Only In Texas....

[MiloMorai]

6 Killed, Dozens Hurt as 130+ Vehicles Collide on ‘Sheets of Ice’ in Massive Fort Worth Pileup – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth (nbcdfw.com)

Six people killed in massive pileup; 65 people treated at hospitals for injuries including 36 who were taken by ambulance

Officials estimate at least 133 vehicles were involved in the pileups

Crashes occurred in the southbound, interior North Texas Express toll lanes of Interstate 35W

[Tim Sielbeck]

People in Texas rarely have to drive in icy conditions.  Add to the fact that they probably weren't paying attention to the changing weather and traffic conditions you get a high probability of this type of carnage.

[Ivanhoe]

3 hours ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

People in Texas rarely have to drive in icy conditions.  Add to the fact that they probably weren't paying attention to the changing weather and traffic conditions you get a high probability of this type of carnage.

Plus, Texas is chock-full of immigrants. From California, Colorado, etc.

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.kcentv.com/article/news/education/baylor-university/baylor-student-tongue-stuck-metal-pole/500-580e488e-37c1-4622-b6f9-1280ba83e600
 

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WACO, Texas — A Baylor University student thought it would be a good idea to stick her tongue to a metal pole in the midst of all the cold weather taking place in Central Texas. 

Predictably, McKailah Ellisor's tongue got stuck to the pole -- just like the hapless victims did in the movies 'A Christmas Story' and 'Dumb and Dumber.'

 

 

[Soren Ras]

Some people are only able to learn from their own mistakes.

Or, as the sage Yogi said, "There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em."

--

Soren

 

[MiloMorai]

6 hours ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

People in Texas rarely have to drive in icy conditions.  Add to the fact that they probably weren't paying attention to the changing weather and traffic conditions you get a high probability of this type of carnage.

as well as speeeed.

[Ivanhoe]

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/02/17/aerial-photos-downtown-austin-office-buildings-parking-garages-stay-lit-up-while-citizens-shiver-in-the-rolling-blackouts-n1426119

 

 

People are in the dark and cold while parking garages and office buildings are fully lit.

[Ivanhoe]

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/02/16/texas-freezing-weather-windmills-n2584773

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"Natural-gas-fired power plants generated 40% of Texas’s electricity in 2020, according to Ercot," WSJ reports, while "wind turbines were second at 23%, followed by coal at 18% and nuclear at 11%."

I've heard a rumor that a bunch of the NG plants are starved of gas due to pumps and valves not being winterized.

Amazingly, no reports of fallen trees taking out residential distribution lines, at least in my AO.

[rmgill]

What's the core reason for the grid being down? Downed lines? Well, an urban district has everything buried so there's less issues keeping it on in inclement weather. 

[Tim Sielbeck]

2 hours ago, rmgill said:

What's the core reason for the grid being down? Downed lines? Well, an urban district has everything buried so there's less issues keeping it on in inclement weather. 

Not in Texas.  MANY urban areas still have above-ground lines because no one wants to pay to put them underground.

[Ivanhoe]

Record levels of demand, loss of generation, growing population. Its simple math.

It appears that Texas has responded to the pop growth and decommissioned coal plants with wind turbines.

 

[Ssnake]

Admittedly, that decarbonization does cool down the climate in Texan houses right now.

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.americanexperiment.org/2021/02/the-powers-back-on-my-experience-during-the-most-dangerous-energy-emergency-in-texas-history/
 

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Little did I know, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) issued rolling blackouts early that morning to maintain the integrity of the grid due to power facilities falling offline from extreme weather. Over 45,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity capacity tripped offline at one point on the electrical grid – more than 22 percent of total capacity in Texas.

Out of the capacity that tripped offline, about 15,000 MW belonged to wind energy. Freezing temperatures led to wind turbines not being able to generate electricity, much like the 2019 Polar Vortex event in Minnesota that froze wind turbines across the state and prevented them from producing electricity for over 15 hours.

 

So apparently frozen windmills aren't unique to Texas.
 

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However, like many other states in recent years, Texas has done the opposite. Coal and nuclear capacity once made up over 32 percent of the state’s electricity resources in 1990. Now, they make up only 18 percent.

Coal capacity has decreased by over 5,000 MW from a high of 25,420 MW in 2015, and nuclear capacity has remained at 5,390 MW since 1993. In comparison, wind capacity has increased to 28,064.2 MW from the 1990s to 2019, making Texas the leading state of wind energy in the entire country by nearly 20,000 MW.

