Guest repost from Chuck DeVore
There are two general reasons for Texas’ prolonged power outages
Green New Deal would create ‘more events’ like Texas power outage: Rick Perry
Rick Perry, former Energy Secretary and former Texas governor, discusses the potential impacts of progressive energy policies on ‘America Reports.’
As Texas entered a deep freeze on Feb. 14, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio broke seven record lows over three days. Ice-laden trees snapped power lines. Wind turbines ground to a halt while some reliable natural gas, coal and nuclear plants failed to get energy to the grid. Electricity demand hit an all-time high – but the supply wasn’t available, plunging some four million Texans into the cold and darkness.
As massive gas-powered turbines spun down across Texas and the lights went out, an aggressive narrative spun up: the electric grid failed in Texas, not because wind and solar failed, but due to a lack of regulatory power to force the electric industry – from natural gas producers to pipeline operators to power generators, and lastly, the transmission line firms – to winterize. It was a failure of Texas’ unregulated free market. And further, this extreme weather event was a harbinger of more to come due to climate change, necessitating even more wind and solar power.
This narrative, pushed out by the renewable industry and environmentalists, found a sympathetic mouthpiece in corporate media.
The narrative is wrong.
There are three electric grids in the continental U.S with Texas having its own grid providing power to about 90% of Texans. This electrical independence allows Texans to escape a certain amount of federal meddling in its electric affairs – though it also makes Texans largely responsible for their own problems.
Addressing those problems, the Texas Legislature held marathon hearings a week after the freeze. That testimony, and an increasing flow of information from operators on the ground, has produced a more complete picture of what went wrong during a storm that plunged Texas into a deep freeze colder than most of Alaska.
There are two general reasons for Texas’ prolonged power outages, one proximate to the storm and involving a series of on-the-ground mistakes and cold-related failures, and one the result of long-term policy.
However, it was the policy failures over 20 years that allowed the storm-related failures to become persistent and deadly.
It’s important to note that had every Texas generator powered by natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydro operated at full output during the height of the storm’s demand, Texas still would have experienced planned blackouts. That Texas’ grid has become increasingly dependent on unreliable wind and solar is largely to blame for this critical shortfall.
Federal and state tax policy have encouraged the overbuilding of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar power, resulting in cheap, subsidized power flooding the Texas grid. This inexpensive but unreliable power has acted as a powerful disincentive to build needed natural gas power plants.
In the past five years, Texas saw an increase of about 20,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity with a net loss of 4,000 megawatts of gas and coal-fired powerplants. This 4,000 megawatts, had it been built or not prematurely retired, would have saved lives during the 2021 St. Valentine’s Day Storm.
Because ERCOT, Texas’ grid operator, didn’t have enough reliable safety margin meant that when things started to go wrong on early Monday morning, they got worse fast.
So, did the unusually cold weather cause power plant failures?
Winter isn’t over, but Texas – and California and other Western states – are at increased risk of blackouts this summer.
We know that wind turbines were affected, with half of them freezing up. Over the course of 2019, Texas wind produced about 34% of its capacity – from hour-to-hour and season-to-season, sometimes more than 70%, sometimes close to zero. At one point during the storm, solar was producing no electricity while wind produced about 1% of its potential output. Since electricity must be produced the moment it is needed, that meant that natural gas power plants had to make up the shortfall.
The emerging data from thermal – gas, coal, and nuclear – power plants suggests that there were some cold-related failures. But, as ERCOT struggled to keep the lights on, the grid became unstable, tripping additional power plants offline to protect their massive generators from destructive interaction with a fluctuating line frequency.
As ERCOT issued the order to start load shedding – rotating blackouts – some of the darkened circuits included vital oil and gas infrastructure. This uncoordinated move starved natural gas power plants of their fuel – leading to a further loss of power and the widespread and incorrect rumor that wellhead and pipeline freeze off contributed to the disaster.
When these systems lost power, gas production dropped 75%. An Obama-era environmental rule that forced oilfield compressors to switch from natural gas to electric likely made things worse. Eventually, power was restored, and natural gas production ramped back up to meet electricity generation demand.
Winter isn’t over, but Texas – and California and other Western states – are at increased risk of blackouts this summer. This is due to policy that favors unreliables – wind and solar – over reliable electricity from gas, coal and nuclear.
In Texas, it’s an overbuilding of wind. In California, an overbuilding of mandated solar. In both states, this has caused the grid to become increasingly at risk of blackouts at times when nature doesn’t cooperate.
