Rolling blackouts in Texas

173,721 Views | 1588 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by Whitetail
itsyourboypookie
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Jbob04 said:

itsyourboypookie said:

They are hauling coal to oak grove power plant down hwy 7 by kosse.

With the 175 ton dump trucks they mine with #getherdone

I heard both their units are down and don't expect to be back online until next week. You hear anything?


Seems like they are doing whatever it takes.
Stat Monitor Repairman
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Jerry Jones on ABC doing sign language..
HotardAg07
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Charpie said:



WTF would we be selling outside of Texas?
Texas provides natural gas to the whole world... We have multiple LNG terminals, pipelines that export to Mexico, and most of the major trunkline pipelines in the country originate in texas and head up to the Midwest and Northeast.
Jbob04
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
itsyourboypookie said:

Jbob04 said:

itsyourboypookie said:

They are hauling coal to oak grove power plant down hwy 7 by kosse.

With the 175 ton dump trucks they mine with #getherdone

I heard both their units are down and don't expect to be back online until next week. You hear anything?


Seems like they are doing whatever it takes.

No doubt, they are scrambling. Sounds like their water is frozen and all of their instrumentation is all jacked up.
Deputy Travis Junior
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Midnight(ish) will make 3 full days without power for me. Heads need to roll. I haven't seen a more incompetent group of wankers in quite some time. They did this same song and dance in 2010 or 2011, but didn't change zip afterward. Then, with a week of notice that this monster weather pattern was coming, they sat on their hands and let things spiral out of control before rolling out poorly tailored "controlled outages."

I love driving down the freeway and seeing all the electric billboards flashing PI attorney ads at me. I love seeing public transit stations lit up like Christmas trees despite the fact that they all halted service on Saturday or Sunday. I absolutely ****ing love reading press releases on rolling blackouts when the power companies have actually shut down entire regions for days without any effort to share their limited power among customers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get Mike Sherman aggie football game drunk in my dark, 40 degree living room
chimpanzee
How long do you want to ignore this user?
HotardAg07 said:

Charpie said:



WTF would we be selling outside of Texas?
Texas provides natural gas to the whole world... We have multiple LNG terminals, pipelines that export to Mexico, and most of the major trunkline pipelines in the country originate in texas and head up to the Midwest and Northeast.

Likely a symbolic order. Tons of infrastructure is built to ship exclusively out of state, but the prices are going to do a pretty good job of allocating to the places that need it most, so uncorking those wells/facilities that serve the need will be on the top of the list.

It's not like they're putting it on trains that can be re-routed from Chicago to Waco.
TAMU1990
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
H2Ag said:

I have a friend in South Florida that allows the power company to have a disconnect on his pool equipment for a cheaper rate. another coop i know of puts them on water heaters. Initiatives like that could make a difference is applied widely.

Sounds like it could assist in restarting a grid in the conditions ERCOT is in today, as well as utilizing that extra 5 or 6 GW of capacity ERCOT is letting go to waste right now...

I'm no EE but Im sure we could be smarter about this whole issue....




No way in hell would I give that power to the government. What a leftists dream! It will easily be abused.
ttu_85
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Charpie said:



WTF would we be selling outside of Texas?
Orders placed before the event most likely. The leadership has some tough decisions to make.
AggieRob93
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
itsyourboypookie said:

Kenneth_2003 said:

itsyourboypookie said:

They are hauling coal to oak grove power plant down hwy 7 by kosse.

With the 175 ton dump trucks they mine with #getherdone

Where do they normally get their coal from? I thought coal thermal kept 30 days of fuel on hand


Train. It's frozen.
So Snowpiercer is not the future?
eric76
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
There's a company called Griddy (or something like that) that sells electrical power at the market price.

I wonder how well it would work to have Griddy for your usual power but be ready to switch to your own electrical generator when the price rises. That way, you would essentially pay for the electrical generator from money saved when the price is well under the usual consumer price and would have it ready to run when the price goes up or during emergencies.
Kenneth_2003
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
AggieRob93 said:

itsyourboypookie said:

Kenneth_2003 said:

itsyourboypookie said:

They are hauling coal to oak grove power plant down hwy 7 by kosse.

With the 175 ton dump trucks they mine with #getherdone

Where do they normally get their coal from? I thought coal thermal kept 30 days of fuel on hand


Train. It's frozen.
So Snowpiercer is not the future?
again, I thought coal keeps stockpiles!
45-70Ag
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Not sure i fully understand this.


nortex97
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
eric76 said:

There's a company called Griddy (or something like that) that sells electrical power at the market price.

