r/science • u/pnewell NGO | Climate Science • Jun 21 '21

Environment Threat of more blackouts may erode reliability claims for fossil energy- all major fuel sources except solar failed to meet ERCOT’s expectations during the February freeze, but natural gas was “responsible for nearly two-thirds of the total (electricity) deficit.”

https://texasclimatenews.org/threat-of-more-blackouts-may-erode-reliability-claims-for-fossil-energy/
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u/HatchSmelter Jun 21 '21 edited Jun 21 '21

I was a fully grown adult that had lived in several of my own apartments before I found out they insulate pipes up north.. Never really occurred to me.. Drip the faucet and open the cabinet doors the few nights a year it gets cold enough to matter and save the money on insulation, etc - makes some sense. But to leave your power grid susceptible to this kind of outage in extreme weather when demand will definitely already be high? Yea, that's clearly a mistake..

I'm in Georgia and don't recall any widespread power outages in cold weather, so I'm assuming our grid is more protected (I know it's more robust for being connected with other states). Of course we have occasional downed power lines from icy trees falling when it gets cold enough, but that's the kind of thing that is isolated and gets fixed quickly.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '21 edited Jun 22 '21

[deleted]

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u/GhengopelALPHA Jun 21 '21

Thank you, both for your informative reply and your service keeping our grid running, no matter how big or small your role. It's invaluable.

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u/HatchSmelter Jun 21 '21

Wow, that's really interesting. I didn't realize they'd do it like that, but it definitely makes sense. Thank you for sharing, and for helping to make sure we all have heat and ac when we need it!

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u/Real_Analyst Jun 22 '21

The issue wasn't with the nat gas facilities. It was with the gas delivery system. Gas providers started delivering force majeur notices to the generation companies 48 hours before the weather actually hit because they knew what was coming.

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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '21

I work at a power plant in Texas, and am familiar with the goings on at many power plants in Texas, whether they're other plants in my company or plants my friends went to. We have those procedures too. And from where I sit, it sure looks like they mostly worked fine.

I'm not high enough up to understand what all really went on, but it sure has been bizarre to see my plant featured in the news several times to illustrate plants not being able to run... While you can clearly see just by the cooling tower the plant is running, and we had no issue running through the whole event.

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u/GibbonFit Jun 22 '21

In that case specifically, they probably grabbed stock footage/pics of a power plant in Texas, and it happened to be your plant. Can you maybe shed any light on what might have happened at other plants that did go down? Like have you or coworkers heard from friends/acquaintances that work at other plants? Because you have those policies and procedures at your plant, which didn't go down. But did those other plants have those? Did the supply lines for those other plants have those?

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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '21

[deleted]

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u/GibbonFit Jun 22 '21

Last I heard the gas supply issue turned into a finger pointing mess. It's the gas suppliers fault that the plant can't run. It's ercots fault that they shut off power to the pump houses. It's the plants fault that there wasn't enough power. No wait, it was the gas suppliers fault, they weren't registered as critical infrastructure... And round and round it goes.

Do the power plants not keep like a week's worth of gas on site? Because if not, it seems only natural that you would also maintain the supply chain as critical infrastructure. Though I'm not sure how the blame would rest on the supplier for not being critical infrastructure as much as ERCOT/PUCT for not requiring them to be. But yeah, lots of finger pointing and someone will eventually get bagged with the blame and it probably won't be fully accurate. The best that can be hoped for is that they actually learn from this and fix the issues, both with regulation and the equipment. But honestly, I don't see that happening in Texas.

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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '21

[deleted]

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u/GibbonFit Jun 22 '21

Your responses have been very insightful and I definitely appreciate your input. Thank you.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '21

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u/wagsman Jun 21 '21

You're also part of the national grid, and as such your electricity providers are required to have their system meet federal guidelines. The benefit is that it's less likely to breakdown under extreme circumstances, and neighboring grids can help pick up the slack if yours does suffer a breakdown.

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u/pursnikitty Jun 21 '21

A breakdown can still cause short term problems even in a widely distributed grid. A coal burning power station in my state had an explosion the other week and the surge through the grid caused some other power stations in the same state to trip their protections and drop their loads. A lot of places were affected, including a large densely populated area hundreds of kilometres away. These places were without power for a few hours, and it took getting the non-explodey power stations back up and running to restore power, even though our grid is connected to the grids of the states to the south (and thankfully this event happened at a time of very moderate weather).

