Grim Day on the Texas Power Grid

[anorlunda]

• This is an enormous failure, comparable to the "Great Northeast Blackout of 1965".
• Rolling blackouts are being imposed at a time when millions of residential customers need home heating.
• The oil refineries shut down. Expect gasoline/diesel shortages and price spikes nation wide in a few days.
• You can actually see blackouts as negative steps in the green curve below.
• Wholesale prices throughout the state are roughly 2000% higher than normal.
• There is no way to import bulk power to most of the state from outside.

I don't have enough data to diagnose with confidence. The possibilities are:

1. It is a failure of policy -- not enough reserves required.
2. It is a failure of planning -- the needed reserves underforecasted.
3. An extremely unlikely combination of random events.

But like the 65 blackout, or the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, I'm sure this event will be thoroughly investigated and reported in the next year. For now, just add it to the heap of calamities heaped on us in 2020 and 2021. 17 year locusts in the SE USA are due to emerge soon.

source: ercot.com

 

[Klystron]

This link seems a bit frivolous for the EE forum but the Houston Chronicle article describes the human toll of the cold temperatures coupled with widespread power outages. Interviews mention poorly insulated homes and difficulty keeping small children and elder citizens warm without sufficient electricity.

 

[nsaspook]

It's bad all over.

https://www.news9.com/story/602ab8a...-pulls-back-to-energy-emergency-alert-level-2

OKLAHOMA -
The Southwest Power Pool officials said enough power has been generated to shift Oklahoma back to an Energy Emergency Alert level 2.
The SPP first declared an Energy Emergency Alert level 3, which is the highest alert level, on Sunday, meaning that its “operating reserves are below the required minimum,” officials said in a press release.
According to The Southwest Power Pool’s website, it “manages the electric grid across 17 central and western U.S. states and provides energy services on a contract basis to customers.” This includes Oklahoma.
According to a press release, the Southwest Power Pool has “directed its member utilities to be prepared to implement controlled interruptions of service if necessary.”

https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/utility-companies-initiate-controlled-outages

As a result, the grid operator is directing its member utilities to implement controlled interruptions of service to prevent more widespread and uncontrolled outages.

“In our history as a grid operator, this is an unprecedented event and marks the first time SPP has ever had to call for controlled interruptions of service,” Southwest Power Pool Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Lanny Nickell said in a statement. “It’s a last resort the we understand puts a burden on our member utilities and the customers they serve, but it’s a step we’re consciously taking to prevent circumstances from getting worse, which could result in uncontrolled outages of even greater magnitude.”

The Southwest Power Pool includes all of Kansas and Oklahoma along with portions of western Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. The pool also has contracts with power providers in Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

 

[anorlunda]

It's bad all over.

WOW! I'm stunned.

I'm tempted to speculate, but I'll wait for more official reports instead.

 

[nsaspook]

WOW! I'm stunned.

I'm tempted to speculate, but I'll wait for more official reports instead.

https://www.kptv.com/news/nearly-300k-pge-customers-without-power-monday-morning/article_e411d1d8-6f8a-11eb-b9f9-a78d1ea140ad.html

(KPTV) – Widespread power outages persisted for a third day Monday after a weekend of winter weather slammed northwest Oregon.

Hundreds of thousands of Oregonians didn’t have power Saturday, https://www.kptv.com/news/more-than-200k-pge-pacific-power-customers-remain-without-power-after-winter-storm/article_5d8c845e-6ed2-11eb-a966-b7654ec0a07a.html and now Monday.

On Saturday, Gov. Kate Brown issued https://www.kptv.com/news/gov-brown-issues-state-of-emergency-for-nine-oregon-counties-due-to-severe-weather/article_7bb97a9a-6e50-11eb-a46a-0f88858ce673.html for nine counties during the winter storm.

 

[DaveE]

I don't have enough data to diagnose with confidence. The possibilities are:

1. It is a failure of policy -- not enough reserves required.
2. It is a failure of planning -- the needed reserves underforecasted.
3. An extremely unlikely combination of random events.

4. A normal feature of efficient systems.

Resiliency costs money that people don't want to spend because they only see the benefits in extreme circumstances. In truly "free market capitalism" this would be exaggerated by short term optimization. This is one reason utility monopolies must be regulated. Even so, with perfect planning, it raises the question of what is the optimal design. Does it really make sense to pay for a system that never fails, that always has excess capacity?

In California, power shortages are a nearly yearly problem, with regulators working with large power consumers to help manage peak load demands with pricing incentives. I wonder to what extent they have done that sort of thing in the Southwest Pool? I don't recall a significant history of power shortages there.

 

[Klystron]

Here is a photo montage of effects of the current weather provided by WaPo.

 

[anorlunda]

Does it really make sense to pay for a system that never fails, that always has excess capacity?

