By Mike Smith, Meteorological Musings
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said 7,000 megawatts of generating capacity tripped [“tripped” means failed]Tuesday night, leaving the state without enough juice. That’s enough capacity to power about 1.4 million homes. By rotating outages, ERCOT said it prevented total blackouts.
“We have the double whammy of extremely high demand, given the lowest temperatures in 15 years, combined with generation that’s been compromised and is producing less than expected or needed,” said Oncor spokeswoman Catherine Cuellar. Oncor operates power lines in North Texas and facilitated the blackouts for ERCOT.
— above from the “Dallas Morning News”
The article didn’t give a clue as to what generating capability failed, but I can make a pretty good guess: Wind energy.
When the wind is light, the turbine blades do not turn. And, the coldest nights usually occur with snow cover and light winds. The 9pm weather map for the region is below. The red number at upper right is the current temperature and they are well below zero deep into New Mexico and parts of Kansas and Colorado, so regional power use is high. Springfield, CO was already -15°F. Temperatures are in the single digits and teens over most Texas with very light winds in the areas where the turbines are located.
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| Map courtesy National Center for Atmospheric Research |
For a time, Texas was bragging about being the #1 state for “wind power” (it still is) and we were bombarded with TV commercials and newspaper editorial touting the “Pickens Plan” for massive spending on wind energy. Pickens himself was building a huge wind farm in northwest Texas. He has now ceased construction.
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| Wind power capacity in 2008. Texas has more than twice as
much as any other state. |
Now, because of relying so much on wind power, the state is suffering blackouts. My book’s publisher, Greenleaf Book Group in Austin, was without power all day and Austin wasn’t even affected by the recent winter storm. Mexico is trying to help by shipping power to Texas, but it is not enough.
Of course, Great Britain has experienced wind power failures (and rolling blackouts) during cold weather due to light winds. So has Minnesota, just last winter. I think we should learn from them.
If Texas had made the same dollar investment in new coal and/or nuclear power plants they would probably be snug and warm tonight. Do we we really want to sacrifice our families’ safety and security along with business productivity during extreme cold for the sake of political correctness?
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Also FYI – Texas wind power induced blackouts happened in 2008, see this story.
See Mike Smith’s book on “how science tamed the weather”.
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UPDATE: 2/3
THE PLOT THICKENS. Please read the addition to this story (at the bottom): http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/02/equal-time-american-wind-energy.html
Methane Hydrates
“Seabed drilling exploration for methane hydrate in coastal waters, utilizing a world-class deep sea exploration vessel, is scheduled to start Saturday.
The Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, an independent administrative body, will conduct the exploration using the “Chikyu” research ship.”
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T110131002852.htm
Dave Springer: “What actually gets purchased and consumed is, on average, 10% of faceplate capacity.”
So the money to build the Tubines was squandered. As I thought.
Dave, the report damning wind farms is here:
http://www.texasahead.org/tax_programs/chapter313/TEDA2010-96-1359.pdf
“Combs stated that the cost to the state per job is nearly $1.6 million, roughly 40 times more than the cost per job under the Texas Enterprise Fund”
_Jim says:
February 3, 2011 at 8:37 pm (Edit)
racookpe1978 February 3, 2011 at 7:45 pm
…
You cannot “ship” electricity further than 900 miles without losing over 70% to heat losses in the power lines. You “can” exchange voltage that far easily, just as you can get water pressure through a 1/2 garden hose 800 feet to a neighbor’s garage. But open the faucet to get water “flow” (current x voltage, or power) through that little garden hose? You get a dribble.
Hmmm … Path 65 also known as “The Pacific DC Intertie” at 846 mi (64 miles shy of 900) seems to be indicated for a ‘line capacity’ of 3,100 megawatts … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
Yes. All of the DC inter-ties are limited that way by only allowing power to be sent through extremely expensive AC-DC conversion systems at either end. If you are in the middle of the DC string, you CANNOT get any power from the line going overhead, but have to use a local conventional overhead transmission line.