 

 

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.naturalgasintel.com/no-easy-answers-as-texas-power-grid-natural-gas-market-rocked-by-unprecedented-cold-snap/
 

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About 7 Bcf/d of natural gas production had been shut-in by the freeze-off since Thursday, with most of that amount concentrated in the Permian Basin, said analysts at EBW Analytics, noting that disruptions could continue through the week. 

Critics also pointed to the structure of ERCOT’s energy-only market, where generators are paid for producing energy but not for keeping reserve capacity on standby to meet future demand peaks.

The truth is that numerous factors contributed to the extended outages, Enverus’ Bernadette Johnson, vice president of market intelligence, told NGI.

 

 

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Part of the issue was natural gas shortages, she said, explaining that the gas pipeline network is configured to move gas out of Texas and into colder regions during the winter months.

What’s more, Texas does not have the same access to underground natural gas storage facilities as colder regions such as the northeast.

Additionally, Texas’ oil and gas fields, pipelines, and renewable and conventional power generating assets simply are not set up to handle below-freezing temperatures the way that similar installations are in colder states, Johnson said. 

On top of that, she said, some thermal power facilities in Texas were undergoing scheduled winter maintenance, since ERCOT’s highest demand spikes are normally seen in the summer.

 

 

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About 60% of homes in Texas use electricity as their primary source of heating, according to the Energy Information Administration.

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

FERC report on the 2011 blackouts in AZ/NM/TX due to winter weather;

https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-report.pdf

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The production losses stemmed principally from three things: freeze-offs, icy roads, and rolling electric blackouts or customer curtailments. Freeze-offs occurred when the small amount of water produced alongside the natural gas crystallized or froze, completely blocking off the gas flow and shutting down the well. Freeze-offs routinely occur in very cold weather, and affected at least some of these basins in all of the six recent cold weather events in the Southwest with the possible exception of 1983, for which adequate records are not available. During the February event, icy roads prevented maintenance personnel and equipment from reaching the wells and hauling off produced water which, if left in holding tanks at the wellhead, causes the wells to shut down automatically. The ERCOT blackouts or customer curtailments affected primarily the Permian and Fort Worth Basins and caused or contributed to 29 percent (Permian) and 27 percent (Fort Worth) of the production outages, principally as a result of shutting down electric pumping units or compressors on gathering lines.

Given the amount of road traffic I've seen during the two freezing rain events, and two main snowfalls, over the last 6 days, I'm wondering how incompetent the gas production companies are.

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The report also addresses the interdependency of the electric and natural gas industries. Utilities are becoming increasingly reliant on gas-fired generation, in large part because shale production has dramatically reduced the cost of gas. Likewise, compressors used in the gas industry are more likely than in the past to be powered with electricity, rather than gas. As a result, deficiencies in the supply of either electricity or natural gas affect not only consumers of that commodity, but of the other commodity as well.

 

 

 

[MiloMorai]

3 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

Record levels of demand, loss of generation, growing population. Its simple math.

It appears that Texas has responded to the pop growth and decommissioned coal plants with wind turbines.

 

Abbott says little over 10% is wind power. Is around 20%.

Edited February 18, 2021 by MiloMorai

[Ivanhoe]

And amusingly, the Texas natural gas production problems are causing blackouts in North Dakota;

https://www.kxnet.com/news/winter-storms-in-texas-cause-power-outages-in-north-dakota/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/how-the-texas-power-grid-failed-and-what-could-stop-it-from-happening-again.html

“Texas has chosen to operate its power grid as an island,” noted Rice University’s Cohan, which means the state can’t import power from other states when it’s most needed. He added that the impacts are also felt in the summer, when Texas has an abundance of power that it can’t export.

There is a certain amount of interconnection between ERCOT and northern Mexico, which apparently is also getting clobbered.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-power-prices-explainer-idINKBN2AG2KD

Since 2010, ERCOT’s reserve margin - the buffer between what it can produce vs. forecasted demand - has dropped to about 10% from about 20%. This has put pressure on generators during electricity demand spikes, making the grid less flexible, NERC said.

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

One of the non sequiturs I am seeing repeated on the web is that part of Texas's problem is its lack of interconnection with the two adjacent interconnection systems; the idea being that the generation shortfall could be compensated by buying power from the adjacent systems.