There are national standards set by NERC (North American Reliability Corporation) that everyone follows. The last time I checked, the standard was 10 years mean time between outages that affect 2 or more million people. That's a long way from a system that never fails.

There are many lower level requirements, one of which is "adequate" reserves (you would say excess capacity). In NY, the reserve requirement is roughly 20% of peak demand. A rolling blackout means that reserves were not adequate by definition.

In my home state (NY), we had blackouts in NYC in the years 1965, 1977, and 2003. That is 3 times in 38 years, pretty close to the NERC standard.

I've complained before about California not meeting its reserve obligations.

On the news tonight, they mentioned frozen wind turbines out of service. Texas has a huge amount of wind power (21,190 MW) compared to 73,308 MW record peak demand . But it's still too early to finger the causes with confidence.

ABC news also hinted that the rolling blackouts may grow to include everything directly north of Texas up to Canada. It boggles my mind.

 

[jedishrfu]

Here’s an Ars Technica article on the situation in Texas.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/texas-power-grid-crumples-under-the-cold/

so far in Austin, we have not been affected... transmission lost...

 

[nsaspook]

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/14/texas-rolling-blackouts/

Outages typically last from 10 to 45 minutes for residential neighborhoods and small businesses, but the exact response would vary by transmission company, according to http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/190195/EEA_Tools_One_Pager_Summer_2020_FINAL3.pdf from ERCOT. ERCOT has only instituted three systemwide rotating outages in its history. The most recent one was more than 10 years ago on Feb. 2, 2011 in response to a blizzard affecting the state.

 

[Dr.D]

nasaspook said, " Outages typically last from 10 to 45 minutes for residential neighborhoods and small businesses, but the exact response would vary by transmission company, according to http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/190195/EEA_Tools_One_Pager_Summer_2020_FINAL3.pdf from ERCOT. " I talked to a friend (a physicist) in Round Rock, TX (just north of Austin) who told me the power had just come back on at his home after an 8 hour outage.

 

[dlgoff]

Rolling blackouts are being imposed at a time when millions of residential customers need home heating.

Really needed here. Last night -10°F tonight expected to be -15°F.

 

[jedishrfu]

nasaspook said, " Outages typically last from 10 to 45 minutes for residential neighborhoods and small businesses, but the exact response would vary by transmission company, according to http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/190195/EEA_Tools_One_Pager_Summer_2020_FINAL3.pdf from ERCOT. " I talked to a friend (a physicist) in Round Rock, TX (just north of Austin) who told me the power had just come back on at his home after an 8 hour outage.

Yeah, progress moves so fast in Texas that 10-45 mins can seem like 8hrs.

 

[anorlunda]

My son is a plumber. He says that all the online plumbing forums are swamped today with posts about frozen pipes in Texas.

When temperatures are below freezing, that is the worst possible time to lose power. I feel sorry for the victims in those areas.

 

[jedishrfu]

Texas has multiple issues. Houses are built with minimal insulation against the cold with lots of window area and air conditioning for the summer heat. The grid model is natural gas heating for the winter and natural gas for electricity for the summer to augment the grid.

Texas also isolates its grid from the rest of the nation to avoid federal regulation and hence operators didn’t conform to federal guidelines for extreme cold weather events.

 

[nsaspook]

 

[BWV]

Simple story about no political will to spend money to winterize generators for rare storms

 

[Dr.D]

Simple story about no political will to spend money to winterize generators for rare storms

This sound pretty cynical. For any group of people, there are only finite resources available. Those resources will always be allocated to deal with the more probable events, with less to the rare events. Would you really have it done some other way?

 

[anorlunda]

I won't accept any simple explanations until I read more details from the investigation. It is analogous to a plane crash. There can be a chain of events and multiple contributing causes.

 

[nsaspook]

“Welcome to every winter in the northeast US” is the simple explanation for blackouts in sub-tropical Texas during a rare winter event for them.

The chain of events and multiple contributing causes will be much the same for every management and engineering task designed to only happen once in maybe 10-20 years instead of every year. Dry runs, simulations, load testing with long idle/offline/low usage standby and backup systems will always be a prime failure point when compared to actually using those systems operationally on a regular basis to reduce full tempo operational failures.

No excuses, it's just the reality IMO with complex systems with finite resources.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/PreliminaryDisturbanceReport.pdf
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/8-14-03-outage-announcement4.pdf

 

[anorlunda]

No excuses, it's just the reality IMO with complex systems with finite resources.

That would make it a common mode failure, and the reliability planning should have accounted for that when calculating reserve requirements.

The costs to eliminate common mode failures may be unbounded, but the cost of continued operation despite them can be finite.