(The Pacific Intertie is one of the longest in the world by the way, and, at over 500,000 volts to reduce – but NOT eliminate! – losses still suffers considerable transmission losses 25% that are “accepted” as a penalty for getting the power that far from the hydro power plants of the Columbia River to the air conditioners of Los Angelos.) That is, it is far more economical to build two or three “generating” power plants at 400 to 500 mile intervals – and use a conventional overhead network of power lines at 150,000 to 250,000 volts that you can actually connect to rather than build a multi-billion AC-DC-AC tie. Ties are important for grid-grid ties, and for underwater transmissions – like in the European islands – but only for those very expensive, very limited places. For hooking up real users? You need to use a conventional 150,000 – 250,000 cross-country line. Losses go down for the higher voltages in such a conventional line by the I^2R law, but the extra voltage gets very, very expensive quickly!
(North New Hampshire’s NPS is attempting to tie into Canada’s hydro power from Niagara Falls just over the hills. That effort is going to take over ten years and 1.2 billion dollars – for a net distance less than a eastern Dallas suburb to a western Fort Worth suburb. For 1.2 billion dollars, you can build quite a few conventional plants that will actually generate real power close to the place where it will be actually be used, rather than “lose power” through heat losses merely moving power from one place to another!)
I thought I might take this opportunity to post the time line as published in the Dallas Morning News titled:
Freeze knocked out coal plants and natural gas supplies, leading to blackouts
By ELIZABETH SOUDER, S.C. GWYNNE and GARY JACOBSON
Published 06 February 2011 12:56 AM
and do so under the Fair Use provision of the copyright act:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Texas’ power crisis timeline
Monday
Jan. 31 6:08 a.m.: ERCOT control room issues an operational message that says a cold front is approaching. Temperatures are expected to be 18 degrees or lower and remain near or below freezing, affecting half or more of major metropolitan areas, beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Tuesday
9:07 a.m.: ERCOT repeats its weather warning.
Before midnight: Gibbons Creek coal-fired generating plant near Bryan goes offline. It would be back up at midday Wednesday, off again late that day and up again early Thursday.
Wednesday
After midnight: Four of Luminant’s coal-fired units in Central Texas go offline, as does one unit at a CPS Energy coal-fired plant in San Antonio. Officials decline to give specific times. The CPS unit is back up again by 11 a.m.
2:49 a.m.: ERCOT control issues an advisory because it doesn’t expect to have enough power generation to meet demand. “Physical Responsive Capability” is below 3,000 megawatts.
3:21 a.m.: ERCOT e-mails that notification to Public Utility Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman and other top regulators. The advisory rates the probability of cutting off customers as “low.”
3:30 a.m.: Real-time settlement point price for electricity in North Texas is $80.95 a megawatt hour. Some electricity in Texas trades on an electronic spot market, where retailers and big consumers can buy power each day from wholesalers.
3:45 a.m.: Settlement price jumps to $1,117.60 a megawatt hour. Prices typically spike on the spot market when supplies are tight.
5:08 a.m.: ERCOT control issues “watch” because Physical Responsive Capability is below 2,500 MW.
5:18 a.m.: ERCOT declares Level 2A of Energy Emergency Alert, meaning the grid has less than 1,750 megawatts of available reserves, a thin margin. ERCOT cuts power to customers who agreed to be part of an interruptible load program.
5:20 a.m.: ERCOT CEO Trip Doggett is in the shower when the emergency notification comes in. When he sees the notice, he calls Ken Saathoff, ERCOT’s vice president of grid operations, to gather information. He then spends half an hour calling the three PUC members, the PUC executive director and one of the governor’s advisers. He then drives to ERCOT’s back-up control room in Austin and begins calling legislators.
5:43 a.m.: ERCOT declares a Level 3 EEA, the highest emergency level, meaning the grid is struggling to maintain system frequency at 59.8 Hz or greater. ERCOT instructs power line utilities to use rolling outages to cut demand.
5:52 a.m.: PUC chairman Smitherman gets a call from ERCOT’s market monitor, Dan Jones. Smitherman, sick in bed with a sinus infection, doesn’t answer. He takes a call from Doggett at 6:23, and heads to the backup control room, canceling a speaking engagement at Texas A&M University. He will spend much of the day coordinating with leaders of other state agencies to move more fuel to power plants.
6:14 a.m.: Austin Energy issues a news release about rolling blackouts statewide.
6:15 a.m.: Settlement price hits $3,001 megawatt hour.
6:54 a.m.: ERCOT issues a news release about rolling blackouts statewide.
8 a.m.: ERCOT asks Oncor to exclude natural gas compressor facilities from the rolling blackouts. Oncor asks for specific customers, but ERCOT isn’t able to provide names.