As America builds more wind and solar – with a renewed push from the Biden administration –the costs to prevent blackouts will mount in the form of massive battery farms to store power or increasingly large numbers of backup gas power plants. Instead, we should end subsidies for all energy sources while making wind and solar pay for the reliability costs they impose on the grid.
Chuck DeVore
Vice President of National Initiatives
Texas Public Policy Foundation
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TEXAS
Here is an image of the Texas 2020 generation, by source. When wind is near zero many hours of the year, quick-starting, high-efficiency, combined-cycle, gas-turbine, CCGT, plants have to take up the slack, plus they have to ramp up and down to counteract the variations of wind., 24/7/365
https://www.newsweek.com/how-much-power-texas-renewable-coal-gas-wind-turbines-1570238
Typically, CCGT plants operate near rated capacity to maximize production and revenues. However, with higher levels of wind electricity on the grid, they would have to vary their outputs from about 50% to 100% of rated capacity to counteract the variations of wind; operating below 50% needs to be avoided, because CCGT plants tend to become unstable.
Payments would need to be made to CCGT plant owners for forcing them to:
1) Generate less electricity, than without wind, i.e., operate uneconomically
2) Provide counteracting services, 24/7/365.
As CCGT plants perform the peaking, filling-in and balancing, to counteract variable, intermittent wind and solar electricity on the grid, they would:
1) Operate at varying outputs, which would be produced at lesser efficiency
2) Have lower-than-normal outputs, which would be produced at lesser efficiency
3) Have more frequent cold starts and stops, which would decrease inefficiency
4) The more wind and solar on the grid, the more extreme the output variations, and the more frequent the start/stops.
Less efficient plant operation, and additional wind turbine build-outs means: 1) more Btu/kWh, 2) more CO2/kWh, and 3) more wear and tear, and 4) more grid augmentation/expansion/storage.
PS HOW DO I ATTACH AN IMAGE FROM MY MAC DESKTOP?
When you type a comment, SE of the comment box is a little picture icon. Click, and you will be invited to point to an image in your computer folders to be uploaded.
Thank you.
I went to Preview, clicked Export, in the window selected png to convert it, saved it to my desktop, and, voila, image appeared!!
Here is the image, I hope
Fixed it for ya
AGW,
Thank you
One issue that the article pointed out was that many Texas gas compressors were run by electric motors. This, as the article pointed out, was the reason why natural gas supplies dropped. If 20% of your grid power comes from renewables without backup and you use electric motors to compress natural gas the obvious result is a drop in gas pressure in the pipelines.
Right. Gas pumps powered by electricity coming from sources the gas is built to backup is nonsensical.
“We’re locked out!”
“Great! Where is it?
“Inside the house?”
(Face palm)
Like Texas, California relies on solar and wind for a large percentage of the state’s grid supply. Unlike Texas, California imports more than 30% of the electricity used in the Golden State. Last summer California had rolling black outs because there was too little power available from neighboring States to make up for the unreliable renewables. California is making the energy situation even less stable by pushing all electric homes and EVs while California is shutting down fossil fuel plants. The last remaining nuclear plant will shut down in less than 4 years.
It won’t be long before California will be importing more than 50% of its electricity. This over reliance on unreliable electricity sources will result in massive electricity shortfalls. After the recent energy disaster in Texas, the power industry in California needs to do something to prevent a similar disaster here. Recently, I started to see TV ads advising Californians to power down between 4PM and 9PM. The deceptively titled website below explains the plan.
https://www.energyupgradeca.org/time-of-use/
I suppose that when the inevitable blackouts happen the State of California will be blaming its residents for the blackouts.
CA’s coming problem will be mitigated by the exodus of tens of thousands of people – fewer people; lower need. Further, new inhabitants traipsing in from the Third World are used to rolling blackouts. So I expect the issue to become less urgent, as time passes.
Once upon a time, there was a three-legged stool. It was not your ordinary stool, though. Each leg was different and had its own attributes, but together, they made for a very dependable stool, even if it wasn’t always taken care of properly. The names of the three legs were “Coal”, “Nuclear”, and “Gas”.
Then one day, some very evil, stupid and greedy people called “Blue Greenies” came in with a fourth leg they claimed was far superior (even though it wasn’t). To make way for their fourth leg, called “Renoobles”, they kicked the Coal leg several times, weakening it. Thenceforth, they would always laugh and point at the Coal leg, saying how wobbly it was (even though it still held up quite well, when allowed to).
