From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Sounds like Texas is getting fed up with its electricity system being increasingly put at risk by wind and solar power.
After years of papering over the cracks with half hearted proposals, it appears that the State Legislature will formally pass a law requiring all generators, not just new ones, to be fully dispatchable.
Ed Ireland has the story:
In 2021, Winter Storm Uri pushed Texas’s electricity grid to the brink, with just 4 minutes and 37 seconds from total collapse. Snow, ice, and freezing temperatures covered all 254 counties in the State for five days, starting February 13. Wind turbines froze, overcast skies incapacitated solar panels, some natural gas wells experienced freeze-offs, and even coal plants struggled with frozen equipment.
As power generators failed and electricity demand skyrocketed, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) ordered rolling blackouts across Texas. Some local utilities unknowingly cut power to areas with electric natural gas compressors, which stopped gas flows to generating stations, causing more outages. (The Railroad Commission of Texas created a new division, Critical Infrastructure, so this problem would never happen again.) The grid’s frequency dropped dangerously below 60 hertz, nearly crashing, but a slight drop in demand and the recovery of some generation saved the grid from total collapse, which could have required weeks to recover from a “black” start of the grid.
Since then, ERCOT, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), and lawmakers have repeatedly vowed to prevent another near-disaster. They have proposed ideas such as:
- Weatherization requirements for power plants to handle extreme cold (passed in 2021 via Senate Bill 3).
- Incentives for building more dispatchable power, specifically natural gas plants, such as the Texas Energy Fund (House Bill 1500, 2023).
- Market reforms prioritize reliable power, such as the Performance Credit Mechanism, which was debated but not implemented.
None of these proposals squarely addressed the grid reliability problem until Texas House Bill 3356 and Senate Bill 715 were recently approved by legislative committees and could become law. These bills set new reliability rules for all ERCOT power generators, not just new ones. They require all power generators on ERCOT, including wind and solar, to be dispatchable, meaning they can quickly adjust to meet demand.
To comply, generators must either build their own backup power, such as battery energy storage systems (BESS), or contract with others to provide their backup power.
Read the full post here.
It’s time we did the same here!
And they are still going with this stupid battery crap. Morons. Build gas, coal, hydro and nuclear electricity generation plants NOW, idiots. Wind and solar are total failures and this battery crap is going to be 1000% worse.
Fire them (the morons, not the batteries)!
Yep. The batteries go on fire by themselves, they don’t need any help from us.
You beat me to it! 😄😆😅🤣😂
Ah, but that is the subtlety.
It doesn’t apparently go against renewables. Only demands that they step up to the reliability plate. Of course they can, but at such enormous costs that they will simply disappear instead.
Ed Ireland’s full post is here:
https://edireland.substack.com/p/texas-laws-aim-to-stabilize-ercot
The link in the article above goes to a yahoo mail login.
This forces providers of intermittent power to arrange their own back-up. This will finally put renewables on the same economic footing as reliable power.
The only economic footing “renewables” need to be on is the trash heap.
LCOE – one of the most celebrated cost measure by the wind and solar advocates, yet one of the most deceptive cost measure
it doesnt include the costs of stability and costs of intermittency. LCOE grossly understates the true cost of renewables.
Lazards who came up with the initial LCOE finally admitted in 2024 that it did not take account of the costs of intermittency and providing power when the wind or the sun could not meet load demand. They also assumed an operating life for new natural gas plants of only 20 years when 30 – 40 years is often the case.
Unfortunately people like Nick Stokes haven’t noticed this yet.
Natural gas reciprocating compression 60-80 years, not 30-40,
There is a big difference between “haven’t noticed” and “ignored.” One is ignorance, the other is intentional.
LCOE is a greatly simplified metric favoring the payback of guaranteed loans on energy investments that, without government guarantees, would not be viable. LCOE explicitly front loads the loan payback by discounting the payback over 15 years, for example. LCOE values returns over a longer term at zero $- meaning that a coal or gas or nuclear power plant lasting 45-75 years is valued at zero $ after 15 years. That was Lazard’s purpose – to ensure bankers make out like the bandits they are, but with minimum risk. The list of costs NOT included in LCOE is long and was deselected to favor intermittent renewable energy over base energy. Computing the full cost of electricity (energy): FCOE, by including the omitted costs, reverses the costs of base power and intermittent renewable energy.
“ … and could become law”.
I will withhold applause until such event occurs.
Meanwhile, it’s time to stop paying first and premium prices for wind and solar electricity – especially at midday when demand is low.
Pinch off the money, strangle the rat.
It should also be law that providers must bid to supply purely on price and not based on any ‘renewables priority’, meaning renewables will have to compete in the open market without assistance. They should be ok though, as the greenies keep saying renewables are cheaper </sarc>.
The subsidy miners have quite a lobby. And it gets rationalized as being a federal program.
Unfortunately, government has become just a trafficker in other people’s money.
Yes, the “bagman” for the renewables families.
The families made the Dems an offer they couldn’t refuse –
re-directing their voters to Bernie Sanders et al.
Just a start, but a good start. At worse it will have people ask “what is dispatchable energy”? And when they get their question answered they’ll start questioning wind and solar ‘renewables’.
