They are penalized if they can't produce once committed. One way is by having to buy power on the market to cover their commitments. If you sold for $50 and are buying for $5000+ That could be a hefty mistake. This is why some are saying it was "expedient" to cut power. Then, poof, the obligation is gone.

Probably because someone at a SCADA terminal at one of the distribution companies didn't click a button to shed more load when they were supposed to.

Not knowing the numbers, I'll ask the question: What is the larger amount between what it would have cost to winterize our plants and what has been spent subsidizing renewables?

Agree with the first, and the second already happens. Standby power isn't free.

I think what you'll find is in the next 10 years or so both solar and wind will be competitive without subsidies.

I have not looked at all the previous posts. I did see on the NRC website that South Texas Unit 1 shutdown at 0523 yesterday morning when they lost 2 of the 3 feed pumps. That was a loss of probably 1300 megawatts going to the grid and then the unit keeps using about 50 megawatts when it is off-line, so 1350 megawatts lost to the grid.

So gonemaroon or anyone know why ervot is showing much larger capacity today? Expecting some plants back on today? Not back to normal peak levels but considerably higher than yesterday.

We need a capacity market.

Not exactly the same pockets or guiding imperative
The subsidizers will likely show this as a reason to go all in on renewables because reasons

Zobel said:

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Agree with the first, and the second already happens. Standby power isn't free.

I think what you'll find is in the next 10 years or so both solar and wind will be competitive without subsidies.

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Wouldn't that ultimately place us at greater risk of repeating these events?

Or it flips the switch for all the anti coal anti nat gas people to say f that crap, build up the grid. A blue state will never improve power for the people.

Then again a capacity market does no good if you don't have gas.

mullokmotx said:

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I have not looked at all the previous posts. I did see on the NRC website that South Texas Unit 1 shutdown at 0523 yesterday morning when they lost 2 of the 3 feed pumps. That was a loss of probably 1300 megawatts going to the grid and then the unit keeps using about 50 megawatts when it is off-line, so 1350 megawatts lost to the grid.

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Thanks, just wanted to know if there was a technical failure at the plant due to the cold or some sort of ERCOT snafu. That's 1 GW we could all use right now.

There are no sellers of gas / gas is going to trade in excess of $500 might trade north of $1000. This is the craziest thing ever it make take until the weekend when it warms up to get things under control.

We have gas what is lacking is often access to market that makes sense -see flaring in ND

Having spent a decade in coal industry, will be interesting to see if they accelerate these start ups, depending on the plants.

Coal fired plants, and Nat gas plants if on the spot market can make a killing, then shut down again in a few weeks to finish minor fixes.

Kinda yes kinda no. They are different and they need to be priced differently. Adding renewable capacity doesn't hurt. It does crowd out base load that can't cycle (coal). The problem today was that the thermal power we had, wasn't running. Adding more plants only helps if they actually work in the cold!

Squadron7 said:

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Not knowing the numbers, I'll ask the question: What is the larger amount between what it would have cost to winterize our plants and what has been spent subsidizing renewables?

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Very complex problem.'

Events such as this are once in 50 years or so. 1983 was the last of this magnitude. Even lessor events such as Feb 2011 are destructive. But all in all these events for Texas are very rare.

Our climate allows us to build cheaper than up north or in say Co. Isolating homes and industry is expensive. This up front reduction in cost is one of several drivers of moving people and industry into Southern states.

But once in a while you have extremely expensive outside the bell curve event such as this. And between the events there is significant change: in 1983 Texas had 16 million people. Today 29.5MM of course the damage is going to be worse- much worse.

Texas, with its 5 cities of +1MM and 4 metros of 2.5M+ we are sometimes going to catch hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and killing freezes and heatwaves with horrific numbers.

Most of the time we live in a good climate but when things go Harvey or deep freeze 2021 bad. Lots of people are going to suffer.

Its all Math and math can be cruel. Do you want to pay up front or afterwards ?

The Texas Power Grid was clearly not designed for infrequent events, like a massive snowstorm. The the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) needs to establish and enforce standards that will guarantee reliable electricity for all Texans, regardless of adverse weather. This is the 2nd time that snow has reached central and north Texas this year, but the amount of snow that arrived on 1/10/21 is nothing compared to these past 2 days. I live in South Austin, and I am grateful that electricity in the house that I am renting a room in went out for just 20 minutes yesterday afternoon.

TravelAg2004 said:

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Zobel said:

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The grid is "fine" for normal. It's not fine for cold. The root of this is equipment unprepared to operate in freezing conditions. We are at 60% of previous max generation, and we have coal, nuke, wind, and gas all offline for cold.

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I know the free market means less regulation, but wouldn't it be feasible to require power generation to be capable of operating to a minimum temp? I know it doesn't happen "often", but it seems like we can all talk about 2-3 times where freezing weather has caused issues with the grid.

Or change the pricing/structure so that you are penalized if you can't operate down to a specific temp? So you don't have to pay to weatherize, but if you can't produce, you get stuck paying for your down time? Only if temps drop below zero (or a pre-defined number), are you "excused" of your fine. So any generation that you didn't contribute below zero is not billed against you.

Obviously I know nothing about this market, but it seems like there's got to be a way to incentivize producers to weatherize and be prepared for this kind of weather...even if it only happens once every 10 years.

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An unregulated market would have people going bankrupt if they couldn't deliver what they promised. Insurance could backstop them and they would figure out how much it would cost to weatherproof facilities and/or have backup generation before they would provide coverage or allowed them to enter into supply agreements in the first place. As it sits now, we can "demand" whatever we want, whenever we want it, but generators have to play mother-may-I with PUC's, DOE, etc. to get a facility into a system that earns a return for their troubles.

