Hardest thing to,hit the Texas grid in 60 years have been the politicians

Don't forget the federal bureaucracy.
Nuclear plants take 30 years from permitting to commissioning.

Gonna be a fun few days! I'm actually gonna be working hard.

It's actually the displacement of reliable, dispatcheable generation by government subsidized renewable energy that has had the biggest negative impact.

given next weeks events have been forecast for a week now, I hope they have prepared in advance for the increased load.

All comes down to natural gas production. If the wells stay online, shouldn't be a problem.

I would guess an arctic freeze taps the grid harder in a an apples to apples comparison. I know I can run all my central units on my generator when we have a hurricane. However, I was really surprised how our electric heating coils in those air handlers quickly brought it to its knees in the '21 freeze. I could only run one heating unit at a time.

Grid-wide we'd have to account for all the gas heating, heat pumps, and other alternative heat sources that coexist with a lot of those air conditioners; so I'd guess the overall mix would determine the which is the biggest actual load.

Unless they lose power, of course

What hit so hard in Feb '21 was the loss of natural gas supply. Wells across the whole state froze up so there was no nat gas available for power generation.

Heat waves draw more electricity demand, but a statewide deep freeze is more likely to disrupt supply and result in a shortage.

You can look at ERCOT's dashboards here to see current and forecasted demand, capacity, and fuel sources.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

Biggest concern is in August, 5PM to 9PM.
A high pressure system moving into Texas and stopping wind ( which has happened) combined with the daily ramp down in solar as the sun's angle changes.
ERCOT Grid doesn't have enough thermal generation to meet capacity demands.
Rolling blackouts will happen just a matter of when and how widespread .
Maybe we will get lucky & ERCOT will get sufficient number of new gas generation units built first ……,,,,


In the Feb 2021 freeze, statewide ice took out coastal & inland wind and solar. Of the 32,000 megawatts of wind capacity only 600 MW were being generated. Solar panels iced over, stopping generation.

There weren't enough thermal generators ( coal, gas, nuclear) to meet the demand thanks to short cited politicians. ERCOT does not have a guaranteed capacity market and also allows low spinning reserve margins.

It was greatly exacerbated by loss of natural gas generation and plants control systems' freezing and tripping.

Electric heat sources (space heaters) are basically just massive resistors. Not efficient at all compared to the heating methods.

It's not watts per hour, it's just Watts. It's already a time dependent unit.

you're using it wrong then... it would consume 1200-1500 watt-hours in an hour.

it consumes 1200-1500 watts every minute, and every second, too.

javajaws said:

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Ogre09 said:

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What hit so hard in Feb '21 was the loss of natural gas supply. Wells across the whole state froze up so there was no nat gas available for power generation.

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I definitely recall that being the case - question though: What amount of natural gas are we talking about for 3-5 days supply and why is there not a big enough storage buffer in place? Is that just not possible? (disclaimer I don't work in oil and gas).

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We do have natural gas storage, but to dramatically oversimply the system it doesn't work like that. We do have tremendous natural gas reserves in underground storage. But that storage is setup for seasonal and regional demand and not single event or site specific demand.

NG is stored underground in carved out salt domes or in carefully mapped geologic formations. It's not sitting in a tank out back that can be sent into the power plant just by re-orienting a few valves.

Ogre09 said:

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What hit so hard in Feb '21 was the loss of natural gas supply. Wells across the whole state froze up so there was no nat gas available for power generation.

Heat waves draw more electricity demand, but a statewide deep freeze is more likely to disrupt supply and result in a shortage.

You can look at ERCOT's dashboards here to see current and forecasted demand, capacity, and fuel sources.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

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I mostly agree but this is a bit simplistic. In WS Uri, the "rolling brownouts" inadvertently took massive parts of the gas processing and transportation network offline. With arctic temps, processing equipment freezes up and it's hard to get it back online at that point. Way more chicken and egg to this than the media will tell you.

Bottom line is, natural gas production, processing, and transportation is relying on continuous electrical supply to operate. Similarly, power generators need the natural gas to generate electricity. It's a circular process insofar as those two pieces are concerned.

bowhuntr said:

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Thunderstruck xx said:

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It's actually the displacement of reliable, dispatcheable generation by government subsidized renewable energy that has had the biggest negative impact.

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explain please

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Legislation to deregulate Texas electricity grid set no requirements to forecast future demand and ensure guaranteed capacity would be available.

