Assigning Blame for the Blackouts in Texas

[rangerrebew]

Assigning Blame for the Blackouts in Texas
Posted on February 18, 2021 by curryja 

By Planning Engineer

The story from some media sources is that frozen wind turbines are responsible for the power shortfalls in Texas. Other media sources emphasize that fossil fuel resources should shoulder the blame because they have large cold induced outages as well and also some natural gas plants could not obtain fuel.

Extreme cold should be expected to cause significant outages of both renewable and fossil fuel based resources. Why would anyone expect that sufficient amounts of natural gas would be available and deliverable to supply much needed generation? Considering the extreme cold, nothing particularly surprising is happening within any resource class in Texas. The technologies and their performance were well within the expected bounds of what could have been foreseen for such weather conditions. While some degradation should be expected, what is happening in Texas is a departure from what they should be experiencing. Who or what then is responsible for the shocking consequences produced by Texas’s run in with this recent bout of extreme cold?

TRADITIONAL PLANNING

Traditionally, responsibility for ensuring adequate capacity during extreme conditions has fallen upon individual utility providers. A couple decades ago I was responsible for the load forecasting, transmission planning and generation planning efforts of an electric cooperative in the southeastern US. My group’s projections, studies and analysis supported our plans to meet customer demand under forecasted peak load conditions. We had seen considerable growth in residential and commercial heat pumps. At colder temperature these units stop producing heat efficiently and switch to resistance heating which causes a spike in demand. Our forecasts showed that we would need to plan for extra capacity to meet this potential demand under extreme conditions in upcoming winters.

 https://judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/assigning-blame-for-the-blackouts-in-texas/#more-27097

[240B]

Traditionally, responsibility for ensuring adequate capacity during extreme conditions has fallen upon individual utility providers. A couple decades ago I was responsible for the load forecasting, transmission planning and generation planning efforts of an electric cooperative in the southeastern US. My group’s projections, studies and analysis supported our plans to meet customer demand under forecasted peak load conditions. We had seen considerable growth in residential and commercial heat pumps. At colder temperature these units stop producing heat efficiently and switch to resistance heating which causes a spike in demand. Our forecasts showed that we would need to plan for extra capacity to meet this potential demand under extreme conditions in upcoming winters.

Nobody could have predicted the arctic blast that happened nationally.
It was so far out of bounds it was a true anomaly.
Not an Al Gore disciple by any means but I do blame the Global Warming crowd for what happened.
They are all so stupidly and blindly obsessed with "cooling the Earth" that they are having some minimal impact.
And that is what happened. When you start screwing around with Mother Nature the results are always unpredictable and chaotic.
I hope the Liberals fools got enough of a taste of what they are rooting for to cause them to rethink their 'cooling' delusion.
But that would require Liberals to think logically and rationally, which is something they are incapable of doing.
However, I think this month was enough of a shock to the world to cause very many GW priests worldwide to moderate their mania.

[thackney]

Assigning the blame seems to be the bigger desire than fixing the problems.

[Cyber Liberty]

Assigning the blame seems to be the bigger desire than fixing the problems.

Nothing new under the sun.

[Bigun]

Assigning the blame seems to be the bigger desire than fixing the problems.

That seems to be the case and, WRT fixing the problem,  I would offer the following as guidance:  "There is NOTHING so F'd up that government cannot figure out how to F up even more!"

[Fishrrman]

Remember the scene from "The Graduate" where young Ben Braddock is cornered by the guy near the pool, who advises, "I have just one word for you..."   ??

Well, for all you Texans, I have three words for you:

The first two:
"Maunder Minimum"...

The last word:
"Coal..."

[cato potatoe]

Don't forget "nucular" 

In all seriousness, I am surprised there aren't more reactors in Texas??

[Bigun]

Don't forget "nucular" 

In all seriousness, I am surprised there aren't more reactors in Texas??

If we could rid ourselves of the commies and enviro wackos there would be.  Lots more!

And we need to stop tilting the table in favor of wind as well.

[XenaLee]

If we could rid ourselves of the commies and enviro wackos there would be.  Lots more!

And we need to stop tilting the table in favor of wind as well.

Look around.   Those commies and enviro wackos have just seized power for, at the very least, the next four years.  And quite possibly....for EVER.

Big "if", IOW.

[Slide Rule]

Energy Technology
Wind turbines and Solar panels are wonderful. It is just the weather that interfered with the optimum
power source selection. The design criteria didn't change as wind and sun took a larger and larger percentage of total
Texas electrical demand. More wind and sun and tearing out coal, gas and nuclear units does change things. Texas went
cheap in gambling on wind and solar by retaining early design and operation criteria. All the things that a cold winter
can bring depend on a highly reliable generation system that is independent of sun and wind.

Pushing up those percentages is a major goal of our federal government. You can see it with dims throwing coal miners
and petroleum production under the bus. Hell, Xo Bi Din just shut a major pipeline. The union guys must have been
wearing red hats and otherwise known to be despicable.

By summer the frozen free power sources will have thawed. If the those making decisions for wind and solar are bright,
they will adjust design and operations criteria for the next cold winter. But will they? It does take considerable thought
energy and coordination to incorporate new criteria into existing plant. Rebuilds are always more difficult.


Blame
No doubt the governor had the number of a utility executive and not someone in dispatch or operations. The higher from the action the least
accurate the detail. Detail improves when the What, Where, and When questions are asked.

The governor should know such things and so should the person he contacts as incorrect information could be career ending. To resolve the
political aspects some high level persons will stand up and absorb the blame and resign. Have no doubt they will address and resolve their
internal construction, operation, and maintenance issues.


https://www.puc.texas.gov/industry/maps/Electricity.aspx​
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https://www.puc.texas.gov/industry/maps/elecmaps/gentable.pdf​
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https://www.puc.texas.gov/industry/maps/maps/transmission_scenario2dev_crez.pdf​
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https://www.puc.texas.gov/industry/maps/maps/tdumap.pdf​
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https://www.puc.texas.gov/industry/maps/maps/ERCOT.pdf​


I remember having lunch with a couple of power plant managers and their general manager. My being there was nothing planned because they
invited me to join them. They spoke among themselves and one man did stand up in the manner described. Their group operated quite similar
to the Transmission and Distribution group I was part of. It was all straight forward. They were shielding their general manager and his boss.

Texas is an extremely large operation with every sort of energy source imaginable. Hundreds of plants existing, planned, and retired. There will
be many executives to select from.