I wonder how well it would work to have Griddy for your usual power but be ready to switch to your own electrical generator when the price rises. That way, you would essentially pay for the electrical generator from money saved when the price is well under the usual consumer price and would have it ready to run when the price goes up or during emergencies.
It's an idea, but then again, powering your house with your home generator, whether using CNG or diesel, is going to wind up costing something like twice the cost per month you'd pay normally.

If it really made sense to do so, I think the billionaire class would be 'off the grid' etc. Yes, they have backup generators, but they don't run them regularly/routinely.

I'm reminded of the fact that Master Algore made a ton of money via a highly polluting copper mine on his family's estate, and that JFK (the one who served in Vietnam, and Cambodia) also uses regular working man's electricity for his estate too.
Point Man 81
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Looks like the Enron thieves found new jobs in the industry.
whiryno
How long do you want to ignore this user?
I can't seem to find any straight answers on total capacity by power generation type. Does someone have a link to that?

From what I can find, the nominal amount of power loss is caused by natural gas/coal during this event.

link

However, the fact that no one is showing percentage failures of total capacity by type makes my propaganda bell go off. For instance in the above link, this part of the article makes it seem like coal and gas are the issue:

Quote:

During a news conference Tuesday, representatives from ERCOT said there were 45,000 megawatts offline. Of that, 15,000 megawatts were wind and 30,000 were gas and coal.
I continue to see that wind/renewables are ~23% of the supply with nat gas/coal in the 58% range. Wouldn't that ratio mean that nat gas/coal outperformed wind on a comparative basis by a large margin?

Further, it says later in the article:

Quote:

Rai said there are times of the year when wind is an extremely important energy source for Texas, powering half of the state's electricity supply.

This week, operators planned for much less wind capacity, in the range of 6,000 megawatts, Cohan said.

Why would you build such a large portion of your power supply with a high chance of being unavailable during the second largest energy consumption season? I could understand 10% of total capacity, but 20%+?
AgsinGA
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Deputy Travis Junior said:

Midnight(ish) will make 3 full days without power for me. Heads need to roll. I haven't seen a more incompetent group of wankers in quite some time. They did this same song and dance in 2010 or 2011, but didn't change zip afterward. Then, with a week of notice that this monster weather pattern was coming, they sat on their hands and let things spiral out of control before rolling out poorly tailored "controlled outages."

I love driving down the freeway and seeing all the electric billboards flashing PI attorney ads at me. I love seeing public transit stations lit up like Christmas trees despite the fact that they all halted service on Saturday or Sunday. I absolutely ****ing love reading press releases on rolling blackouts when the power companies have actually shut down entire regions for days without any effort to share their limited power among customers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get Mike Sherman aggie football game drunk in my dark, 40 degree living room
This should be the post of the day. It builds to a great ending that had me laughing hysterically.

Sorry you are out of power, but that was a fantastic post. I am sorry I have only one star to give.
rausr
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
My son in Bryan had his go out again at 4:15...
Wannabud
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Lookup the Dumb Money Live guys on YouTube. One of the guys uses Griddy and talked about it in their video yesterday. He went from paying a couple dollars a day in electric to $300-500/day since Sunday.
eric76
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
nortex97 said:

eric76 said:

There's a company called Griddy (or something like that) that sells electrical power at the market price.

I wonder how well it would work to have Griddy for your usual power but be ready to switch to your own electrical generator when the price rises. That way, you would essentially pay for the electrical generator from money saved when the price is well under the usual consumer price and would have it ready to run when the price goes up or during emergencies.
It's an idea, but then again, powering your house with your home generator, whether using CNG or diesel, is going to wind up costing something like twice the cost per month you'd pay normally.

If it really made sense to do so, I think the billionaire class would be 'off the grid' etc. Yes, they have backup generators, but they don't run them regularly/routinely.

I'm reminded of the fact that Master Algore made a ton of money via a highly polluting copper mine on his family's estate, and that JFK (the one who served in Vietnam, and Cambodia) also uses regular working man's electricity for his estate too.
I did not suggest living off the grid.

What I suggested was a way to be more adaptable to current conditions. Much of the time you would be buying power at better than consumer rates and using the savings to make sure you have a solid backup for when the rates go up or when the power goes out.

