5 ERCOT board members resign, according to report

[thackney]

Your own graphs show that is not a true statement.  How can replacing Wind which produced almost nil during the storm with Natural Gas be worse than relying on Natural Gas?

Because we did not have enough Nat Gas to run what was available.  More consumers of Nat Gas produces nothing without fuel.

And what you seem to be missing is that if there were more broader usage of natural gas as our power fuel, there would have been a more concerted effort to ensure the supply of fuel was less interrupted by nearby storage or by other means. 

I see.  When we produce 21~23 Billion Cubic Feet per Day, who cares if they are properly winterized.  But if we need ~28 Billion CF/D, just by freaking magic it becomes reliable.

The prevalent notion by those who control the grid, Ercot and the PUC, is we gain reliability of supply by varying the methods by which we get power onto the grid.  That is their way of propping up renewables.

Ercot does NOTHING related to choosing generation sources.  You need to look to the legislature, the governor, and the feds for pushing renewables over other sources.

That is a falsehood as we have proven with the absolute failure of renewables to provide ANY power during the freeze.  A continued fuel supply to natural gas generators had been consequently deprioritized as the grid operators believed, erroneously, that the renewables would be able to perform.  They are novelties, not to be relied upon.

That is the mistake of those who foist political episodes such as increasing renewables onto us instead of achieving the 'R' part of their name, Reliability.

This idiocy of trying to find a scapegoat like renewables and not recognizing the problem of not preparing is spread all over multiple industries is going to have us repeat it once again.  Just like 1989, 2011, and now 2021. 

[thackney]

No doubt that is true if you believe that everything else would have been as it was had those things not been in the mix but I happen to not believe that.  @thackney

You think ~30% of coal dropped off, ~20% of nuclear dropped off, ~35% of nat gas dropped off because the wind went down?



And yet the previous week when the wind power went almost to zero nothing happened then?

Wind is always erratic and not dependable.  This wasn't something new.  In my opinion, in the ERCOT market system, wind and solar should earn less because of those reasons.  But ERCOT deals with that up and down all the time.  It was not the cause of the outages.  It did contribute, just like all of our forms of power contributed.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Because we did not have enough Nat Gas to run what was available.  More consumers of Nat Gas produces nothing without fuel.

You are failing again to understand that the installation and operation of wind farms deprioritized any supply security for natural gas.  Wind is an absolute failure for reliability.

Ercot does NOTHING related to choosing generation sources.  You need to look to the legislature, the governor, and the feds for pushing renewables over other sources.

Ercot is front and center promoting renewables while disregarding its innate unreliability as well as natural gas supply security.  It even promotes renewable credits for that purpose.

How can you possibly say they have nothing to do with generation sources?  That is disingenuous.  Their own name is an acronym that includes 'Reliability'.

This idiocy of trying to find a scapegoat like renewables and not recognizing the problem of not preparing is spread all over multiple industries is going to have us repeat it once again.  Just like 1989, 2011, and now 2021.

It is idiocy to disregard as irrelevant that a generation source like wind which cannot produce effectively during times of weather.  Do you not see the graphs which show we were utterly dependent upon other sources for our electricity during this time?

[Bigun]

More coal!  More nukes! Less wind and solar! Hardened NG supplies.

And a command structure with someone at the top who has a full working knowledge of the grid and all its interdependencies.

[thackney]

You are failing again to understand that the installation and operation of wind farms deprioritized any supply security for natural gas.  Wind is an absolute failure for reliability.

You are right. I do not understand that since it has not been shown in any fashion to be true.

Ercot is front and center promoting renewables while disregarding its innate unreliability as well as natural gas supply security.  It even promotes renewable credits for that purpose.

Ercot does not create those credits.  They are not the source of that issue.

How can you possibly say they have nothing to do with generation sources?  That is disingenuous.  Their own name is an acronym that includes 'Reliability'.

Because I understand that authority and responsibility does not magically happen because of the title chosen for them by others.  Ercot has no authority is selecting fuel types for power generation sources.

It is idiocy to disregard as irrelevant that a generation source like wind which cannot produce effectively during times of weather.  Do you not see the graphs which show we were utterly dependent upon other sources for our electricity during this time?

I have repeated said wind is not dispatchable.  It is not dependable.  That is why it is so limited in Ercot planning.  This is no surprise and has always been that way.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

You are right. I do not understand that since it has not been shown in any fashion to be true.

Ercot does not create those credits.  They are not the source of that issue.

Because I understand that authority and responsibility does not magically happen because of the title chosen for them by others.  Ercot has no authority is selecting fuel types for power generation sources.

I have repeated said wind is not dispatchable.  It is not dependable.  That is why it is so limited in Ercot planning.  This is no surprise and has always been that way.

Do you realize the circular argument you are using?

The Governor cannot by himself understand the complexities of how a grid operates and how differing actions change its nature.

He therefore hires people(hopefully) that do understand these things.  They are the PUC and Ercot.  They are the ones who (supposedly) study the aspects of the grid, which is the reason they are employed, and make recommendations to ensure reliability is first and foremost.

I have seen no indication within available Ercot or PUC meetings or news reports that mentioned any suggestions of reliability problems that might occur that was reported back to the Governor before this drastic weather event, only in retrospect.

You do not see a problem with this, the PRIMARY role for them, to provide reliability assessments?

So people conclude Ercot and the PUC are not responsible. (Then why did so many Ercot members resign shortly after the debacle?)

Others say the Governor is not responsible, Ercot told him everything was ok with the grid.

So who is ultimately responsible?  This is not an engineering issue. It is a political issue.

It is also certainly not the private entities that place power into the grid.  They are under the auspices of the governmental authorities.

One other thing:  you say we would have had a worst disaster if more natural gas generation was available.

What if on the other hand 100% of our power came from renewables?  Would you continue to say that natural gas would still be a worse situation?

The new DOE chief Granholm has guaranteed she will tee up more renewables into our system and to get Texas connected into other states in order to assert more federal control.

Is that not a political issue as well?

We engineers can easily predict what will result with that disastrous policy.

[thackney]

Do you realize the circular argument you are using?....

We agree on half of that sentence, not much else.

[thackney]

Another part of the problem appears.  Lots of pieces in fixing the problem.

...Nye said before the storm they had identified 35 gas facilities that needed to continue receiving electricity.

But after the outages began, Nye said he received calls from many more them. “During the event, we added 168 new gas critical facilities. We turned them all on immediately and we kept them on the entire time.”

He told lawmakers that his company and other transmission owners, power plant operators, and the gas industry need to develop an updated list.

Energy experts have told CBS 11 that improvements need to be made to both the electric and gas grids holistically to prevent the kind of widespread power outages that happened last week....