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Natural gas prices have been absolutely wild the past few days. https://www.naturalgasintel.com/weekly-natural-gas-prices-soar-as-polar-vortex-unleashes-brutal

• dehrmann 6y ago
  How isolated are different natural gas networks in the US?
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    Not a direct answer, but you can adjust the active layers on https://www.eia.gov/state/maps.php https://www.eia.gov/state/maps.php to show pipelines. It's pretty well interconnected.
    • dehrmann 6y ago
      Connections only halfway answers it capacity is also a big part of this.
  • bloaf 6y ago
    Virtually everything is interconnected [0], but some regions are more connected than others. All the producers and consumers know how much it costs to ship to/from different hubs, including Asia and Europe, and will do so very quickly whenever it becomes economic. As you can probably tell from the wikipedia graph, the gulf is heavily plumbed. In addition to the shipping and processing in the gulf, there are also massive storage caverns [1] that can buffer most swings in demand. Different US regions have their own storage hubs [2] but the reason that lots of natural gas-related prices have "Mont Belvieu" in the name is that Mont Belvieu TX is basically the biggest storage hub and serves as the benchmark for everyone else. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_pipeline_system_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_pipeline_system_in... [1] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2015/10/19/124674/on-edge-of-houston-underground-caverns-store-huge-quantities-of-natural-gas-liquids/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2015/10/19/... [2] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_stor_wkly_s1_w.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_stor_wkly_s1_w.htm Edit: wikipedia has a pretty good overview here, but it is a little dated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage
• jillesvangurp 6y ago
  That price volatility is an interesting thing. It could actually accelerate the transition to renewables in places like Texas. Gas for peaker plants becomes a lot less attractive when the price can jump by 100x when it is most needed. If that becomes a regular thing, people will want other options. And of course such options are readily available in the market now in the form of e.g. solar + battery that you can install in your home.
  • bob1029 6y ago
    Battery storage is wholly inadequate for this current scenario. We need reliable baseload capacity for prolonged demand cycles like this. Texas being frozen over for days on end is not the same as dealing with the duck curve on an intraday basis in the summer. Running your AC on batteries for a few hours in the afternoon is a completely different ballgame than trying to heat your home for 72 hours straight.
    • jillesvangurp 6y ago
      You are right, it's not a solution by itself. But it does help smooth out the energy peaks. The more people do that the better it gets. And if you have an EV with vehicle to grid capability, that's another very capable battery that should be able to keep you powered for 2-3 days. A couple of million of those would go a long way in the next few years. But it does require a bit of planning and infrastructure to happen.
    • pfdietz 6y ago
      The solution may be hydrogen. This helps in two ways: it can be burned in turbines, and it provides large amounts of dispatchable demand (for the electrolyzers) that can be shut down in emergencies.