Gov. Abbott: Blame outages on power generators

[Elderberry]

ABC13 2/15/2021

Governor Greg Abbott says the massive outages leaving millions in the dark Monday were caused by private power companies that "fell short," calling it the winter version of "Hurricane Harvey."

"The people who have fallen short with regard to the power are the private power generation companies," Abbott said.

In a call with ABC13, Abbott expressed frustration that power generators hadn't done enough to ensure the flow of electricity would continue.

"There's a separate part of the system that is not working right now, and those are the private companies that generate the power that goes into ERCOT. And it's those private companies that generate power that are not working," Abbott said. "They were working up until about midnight last night, but after midnight, some of them literally froze up, and were incapable of providing power, and some are still incapable of providing power."

Abbott promised that power would begin to be restored to about 200,000 residential customers as power plants begin coming back online after the winter storm that paralyzed the state left families desperate for power during the bitter cold.

After a cold event in 2011 that took power offline, power generators claim they did a better job of "winterizing" power plants, but Abbott says it didn't go far enough.

"I think after what happened in 2011, an assessment was not made to gauge for this type of event, because the last time we had this type of weather was more than 100 years ago," Abbott said. "We need to calibrate for this type of weather to make sure that the companies that are contracted with to provide the power generation in the state of Texas are going to be capable of providing power generation in these ultra cold temperatures."

More: https://abc13.com/texas-disaster-declaration-governor-greg-abbott-winter-weather-winterizing-roads/10342268/

[thackney]

power would begin to be restored to about 200,000 residential customers

How about the other 4 million?

Texas
Customers Tracked: 12,476,410
State Outages: 4,214,259
Last Updated: 2/16/2021, 07:45:09 AM

https://poweroutage.us/area/state/texas

[PeteS in CA]

Maybe those companies - how many are bird chopper farms - believe in Global Warming.

[thackney]

Most Texas households without power won't be restored today, source estimates
https://abc13.com/weather/10-15%25-of-tx-outages-to-be-restored-today-source-estimates/10344285/
Updated 6 minutes ago

New information indicates that there will be a window Tuesday afternoon where ERCOT hopes to get more power generation, a source at a power company tells ABC13. However, it likely won't be enough to get a lot of customers back online.

The source says the generation this afternoon will be almost all wind power.

They expect about 10-15% of outages to be restored by mid-afternoon, but the majority of households experiencing outages should expect to be without power for the the full day again Tuesday....

...The outages across Texas could stretch for days, due to multiple power generation plants that are offline, according to officials. An estimated 75% of Texas power generation capacity is impacted....

[Bigun]

The Disgusting Reason That Millions of Texans Spent The Night Without Power

[libertybele]

The Disgusting Reason That Millions of Texans Spent The Night Without Power

Thanks for the information -- hubby is watching someone on PBS from Stanford Univ. lying through his teeth about the reason why TX has a problem -- he knew he was lying because what the hotshot from Stanford was saying just didn't add up.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Abbott was too busy last week receiving his award by the wind industry to concern himself with planning for this type of event.

Texas Governor Receives TGE’s Wind Leadership Award
https://nawindpower.com/texas-governor-receives-tges-wind-leadership-award#:~:text=Tri%20Global%20Energy%20(TGE)%2C,Global%20Energy%20Wind%20Leadership%20Award

[thackney]

The Disgusting Reason That Millions of Texans Spent The Night Without Power

Repeated from the other thread:

And the requirement was waived.  This looks like a very misleading article.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-15/pollution-limit-waived-for-texas-power-plants-in-emergency-order

The Department of Energy issued an emergency order allowing several Texas power plants to produce as much electricity as possible, a move expected to violate anti-pollution rules that comes amid a deepening electricity crisis in the state that has cut power to millions of homes.

The Energy Department order, requested by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, authorizes power plants throughout the state to run a maximum output levels, even as such a move is anticipated to result in a violation of limits of pollution....

[PeteS in CA]

The DoE order was issued 2/14/2021 at 8:51 PM EST, the same day permission was requested, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2021/02/f82/DOE%20202%28c%29%20Emergency%20Order%20-%20ERCOT%2002.14.2021.pdf .

[thackney]

https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/feb/16/natural-gas-not-wind-turbines-main-driver-texas-po/

...The state’s grid operator said Feb. 15 that about 34 gigawatts of power were offline. But of that, about 4 gigawatts was due to problems with wind turbines. The rest came mainly from the state’s primary sources, natural gas and coal.

Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told Bloomberg that frozen gauges and instruments at natural gas, coal and nuclear plants cut into operations. Natural gas-fired plants also had to deal with low gas pressure in their supply lines....

[IsailedawayfromFR]

https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/feb/16/natural-gas-not-wind-turbines-main-driver-texas-po/

...The state’s grid operator said Feb. 15 that about 34 gigawatts of power were offline. But of that, about 4 gigawatts was due to problems with wind turbines. The rest came mainly from the state’s primary sources, natural gas and coal.

Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told Bloomberg that frozen gauges and instruments at natural gas, coal and nuclear plants cut into operations. Natural gas-fired plants also had to deal with low gas pressure in their supply lines....

Really, that is one of the worst liberal websites one could find, funded by several Texas newspapers like the Houston Chronicle and Austin American Statesman.

Just look at the drivel which comes out of their website  https://www.politifact.com/texas/

I am still wondering whether the libs are pinpointing the partially used natural gas backup generators within their tabulations of natural gas capacity of the state.

[thackney]

Really, that is one of the worst liberal websites one could find, funded by several Texas newspapers like the Houston Chronicle and Austin American Statesman.

Just look at the drivel which comes out of their website  https://www.politifact.com/texas/

I am still wondering whether the libs are pinpointing the partially used natural gas backup generators within their tabulations of natural gas capacity of the state.

sigh...