 

[Dr.D]

I won't accept any simple explanations until I read more details from the investigation. It is analogous to a plane crash. There can be a chain of events and multiple contributing causes.

Sadly, I think that this will most likely come down to a lot of finger pointing and not much more.

 

[nsaspook]

That would make it a common mode failure, and the reliability planning should have accounted for that when calculating reserve requirements.

The costs to eliminate common mode failures may be unbounded, but the cost of continued operation despite them can be finite.

All true in theory but every flood, fire, cold snap, heat wave, etc ... proves our ability to predict future cascading failure modes to be limited. In my engineering experience unused reserves become useless reserves very quickly. (offline UPS systems during power loss is a typical example)

The state is rightly focused on and likely prepared for extended yearly extreme heat events (heat elimination in homes, businesses and power generation) at the expense of rarer extreme cold events that require the polar opposite of heat retention.

 

[anorlunda]

All true in theory but every flood, fire, cold snap, heat wave, etc ... proves our ability to predict future cascading failure modes to be limited. In my engineering experience unused reserves become useless reserves very quickly. (offline UPS systems during power loss is a typical example)

That's a false comparison.

The grid operator pays for reserve by the MWh with real money. To qualify to receive the checks, the providers must comply with the grid operator's requirements and audits.

Often the reserves are in the form of unsold generating capacity. Suppose you have a 500 MW plant. You bid to supply energy to the grid. Your bids are in several blocks, quantity 1 MWh at price1, and quantity 2 at price 2. Some bids may be accepted and some rejected. The rejected capacity can then be offered for sale as reserve capacity. If accepted, they are paid the price for reserves.

The following day (or the following hour) both of your block 1 and block 2 bids for energy may be accepted and the provider actually has to provide the energy.

In NY, we pay different prices for reserves that can be ready to go in 30 minutes, 15 minutes, or 0 seconds (the last one is called spinning reserves). There are also auctions for other services a power plant can provide such as voltage support, frequency regulation, black-start capability, and installed capacity.

So comparing those reserves with a backup diesel that sits unused and neglected until needed is a false comparison.

 

[nsaspook]

That's a false comparison.
...

I would think they've done all that but the Texas reserve capability obviously is designed for hot weather demands. Winter is typically the time for maintenance on reserve capacity to expected loads.

https://www.texaselectricityratings.com/blog/houston-dallas-sweat-record-electricity-demand/

 

[nsaspook]

https://www.argusleader.com/story/n...innesota-xcel-sioux-valley-energy/6763081002/

There is precious little power to pipe into Texas even if it was connected to the national grid.

Power was back on for all of South Dakota early Tuesday afternoon after rolling blackouts caused by "unprecedented demand" on the grid led to outages throughout the eastern part of the state in the morning.

As of 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the Southwest Power Pool turned power back on in parts of South Dakota and Minnesota that experienced rolling blackouts.

Power stations in eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota were being de-energized for up to an hour Tuesday morning on a rolling basis, according to East River Electric spokesman Chris Studer.
...
He noted that some customers were rightly upset about losing power, but stressed the importance of conserving energy in the short term and explained why that's vital.

"The power grid is a remarkable machine that operates under set engineering guidelines that protect it from physics. The system, while strong, must operate within strict parameters. When a situation arises in which the grid is pressed beyond those operating parameters, that once-strong system quickly becomes very delicate. Simply put, the system starts to implode and it will shut down in very damaging fashion. When this happens it can cause a cascading effect that will produce outages across the entire power grid. At that point, those outages will not be of a short duration. Those outages will be days on end as equipment is fixed and then the grid is slowly brought back online and synchronized to the proper operating parameters before it can be used again," McCarthy said.

 

[Baluncore]

When I was young they told me the moon was made from cheese.
Now they say the Texas power grid is made from Swiss Cheese, and all the holes lined up.
It is hard to know what to believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

 

[nsaspook]

Power grids are filled with holes that all line up on a regular basis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages

At 2:44:16 AM on March 13, all was well and power engineers at Hydro-Quebec resigned themselves to yet another night of watching loads come and go during the off-peak hours. The rest of the world had finished enjoying the dance of the aurora borealis, and were slumbering peacefully, preparing for another day’s work the next day. The engineers didn’t know, however, that for the last half-hour, their entire system had been under attack by powerful Earth currents.

http://www.solarstorms.org/SWChapter1.html

One second later, at 2:44:17 AM, these currents found a weak spot in the power grid of the Hydro-Quebec Power Authority. A 100-ton, static VAR capacitor Number 12 at the Chibougamau sub-station tripped and went off-line as harmonic currents induced by the electrojet flowing overhead, caused protective relays to sense overload conditions. The loss of voltage regulation at Chibougamau caused power swings and a reduction of power generation in the 735,000-volt La Grande transmission network. At 2:44:19 AM, a second capacitor followed suit at the same station. 150 kilometers away at the Albanel and Nemiskau stations, four more capacitors went off-line at 2:44:46. The last to fall at 2:45:16 AM was a static VAR capacitor at the Laverendrye complex to the south of Chibougamau. The fate of the network had been sealed in barely 59 seconds as the entire 9,460-megawatt output from Hydro-Quebec’s La Grande Hydroelectric Complex found itself without proper regulation.

