They call me.... Prophet
The article also says there were limited natural gas supplies to generators, but then doesn't elaborate at all.
And according to the data the article cites, that would represent a 10% power dip despite the fact that natural cycles of power have far greater swings. So what gives?
Perhaps it indicates that, taking the natural cycles into account, the power system in Texas has a less than 10% buffer at peak demand (based on the figures in the article, it seems closer to 12% to me).
Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 15th 2021 at 5:36:12 AM
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
They call me.... Prophet
That seems like a paper thin buffer, but then judging by some reactions i've seen it seems that Texas' (power) infrastructure isn't in a great state.
If this is to be believed
, gas-fired plants not working well in extreme cold is actually a bigger reason for the Texas blackout.
I'm surprised it's not smaller. Businesses hate unsold capacity, they treat it like money left on the table.
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
Lost in Space
That's why you use batteries to store the extra energy and discharge them when demand exceeds capacity. A lot of Texas homes have their lights on because they have Powerwalls or some other equivalent.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I'd go for a diesel generator. Nothing has the power density of good old fossil fuel. Well, except for a nuclear power plan, but try to get one of those installed in your home...
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
Professional Forum Ninja
As I learned last night, Texas has its own power grid because our state government has always hated federal overreach, even when that over reach help.
Article is from 2011, but it still fits now.
Texas' secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas.
The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. This presumably has to do with the history of various utilities' service territories and the remoteness of the non-ERCOT locations (for example the Panhandle is closer to Kansas than to Dallas, notes Kenneth Starcher of the Alternative Energy Institute in Canyon), but Texplainer is still figuring out the particulars on this.
The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century. In the decades after Thomas Edison turned on the country's first power plant in Manhattan in 1882, small generating plants sprouted across Texas, bringing electric light to cities. Later, particularly during the first world war, utilities began to link themselves together. These ties, and the accompanying transmission network, grew further during the second world war, when several Texas utilities joined together to form the Texas Interconnected System, which allowed them to link to the big dams along Texas rivers and also send extra electricity to support the ramped-up factories aiding the war effort.
The Texas Interconnected System — which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas — had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. "Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s," writes Richard D. Cudahy in a 1995 article, "The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection." (Self-reliance was also made easier in Texas, especially in the early days, because the state has substantial coal, natural gas and oil resources of its own to fuel power plants.)
ERCOT was formed in 1970, in the wake of a major blackout in the Northeast in November 1965, and it was tasked with managing grid reliability in accordance with national standards. The agency assumed additional responsibilities following electric deregulation in Texas a decade ago. The ERCOT grid remains beyond the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which succeeded the Federal Power Commission and regulates interstate electric transmission.
Historically, the Texas grid's independence has been violated a few times. Once was during World War II, when special provisions were made to link Texas to other grids, according to Cudahy. Another episode occurred in 1976 after a Texas utility, for reasons relating to its own regulatory needs, deliberately flipped a switch and sent power to Oklahoma for a few hours. This event, known as the "Midnight Connection," set off a major legal battle that could have brought Texas under the jurisdiction of federal regulators, but it was ultimately resolved in favor of continued Texan independence.
Even today, ERCOT is also not completely isolated from other grids — as was evident when the state imported some power from Mexico during the rolling blackouts of 2011. ERCOT has three ties to Mexico and — as an outcome of the "Midnight Connection" battle — it also has two ties to the eastern U.S. grid, though they do not trigger federal regulation for ERCOT. All can move power commercially as well as be used in emergencies, according to ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark. A possible sixth interconnection project, in Rusk County, is being studied, and another ambitious proposal, called Tres Amigas, would link the three big U.S. grids together in New Mexico, though Texas' top utility regulator has shown little enthusiasm for participating.
Bottom line: Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with the feds.
Cringe but free
On the engineering side of things, this whole episode got me to look up the issue of wind turbine performance in cold weather. Natural Resources Canada had it covered:
- "Cold weather packages" that provide heating to turbine components can let them operate at temperatures as low as -30ºC.
