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

 

[1503-44]

That market is a scam. 10,000 percent cap. Yes ten thousand percent. NYSE is 20%

Nat gas price (Henry Hub) $/MMBTU

Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri
2021 Feb- 1 to Feb- 5 2.88 3.24 3.01 2.99 3.49
2021 Feb- 8 to Feb-12 3.40 3.35 3.76 6.50 6.12
2021 Feb-15 to Feb-19 xx 11.32 23.86 8.56 4.96
2021 Feb-22 to Feb-26 3.16

Price gouging in times of emergencies is illegal.
Highest gas price was 300% over start of month. Nowhere near 10,000%
NYMEX Gas market seems to have breakers at 40% triggering 15m pause.
It seems that is much doubt in the investors community as to the usefulness of market price circuit breakers with such wide triggers. They may be in place only to avoid close SEC scrutiny and more restrictive regulation, rather than to actually stop wide price swings of commodaties.


Who raised the price of wind fuel?
Who raised the price of solar fuel?
Who raised the price of uranium?

Germany
The Rhine River Valley is also very heavily industrialised, but max load on Germany's grid is 80 GW, only slightly more than TX.

LNG
It takes a lot of power to decrease natgas' volume by 600 times to liquefy it.

 

[Fischstabchen]

1503-44,

The electrical energy use in Texas is more than German if it is 80 GW. Texas ,the state, is part of MISO, ERCOT, and SPP. Houston city council is talking about wanting to join MISO. I would be surprised if that goes anywhere.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

German production capacity is in the region of 220 GW. UK 55 GW and due to loose 13 GW by 2025...

To be honest 10000 domestic customers is chicken feed compared to the industrial users who will also likely be on spot rates even if they each get a bill for 10k each. There are bigger issues to do with the price which have yet to surface.

The industrial user demand will have been the driver for the price increase. And we will have to see what the fall out of that is. Yes they will have cash reserves but not enough to cover a 9000% increase in variable costs of a major resource.

 

[Fischstabchen]

Allistair,

All the plants went into a control shutdown before the cold snap. An uncontrolled interruption of a lot of these processes is dangerous. The system load would have been way heavier residential than normal. Exxon though did fire up its cogen just to get $9000 per MWH.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Exxon though did fire up its cogen just to get $9000 per MWH.

Of course they did...

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

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I am extremely doubtful they did go into shut down unless forced. The ones that had mission critical systems will have had a last customer clause in their contracts so they will be the last lights out after the onsite generators run out of fuel. It takes a few days to shut down without thermal gradients killing your equipment. And they wouldn't be back up yet they would be sorting all the snags out and warming things up again.

From memory a planned shut down of a refinery takes over a week 18 hours to get the flare stack warmed up and producing steam and days of venting, And bring it back up 9 days but usually takes 2 weeks to sort all the stuff that goes in a sulk.

 

[1503-44]

Don't you think that ExxonMobil fired up so that they could avoid curtailment by the grid, or even more likely, to use their own power, rather than pay 9000 kWh?

 

[GregLocock]

The irony is high on this one, and for extra spice it was issued Feb 10.

"On Wednesday, the Texas Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released preliminary findings – including grades – from its 2021 Texas Infrastructure Report Card, the Section’s first report card since 2017. Texas civil engineers gave 12 categories of infrastructure an overall grade of “C”, an upgrade from its 2017 grade of “C-.” Graded categories included aviation (C), bridges (B+), canals (D+), dams (C+), drinking water (B-), hazardous waste (C+), levees (D-), roads (B+), solid waste (B-), stormwater (C+), transit (B+) and wastewater (C). The full report will be released in late February 2021.

Speakers for the event included Jean-Louis Briaud, Ph.D., P.E., President, American Society of Civil Engineers; Griselda Gonzales, P.E., ENV, Vice President, Professional Affairs, ASCE Texas Section; Sean Merrell, P.E., PTOE, RAS, President, ASCE Texas Section; and Mark Boyd, Ph.D., P.E., Chair, Infrastructure Report Card Committee, ASCE Texas Section.

Energy infrastructure received the highest grade of a ‘B+,’ "....

Grade inflation?

https://www.infrastructurereportcar...ers-give-the-states-infrastructure-a-c-grade/

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[Fischstabchen]

1503-44,

They were creating power but not running their process. My wife said there was some memo they put out about how many houses they were supply power during the event. I don't think a plant would ever be curtailed under any circumstances.

Alistair,

They bring their process to a stopping point and that is why they were all flaring. The way you describe it, it can't be cold but it is stopped.

 

[1503-44]

I would not tend to put a lot of faith in civil engineer's collective in-depth knowledge of the energy infrastructure. If there are any civil engineers here that would like to disagree, please feel free to object.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Stopping the process does drop the power consumption but its a gradual drop off over a period. But I suspect they went for a minimum process power drop.

I will leave the oilies on the thread to describe the shutdown process. I have only ever seen it a couple of times as a bystander one scheduled and one emergency . The emergency one had a load of extremely worried people running around for days, All the catalysts were screwed and a large quantity of valves gave up that job description. And it confirmed my decision that I didn't want to get involved with petrochemical.

I believe if the normal high stacks are flaring there isn't much untoward going on... If the ground flares go and the water pipes open up to the flare stacks its time to leave it to the experts and get the hell away from the plant until someone calls you.

