How bad did Ercot drop the ball...

NBC 5 news reporting from Ercot that we were 4 minutes and 37 seconds away from blackouts that could have lasted months. MONTHS!! Wow.

Ercot making themselves the heros now....

Great handle

Yep, they started trying to spread that narrative the day after the outtages began. Weird how they don't explain just how they saved us all from weeks or months without power.

Sad and pathetic.
I try to not get emotionally invested in things I don’t have control over, but this is testing my resolution.

We’re they insinuating that physical damage would occur all over taking months to fix ?

What happens during and over load ? Does some giant breaker fry some where ?

They are saying the rolling blackouts they implemented saved the grid from overload causing a major crash. Not saying I completely buy that but that is their “excuse”. I would like to know how many on the board were personally affected by the blackouts. Somehow I am picking they were spared the inconvenience unlike the rest of us. About all I can say it whatever it takes corrective action has to be implemented so this will not repeat. I will be very interested on what comes out of these hearings.

Texas' power grid was minutes from collapse during Winter Storm Uri last week, officials of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) admitted on Wednesday.

Bill Magness, ERCOT's chief executive told the Wall Street Journal that the grid operator came close to losing control of the system through the night on February 15.

Magness explained that the storm caused the grid's operating frequency to fall to dangerous levels, which prompted ERCOT to try and stabilize it by ordering the state’s electricity providers to cut 5 gigawatts of power to customers.

He said that just before 2am, the frequency of the grid fell significantly below the normal level of 60 hertz and stayed below 60 hertz for more than 4 minutes until the company ordered more blackouts, according to the Journal.

Magness said had the frequency stayed below 60 hertz for nine minutes or more, power generators and other equipment could've suffered damage and resulted in uncontrolled outages that could have caused the entire grid to fail.

'That is the thing we cannot allow to happen,' Magness told the Journal. 'If we have a blackout of the system, the system is out for an indeterminate amount of time and it’s extraordinarily difficult to bring it back.'

I happened to be awake at the time mentioned above and can attest that the compressor on my heat pump started making a load noise like it was losing power (frequency) similar to a brown out before I shut it down. A couple of minutes later the power went out for good. Of course all of the above does not address the true multiple causes of the capacity shortfall.

ERCOT manages what is available. I have no idea what they prevented from happening, but if anything like they claim, it would have been disastrous. Plenty of blame to go around, including PUC and legislators who chose not to have safeguards in place. We need to hold them accountable. And even us, the consumers who have also not properly insulated our homes, with alternative energy sources. Will it change? Maybe but probably not as the cost will be significant to retrofit generators and natural gas plants. Regulations that require those changes will be necessary and we are not in a regulatory mood now.

So we have even worse systemic problems than the lack of secure power when we need it most. Check. Got it. Texas can no longer rely on power during heat and cold weather events and we should be thankful it's not worse.

This is 3rd world stuff. The EPA has a hand in this as generating capacity has been cut over the years by forcing coal fired plants offline.

Must be Trump's fault.

Ercot manages the grid that moves power from the generating plants to the distribution stations. They have NO control of the generating companies. Those companies have failed to update their infrastructure and 6 of 13 plants went offline due to equipment failures. You can’t manage what you don’t have!

I'm not sure I understand how low frequency could cause the system to crash.

I struggled with that too. It seems that the low frequency would damage the generators beyond repair at power generating stations. This is where the months of downtime would come from if they would have to replace the machinery. Maybe the low frequency would destroy windings and such . . . just a guess from me.

Having spent 35 years working at gas fired power plants, I can say that the damage caused by a low frequency blackout would probably take a couple of months to repair. The biggest problem in trying to repair things is parts availability. None of the plants keep any inventory on hand like they did 25 or 30 years ago. Next would be the manpower. Knowledgable people are not standing on the curb waiting on a job and every plant would need them.
I talked to the control operator at the plant where I worked about 15 minutes after the power went off and he was still so shook up he could hardly talk. And this guy has been a control operator for 20 years and has just about seen it all.