- Waterproof coating can also be employed to reduce icing.
- Overall, this is an active area of research, and the most we know is that understanding cold weather patterns is critical to sustaining wind farm operations. Which is a bit inconvenient if you're living through an era of climate instability *shrugs*
I'm not surprised Canadians looked into that and Texans didn't. You just don't expect weather that cold in Texas.
Lost in Space
Except that we're supposed to be moving away from fossil fuels, and those generators are many times dirtier than the corresponding energy production from a power plant.
Edited to add: Oh, and there's the fact that diesel generators are responsible for a large number of fires and asphyxiations in cold weather.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 11:54:24 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Mostly because of improper use. Leave the thing in a shed, folks!
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
They call me.... Prophet
>I'm surprised it's not smaller. Businesses hate unsold capacity, they treat it like money left on the table.
Power use fluctuates both on daily, weekly and seasonal patterns. There's just no neat way to go "this is how much power we have". If the local gas-fired power plant is offline for maintenance during peak hours, you'd better find a couple of gigawatts elsewhere. So at the end of the day, you're gonna need extra capacity.
>I'd go for a diesel generator. Nothing has the power density of good old fossil fuel. Well, except for a nuclear power plan, but try to get one of those installed in your home...
You still have to store and transport those. And well, if the gas pipes are freezing and the roads are frozen over, no diesel for you. And storing enough diesel for several gigawatts of power statewide is a fire and chemical hazard of epic proportions.
Batteries are becoming a more attractive solution, but they still rely on being charged. Biogas would be a good emergency power source, since it burns clearer and we can also produce it from renewable means. In fact, gas-fired power plants are a pretty popular type fast-reaction power plant.
Like reflections in the glass!
And that is a problem we're trying to fix.
Lost in Space
The reason we use fossil fuels is that they come "pre-charged", as it were, but when we've used them up, that's it. We've got to go dig up more. The combination of batteries and solar/wind, on the other hand, can deliver power indefinitely (subject to wear and tear on the materials). All you need is for the sun to shine and the wind to blow... and for the turbines not to freeze and the solar panels not to be covered in a foot of snow, which of course gives us the drawbacks.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 4:34:34 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
My house has a battery+solar backup system, the few times it’s been put to use I’ve been one of the few homes in my area with power, including now. Everyone else rushes to get gas, waits in line at the station for hours, and then when whatever they bought is gone they’re out of luck.
They should have sent a poet.
Singapore has officially increased petrol prices for vehicles as an incentives to use electric and hybrid vehicles.
Figure of Hourai
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Okay, but in emergency conditions, you can't recharge batteries, but you might be able to get more diesel (and in future we can still make biofuel), which is definitely a problem.
Not sure if it belongs here or the US politics thread, but Greg Abbott is blaming renewable energy for the problems. Because of course.
They call me.... Prophet
>The point of batteries is that you charge them from surplus power and discharge them when you need extra.
My point is, they aren't an energy source. They're an energy storage system. In cases like texas, you're dealing with a maximum stress, minimal capacity problem. There IS no excess energy to store now, and so you'll drain the batteries. The biggest battery station in the world is 1200MWh, which is a lot but a single large coal plant (typical size: 1 gigawatt) will fill that up in an hour. Meaning, it discharges in an hour. Stored energy is useful for the initial hump, but unless the weather changes you aren't going to reduce demand. you would need more generation capacity, which is what fast-reaction and reserve capacity powerplants are for. This is typically gas-fired because it's more expensive to burn than coal and nuclear too finicky to fast-respond. And you can't turn on the sun or wind on demand.
it looks like the reason for this disaster, as per the earlier mentioned twitter thread, is that the normal thermal powerstations didn't want to buy expensive gas. It's not that wind turbines are frozen.
Edited by devak on Feb 17th 2021 at 9:22:34 PM
Figure of Hourai
Oh yeah, the point I was making is that the governor is blaming renewables. Because ideologue.
