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

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Do you know if its back up and running again?

 

[electricpete]

I heard all 4 Texas nuke plants are up and running at full capacity. The downed STP unit syncd to the grid in the afternoon 2/18 and reached full power sometimes that night.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[1503-44]

well gas is always produced with some, or maybe a heck of a lot of water. Water and gas can create hydrates, a crystal of ice with a gas molecule locked inside. It can begin forming plugs at around 40°F. In addition to methanol injection, the gas can be heated with inline heaters to prevent hydrates, but that also assumes the heater's gas supply has not frozen.

Apparently the grid came within 4m and some seconds from total blackout.

Cranky,
sounds like you use and actually forward gas to other customers with what is likely to be a significant volume of gas, so somewhere in your company there should be somebody responsible for large volume gas purchases and their associated sales contracts, in which case they may have direct purchase agreements with gas producers, or if they don't, they should consider investigating the possibility of making long term purchase contracts at fixed rates directly from the producers themselves. Interstate gas transmission pipelines are common carriers and will move your direct purchased gas to you at their published transportation fees that depend on distances moved into or through the various zones across their systems.

There are some power gen companies that buy LNG from the international market, arrange ocean going transport, onboard storage wile discharging and anchor the LNG carrier in the bay in front of their plant until the next LNG carrier arrives. River barges also could function in a similar manner. Some even have a small city-sized power gen on board. At Enron we did that kind of arrangement for a few countries.

 

[RedSnake]

They seem to follow this 15 minutes rule in Texas too, if the fervency is under the 50 alt 60 Hz they order manuell load shedding.
Texas is big, is all this generators that went down in the same place or was the weather the same over the whole of Texas?

I get why you want to protect the the equipment from low fervency, but it seems odd that the actual maschins that are going to provide the power to keep the fervency up is allowed the to tripp if it is to low.
Instead of being powered on there own separate grid from there own power generators when they are up and running.
Not taking about freezing wells now.

Best Regards A




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

 

[SnTMan]

RedSnake, pretty much all of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, maybe New Mexico. It was a BIG storm.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Just had a look at my solar inverter settings.

It will cut out below 47.5Hz after half a second and upper limit 52Hz for again half a second.

 

[1503-44]

The weather only needed to get bad over the gas fields, but it was generally bad everywhere. The grid outage map was also widespread.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

How much difference does it make to things freezing up with freezing rain compared to snow?

When I use freezing rain I mean supper cooled large droplets which then freeze on touching anything giving clear ice. which I think they had loads of.

 

[RedSnake]

Well we have some air motors at work that pumps up hydraulic pressure for some locking klamps like 325 bars.
They are in the basement under the presses there is no heating there since the machines generates so much heat themselves.
But some times it happens if some door is left open or when there was some building going on in the winter that there was a cold drop and draft and then this air motor stopped working, it was just a big lump of ice hade hack through it to get it started again.

As for compressed air motors..
We electricians, have a saying at work, -That air is for breading, and nothing else. ;-)

BR A




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

 

[RedSnake]

Its really bad for overhead power lines, since it builds up, and can get so heavy that it breaks the poles, and when blowing you get short circuits.
Dry snow is better.
But I guess you meant the gas wells.

BR A


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

 

[electricpete]

I get why you want to protect the the equipment from low fervency, but it seems odd that the actual maschins that are going to provide the power to keep the fervency up is allowed the to tripp if it is to low.

bacon4life and jbyrd mentioned there are turbine resonances that form the basis for many of the turbine generator trips (you don't want to dwell at the speed where the turbine is shaking like crazy). Also as you know high V/hz overexcitation of generators and transformers can occur at lower frequencies if the voltage remains the same.

It's obviously better to trip the equipment than to destroy it. There may be some unknowns in predicting damage (how long can you operate at that resonant frequency before it "liberates" a blade or two... how low can frequency go for how long before the generator core starts to sizzle). No doubt there is some margin in the setpoints to accommodate those unknowns (leaning towards the side of tripping when in doubt, rather than keeping on line when in doubt).