After 8:30 a.m.: A coal unit at NRG Energy’s Limestone plant near Jewett goes offline. It comes back just after 2 a.m. Thursday.
9:30 a.m.: ERCOT asks Oncor to exclude from the blackouts five counties in the heart of the natural gas production zone: Jack, Palo Pinto, Wise, Parker and Hood. Oncor does. Half an hour later, ERCOT asks Oncor to exclude areas west of Fort Worth from the blackouts, and Oncor complies. Oncor sends crews to repair lingering outages.
11:04 a.m.: ERCOT sends an e-mail to Atmos and other natural gas companies asking for the location of any facilities affected by the outages. Atmos’ pipeline equipment runs on natural gas and is not affected.
Midday: Natural gas supply to Atmos’ system drops off as gas well equipment freezes. Producers struggle to get workers to the field to repair the equipment in the cold. Atmos curtails supply to industrial customers between Interstate 30 and the Red River.
Luminant asks Atmos for a large supply of natural gas to fire up the Lake Ray Hubbard natural gas plant. Atmos declines, saying the request would shut off its residential customers and shut down part of Atmos’ system, requiring weeks to return everyone to service. Atmos offers to move the large supply to Luminant’s DeCordova plant in Hood County, but Luminant doesn’t take the offer.
2:13 p.m.: ERCOT calls off rotating blackouts. ERCOT warns it may have to initiate another round of outages that evening or the following day, but it doesn’t have to do so.
.
As I said, it depends on your technique(s)
Also please note the other long lines mentioned (AC lines I think) and also please note some losses are due to dielectric losses in transmission lines (esp. underwater and underground HV xmission), not just the simple I2R losses due to series wire resistance (corona also another issue). An RF guy can grasp this concept quite quickly, non-RF guys not so much … also consideration must be made for the RMS vs ‘peak’ AC voltage relationship, and for a not-so-insignificant portion of the AC waveform the ‘instantaneous’ voltage is far below the maximum the line is capable of carrying (not to mention that 3-phase -and three conductors- is mandatory for any sort of AC transmission; reasons not enumerated here) … not so with DC:
“HVDC can carry more power per conductor because, for a given power rating, the constant voltage in a DC line is lower than the peak voltage in an AC line. The power delivered is defined by the root mean square (RMS) of an AC voltage, but RMS is only about 71% of the peak voltage. The peak voltage of AC determines the actual insulation thickness and conductor spacing. Because DC operates at a constant maximum voltage, this allows existing transmission line corridors with equally sized conductors and insulation to carry more power into an area of high power consumption than AC, which can lower costs.” – quick excerpt from wikip
More: DC vs AC for power transmission: http://transmissiondesignhub.blogspot.com/2010/09/spotlight-high-voltage-direct-current.html
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Oddity of the pacific intertie losing 25% of its power to heat is a direct result of the oddity of thought processes of Californians. We will not allow the power to be produced but we insist on being able to consume it when we so desire. New Hampshirites seem to be equally odd in their thinking.
One other advantage of Very High Voltage DC over AC is that “all” of the AC current is carried through the three phase lines. If you look at the details of the (very expensive) DC terminal stations, you’ll see that many are “grounding” one side of the DC circuit. Thus, half the power isn’t carried through the lines. Which is good.
However, now you face two very expensive AC_DC converter stations at each end of the line. And no practical way to “export” power from the HVDC lines between the two to nearby cities or intermediate commercial users. To do that, you need extra AC-DC converter stations mid-route – rather than very inexpensive substations and remote-operated controllers common to the already existing AC-AC grid.
And each AC-DC station still required the power panels and transformers and operators and the AC-DC conversion losses – usually a net loss of 10+ percent. All going to wasted heat.
Path 65 has a provision to use one side as ‘return’ and the other line (path 65 has two actual overhead ‘lines’ and plus the system can and does make use of earth for ‘return’ while feeding the two overheads as ‘supply’) as supply. (What? Didn’t you read the references I posted?)
I notice you ‘panned’ any gain DC has over AC (due to the sinusoidal waveform) which yields a considerable ‘dead’ or low voltage time as the waveform follows that sinusoidal curve, or the fact the AC waveform on a line has a peak 1.414 times that of the equivalent DC (RMS) necessitating higher working-voltage hardware for that entire HV transmission circuit.