Here's my guess... They'd have to shut everything down to protect equipment if the frequency got to low. Once you've shut everything off you are in trouble. I would think it would be impossible to bring it all online at the same time. So it would be like hooking a small generator into your panel at home with all the breakers on. It would instantly trip when you fired it up. You'd need to shut them all off and turn them on one at a time while you added generation capacity. How many breakers "transformers" would they have to shut off manually and turn on manually to get this to happen? How long would that take?! Anyway, that's just a guess on my part.

As said before: once the WWII generation died out of running things, the whole system fell apart within 10 years. Roads, infrastructure, power - all of it (except games - we've got some great I-phone based gamers now).

Doesn't bode well.

Texas should check and update/upgrade other infrastructure while they are fixing the energy grid.
Water
Natural gas
Communications
Roads

Overall maintenance and preparedness.
Deregulation and free market competition are great as long as there is an authority to make sure quality control is maintained.

China is waiting!

I suspect many have know this has been a problem for a while, the lack of winterization, capacity, etc. You can't say this is unpredictable because we have weather records going back over a hundred years as well as population/growth data.

Absolutely predictable.
Slaps on the wrist 1988 and 2011.
The severity of this storm was predicted 3 weeks in advance by all the meteorlogists/computer models.

Let's compare our "grid / system / setup" with those in the upper Midwest that routinely get that sub-freezing weather.........they don't have state wide outages or reports of catastrophic collapse.

"We're Texas, we don't need nobody to tell us how to run our 'lectrical system."

Their grid is built for negative temperatures because that’s what routinely happens every winter. Ours is built for 105° summer temperatures, because that’s what we routinely get here. Houses in Montana aren’t built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, either.

I’m not saying the recommendations to winter-proof the plants shouldn’t have been done, nor am I saying that is the sole reason we almost lost the grid (because it’s not, and I’m very interested to see what shakes out, because I think it’s going to be a combination of the war on coal, green energy, not building for severe cold, ERCOT, PUC, Feds, state government and maybe more).

People from the northeast and Midwest were laughing at us all week, while not understanding we don’t have snow plows and salt trucks like they do because we get snow or ice for a couple of days and not a week of single digits and snow routinely. We can afford to wait a day until it’s 68° the next day and it melts. I have a college buddy that lives outside of Pittsburgh. His parents’ house has a gas furnace and window units, no central AC. Blew my mind, until I realized it just doesn’t get that hot there. A lot of us have heat pumps, which I’m sure people are wishing wasn’t the case after last week.

Improvements to the grid need to be made. This is twice in a decade that the grid was stressed by winter weather and nearly suffered a catastrophic event. It needs to be fixed, but comparing it to the Midwest doesn’t make anymore sense than saying the Upper Peninsula should be built for two months of 105° in the summer.

Those same people laughing would probably melt with 10 days over 100 and nights at 95 degrees. They look at living in the cold weather as a badge of toughness. Its apples and oranges.

Abbott got his best robotic act out yesterday and emphatically stated this would be fixed. We'll see if recommendations are made or mandates will happen this time.

Give it a rest slimey. It's not a political problem.

You try to make everything about politics.

Rolling blackouts could continue in Dakotas, Minnesota as winter tests region's power grid

How bad did ERCOT drop the ball?
Let's see, $$$$$$ of damage and at minimum so far, 12 people dead simply from having no electricity.

The media and ERCOT claiming they decisions "helped and saved" from bigger disasters?

I don't believe a word the media says these days!

...------

As bad as ERCOT may (or may not) be, I promise you the Feds can make it worse. And at the same time make it more expensive.

20 other states have lower average electricity costs than Texas. Which frankly is bizarre given our access to fossil fuels.

Looks to be mostly states with moderate/temperate climates; but Oklahoma really stands out at #10--they get extremely cold and extremely hot every year.

Maybe number of nuclear power plants and population and population density are significant factors also.

The data I pulled showed Oklahoma at the cheapest, 8.8 cents per kWh on average. Louisianan and Georgia both cheaper than Texas. Anyway, the point is Texas doesn't have some magic formula here. The best solution in my mind are Nuclear Power Plants. Clean, safe, cheap. It's far easier to winterize a few dozen nuclear plants than it is to winterize tens of thousands of gas wells, wind mills, and solar panels.