 

[1503-44]

Some conflicting statistical info here; 2 x as much as Florida as #2

EIA
TX
Texas is the top U.S. producer of both crude oil and natural gas. In 2019, the state accounted for 41% of the nation's crude oil production and 25% of its marketed natural gas production.
As of January 2019, the 30 petroleum refineries in Texas were able to process about 5.8 million barrels of crude oil per day and accounted for 31% of the nation's refining capacity.
Texas leads the nation in wind-powered generation and produced about 28% of all the U.S. wind-powered electricity in 2019. Texas wind turbines have produced more electricity than both of the state's nuclear power plants since 2014.
Texas produces more electricity than any other state, generating almost twice as much as Florida, the second-highest electricity-producing state.
Texas is the largest energy-producing and energy-consuming state in the nation. The industrial sector, including its refineries and petrochemical plants, accounts for half of the energy consumed in the state.

RE-Comparing with Germany
Wikipedia says all TX gen types total 83.3 GW

German Capacity is given as 209 GW here,

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts

Texas is still a sizable powerhouse, coming in at almost half that of Germany.

AND
Guess what. Computer error gets the blame in TX hearings!

In this case, however, “the (computer) system that was running the processes at ERCOT related to generation were increasing the reserves so that they could balance the system and hopefully bring customers on," she said. But "because they had those reserves on there, it was reducing the price and it was backing down the generation."

https://www.statesman.com/story/bus...glitch-texas-electricity-shortage/6837201002/

 

[1503-44]

FERC to examine potential market violations in wake of massive Texas power outages

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Alistair_Heaton (Mechanical)(OP)18 Feb 21 12:37
The initial blame it on the renewables is pretty much out the window now... Which is where I picked it up....

I am sure they will blame it on IT and a computer bug eventually....

 

[LittleInch]

If you read the statesman article I think it is rubbish.

The "reducing the price" bit is that the poor generators were only being offered $1200/MWh instead of the max 9,000. So only 20 times the normal price instead of 100 times.

and that caused some of them to say they were not going to generate electricity? Yeh right.

The CEO of a generator said "“Honestly, I don't think it had really any bearing as to whether we were going to bring on and get as much generation at that point in time onto the grid," Morgan said."

I also find it difficult to believe that ERCOT don't have some sort of emergency override and can't call on all generators to deliver what they can and then they will sort out the money later.

Ultimately the market incentives to winterise the supply were not present and hence no one does it. Like BI said way above, the free market doesn't work in all (or many) situations without controls and artificial incentives. The blinkered approach to lowest unit price above all else has been seen to fail. I would suggest most other grid operators have a mechanism for either allowing hardening of their supplies against shocks to be paid for or paying for stand by generation aimed to avoid black outs.

Texas though may also be fairly unique in having a lot of its gas supply in state, so anything affecting the power generation such as extreme weather and shortage of electricity will impact the gas supply which then results in low gas supply which .... States or locations where gas supply is separate physically from the electricity generation wouldn't have this double impact that was seen in Texas.

So protecting the raw fuel supply also becomes an issue that the state needs to mandate.



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

 

[Fischstabchen]

LittleInch,

It isn't that they wouldn't generate at $1,200 but it changes the rules that they fell back on when they built their peaker units. It is a struggle to get companies to build peaker generation with a cap of $9,000 per MWH. They need and planned on recovering their investimet during energy shortages.

Here is ERCOT's EEA process when there a shortage of capacity. I don't know the specifics of what is all done but this shows the steps of how load is reduced or shed and additional generation is released during a shortage event.

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/190195/EEA_Tools_One_Pager_Summer_2020_FINAL3.pdf

It isn't just Texas's problem because it produces 24% of the country's dry gas. (

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=46&t=8)

There were rolling blackouts in Oklahoma and Louisiana as well. Natural gas was also clipped to Mexico and caused blackouts there as well. FERC is going to clean this up just due to how much of a national issue is created by losing a needed fuel source.

 

[LittleInch]

Ercot didn't like me so if you can attach it would be useful, but I take the point that there may have been unintended consequences to the grid banking some power before reconnecting parts of the grid they had turned off. In a grid emergency though I am surprised if they didn't have some sort of override and just generate everything you can.

That's why the other option is pay the base cost for the peaker units as part of the grid cost and then have a much smaller premium for the power they actually produce.

Currently in the UK there are recently dozens of small (<50MW) stations being built with a bunch of fast start gas engines who are paid enough to cover their fixed costs and generate less than 500 hrs/year.



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

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

They hate me as well, security risk.

Those fast starts are a feature through most of Europe these days.

 

[1503-44]

You TERRORIST EUROPE guys need a USA VPN to access ERCOT.

Oklahoma did scheduled rolling blackouts. The power companies let everyone know when power would be cut and for exactly how long. Power was typically cut ONCE per customer, for exactly 1 hour and returned as scheduled.

LI, The article is not rubbish so much as the statements quoted within it are rubbish.

It is a struggle to get companies to build peaker generation with a cap of $9,000 per MWH. They need and planned on recovery their investimet during energy shortages.

Gross Revenue
3.1% time price is 1.20/ kWh then 272 hr/yr x $1.20/kWh = $326/kW/yr
0.005% time price is 9.00/kWh then 44 hr/yr x $9.00/kWh = $396/kW/yr

Gross Payback Times
$1500/kW capacity / $326/kW/yr = 4.6 yrs
$1500/kW capacity / $396/kW/yr = 3.7 yrs

If my cost per kW capacity isn't too far off, not sure about that, those gross payback times don't look too bad at all, even at double the cost.
Cost of peaker generation $175/MWh, = $0.175/kWh
That's why I said above that those guys will drool all overthemselves for a chance to charge $0.40/kWh.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I tried the VPN trick with a server in Houston and they still didn't like me.