult onto injury:

Nearly 12 million Texans now face water disruptions. The state needs residents to stop dripping taps.

After enduring multiple days of freezing temperatures and Texans dripping faucets to prevent frozen pipes from bursting, cities across the state warned Wednesday that water levels are dangerously low, and it may be unsafe to drink.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-water-boil-notices/

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[dik]

ya... and have the pipes freeze. My son was eMailing a Texan a couple of days back and suggested this in case they don't have sufficient frost protection... if the pipes are on top of grade, they keep getting hit with the lawnmower.

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

-Dik

 

[JohnRBaker]

Now there's been complaints that most of the highways in Texas haven't been plowed yet. Well, it turns out that the Texas Highway Department only has 30 snowplows for the entire state, and most those are either in the panhandle or stationed along the Northern part of the state that borders Oklahoma and over toward Texarkana.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[JohnRBaker]

Apparently some of the private power companies who are part of the Texas grid, which is managed by ERCOT, are allowed to set the price they charge their own local customers. And some of them sell the power based on the instantaneous spot market for electricity. For example, one owner of a small shop near Dallas, who tracks her power usage on the net, noticed that she had been charged $450 for a single day's power, and within a couple of days, her bill was up another $2,500. When she contacted the power company to complain, they said that it wasn't a problem, that they would gladly set-up an easy-to-pay monthly plan until she paid off her balance.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[TugboatEng]

Define a "small shop". That's only about 100kW over 24 hours at normal rates. A couple of welders, a few kilns, employees charging their Teslas in your parking lot could easily rack up numbers like that in a small shop.

That story is meaningless without context.

 

[IFRs]

As I understand it, the TX grid is designed as a supply /demand system that sees large swings in price as demand increases against a limited supply. The state declined federal oversight and the state board does not reward or even sanction spending money for excess base capacity or super bad weather, as it would necesarily raise prices. The weather induced price spikes or demand exceeding supply is not a new thing - they see it every year in the summer and not that seldom in the winter. This system rewards low cost production, hence the relatively large investment in solar and wind since they are lower cost than coal, natural gas and nuke, and TX does not have a lot of hydro or thermal.

 

[JohnRBaker]

It was an apothecary shop, where she sells herbs, health food and scented candles.

I found another example from the same area, where a family got hit for $7,000 for only TWO DAYS of power, where last year they had paid only $330 for the entire month, and again, the provider offered to set-up a monthly payment schedule until they paid off the balance.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[Tomfh]

What did Texas used to run on?

Here in Australia were rapidly switching to wind and solar and I worry about what will happen when the inevitably intermittency issues hit.

 

[TugboatEng]

I simply don't believe what you are saying to be true, John. There are billing errors from time to time obviously the company is going to assume no error first and attempt to collect. In sure everything was resolved shortly after. Why do you keep your examples hidden, anyways?

 

[byrdj]

being just a insignificant worker in electrical generation, no one could explain how those extreme values or MW-hrs actually changed hands. I ASSUMED the end customers rate was SET by the state's comission (and adjusted couple times year) BUT that was if end service was provided by the original utility.
those extreme values were between the generation enities and thus effected their overall profit.

SO if an end customer purchased their power from a unregulated distrubtion company, maybe the outagous bills

 

[JohnRBaker]

Actually the customers of this particular power company really only have themselves to blame since they had to sign a contract which stipulated that they agreed to pay for power at a price determined by real-time supply and demand, a true 'market-driven' arrangement. What this meant was that the price they paid was whatever the spot price was, plus a set margin which provided the profit for the power company. They probably weren't even a generator, rather they just bought power on a trading market set-up by the ERCOT and added their margin, and that's what the customer paid. This sort of deal is called a 'wholesale agreement', meaning that while the cost per kilowatt could vary literally all day long, that in the end, when times were good and the grid was running at peak efficiency, these customers where paying the absolute cheapest rate in the state. Now only a small number of power companies did business this way, because most people were willing to pay a bit more, basically buying at a fixed rate that would only vary over longer periods of time. Now when everything was working everyone was the winner, the so-called 'wholesale' customers were getting a great deal and the majority of the power companies were making a decent profit. However, for the past several days the 'spot market' for power in Texas was anything but normal, with price fluctuations measured in orders of magnitude. Now for most residential and even many commercial users, this doesn't really mean much. Sure the power companies have to eat the higher prices, for awhile at least, but then this could also account for some people losing power, if you cut your customers off, you don't have to pay the high price yourself for kilowatt hours that you never had to deliver. But of course, the 'wholesale' customers they had to pay the full freight. The good news is that there's absolutely no incentive for their power company to ever cut-off their customers because they're always going to get the money back plus their margin. But this does serve a purpose, showing what happens in a totally unregulated, purely market-driven business, selling a commodity directly to end-users.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[Tomfh]

Buying your retail power at the wholesale spot price. Far out, you’d have to be brave.