In a world of “global warming” the irony is thick that these measures are needed to ensure the energy system stays up due to freezing temperatures/weather.
“Some local utilities unknowingly cut power to areas with electric natural gas compressors, which stopped gas flows to generating stations, causing more outages.”
This is one of the greatest lunacies in energy production. Instead of using nat. gas. to run the compressors as was done for decades, it gets sent to the power plant to generate electricity that is sent back to the pump station to run the compressors. More points of failure at less overall efficiency. This seems like the winner for the Most Moronic Engineering of All Time award.
But wasn’t the change imposed by Government regulators? No surprise that it is moronic.
Well, I have always said that, in this world, there are only two things one can rely on: death and Texas!
😉
“Force Renewables to Be Dispatchable”
Can’t really do that – use half of windmills as motors to blow wind at the other half of windmills used as generators?
I’m still bothered by the “blow your own sail” episode of the long defunct tv show Mythbusters.
It worked well in the old cartoons.
i saw the same episode. if i recall they did manage to get some forward motion. what they failed to account for was the thrust vectors created by the sail deforming and directing a small amount of air to the rear.
In Barbarella also!
Any dispatcher at even a small “municipal” utility could have told you this 25 years ago.
Replacing a known-to-work system of electric generation and delivery with an unproved technology is simply bad governance.
Real world testing has showed this.
More than once. More than Spain.
Critical thinking told anyone capable of such before they built the first subsidy and mandate “farm.”
Grid connected wind or solar IS IDIOTIC.
The elected officials in NYC need to start wearing plaid jackets so they look like the used car salesmen they are.
And, of course, once they separate you from your money, they will never see you again.
I believe the look was dubbed “The Full Cleveland” many years ago.
We could solve nearly all our problems with two actions. Withdraw all energy and transportation net zero mandates and require all energy sources be dispatchable.
Lol!
A subtle move that seems very small, but which will destroy the renewables industry, taking the costs over the edge of profitability.
Finally. A great albeit late requirement!! All generation to grids must be dispatchable….meaning “make up” capacity/energy sources on-site before grid connection!!
Hope this gets through!
And Trump EO’s it for all states.
Will Abbott sign it? It makes perfect sense, but will he?
Maybe someday birds will return to the I-40 pan handle region of Texas
They should have been made dispatchable from the very beginning!!
Why, when the sun is out and the wind is blowing and the grid is maxed out with all the power it can handle and the spot price goes negative, why are solar and wind being paid to produce even more power.
Pay solar and wind the spot price like everyone else and the grid will fix itself.
Penalize solar and wind when they don’t deliver, like everyone else, and the grid will fix itself.
Make solar and wind play by the exact same price and delivery rules as every other power provider and the grid will fix itself.
If the grid is overloaded with too much power, solar and wind still get paid to produce even more power. No one else gets this break. Everyone else is penalized with negative prices to stop over-generating
Expensive Wind and Solar Systems
The over-taxed, over-regulated taxpayers and ratepayers are paying at very high c/kWh for electricity and Heat Pump heating/cooling and for EV driving.
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They pay for:
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1) all sorts of highly subsidized, expensive wind/solar systems that disturb the grid with weather-dependent, variable, intermittent electricity, which has caused expensive brownouts/blackouts, as in Spain/Portugal, and many other places, over the years.
2) all sorts of grid expansion to connect all these far-flung wind/solar systems to the grid,
3) grid reinforcements to ensure the grids do not crash during periods with higher levels of wind/solar power
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In cases of too much wind/solar power, it needs to be curtailed; Owners still get paid for what they could have produced.
In cases of too little wind/solar power, other generators need to increase outputs to meet demand, 24/7/365.
Synchronous Inertia Serves to Stabilize the Grid
Closing down traditional plants (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro), with rotating generators that provide SYNCHRONOUS inertia, de-stabilizes the grid; a death sentence for the grid.
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Wind/solar systems provide ZERO SYNCHRONOUS inertia, because their variable outputs are digitized, then reconstituted into an artificial sine wave with the same phase and frequency as the grid.
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Connections Between Grids
Almost all grids have connections to other grids for import and export purposes.
Those connections usually are high-voltage, direct-current lines, HVDC
Such connections transfer power, but transfer ZERO SYNCHRONOUS inertia to other grids.
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Reactive Power
No AC grid can operate without reactive power
Wind/solar systems take reactive power FROM the grid
All traditional power plants provide reactive power TO the grid
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The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent, wind/solar feed-ins to the grid often create transmission faults.
Those faults can be minimized with synchronous condenser systems to provide reactive power TO the grid.
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Any energy systems analyst would know Spain/Portugal-like blackout problems would eventually happen, before a single wind/solar system were connected to the grid, but naive, woke, non-technical enviros do not want to listen to the pros.
Full speed ahead over the cliff, you go, unless all this wind, solar, battery nonsense is stopped dead by taking away the overly generous subsidies.
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Net Zero to reduce CO2 by 2050 is a very expensive suicide pact.
We need higher CO2 ppm in the atmosphere for increased greening of the world, to support abundant fauna, and to increase crop yields to feed 8 billion people.