Now, pls give it a rest R. A. Cook Prof Eng, or we’ll be at this all night nitpicking and I haven’t even started yet … better yet, post something relevant on the recent ‘power event’ in Texas.
On another subject, do you want to know what the ‘line slip’ (cumulative cycle-slipping b/c of the AC mains falling below 60 Hz for an extended time) was over the last four days?
Here’s my data (my circuit was never cut as a part of the rolling blackouts so I was able to maintain ‘phase continuity’ with pre-blackout grid frequency):
18 secs lagging, Wed morning
13 secs lagging, Thurs
11 secs lagging, Fri
1 sec lagging, Sat *Recovered all lost cycles from Wed. event*
3 secs lagging, Sun Slipped a little overnight, seen to recover during the day.
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BillyBob says:
February 5, 2011 at 11:24 pm
“http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T110131002852.htm”
They’re just surveying for methane ice deposits i.e. where and how much. The article explicitely states there is no way at this time to economically recover the methane as methane ice is unstable and only exists at low temperatures and high pressures. I reiterate – no one is even close to figuring out how to economically recover methane from methane ice.
“Dave Springer: “What actually gets purchased and consumed is, on average, 10% of faceplate capacity.””
“So the money to build the Tubines was squandered. As I thought.”
Non sequitur. It means that most of the time cheaper sources of electricity (read natural gas and coal) are meeting total demand. I’ve never claimed that wind turbines were the least costly way to generate electricity.
“Dave, the report damning wind farms is here:
http://www.texasahead.org/tax_programs/chapter313/TEDA2010-96-1359.pdf”
No. This is a damning report on local school districts gaming the system. They are cutting tax abatement deals with primarily (66%) manufacturing companies and secondarily with renewable energy companies (33%). The reduction in school tax revenues is made up by school tax levelization where revenues from richer districts are shared with poorer districts. Some school districts in remote, rural areas who are already poor are making themselves poorer through these abatements and soaking the richer school districts for the difference. In addition to that they are getting remuneration from the companies getting the tax breaks in the form of payments made to local non-school programs and in this manner are effectively gaming the school tax revenue sharing program so that wealthier school districts in other states are funding non-school-related programs in the poorer districts.
“Combs stated that the cost to the state per job is nearly $1.6 million, roughly 40 times more than the cost per job under the Texas Enterprise Fund”
Yeah, that’s what happens when the system gets gamed as I described above. The local school districts in the rural wind farm locations are effectively robbing rich metropolitan school districts and putting the money into local projects that have nothing to do with either education or renewable energy.
Combs made recommendations to the legislature on how to fix the system so it can’t be gamed in this manner. Note she didn’t recommend not giving school-tax breaks to renewable energy companies but rather fixing the loopholes that allow those districts to game the system to get money for non-educational and non-renewable energy projects.
More on the new Luminant coal plants that failed: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20110210-luminant-broken-coal-plants-lacked-winter-weather-experience.ece?action=reregister
And I use “failed” in what I consider it’s common usage. As in…it was expected to work and didn’t. Mike must have a different definition, if he describes wind as “failing” 43% of the time.
But let’s go with that…wind “fails” 43% of the time, yet we’ve had one near-blackout in 2008 because of it. The Luminant plants and a bunch others “failed” once and we get blackouts. I realize that correlation isn’t causation, but that’s a whole buncha correlation.
Bryan – Try this : Wind is known to fail much of the time so is not relied on.
Mike, in your OP, you wrote:
Now, because of relying so much on wind power, the state is suffering blackouts.
So, which is it? Is wind relied on or not?
Why can’t you admit that your original premises were wrong? Once you get past it, you can write many posts as you’d like about how wind turbines are a lousy investment, a waste of resources, undeserving of subsidies, etc. , and you’d have a fighting chance to be on the right side of the argument.
Bryan,
Are you referring to the Mike Smith who wrote the original post at Meteorological Musings? If so, I don’t know what you are talking about. I have not posted on this blog since two days after I wrote the initial post. I have nothing to “get over.”
There are at least two other posters with the name “Mike” and someone else who apparently is also named “Mike Smith.” I suspect that is where the confusion lies.
Mike Smith of Meteorological Musings
Too many Mikes. I post only as “Mike Jonas” – which is my real name – never just “Mike” or + anything else.