When the power goes out, you are living off the grid for the duration whether you like it or not.
Zobel
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
The answer is made unclear by the way ERCOT advertises capacity, especially wind capacity. They list renewable capacity next to gas and coal, but they don't treat it the same way. If you read their planning doc they count 100% of dispatch capacity and plan on having it on demand. But they only plan to get around 35% of wind capacity on an average basis. So mental note number one - divide wind capacity by 3 whenever you see it.

Then if you look into the planning documents they plan capacity based solely on dispatchable power. So mental note number two - ERCOT doesn't plan on having wind at any particular moment. Which makes sense, they're not dumb.

They went into this winter with a total planned capacity of 67 GW, plus wind, plus reserves to equal 82 GW. When we hit peak output during this event we were at 69 GW with 8 GW of wind. If you're saying to yourself, that doesn't add up - you're right. From the very start Sunday night we were down 10% from where we should be, and demand was going to exceed supply. As soon as the wind - which ercot was not counting on - dropped after midnight, they couldn't handle the load and several units tripped.

It doesn't make sense to say, wind outperformed or not. It's wind, it's NON dispatchable. If wind doesn't blow at all, that's not a failure. It just means you didn't get power from it that day, and over time it should average out. If your dispatch power doesn't work, it is 100% a failure by definition. They don't schedule wind, they absolutely do schedule coal gas and nuclear.

One issue on our market is we don't pay for capacity, and a dispatch MW is paid the same as a non dispatch MW as far as I know. I don't think that makes sense, personally.
Ags77
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Not a drinker, but I'm guessing "mike Sherman Aggie football gaming drunk" is pretty dang drunk.
Gigem
Zobel
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Here's a sensible chuckle.

https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/110520-ercot-expects-sufficient-resources-for-the-coming-winter-and-spring

Here's the detailed plans
http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/197378/SARA-FinalWinter2020-2021.xlsx

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/197379/CapacityDemandandReservesReport_Dec2020.pdf
Bag
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Deputy Travis Junior said:

Midnight(ish) will make 3 full days without power for me. Heads need to roll. I haven't seen a more incompetent group of wankers in quite some time. They did this same song and dance in 2010 or 2011, but didn't change zip afterward. Then, with a week of notice that this monster weather pattern was coming, they sat on their hands and let things spiral out of control before rolling out poorly tailored "controlled outages."

I love driving down the freeway and seeing all the electric billboards flashing PI attorney ads at me. I love seeing public transit stations lit up like Christmas trees despite the fact that they all halted service on Saturday or Sunday. I absolutely ****ing love reading press releases on rolling blackouts when the power companies have actually shut down entire regions for days without any effort to share their limited power among customers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get Mike Sherman aggie football game drunk in my dark, 40 degree living room
now multiply that by 7 and that is the number of days we were out of power during ike.

calm down, put a coat on, it will be over soon
chimpanzee
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Ags77 said:

Not a drinker, but I'm guessing "mike Sherman Aggie football gaming drunk" is pretty dang drunk.
Second half of the night will be downright painful.
boboguitar
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Bag said:

Deputy Travis Junior said:

Midnight(ish) will make 3 full days without power for me. Heads need to roll. I haven't seen a more incompetent group of wankers in quite some time. They did this same song and dance in 2010 or 2011, but didn't change zip afterward. Then, with a week of notice that this monster weather pattern was coming, they sat on their hands and let things spiral out of control before rolling out poorly tailored "controlled outages."

I love driving down the freeway and seeing all the electric billboards flashing PI attorney ads at me. I love seeing public transit stations lit up like Christmas trees despite the fact that they all halted service on Saturday or Sunday. I absolutely ****ing love reading press releases on rolling blackouts when the power companies have actually shut down entire regions for days without any effort to share their limited power among customers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get Mike Sherman aggie football game drunk in my dark, 40 degree living room
now multiply that by 7 and that is the number of days we were out of power during ike.

calm down, put a coat on, it will be over soon
What kind of **** ass response is this?

Living 24/7 in below freezing temps is a bit more serious than "put a coat on."
Ag In Ok
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
45-70Ag said:

Not sure i fully understand this.





If any entity thinks i should foot the bill for this, come and take it. I don't ask you to pay for my **** ups.