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/are-frozen-wind-turbines-to-blame-for-texas-power-outages/

...But the vast majority of energy the state generates is through natural gas. In October 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that renewables generated 22% of the state’s energy, while gas generated 51.8%.

In ERCOT’s plan for this winter, it expected that thermal and hydro resources, i.e. gas, coal and water, would need to generate 67,000 megawatts per hour during a high demand event to support the state. This didn’t take into account a historic snow storm where demand would increase and supply would be threatened.

On Monday, frozen instruments and a limited gas supply forced 30,000 MW/h of power offline. This was half of what ERCOT believed they would need. According to the agency, wind turbines account for less than 13% of the total generation that was lost. The majority of which was coal and gas....

[dfwgator]

I will never vote for Abbott for anything ever again. 

[Bigun]

I will never vote for Abbott for anything ever again.

And I will join you @dfwgator There is plenty of blame to go around in this fiasco and the vast majority of it goes to people Abbott appointed.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I will never vote for Abbott for anything ever again.

But Abbott is loved by the wind industry, isn't he?

http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,428905.msg2382173.html#msg2382173

[XenaLee]

I will never vote for Abbott for anything ever again.

Ditto.

[thackney]

I will never vote for Abbott for anything ever again.

I do not think Abbott had anything at all to do with the situation in Texas energy this week.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I do not think Abbott had anything at all to do with the situation in Texas energy this week.

Anything?  I don't have anything on the situation but I believe one cannot say the same for a Governor.

The purpose of electing a governor is to select a leader who brings in competent people to help run the show and to ensure strategic and tactical plans are developed and executed that keeps the state running smoothly, including plans for different scenarios.

Abbott of course is not 100% to blame for an Artic blast enveloping this state.  No one is.

But is he most certainly ultimately most responsible within this state for handling its effects?  The governor, who we elected to keep things smooth for us.

The quick blaming of problems to private companies, the frantic development of a task force to ascertain "What went wrong" and cutting off natural gas from leaving the state speaks to me of reacting to events instead of developing sufficient plans to anticipate future events like this.

All one has to do is to look into what the governor was actually doing the few weeks or so before the chill set in to see if he in fact had his priorities correct.

As an example, here is the full transcript of his State of State speech he delivered earlier in February.  https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/XgUsY3okgVeISJRtHUjoRPWT3AlE2louWPThFWEkWACD2d4_DcsqYtKUnpaGih-FJ72KyHLkNlBP0UDMJ2BBy2e963E?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=79.76

I see nothing on there regarding the issue of preparing for contingency planning for an chill which could affect out electric grid.  Sit it was chosen by him not to be a priority in keeping the state running smoothly just a short time ago.

[thackney]

Anything?  I don't have anything on the situation but I believe one cannot say the same for a Governor.

The purpose of electing a governor is to select a leader who brings in competent people to help run the show and to ensure strategic and tactical plans are developed and executed that keeps the state running smoothly, including plans for different scenarios.

Abbott of course is not 100% to blame for an Artic blast enveloping this state.  No one is.

But is he most certainly ultimately most responsible within this state for handling its effects?  The governor, who we elected to keep things smooth for us.

The quick blaming of problems to private companies, the frantic development of a task force to ascertain "What went wrong" and cutting off natural gas from leaving the state speaks to me of reacting to events instead of developing sufficient plans to anticipate future events like this.

All one has to do is to look into what the governor was actually doing the few weeks or so before the chill set in to see if he in fact had his priorities correct.

As an example, here is the full transcript of his State of State speech he delivered earlier in February.  https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/XgUsY3okgVeISJRtHUjoRPWT3AlE2louWPThFWEkWACD2d4_DcsqYtKUnpaGih-FJ72KyHLkNlBP0UDMJ2BBy2e963E?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=79.76

I see nothing on there regarding the issue of preparing for contingency planning for an chill which could affect out electric grid.  Sit it was chosen by him not to be a priority in keeping the state running smoothly just a short time ago.

Depending on government to take care of you in a natural emergency is for liberals.

I'll pass

[catfish1957]

I do not think Abbott had anything at all to do with the situation in Texas energy this week.

Yeah, but screaming "Blame Someone else" as first words is more what we expect from democrats.  I join my cohorts above in being  disappointed in Abbott.

[PeteS in CA]

I'm less than convinced Abbott bears responsibility for the mess, but anytime a regulated utility Fs up the state commission regulating the utilities needs to be scrutinized. As others have pointed out, at least some of those commissioners were Abbot appointees.

Of course, I live half a continent away.

[catfish1957]

I'm less than convinced Abbott bears responsibility for the mess, but anytime a regulated utility Fs up the state commission regulating the utilities needs to be scrutinized. As others have pointed out, at least some of those commissioners were Abbot appointees.

Of course, I live half a continent away.

No argument.  Last I looked at the Texas PUC org chart...  it funnelled up to Abbott.

[thackney]

No argument.  Last I looked at the Texas PUC org chart...  it funnelled up to Abbott.

What different result in this specific situation do you expect with a different governor?  How would it be different this week?

[Bigun]

What different result in this specific situation do you expect with a different governor?  How would it be different this week?

One of the governor's major responsibilities is to make appointments and if they turn out to be good ones he looks good and if they turn out to be bad he looks bad as well.

[catfish1957]

What different result in this specific situation do you expect with a different governor?  How would it be different this week?

(1)That wasn't the point. 
(2) Good leaders lead and have ready solutions to problems...  not point fingers.
(3) Good leaders would have surrounded themselves with people with the vision to forsee disasterous scenarios, and plan for contingencies and preventive measures.