 

[LittleInch]

Tomfh. All depends on whether you knew that's what you were doing....

If the spot prices for the last 5 years hasn't varies by more than maybe 30% (I have no idea) but over the course of the year you normally end up cheaper than a fixed rate then people will choose it not really understanding the risk.

If this works like most markets I know, 80%+ of the capacity is fixed at a certain rate between generator and distributor. Its the spare power or gas which gets these huge spikes to allow distributors to balance the grid. If the energy is available they have to buy it to fulfill their contract with the grid.

In the UK the grid operator is allowed to buy energy to balance the grid and charge it to distributors depending on the difference between their firm supplies and the variable amounts actually used by their customers. I don't think any supplier offers a wholesale rate to domestic customers but business might take a chance.

All depends on whether you actually know on a day to day basis what the cost is and whether you have a chance to turn off your supply and be billed on a real time basis.

If not then these charges might be able to be challenged.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[RedSnake]

Here in Australia were rapidly switching to wind and solar and I worry about what will happen when the inevitably intermittency issues hit.
Buying your retail power at the wholesale spot price. Far out, you’d have to be brave.

Well I would say that depends very much on how the system is put up and how large it is.
Here in the Nordic countries and the Baltics we have a electric broker market.
I have been buying for spot price a long time.
Of course there is a risk, but in the long run it's cheaper.
I might add my power consumption isn't high.

But our power providers in this market place are very varied as, water, wind, solar, biogas, nuclear and district heating plants (produces both hot water and electricity) mostly running on burning non-recyclable waste.
There are probably facilities that stil can run on coal, oil or nature gas to if necessary.
And we can also buy from the outside if needed.

All regulating on the power grid is made from one central place and the companies that are in this system has to agree of having a bit of backup power left that can be used when needed.
Off cours this system also builds on some government laws and company agreements.
And that the government is helping in investing in and supporting a grid that can handle this when necessary.

If Australia are setting up a similar system that can provide power from all over the country, it will never be no sun or no wind all over at the same time, I would not worry.
If they are thinking of going Texas's stile, I would.

Best Regards A





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

 

[hokie66]

The Texas system seems to have worked just fine, except for times of extremely cold weather. Hopefully, Australia will never experience that type weather, but with global warming, you never know...

 

[LittleInch]

Apparently the Texas grid limits the maximum price to $9000 per MWh.

The general worldwide switch to renewables, with their inbuilt potential for interruption and variation (low wind, cloudy skies) is prompting large scale development of energy storage systems.

Large single offshore systems can create grid instability - The UK black out a couple of years ago was prompted by loss of a huge offshore wind farm (1000+MW) as well as a trip at a couple of other generating plants, so they are not a distributed system. They also realised that they lost more power when they had a blackout as everyones solar panels stopped inputting into the grid!

Batteries are one, but also hydro storage systems. This lot want to use some sort of (very) heavy water to create storage in relatively low height difference conditions.

https://www.rheenergise.com/

https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...tesla-battery-to-ease-transmission-constraint

LNG storage is another. Pumped underground gas storage in the UK collapsed once two or three massive LNG import terminals appeared as the biggest could supply 10% of the gas demand and some was held as peak shaving.

The UK grid is getting lots (dozens) of relatively small (<50MW) gas engine plants springing up with the main aim to be a standby power source being paid to stand by and generate for <500 or 1000 hrs a year at 30 seconds notice.

Grid companies need all these tools in their box to give us heat and power and is ever changing. Unfortunately politicians often just go for the short term sound bite or price reduction and ignore the 10 year plan put together by the Grid.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[davefitz]

The current crisis in Texas should be viewed as an example of what could happen anywhere that is highly dependent on both natural gas and electricity. Each household should consider what they would have to do if they had no use of electricity or nat gas for a week in the winter, and munincipalities reconsider emergency backup plans for cascading failures of the water supply and sewer treatment systems. I do not think it is prudent to pretend that a similar crisis cannot happen elsewhere.

Severe earthquakes can disrupt the interstate gas pipeline system, and there have been recent scare stories of the impact of a solar CME coronal mass ejection event on large transformers or hacking of the grid control systems.

One positive aspect is that in Texas, where most households have at least one firearm, there has not yet been reports of home invasions peaking to get food and water. Maybe if another week goes by with no improvement.

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

 

[RedSnake]

Well it was a lot of information about that before this pandemic, when you are use to having everything all the time , you do not really know what problems you will get when you do not have it anymore.
For example if ..

The heat disappears.
It becomes difficult to cook and store food.
Food and other goods can run out in the shops.
There is no water in the tap or toilet.
It is not possible to refuel.
Debit cards and ATMs do not work.
Mobile networks and the internet and TV do not work.
Public transport and other transport are at a standstill.
It will be difficult to get hold of medicines and medical equipment.

Most people don't have enough of what is needed to last a week with everything shut down which is recommended here, not me either.

Best Regards A

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