 

[anorlunda]

Well, it seems that everyone else is commenting on this event without waiting for the report, so I guess I will too. I'm using an article from a source that I trust to check sources, and to not sensationalize -- wsj.com.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-...arket-incentives-11613777856?mod=hp_lead_pos7

The core problem: Power providers can reap rewards by supplying electricity to Texas customers, but they aren’t required to do it and face no penalties for failing to deliver during a lengthy emergency.

The phrase "power providers" must be read carefully. They mean power plants, that sell energy to power utilities. Power utilities that sell energy retail to consumers are punished by the PUC (Public Utilities Commission http://www.puc.texas.gov/) for failing to deliver.

Later in the article, they mention the "capacity market" that Texas does not have, but other states do have. In NY, we call that ICAP. ICAP pays generators for being capable of delivering energy, and bidding in the daily markets. The purpose of ICAP is to prevent bad guys like Enron from boosting prices by withholding capacity, or faking malfunctions. If ICAP payments are substantial, power generators want the payments badly. The key relevant here is, what do the power plants need to do to qualify for ICAP payments? Thinks like winterproofing for example.

Critics say ICAP pays providers for doing nothing, and Texas doesn't have it. But I agree with the WSJ that the lack of ICAP in Texas is a major blunder.

The system broke down this week when 185 generating units, including gas and coal-fired power plants, tripped offline during the brunt of the storm. Wind turbines in West Texas froze as well, and a nuclear unit near the Gulf of Mexico went down for more than 48 hours. Another problem emerged: Some power plants lost their pipeline supply of gas and couldn’t generate electricity even if they wanted to capture the high prices.

The grid operator said that about 46 gigawatts of natural gas, coal and wind generation wasn’t working—roughly 40% of what it had expected to be available.

That's a staggering number, 40%.

But it wasn't just power plants. Natural gas pipelines, oil refineries, and city water systems, also shut down because of freezing. [EDIT: Therefore, some consumers who heat their homes with gas were left to freeze. Customers can provide for gas furnaces that can operate without grid electricity.]

Within the competitive Texas power market, there is a strong incentive for generators to keep costs down to recoup their investments. The rapid buildout of wind and solar power, which are now among the cheapest sources of electricity, have pushed prices even lower in recent years, making it more difficult for gas and coal plants to compete.

That touches on the destabilization of markets that I talked about in the 2019 PF Insights article. https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/renewable-energy-meets-power-grid-operations/

EDIT: One more point.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/some-tex...kyrocket-as-high-as-17000-during-winter-storm
Some Texans' electricity bills skyrocket as high as $17,000 during winter storm

Retail consumers should never be exposed to the volatility of wholesale energy prices. Sweden learned that many years ago when some consumers were similarly harmed when they chose to buy electricity on a time variable price. Consumers can never be adequately informed about the risks to enable knowledgeable consent.

That is not the same thing as utility peak/off-peak tiered pricing. Those tiers have published prices.

The system is supposed to be that power utilities buy energy on the volatile wholesale market. Then they sell to retail consumers, with the retail rates set by the PUC. Typically, retail rates stay fixed for 1-2 years.
It is community organizers who advocate becoming middlemen, buying power wholesale and selling it retail. They argue that helps keep the profits within the community. They escape regulation by the PUC. Of course, the organizers are never responsible for paying the bills when prices skyrocket. IMO, those middlemen should never be allowed.

 

[artis]

Someone already pointed this out here. I recently talked with a friend of mine who happens to be a nuke plant operator in Alabama, he said that the main problem for Texas is the fact that they are not interconnected to the national grid which itself seems to be made from two halves namely the east and west.
Surely enough I live in the northern part of Europe and such weather as is in Texas now is just fun and games for us here. We had like -25Celsius recently and nobody even bothered. The reason is simple we have reinforced concrete buildings with heat insulation and pretty much everything everywhere is made for such weather so no problem.

What I see in Texas is that it's a state that enjoys sunshine and warm weather pretty much and everything is built accordingly. Whenever I see the private house construction videos from US south side I see thin structures that are not made for any real thermal insulation for longer than a few hours.
Now bad thermal insulation aside, a state that is not interconnected and has very few baseload 24/7 plants of which as I understood some had been offline for whatever reason it's no miracle that when everyone switches on their heater the grid drops.