Leaders make tradeoff decisions all the time and cold weather reliability was put on the back burner of priorities. You either allow the market to fill the need by giving people a profit incentive to fill gaps in times of high need or you pay for things you don't need very often,

Zobel said:

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Counterpoint to that - we have plenty of simple cycle peakers and more than enough power 99.9% of the time. We run into a squeeze about once every 3-4 years.

The grid is "fine" for normal. It's not fine for cold. The root of this is equipment unprepared to operate in freezing conditions. We are at 60% of previous max generation, and we have coal, nuke, wind, and gas all offline for cold.

The market does not incentivize preparedness... I mean I guess if you were a GT peaker or something who was not locked in for power and invested in weatherization you're making out like a bandit today. IF you have gas, which doesn't seem like a sure thing at all.

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So what are we managing our infrastructure too is the question and a valid one. Clearly our collective views on 100-year events is not correct. So, if we are okay with the current paradigm on a basis by which we are conscious of, then we can continue the way we are. Do we want to pay more for a stable, diversified and FORTIFIED grid, well I don't have an answer for that. The California wild fires. Cyber attacks. Storm events like hurricanes. Worse case scenario, EMP attack. Where to we stop. No good answer. Ultimately society will decide with pressure on politicians and how much we are will in to pay. I believe we should pay more to secure our basic services, but I am one person.

We just moved our parents into assisted living and were staying at their house cleaning and organizing. We headed back to Tennessee Saturday afternoon to beat the weather. We left heat on, cabinets with pipes open, and outside spigots wrapped.

If we had known that blackouts were planned, we would have shut off water completely and turned off water heater. No telling what damage might occur now, and we're too far away to do anything about it.

Zobel said:

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Agree with the first, and the second already happens. Standby power isn't free.

I think what you'll find is in the next 10 years or so both solar and wind will be competitive without subsidies.

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Agree, part of the cost paid by the rate base but would also argue it is a national security measure. This is why we are headed to a more decentralized grid. That will be the bain of the dems. Imagine if we were all responsible for our own power. Then imagine the load with us all deriving EV's. I digress. If we have enough standby speaker power, then were is it. I have stood in a multi-unit peaker plant as it spools up from standby idle to full power and it ain't long for it to get humming. I hope all the peakers are at full boogey right now.

missyaggie said:

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We just moved our parents into assisted living and were staying at their house cleaning and organizing. We headed back to Tennessee Saturday afternoon to beat the weather. We left heat on, cabinets with pipes open, and outside spigots wrapped.

If we had known that blackouts were planned, we would have shut off water completely and turned off water heater. No telling what damage might occur now, and we're too far away to do anything about it.

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Yep. Water damage claims are going to be massive. No telling how many houses have frozen in the wall pipes.

I'd get my water off at the road or source if power is erratic then drip it out till water pressure is 0.

I know, I know not everyone can do that. Most can. Its the smart play.

How does this work?

Texags overlords do not allow whatever you posted.

gonemaroon said:

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How does this work?

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Probably flagging a http:// versus an https:// source.

Solar and wind tech is relatively young. Early wind power installations in the US were translated European tech that did not fare well in the upper midwest. I agree it could be competitive but only with a regulatory burden on conventional generation that makes it economic combined with renewable portfolio standards. Also, I believe the issue is larger than economics. This is a national security issue so economics should be one factor of many.

ttu_85 said:

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missyaggie said:

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We just moved our parents into assisted living and were staying at their house cleaning and organizing. We headed back to Tennessee Saturday afternoon to beat the weather. We left heat on, cabinets with pipes open, and outside spigots wrapped.

If we had known that blackouts were planned, we would have shut off water completely and turned off water heater. No telling what damage might occur now, and we're too far away to do anything about it.

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Yep. Water damage claims are going to be massive. No telling how many houses have frozen in the wall pipes.

I'd get my water off at the road or source if power is erratic then drip it out till water pressure is 0.

I know, I know not everyone can do that. Most can. Its the smart play.

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I might be doing this at some point today. Our hot water is all dead because I didn't drip that side. Didn't think about it.

Scale does crazy things. It's up 2.91% right now. Miners & energy across the board, 2-4% not a big deal?

Cross posting my post from another thread.

This is a mess.

We took every precaution. But when power went out here at 2 am Monday morning, a pipe froze, despite having the faucet drip. So no water for sink or toilet and shower in that bathroom because of frozen pipe. We'll shut off water entirely IF that pipe breaks during thaw to limit water damage. I'm open to other suggestions.

We're now at 30 hours without power. It's 50 inside our home and we can't get down the street because of the snow and ice. And there's another winter storm headed our way tonight/tomorrow. We're stuck at home without power and with a likely pending water break.

I'm not blaming anyone. But this sucks.

gonemaroon said:

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There are no sellers of gas / gas is going to trade in excess of $500 might trade north of $1000. This is the craziest thing ever it make take until the weekend when it warms up to get things under control.

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I have truly appreciated your posts during this episode. Let me give you some context from a natural gas producer.

My natural gas wells in West Texas are processed in a cryogenic processing plant to remove natural gas liquids before being placed in the WAHA pipeline system for delivery to the market. The near zero weather conditions were anticipated to negatively impact processing plant operations (and almost everything else in West Texas), so natural gas producers on that system were requested to shut in their natural gas production on Friday.

One small story, but it is probably repeated all across the spectrum of O&G producers in Texas...

When do you think this will be ok and they will start flowing back onto the system more normally?