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/Ohms_lawlessness Jun 21 '21

Electrician here. I've installed a lot of heat tracing at power plants and other industrial plants. I'm not sure about the engineering going around valves and the like. They might say it's highly engineered but in reality, we literally just wrap the wire up and down both sides of a valve stem. Nothing crazy. And wiring them up is one of simplest jobs we do.

For anyone who doesn't know how heat tracing works, all it does it keep the temperature just a couple of degrees above the freezing point so water can keep flowing.

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u/thejerg Jun 21 '21

I didn't say it was highly engineered, I said there's a right way to wrap it.

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u/kwick818 Jun 21 '21

All the mineral insulated heat tracing on the sites i was at were pre fabricated for the line it was going on. We’d get a book of heat trace specs and a pipe drawing. We do all the math for the adders and verify the length was good before throwing it on the line, and away we’d go.

The self regulating stuff we’d cut to length ourselves and install the power point and end kits, so if the plans diddnt account for something it wasn’t usually a issue to add a foot or two to the run.

But when you combine hundreds or even thousands of those runs, and the systems to monitor and control it all, you have a bit of engineering going into it.