Aggies2009
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
AgsinGA said:

Deputy Travis Junior said:

Midnight(ish) will make 3 full days without power for me. Heads need to roll. I haven't seen a more incompetent group of wankers in quite some time. They did this same song and dance in 2010 or 2011, but didn't change zip afterward. Then, with a week of notice that this monster weather pattern was coming, they sat on their hands and let things spiral out of control before rolling out poorly tailored "controlled outages."

I love driving down the freeway and seeing all the electric billboards flashing PI attorney ads at me. I love seeing public transit stations lit up like Christmas trees despite the fact that they all halted service on Saturday or Sunday. I absolutely ****ing love reading press releases on rolling blackouts when the power companies have actually shut down entire regions for days without any effort to share their limited power among customers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get Mike Sherman aggie football game drunk in my dark, 40 degree living room
This should be the post of the day. It builds to a great ending that had me laughing hysterically.




Ironic, since Sherman did anything but build to great endings.
whiryno
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Thanks for the response Zobel, and the links. So we are investing in infrastructure that we expect between 7% and 43% of available capacity during the winter months (second link)?

On the wintercapacities tab, the capacity breakout is:

nuclear: 5,153 MW
gas: 52,031 MW
coal: 14,479 MW
solar: 4,400 MW
wind: 29,057 MW
biomass: 169 MW
hydro: 556 MW

On the scenario tab they claim 82,513 in total resources with 24,814 in reserves for 107,327. The above list comes out as 105,845.

I'm not in the industry, but it seems crazy to invest 35% of your infrastructure capacity in a production type that can't be counted on.

To my original propaganda thesis, looks like they failed to produce at a similar clip of total winter capacity:

15,000 MW renewables in the article earlier is 45% of total renewable capacity above
30,000 MW of coal/gas is 44%
eric76
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
whiryno said:

Thanks for the response Zobel, and the links. So we are investing in infrastructure that we expect between 7% and 43% of available capacity during the winter months (second link)?

On the wintercapacities tab, the capacity breakout is:

nuclear: 5,153 MW
gas: 52,031 MW
coal: 14,479 MW
solar: 4,400 MW
wind: 29,057 MW
biomass: 169 MW
hydro: 556 MW

On the scenario tab they claim 82,513 in total resources with 24,814 in reserves for 107,327. The above list comes out as 105,845.

I'm not in the industry, but it seems crazy to invest 35% of your infrastructure capacity in a production type that can't be counted on.

To my original propaganda thesis, looks like they failed to produce at a similar clip of total winter capacity:

15,000 MW renewables in the article earlier is 45% of total renewable capacity above
30,000 MW of coal/gas is 44%
Just out of curiosity, what percentage of the wind generator capacity was built by the various large energy companies? It seems more likely to me that most of the capacity was built by other companies seeking the tax credits and then selling to the power companies, but I might be wrong.

My point is that it might not be accurate to complain about the power companies putting money into wind generators instead of their own production.
Zobel
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Read page 2. They tell you what average peak power they expect to get from wind. Around 6.2 GW. Sunday we got 9 GW. We did not get what we planned for from thermal. If we had, we would have done OK.

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/197378/SARA-FinalWinter2020-2021.pdf

It's not dollar for dollar, or MW for MW. Comparing them is like comparing wrenches and screwdrivers. They're different, the grid treats them differently.

Sometimes wind blows. It's been as high as 60% of the power on the grid. How expensive was power that day you think? Do you think people were complaining that electricity was too cheap and unreliable that day?

Nobody even knew wind was 20% of our capacity until Sunday. Or cared. They were happy with their bill, or maybe even thought it was too much.

Wind is an easy scapegoat to point at for a much larger problem.
Dorm 15
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
This may sound like a strange question at this time but what happens on the Texas grid when supply exceeds demand?
htxag09
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Rolling blackouts. Or, in Texas' case, the system completely ****s out and 70% of people don't have power for days
mazag08
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Zobel, I thought you were an infectious disease expert. When did you pivot to electricity and power generation?
aginlakeway
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
mazag08 said:

Zobel, I thought you were an infectious disease expert. When did you pivot to electricity and power generation?

Multi talented.
"I'm sure that won't make a bit of difference for those of you who enjoy a baseless rage over the decisions of a few teenagers."
Dorm 15
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Quote:

Rolling blackouts. Or, in Texas' case, the system completely ****s out and 70% of people don't have power for days
So when demand exceeds supply you have rolling blackouts and the same happens when supply exceeds demand?
 
×
subscribe Verify your student status
See Subscription Benefits
Trial only available to users who have never subscribed or participated in a previous trial.