It is a simple supply and demand market on a day ahead ( hourly) and spot market (15 minutes) - at established nodes on the grid.

Assume buyers only want 55,345 Megawatts. Sellers ( generators) bid in and the generation amounts bid into the market is cumulatively stacked lowest to highest cost.
At 55,345 Megawatts that seller's price determines the market price.
Everybody above 55,345 gets priced out and don't get to sell their product.

Renewables have Federal capital subsidies and tax credits that allows them to undercut the market. So the more expensive coal and natural gas boilers were no longer competitive and were torn down.

Also Texas legislators in their zeal to please special interest set low spinning reserve requirements. Thus not having to pay as many thermal generators to be in hot standby ready to make power instantly.

Thermal generators ( coal, nuclear, natural gas boilers and combined cycle gas turbine boilers) are able to run 7-24-365 and are both predictable and reliable regardless if the sky is cloudy or wind doesn't blow.

A grid dispatcher could evaluate weather reports and order more units online ( dispatchable). Yoj cant order more wind or solar for next Thursday's cold front because no one can guarantee their output.
Battery storage sounds good but has discharge limits and capacity is very low.

We took electricity for granted.


All deregulated regional electric grids abandoned the supply-demand only market as too risky except ERCOT.
All have guaranteed capacity markets.

ERCOT knew the problem was brewing but special interests wanted very cheap power and kept legislators from passing a bill in 2016 to establish guaranteed capacity. We paid the piper in Feb 2021.

Similar vulnerability exists due to the growing generation in solar. Load demand stays very high in August evenings when solar output decreases 1700-2100. Texas currently does not have enough traditional generation if wind is curtailed due to a high pressure system. We got lucky in 2023……

Additionally the market is very risky. If a generator is in the market on a peak value day ( polar vortex) and trips offline, the seller has to meet their market commitments at peak prices. One bad day can ruin a fiscal year.

As an example a friend works at a combined cycle NG unit that was offline for emergent maintenance prior to Feb 2021 storm URI. They decided to try to come online to alleviate the grid shortfall and also cash in on the high prices . Their unit tripped shortly after connecting the grid and couldn't restart in time. He said the financial hit was huge and they would never take that risk again to supply the grid .

That is about the best summary of things that got Texas to this point I have seen. Well done. Only thing I would add is those same special interests (large industrial electric users) pressured Abbott to replace all three PUCT commissioners in that same 2016/2017 timeframe because they were raising the capacity alarm, said the market was broken, held a hearing. And of course he did exactly that and the state's residential folks paid the price in 2021.

WhoopN06 said:

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Do renewable generators have to buy power on the spot market the same way thermal producers do if they can't meet committed supply?

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As other said , most renewables sell blocks of power at lower cost with Purchased Power Agreements ( PPA)
Contracts between buyer & sellers determine the penalties.

A lot of power contracts are brokered and sold over the Intercontinenal Exchange System ( ICES). A guy working out of his home office in Atlanta for Deutschbank may be buying ( and selling surplus) over ICES for a Texas municipal power system such as the City of Brownsville Light Company. They're referred to as " Ice Jockeys".

Obviously there are a lot more nuances about the market I didn't cover that are too complex for TexAgs posts.
Line congestion is an example that was and still is a big issue.

All major ERCOT sellers have portions of their generation sold in private purchased power agreements. Some contracts have interruptible clauses and can be turned off with minimal notice , they can get cheaper prices.

Ironically one of the major natural gas interchange compressor stations had an interruptible power contract until someone figured out that was a bad idea to reduce natural gas flow during an electrical power crisis.

Problem is buyers such as Bryan Texas Utilities are signing PPA with renewables and no longer buying from thermal generators . They are celebrating the reduction in cost to consumers and creating a huge demand for unreliable renewables. Consequently resulting in dismantling units they used to have PPA with like TMP's Gibbons Creek coal unit that are no longer profitable.

I saw this problem brewing in 2012 and put in a 1000 gallon propane tank and a 22KW generator.
Was still working and couldn't talk about it. I did write several letters to my state congressman that were ignored.

I'm good friends with a gent that was on watch at ERCOT's control facility the night the grid collapsed in Feb 2021.
About a year later he was able to share stories.

In my educated opinion those guys were superstars and their quick actions saved Texas from a complete grid collapse that would have been catastrophic.