Now, the Renoobles leg was sometimes strong, and sometimes very weak, so the trick was for the other three legs to make up for when the fourth leg was weak, or even nonexistant. It was up to the other three legs to figure out what to do and when, in order to accomodate this fourth leg. It was suggested that a carpenter be brought in, to further stabilize the stool which was now acting a bit strange. Maybe a brace here and there would do the trick. This got to be quite expensive though, and was annoying to the carpenter – but that’s a different story.
One day, the stool wobbled mightily, and nearly collapsed. Immediately, the evil stupidgreedy people blamed the other three legs, saying they didn’t do their job. Many people without brains eagerly believed them, as they believed in “Renoobles”. It was a big mess, and very sad. The End.
Chuck, thank you for bringing this nicely detailed summary of the problems that affected TX power last month. I had suspected a fair amount of what you have presented, having worked at Reliant Energy some years ago in the customer service call center departments on a team to improve the call center reps’ ability to handle inquiries and complaints. Part of that was learning about myriad failure modes that could affect power delivery to consumers, and having to deal with ERCOT to get information about their role. It seemed to me that this was a nearly perfect storm of interconnected feedback loops where the power generation sources were hitting the others like a complex chain of dominoes all over the state. I don’t feel any satisfaction for understanding this, just disgust over agencies such as ERCOT and others who didn’t live up to their contractual responsibilities to the consumers.
Interesting story in the UK Daily Mail today:
See Daily Mail online.
YOU CANNOT BUILD A RELIABLE ENERGY SUPPLY FROM UNRELIABLE ENERGY SOURCES.
Wind and solar should be ancillary energy sources, best installed at end-users and only to lower the overall demand on the grid. To put such crappy energy sources in the center of the grid and then pretend that the other reliable sources can be retired is just stupid.
In fact, the greater wind and solar energy placed in the grid means that you need to increase the available back up power sources, not decrease them. It’s just dumb or consciously ignoring the realities of unreliable and hyper-expensive energy sources.
Wind and solar are the least green energies on the plant. The most reliable is nuclear and coal, with nuclear the safest of all.
Someone finally caught the switch of compressor drivers from natural gas to electric due to Obama’s Cost of Carbon. There is one thing left that needs answered. Why did the cooling pumps at the nuke go down? Were they “load shed”?
I answered that already for you. The feed pipe to a pressure gauge froze, so the gauge gave a false reading that tripped out the water supply pumps and in turn the reactor.
He has “load shed” on the brain. And as I have explained, the pumps and ancillary equipment in an online gen plant are being powered by said gen plant for all practical purposes. A load shed event will have no effect on a running gen plant’s equipment. One of the two reactors at STP unit 1 was shut down following the tripping of a feedwater pump (or pumps) due to a faulty sensor (which may, or may not, have been related to the cold).
The feed pipe freeze story came from an interview with an STP executive. Regret I can no longer remember exactly where I saw or heard it, and I’ve looked at so much stuff on the blackouts it would take some time to find it again. I think it was a TV clip, which makes it even harder to find.
Nuclear, Nuclear, Nuclear.
The electrical grid should not be used as a toilet to dump your crap energy into and make others pay for it. Generation needs to be capable of responding to load demand. Wind and solar have no ability to do that.
The GE and Siemens plan (begun over a decade ago) is working exactly as planned and ALL of you are biting this con hook line and sinker. Both mega companies market central power equipment and maintenance … that is their main business. Oddly enough they also market 3 blade wind turbines (the crap that failed in Texas and is failing all over the world). Their central power company world wide business dwarfs their “alternative energy” business. Ask yourselves “why would they build a product (3 blade wind turbines) that would take over their core business (central power company)?” Of course that makes no business sense at all, unless the entire thing has been a giant con from the very beginning. The entire point was to 1) through AWEA and CWEA (of which GE and Siemens are leaders) and other lobby groups, promote government subsidies to “help the “green” industries get a foot hold” and then according to plan, turn that into a permanent industry support via things like the “Green New Deal”; 2) get investors like warren buffet to invest billions and make even more based solely on the subsidies thus sucking all funding out of the government and private sources and funneling $ into a few pockets. 3) let this system run until it all comes crashing down one day (ala Texas) and 4) have web pages like whatsupwiththat to promote the failure of the 3 blade monsters and solar when the inevitable collapse finally came along … and here is the punch line boys and girls … to make the case that drumb roll … we have to get back to that good old reliable GE and Siemens central company power. I am going to sell a hook removal device for all of you morons that bought into this hook line and sinker. I will make a fortune.
Unreliables should be charged an intermittency tax that generates the funds needed to provide back up for the times they don’t operate.