But those systems are dependent to various extents on natural gas production in Texas, and they are also enjoying freakishly low temps and elevated power demand.

https://www.ft.com/content/4d07eedc-b3ec-417e-8cb1-5895178c9f9b

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Natural gas supplies have been “limited” to some power plants, Ercot said. “Freeze-offs” of wells and pipelines in Texas and neighbouring Oklahoma had curtailed 4.4bn cubic feet a day of gas production, or about 5 per cent of US supply, according to Wood Mackenzie, a research company.

 

[MiloMorai]

Texas’ Electricity Resources WHERE POWER COMES FROM — AND HOW IT GETS TO YOU

Texas’ Electricity Resources

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-weather/article/Live-weather-updates-Houston-snow-winter-storm-15951522.php

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Abbott said some natural gas producers had been shipping their product out of state, prompting him to issue an order requiring that they sell the gas to Texas power generators instead.

I saw something to the effect that the LNG terminals in east Texas and Louisiana have stopped loading tankers for the time being.

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1:55 p.m. Nearly 80% of households in Galveston County do not have power and there is no estimate for when it will be restored, according to county officials.

Galveston is about 40F right now.

[Ivanhoe]

https://abc7amarillo.com/news/local/texas-largely-relies-on-natural-gas-for-power-it-wasnt-ready-for-the-extreme-cold

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The outages during this storm far exceeded what ERCOT had predicted in November for an extreme winter event. The forecast for peak demand was 67 gigawatts; peak usage during the storm was more than 69 gigawatts Sunday.

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Woodfin said Tuesday that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, are offline and that 30 gigawatts of thermal sources, which include gas, coal and nuclear energy, are offline.

If you try to research this thing online, you have to wade through a zillion articles along the lines of "wind power falsely blamed for outages". Yet looking at the above quotation, failed wind power is responsible for 1/3 of the shortage.

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“Gathering lines freeze, and the wells get so cold that they can’t produce,” said Parker Fawcett, a natural gas analyst for S&P Global Platts. “And pumps use electricity, so they’re not even able to lift that gas and liquid, because there’s no power to produce.”

I am far from knowledgeable about the energy thing, but I have a nagging suspicion that ERCOT is more about NG markets and finance geek stuff than the heavy lifting of actual energy production. ERCOT keeps issuing these bland statements about balancing loads but a deafening silence about getting crews out to wells to restore NG production.

 

 

 

[Tim Sielbeck]

ERCOT is only responsible for distribution, not production.

[Yama]

9 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

So apparently frozen windmills aren't unique to Texas.
 

Up here, wind power produces more in wintertime as the cold air is heavier and carries more energy. I have never heard of turbines icing up being regarded a major issue. I suppose it happens and is fairly routinely dealt with. However, cold spells are a problem because usually it's combined with still air, meaning that peak power consumption matches with nadir of wind power generation - not a good combination.

Recently I argued about this with a wind power lobbyist who showed a study they commissioned which demonstrated that this is not a problem as they have projected this extensive consumption flexibility scheme. Which in plainspeak means just that when there is no wind, people have their heat turned off! At the same time, they have been pushing for people to give up their independent oil and wood heating. Yeah, good luck with getting THAT over.

[jmsaari]

17 minutes ago, Yama said:

Up here, wind power produces more in wintertime as the cold air is heavier and carries more energy. I have never heard of turbines icing up being regarded a major issue. I suppose it happens and is fairly routinely dealt with. However, cold spells are a problem because usually it's combined with still air, meaning that peak power consumption matches with nadir of wind power generation - not a good combination.

Well it's true that wind produces more in winter (*), but ice is still a real problem, with older turbines often a major one. Enough so that some older wind farms up north turned out unprofitable mainly because of too much unscheduled outages in winter due to underpowered de-icing. Also especially in older turbines the de-icing power demand can exceed what the turbine would produce, so in practice you're better off shutting down when it gets cold enough, anyway. 

Ultimately it depends on expected local conditions if the profit of power generation in bad icing conditions is enough to makes it worth installing and running electric blade heating. Sometimes that estimate goes wrong, and also sometimes what's cost-optimal for operator may still end up having outages in inconvenient times... 

 

(*) wind speed variation alone would more than double the production in best wind areas where most wind farms are, cold temperature adds maybe 5-10%. Some of that gets eaten away by the de-icing and the need to shut down for not just ice but also storms, though.

[MiloMorai]

Abbott and Cruz statements last summer about Kali and their electrical problems was because it was a Dem controlled State. Well guys, what goes around comes around for your Repub State.🙂