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A procrastination in of itself
Hydro also makes a great fast-response if you’ve got the terrain for it. The UK ruses a pair of hydro-stations as fast-response when TV ad breaks cause masses of the population to turn on an electric kettle to make tea.
Battery storage could get you through the few hours needed to get your other stations online, but it can’t cover days of production failure. The solution to that is either a grid that’s resistant to all conditions or a grid that geographically diverse enough that you can ramp up production in unaffected areas.
Edited by Silasw on Feb 19th 2021 at 4:10:23 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Well, the buffer I'm referring to is the difference between maximum production and maximum demand. It's apparently less than 10% in Texas.
By the way, I was suggesting a diesel generator as a solution for my house, not state-wide. That obviously wouldn't work.
The ultimate solution to this is nuclear power.
Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 19th 2021 at 10:18:48 AM
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
Cringe but free
Air pollution caused 1 out of 5 deaths in 2018—that's more than 8 million, study says.
That number far surpasses previous estimates of the amount of people killed globally by all types of air pollution, including dust and smoke from wildfires and agricultural burns. The most widely accepted estimate stands at 4.2 million, according to a Harvard University news release.
But the researchers from Harvard and several other institutions in England wanted to learn how many global deaths could be tied to pollution from the burning of fossil fuels alone.
So, they collected pollution emissions and meteorology data from 2012—a year not influenced by a climate phenomenon called El Niño that can naturally worsen air pollution in some regions—and dropped that into a global 3-D model.
A study on the findings was published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research.
"Often, when we discuss the dangers of fossil fuel combustion, it's in the context of CO2 and climate change and overlook the potential health impact of the pollutants co-emitted with greenhouse gases," study co-author Joel Schwartz, a professor of environmental epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a news release.
"We hope that by quantifying the health consequences of fossil fuel combustion, we can send a clear message to policymakers and stakeholders of the benefits of a transition to alternative energy sources."
Past research on global deaths due to air pollution has relied on satellite and surface observations that cannot differentiate where particles came from, such as from fossil fuels or wildfires. "With satellite data, you're seeing only pieces of the puzzle," said study co-author Loretta Mickley, a senior research fellow in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The researchers attempted to overcome this issue by integrating data on atmospheric chemistry driven by everyday weather and climate patterns with estimates of emissions from multiple sources such as power plants, ships, aircraft and ground transportation.
This model, called GEOS-Chem, also allowed the scientists to divide the world into grid-like boxes to accurately map pollution levels in individual regions, "so we could know more exactly what people are breathing," study first author Karn Vohra, a graduate student at the University of Birmingham in England, said in the release.
The team then developed a separate "risk assessment" model to understand how these pollution levels affect people's health across the globe.
They found that more than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution, or a little less than one out of five people. Regions with the most greenhouse gas emissions were Eastern North America, Europe and South-East Asia, the release said.
Particulate matter from fossil fuel pollution can lead to significant health problems such as nonfatal heart attacks, irregular heart beat, asthma and premature death in people with heart or lung disease, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
And the smaller the particles, the more danger they pose "because they can get deep into your lungs, and some may even get into your bloodstream," the EPA said.
Texas had problems because Texan republican politicians are extremely useless. They had this exact thing happen 12 years ago, and did nothing. And it is not like doing something would have been very expensive because do you want to know what the problem basically was?
Texan power plants do not have turbine halls. They put their goddamn turbines and generators outside. On concrete slabs or rooftops with no roofs or walls, because that lowers their goddamn property taxes a bit.
Also, they buy the "no, we never get winter" version of windmills because they are very, very slightly cheaper. That would actually be difficult to fix, since retrofitting cold-tolerance costs a whole lot more than doing it from the word go. But having a barn raising over the very expensive generating machinery of the nuclear and combustion power plants ? Cheap.
Nobody expected wind turbines to freeze solid in Texas! Reuters article
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 15th 2021 at 1:59:02 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"