I can be wrong here but my own two conclusions from what I know here are such:

1) A smaller grid with too small reserve capacity is more likely to fail than a larger one with more backups, this I think is pretty much a universal axiom

2) whenever a substantial portion of the grid is made by renewables like solar and wind one also has to have failsafe backups that can act as base loads much like a nuke plant has its diesel's always ready.

So that when your wind turbines ice up and are stopped or your solar turns to snowstorm and your natural gas fails for whatever reason you can switch on a fast acting reserve. From what I know and contrary to popular belief coal can be a good backup. Pumped hydro or hydro can also save the day.Actually natural gas I think is also a good reserve as well as active , not sure how much of it Texas has and in what condition
All in all I think it isn't/wasn't a wise strategy to close down and stop building nuclear plants as base loads.

This seems more like a long term political planning and ideology problem that is now manifesting as a technical problem.

I can draw some similarities to Fukushima, I looked at some history a while back and saw that Japan has had tsunami's like that before , but when they built Fukushima they concluded that because in the past 50 years it did not happen it is unlikely to happen in the next 50 of the plant operating lifetime. Well that short sighted planning turned out to cost a tremendous fortune along the road.

All they had to do is locate those diesles higher up on the shore and seal them better. I'm sure a minor investment compared to the consequences.
Even with our modern meteorology we cannot foresee dramatic events with 100% accuracy and big enough failsafe time to adequately prepare so being ready in advance and having a failsafe reserve is always the smart move.
I think it costs and that is the real problem why things get built less sturdy

 

[anorlunda]

You make several good points.

1) A smaller grid with too small reserve capacity is more likely to fail than a larger one with more backups, this I think is pretty much a universal axiom

That is undeniably true, and it is why the interconnections in the rest of North America are so big. But in this case, Texas' neighboring states had similar problems on the same day (see post #3 in this thread). That makes it difficult to say that the problem was entirely due to causes unique to Texas, or whether the neighbors could have helped much.

2) whenever a substantial portion of the grid is made by renewables like solar and wind one also has to have failsafe backups that can act as base loads much like a nuke plant has its diesel's always ready.

That is also true. But in this case, renewable wind was scheduled to provide only 10% of the generation on that day, while the shortfall was 40%. So although a contributor, renewables weren't the biggest contributors.

Actually natural gas I think is also a good reserve as well as active , not sure how much of it Texas has and in what condition

Texas has huge quantities of natural gas. Texas supplies most of North America with natural gas. But the gas pipelines themselves froze, causing gas supply to fail to many of the 158 power plants that went down and to many private homes that have natural gas heat and/or natural gas fueled backup electric generators. So, what happens when your upstream suppliers also fail? Natural gas is like electric energy. You can't store 3 month's supply in advance.

I can draw some similarities to Fukushima,

Now they say the Texas power grid is made from Swiss Cheese, and all the holes lined up.

I too thought of Fukushima. The article about the Swiss Cheese model of reliability is just another name for common mode failures. Common mode failures are the bane of reliability engineers, because the rules for calculating the probability of multiple independent events don't apply if they are not independent. In Fukushima, even though they had multiple redundant diesel generators, they had a common diesel fuel storage that got contaminated with salt water.

If a common mode failure causes highly engineered things to fail, the only thing we can say is that the imaginations of the engineers was too limited. How can you account for something that you have not imagined?

Whenever I see the private house construction videos from US south side I see thin structures that are not made for any real thermal insulation for longer than a few hours.

"Rolling blackouts" are supposed to be designed so that no customer is out for more than 3-4 hours (they said 12 hours in the WSJ article). Even in thin walled houses, it may take longer than that for pipes to freeze. But this week, some customers were out for more than 72 hours. That indicates a second level failure. The rolling blackouts didn't roll.

when everyone switches on their heater the grid drops.

Most modern houses in the area have central heat pumps to provide air conditioning cooling and heating. When the heat pumps can't keep up, they have resistive heating elements that come on automatically to provide supplementary heat. Those switch on and off to control temperature. If the supplementary need is slight, only a few of them will be on at the same time. But if it is so cold that more supplementary is needed than available, all of them will stay on all the time. I'm sure that was what caused a record high demand for that day. A record high demand simultaneous with a 40% shortfall in supply seems to be a perfect storm of improbable events. But if they have a common cause it is not so improbable at all.

A giant asteroid crashing into Earth could cause a world-wide blackout. But we wouldn't care, because we would all be dead anyhow. Sorry for the black humor, but it illustrates a point. Wild flights of imagination about common mode events can also lead to absurdity. Overactive imaginations IMO cause much of the anti-nuclear feelings around the world. We can both underestimate and overestimate risks with bad consequences in both extremes.

 

[austinuni]

Whenever I see the private house construction videos from US south side I see thin structures that are not made for any real thermal insulation for longer than a few hours.