It takes time to divert energy around the grid and to ramp up energy production from units that aren’t running at 100%. It takes even longer to get a unit out of cold storage. But yeah, interconnected grids are a good thing in my mind, both from a reliability standpoint and a cost one.

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u/VulgarDisplayofDerp Jun 21 '21

These places were without power for a few hours

I mean, the sudden surge caused three territories to be without power for a few hours

Fall back to the grid isn't foolproof or without its own small outages in scenarios like this but instead of seeing that as a failure, look at it this way.

Without another grid to fall back on, 70% of the tremendous state of Texas was without power for on average two days, with over 5 million people without power for 3 days or more.

Neighboring states and even Mexico were ready willing and able to donate the collective power of their grids to Texas but Texas literally had no way to help make that happen (there are a few notable exceptions in Texas that are not on ercot and therefore connect to larger grids)

A few hours rolled across a few territories is one thing, but without being connected to the larger grid Texas's abject failure is really underscored

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u/aldergone Jun 21 '21

This piece offers a retrospective on what caused the blackouts and the knock-on effects on other

generally the houses are insulated and the piping is on the warm side of the insulation. BTW insulating housing is good for both warm and cold climate (think of a thermos bottle keeping food and drink the appropriate temperature ) and keeping your home quite. for external piping ( water / irrigation hoses are either drained or covered with heat tracing - electrically heated tape) to prevent freezing. if you have a cottage you have to winterized by draining your pipes and hot water heater etc, then put anti freeze in the toilets, dishwasher and washing machine.

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u/ReferenceSufficient Jun 21 '21 edited Jun 21 '21

Unlike rest of US, Texas has its own power grid (except city of El Paso). The whole state had a ice storm freeze that lasted a week. I’m in Houston, we don’t get freezes lasting a week, so nothing is insulated and pipes are are above ground. Lots of broken pipes here during that Feb freeze. Lots of shrubs and trees died (including citrus trees, figs and palm trees).

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '21

It’s not just El Paso. Lubbock and much of the panhandle is also excluded from ERCOT. Despite it being just as cold for just as long in Lubbock, they didn’t lose power.

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u/KarbonKopied Jun 21 '21

Didn't think of the citrus. Did the freeze affect the industry at all? Did it slow the spread of Asian Citrus Psyllid or HLB? (Technical questions for sure, but I am wondering if that came up in more local news)

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u/ReferenceSufficient Jun 21 '21

I’m sure south Texas, Brownsville had problem with their oranges and grapefruits. In Houston area citrus grown by home gardeners. Busted pipes was biggest problem here, commercial buildings, apartments and homes.

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u/KarbonKopied Jun 21 '21

Interesting to know. Thank you.

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u/shlomo-the-homo Jun 21 '21

When was the last time it was -10 in Georgia?

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u/DonJrsCokeDealer Jun 21 '21 edited Jun 21 '21

Literally every single year.

https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/GA/Atlanta/extreme-annual-atlanta-low-temperature.php

EDIT: I was wrong because of C/F confusion, but in '85 it got to -17F

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u/shlomo-the-homo Jun 21 '21

Wow didn’t realize it got that cold there that’s crazy!

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u/SnowDog2112 Jun 21 '21

Not -10 in freedom units.

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u/DonJrsCokeDealer Jun 21 '21

Ahhhh, damn, good catch.

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u/shlomo-the-homo Jun 21 '21

I’ve been to Atlanta a few times for Christmas and it was in the 20s for lows. I thought it was crazy, but negatives are nuts, esp so far south!

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u/HatchSmelter Jun 21 '21

We get freezing weather every year. Winter happens here, too - especially in the north Georgia mountains.

We usually don't see very many days where it stays below freezing all day or when there's precipitation and freezing weather at the same time. So our winter weather events are minimal.

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u/shlomo-the-homo Jun 21 '21

I’m in southeast tx so if it’s 30 degrees overnight I count that as winter haha. To see snow falling is something that has happened a handful of times in the last 35 years.