God's Country

You may find this of interest:
https://www.power-grid.com/td/for-texas-the-past-was-not-prologue-in-the-2021-electricity-fiasco/

Amen to that

Where did you pull data from? I looked at the Federal site yesterday and Texas was 43rd out of 51 (includes DC).

From the article"
But what happened in Texas on February 14-18, 2021 was an event that was not foreseen and could not have been predicted mostly because of the sheer numbers involved. Because the temps were so cold and so many generators couldn’t generate electricity (another article for another time) ERCOT turned to rolling blackouts. But, the rolling blackouts that should normally only last a couple of hours turned into multiple days and that led to all kinds of disastrous consequences.

Like machinist, my brother has worked at the NRG plant at Jewett for 30+ years. He works on the old coal burners and they were not given permission to start generating until Monday Feb 15. This came from the Fed's and was a little late. You can't take a huge plant like that and get her up and generating with the flip of a switch. Now factor into that challenge the severe cold and it becomes even more difficult.

I haven't heard how many plants were offline prior to Feb 15 but things certainly would have been different if they had brought them online the week prior.

https://paylesspower.com/blog/electric-rates-by-state/

Relieved to see Constellation confirming my fixed rate. Note the temp difference from the previous week.

Then explain why recommendations weren't followed from 2011. I suspect it was because the PUC feared upsetting energy-related political donors. Recommendations were made at that time instead of mandates. Big difference. Smells of politics to me. Let's see what happens this time. Abbott's rant means nothing until we see some actions that speak.

I figured it out, ercot hired amerigas to run the grid.

has to be it.

At least you got someone to answer the phone. Everyone involved with the grid was unavailable - too busy blaming it on green energy.

Again this is from my brother who is on the frontline, he works at the coal burning power plant in Jewett. He just posted this and I found it interesting that we never hear or actually understand what's taking place.

During the joint hearing of State Affairs and Energy Resources Representative Phil King fed the wind generation representative a bogus statistic of an average price of $28-30 per megawatt hour when questioning the wind rep about federal subsidies allotted to wind that they are paid at a minimum of $23/megawatt hour. In fact the average megawatt price is $11-18 unless you are in a severe heating or cooling weather event. 100° in Texas is not considered extreme, however prices will elevate above the mean. Thermal units (coal, gas, biomass, nuclear) with exception of nuclear (due to less than stable conditions at less than 85-90% output) are generally backed down during this time to the lowest achievable stable megawatt loads to make room for wind generation.

The wind representative did NOT correct King, instead he ran with that number and outright lied to hide the fact that they are still making money in an unfairly priced market down to a minimum on average of -$7 to -$12 per megawatt hour on the low side.

As I stated before, some subsidies allow for profit down to a -$60/megawatt hour price point. Stable load thermal units cannot compete with that. Nuclear being the exception at a mean bid out price of $6-9/megawatt hour, because the price per megawatt at each plant is based off of fuel costs among other things. Nuclear however, brings a whole new danger to the picture during a prolonged grid down event, which as ERCOT stated could have taken a month if we had blacked out last week.

All of the plants didn’t ignore the winterizen mandates. All of the TXU plants implemented the recommendations. I know this will sound strange but the time to work on freeze protection is in the spring and fall. Most plants run in the summer so it is not feasible to work on it. You don’t do it in winter because if you uncover a pipe and get a cold snap it could freeze. When the plants have outages/overhauls you make sure to put new heat trace on anything uncovered. The initial cost may be high but it is not hard or expensive to keep it up once repaired right.

I watched some of the testimony before the Texas Senate. I didn’t see any plant operators testifying but maybe they did. The ones that went down should have been answering questions.

There have been a lot of plants torn down since deregulation. Most got older and weren’t efficient enough to compete. The PH Robinson plant in Baycliff was one of the largest natural gas fired plants in the nation.it’s gone

Nobody is going to put up the expense to keep a plant in a ready state to just run once in a blue moon.

Deregulation had a lot to do with last weeks power generation problem.

Expensive to deliver to dense urban areas. Most the states with lower costs have much lower population and smaller cities.
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