Good insulation is needed year round here in Austin (and in large parts of Texas) with our 100F+ temperatures during the summer, and frequent 40F temperatures during the winter. Texas is definitely not Florida or Southern California.

 

[256bits]

Power grids are filled with holes that all line up on a regular basis.

Agreed.

While the relay failure broke power for customers, that was easily fixed.
There was still a whole slew of other problems to deal with across the province . The ice was 3 - 4 inches thick, with some places much much more, downed HV power lines, and bent trees onto the lines.

So even if the Texas system is 'designed for the hot summer months', and failed in the winter, the Quebec system, 'designed for cold winter months', also failed in the winter.
Several areas, without power for months, mainly the Eastern Townships, would be akin to what the Texans are going through.

https://www.inmr.com/looking-back-on-the-great-ice-storm-of-1998/

Images example
https://www.google.com/search?q=quebec+ice+storm+images&rlz=1C1KMZB_enCA593CA862&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=uHhpqtGfuiW7aM%2CCPY5pdVrOC7dFM%2C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kT0E0DVsMK1NGmTopYeJsFuAjVcaQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu3NbxsPnuAhWgGFkFHZ7_DsEQ9QF6BAgFEAE#imgrc=uHhpqtGfuiW7aM

insulation - in two days time, our unit dropped in temperature to 40 degrees or so - we were sleeping in our winter parkas. One would have to foresee a lengthy power failure and "overinsulate" for such events. Few homes are made that way wherever they are. One builds for the normal climate and possible risks ( earthquakes perhaps) where one lives.

 

[anorlunda]

That same ice storm (it was 1998??) also hit northern NY, VT, NH, ME. I remember hearing the number 400,000 power poles snapped.

A huge victory for the grid in that storm is that the blackout did not cascade into areas not covered in ice. The rest of the grid survived roughly 1 million simultaneous failures. I remember citing that number a year later in 1999, when the Y2K fear mongers insisted that multiple simultaneous failures would spell doom for the power grid. It still circulates today when fear mongers cite cyberattacks as the thing that will plunge everyone into darkness for a year or more.

 

[DaveE]

I won't accept any simple explanations until I read more details from the investigation. It is analogous to a plane crash. There can be a chain of events and multiple contributing causes.

Yes, the devil is in the details. OTOH, at the most basic level, it isn't so complex. It's a question of how much planning and money is spent to build a resilient system. This isn't an accusation or judgement of those choices. The only bad choice is none. There are always pros and cons. But, people do have to live with the consequences of those choices regardless.

I think the interesting part of this is the fall out regarding public attitudes towards regulation vs free market; cheap energy vs. reliable supply; collective solutions vs. isolation from other states, etc. Texas has been an outlier in these choices. Will that continue?

 

[anorlunda]

Yes, the devil is in the details.

Read #29.

 

[nsaspook]

I think the interesting part of this is the fall out regarding public attitudes towards regulation vs free market; cheap energy vs. reliable supply; collective solutions vs. isolation from other states, etc. Texas has been an outlier in these choices. Will that continue?

Whatever solution is found it's likely to be uniquely Texan.

https://www.marvel.com/characters/texas-twister
They're like the Hulk, the more you pound them, the meaner they get.

 

[Tom.G]

It seems that Texans (or at least their politicians) value independence over reliability.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the Texas Tribune after the 2011 failure:
https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/

"The Texas Interconnected System (http://tx.findacase.com/research/wf..../FDCT/NTX/1979/19790130_0000007.NTX.htm/qx)— which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities (http://www.ercot.com/about/profile/history/), one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas — had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. "Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s,""

A case of You Reap What You Sow.

 

[artis]

Well speaking about freedom sometimes people I think get rather foolish about it. I mean having freedom in a sense that you can have free speech or choice of religion is good but connecting a bunch of wires and circuit breakers won't suck anyone's soul out or make anyone possessed so I really can't see any downside of that , after all it's the same country that you are connecting to.I don't claim to be an expert and even though I drive a LPG car I haven't read that much about gas physics although I think I know some basics.
One thing seems weird to me, even though LPG is much better at being stored cold than natural gas aka methane, I think a gas all by itself cannot freeze , well not in mild cold conditions, it could liquefy but that would require temperatures nearing superconductor working ones.
Could it be that the Texas pipelines were not up to task and "clean enough" and that caused the freezing?
One way I can imagine this could occur if the gas is contaminated with water vapor which could then freeze up causing the pressure to drop in the pipe causing further cooling and freezing.
Here is a short paper describing something like that.
https://asgmt.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf-docs/2011/1/T06.pdf
Like a common failure mode in cars equipped with LPG is that the gas reductor (for those that don't know, the part were the liquefied high pressure gas is allowed to expand so that it can be turned back to gas state for dosing into individual cylinders. Because squirting in drops of liquid gas on hot metal piston would likely cause the engine to explode itself) so if this reductor loses it's heating the gas causes it to freeze to very low temperatures even during hot summer temperatures. Because the gas is performing the same process it does in a AC or any other cooling pump taking away heat as it expands.
So what happens is the water vapor surrounding the reductor freezes up and causes the gas pipes to become one giant frozen water clump.
This actually happened to me once. Then I went and repaired and rerouted my heating hoses. You could say I had a Texas happening under my hood...
Also as this happened the gas that entered my engine became more and more liquid and I could hear how detonation was starting to happen.