I can see that removing UF trips of generators would make the system less likely to collapse. But if the nightmare scenario of grid collapse takes weeks to recover from... the double-nightmare scenario of damaged generators and transformers throughout the system has gotta be a heckuva lot worse... it's hard to even contemplate.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[itsmoked]

Thanks BI, LI, JJPellin on gas storage issue.


davefitz; Had no idea they needed that kind of injection pressure into large frame turbines. WOW!

Learning a crap-ton in this thread!

Thanks everyone.


Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[byrdj]

Minor point, but . . .

bacon4life and jbyrd mentioned there are turbine resonances that form the basis for many of the turbine generator trips (you don't want to dwell at the speed where the turbine is shaking like crazy)

For bucket (blade) resonaces, think of each blade as a tuning fork. as steam turbines got bigger, the buckets longer, avoiding a resonace is a serious desing chalalnge. the senister aspect is the felt "vibration" of the spinning element doesnot change, just those individul buckets buzzing and fatigue life being expended.

just throwing concept out there, a bucket is operating between its 6th to 7th harmotic

lot of bucket designers with all types of damping / deturning practices

(bucket design was way above my pay grade, just passing alone why I was told of importance to avoid off frequency operation for certain units)


Another concern I was begining to hear during my last days, prior turbine controls were design to have the absolute minimun dead band, thus valves responded to increase / decrease output with every wiggle in frequency. the smaller generation being connected to the grid were "working the hell" out of older steam turbines chasing very small freq disturbances. (I was hearing the introduction of deadband SETTINGS with digital controls)

 

[waross]

We just went through a week of minus 40 degrees.
The wind chill went to the chilly side of minus 50C.
The coal generating plant about that is 40 miles north of my place is converting to gas and I understand is running both gas and coal.
The coal generating plant about that is 40 miles south of my place is converting to gas and I understand is running both gas and coal.
We heat with gas.
The water supply for my son's horses did not freeze up.
The heat stayed on in the chicken coop.
Life went on as usual.
In Texas?
I don't see an engineering failure.
There is no shortage of engineering solutions to operating almost any equipment in cold weather.
I do see a planning failure in the MBA's board rooms.
Texas was not an engineering failure.
It was more a failure of corporate foresight that seldom extends beyond the next dividend dispersal.
Without mandates originating outside of the board rooms, this will happen again in Texas.

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

 

[dik]

Concur... and one that caused needless deaths.

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

-Dik

 

[JohnRBaker]

The CEO of ERCOT, in testimony before the Texas legislature today, when asked what he would do different next time, said he probably wouldn't do anything different. In fact, he bragged that despite the fact that some people died, which he said was unfortunate but he implied that it wasn't his job to save lives, rather it was to keep the grid from collapsing and that things worked the way they were supposed to. The grid never actually went down completely and that they eventually got everything up and running again. And when asked whether they should make changes to better protect the gas supply and things like that, from the cold weather, he said that he saw nothing that would prompt him to do so. He seemed to suggest that since this isn't something that happens every year or so, that there was no need to make any changes.

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

 

[RedSnake]

Found this video explaining a bit about how steam turbines work.
I need pictures to get the picture ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPg7hOxFItI

Best Regards A

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

 

[dik]

For liability reasons, he cannot say anything different... he should be charged with negligent homicide.

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

-Dik

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Careful redsnake your going to open the can of worms which is the entropy-enthalpy fun and games. If you crack that your only a couple of steps away from becoming a mechie.

 

[RedSnake]

He seemed to suggest that since this isn't something that happens every year or so

Well I wouldn't count on that, it will happen more often in the future, and the increase will be exponential.

For liability reasons, he cannot say anything different...

To much demand for liability in form lawsuits is to some extent contra productive to getting the problems solved and making changes to secure future damages.
Both due to people not wanting to speak out and money being spent on damages payments instead of improving system failures.

Best Reagards A


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