 

[artis]

I think @austinuni made a good point because one wants good thermal insulation year round because it not only helps keep the heat in at winter but the also keep the heat out in summer. Otherwise you are just making the local energy company rich by needlessly driving your AC.

 

[Rive]

1) A smaller grid with too small reserve capacity is more likely to fail than a larger one with more backups, this I think is pretty much a universal axiom

That's a tricky one. While in itself it's true: in practice it's often used to reduce the amount of reserves (especially in case some heavily donated intermittent sources pressuring the grid), so overall you can easily end with just bigger blackouts. As it went in Europe, a continent wide blackout is no longer just a nightmare - it's already an existing danger.

 

[anorlunda]

A case of You Reap What You Sow.

Let's not ignore the evidence. Post #3 in this thread shows that blackouts also occurred the same day in Oklahoma, Texas' nearest neighbor. (And other states too. See #3). Oklahoma is part of the large Eastern Interconnect in North America. Oklahoma also has it's own laws/regulations/operator/owners/profit motives/ ... and so on.

Based on that evidence, I say Texas' lack of interstate connections was not a primary cause of this event.

 

[Astronuc]

A giant asteroid crashing into Earth could cause a world-wide blackout. But we wouldn't care, because we would all be dead anyhow.

Reminds me of a question concerning the safety of nuclear power plants from an anti-nuclear activist, "What would happen if a giant asteroid hit a nuclear plant?" The paraphrased response was "if an asteroid hit a nuclear plant, the plant wouldn't be the problem."

With respect to the FOX news article: "The price hikes affected only those customers on variable or indexed-rate plans, not those with a fixed-rate." Don't pick variable or indexed-rate plans, otherwise read the details. I was wondering if one could apply a force majeure provision.

I say Texas' lack of interstate connections was not a primary cause of this event.

Not a primary cause, but certainly a contributor to the fiasco that unfolded. If power had been available from Louisiana and/or Arkansas, assuming there was plenty of reserve/excess, then perhaps gas transmission lines could have delivered gas if the problem had been losing electrical power to the compressors.

As for gas lines freezing, I understand that it was instrumentation, or perhaps moisture in the gas, rather than the gas itself that froze. Melting point of methane: -295.6°F (-182°C). LPG is a blend of propane and butane, and perhaps small amount of isobutane, butylene, propylene. LPG (propane) has -42°C boiling point, -188°C freezing point.

 

[Astronuc]

With respect to gas lines freezing,

Natural gas wells and pipes ill-equipped for cold weather are a big reason why millions of Texans lost power during frigid temperatures this week. As temperatures dropped to record lows across some parts of the state, liquid inside wells, pipes, and valves froze solid.

Ice can block gas flow, clogging pipes. It’s a phenomenon called a “freeze-off” that disrupts gas production across the US every winter. But freeze-offs can have outsized effects in Texas, as we’ve seen this week. The state is a huge natural gas producer — and it doesn’t usually have to deal with such cold weather.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/17/22287130/texas-natural-gas-production-power-outages-frozen

While the frigid cold slashed fuel supplies of all sorts, it also drove up demand for natural gas to heat homes. That “mismatch” is what’s driving these blackouts, says Coombs. There simply hasn’t been enough fuel on hand to power the state’s electricity needs. Natural gas production was pretty much halved in Texas and its gas-rich Permian Basin during the recent cold and stormy weather. It fell from 22.5 billion cubic feet of gas produced per day in December to between 10 to 12 billion cubic feet of gas per day this week, according to estimates from BTU Analytics.

That drop-off in production is thanks to freeze-offs at wellheads where oil and gas are pumped out of the ground. But the cold has also stopped equipment from working properly at gas processing plants, Coombs says. Processing plants separate gas from fluid and impurities; when equipment freezes, plants have to heat it up or wait for temperatures to rise before they can resume their work.

While other states invest more in equipment that helps prevent freeze-offs, Texas hasn’t seen the need. North Dakota typically sees 20 days a year with freeze-off events, while the Permian Basin would normally have just four days a year with freeze-offs disrupting gas production, according to BTU Analytics.

Production of natural gas in the state has plunged, making it difficult for power plants to get the fuel necessary to run the plants. Natural gas power plants usually don’t have very much fuel storage on site, experts said. Instead, the plants rely on the constant flow of natural gas from pipelines that run across the state from areas like the Permian Basin in West Texas to major demand centers like Houston and Dallas.
. . .
The systems that get gas from the Earth aren’t properly built for cold weather. Operators in West Texas’ Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil fields in the world, are particularly struggling to bring natural gas to the surface, analysts said, as cold weather and snow close wells or cause power outages that prevent pumping the fossil fuels from the ground.

“Gathering lines freeze, and the wells get so cold that they can’t produce,” said Parker Fawcett, a natural gas analyst for S&P Global Platts. “And pumps use electricity, so they’re not even able to lift that gas and liquid, because there’s no power to produce.”

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/wea...or-power-it-wasnt-ready-for-the-extreme-cold/
It's going to be up to Texans to sort out this mess.

Similarly, with wind turbines, they can operate (as long as there is sufficient wind) in cold climates without freezing.

 

[anorlunda]

Similarly, with wind turbines, they can operate (as long as there is sufficient wind) in cold climates without freezing.

It's not the temperature per se, but the accumulation of ice on the blades, which cause imbalance.Regarding contributory causes. Almost all of us (including me) want one or two primary things to blame for bad outcomes. A hypothetical event with 20 causes, each contributing 5% to the risk, would be profoundly unsatisfying to people who would like to render judgement.

 

[Astronuc]

Nuclear plants aren't necessarily immune to faults:

On Monday, Feb. 15, 2021, at 0537, an automatic reactor trip occurred at South Texas Project in Unit 1. The trip resulted from a loss of feedwater attributed to a cold weather-related failure of a pressure sensing lines to the feedwater pumps, causing a false signal, which in turn, caused the feedwater pump to trip. This event occurred in the secondary side of the plant (non-nuclear part of the unit). The reactor trip was a result of the feedwater pump trips. The primary side of the plant (nuclear side) is safe and secured.

https://atomicinsights.com/south-texas-project-unit-1-tripped-at-0537-on-feb-15-2021/
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2021/20210216en.html#en55104

 

[Astronuc]

Almost all of us (including me) want one or two primary things to blame for bad outcomes. A hypothetical event with 20 causes, each contributing 5% to the risk, would be profoundly unsatisfying to people who would like to render judgement.

I like complicated problems. I've done plenty of root cause failure analyses, mostly with respect to nuclear fuel and core component failures, and there are often several factors (e.g., design, materials, manufacturing and operation). Often though, it's a matter of what was overlooked or ignored in design and/or operations.

 

[PeroK]

It's not the temperature per se, but the accumulation of ice on the blades, which cause imbalance.Regarding contributory causes. Almost all of us (including me) want one or two primary things to blame for bad outcomes. A hypothetical event with 20 causes, each contributing 5% to the risk, would be profoundly unsatisfying to people who would like to render judgement.

It's not a question of rendering judgement, but that the widespread extent and prolonged nature of the failure cannot be attributed to one technical fault. Almost by definition, any failure on this scale must ultimately point to a systematic failure of governance. This is well beyond what could possibly have been caused by one engineering or technical oversight - or even several technical blunders.

Ultimately, the root causes of something like this must be financial and political in nature. The technical failures, whatever they are, are ultimately a manifestation of a failure of governance of the state's power and water supplies.

There can be no doubt about where the accountability lies.

 

[artis]

Well I think this is mainly the same problem as with the joke about the "Jamaican hockey team", it's definitely not a new or unheard of event that people tend to get used to the conditions that prevail in the long term and considering a once in a century or once in a half century type of event is unlikely.
I don't want to sound anti free market but I think investors and private companies are also largely to blame here and maybe even understandably because who would want to equip everything for a -20 C winter when there simply isn't one.
It is definitely not a matter of technical incapability, Russia for example has a huge natural gas infrastructure of which at least half is located in permanent freezing like the Yamal gas field and processing plant.
I know a dozen of reactors off the top of my head that have worked or work in winter conditions so again should be no problems there.I think it's simply not having enough redundancy and the cause for that well I think we all know, is most likely the wish to earn the same dollars without having to invest more.

Maybe we need a new patent for wind turbine blades with heating for turbines that work in winter conditions. Just build in some resistive elements and attach a two wire slipring to the shaft, one could simply use the power generated right on the spot with the help of a temp sensor and some electronics to switch on or off, depending on weather conditions.


It seems like a rather long and exhausting process.

 

[PeroK]

Well I think this is mainly the same problem as with the joke about the "Jamaican hockey team",

Do you mean the Jamaican bobsleigh team?