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Texas has the equipment, but it's all frozen due to an extreme weather event. 1. The extreme cold is driving up demand to heat homes which is usually done in p
by noodlenotes 6y ago
Texas has the equipment, but it's all frozen due to an extreme weather event.
1. The extreme cold is driving up demand to heat homes which is usually done in part by natural gas but
2. The cold has frozen natural gas pipes and wells, driving up the cost of gas 33x.
3. People are trying to heat their homes with electricity but
4. Wind turbines are frozen, limiting capacity, AND those sky high gas prices are limiting what gas power plants can output.
- namibj 6y agoHow do you manage to freeze natural gas pipelines? It isn't even liquid at the near-surface air low-temperature record (-89.2 C/-128.6 F).
- fuzzfactor 6y agoCrude natural gas is usually saturated with water downhole at warm temperatures and high pressures, some of which condenses as it is produced at the surface. At many points in a pipeline further water removal can be essential too. Even when not liquefied like LPG, when passing through a restriction valve or orifice, there is still additional cooling due to the product acting a bit like a refigerant. The water content may be small but the quantity of cold gas passing through a narrow point which is well below 0C eventually can build up kilos of ice and block the flow until the ambient temperature rises enough to open it back up.
- pfdietz 6y agoAnd you get can get clathrates (combinations of methane/ethane/propane and water).
- dmurray 6y agoMethane can't realistically freeze in the pipes, but unrefined natural gas has plenty of impurities which can. Note they're talking about "pipelines and wells" freezing in a gas production context, not residential gas mains.
- namibj 6y agoUnderstandable. As long as it remains available, the price hike seems to incentivize operators to expend energy on manually thawing them. I'm assuming they could rig up makeshift natural gas burners/heat lamps to keep critical sections above freezing.
- sneak 6y agoI feel like this reads like the first 60 seconds of intro to one of those youtube disaster-recounting videos.
- genewitch 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB being one of said channels. I don't want to say in enjoy their videos due to the content, but for being so simple they convey a great deal of information in a way that few other media have done in decades.
- DavidPeiffer 6y agoI've definitely watched over 20 hours of their content. It's very well produced, very approachable and easy to understand. I'm pleasantly surprised at how good of a resource their videos are. I had lower expectations with them being part of the federal government.
- sneak 6y agoThe one I was thinking of is https://youtube.com/c/FascinatingHorror https://youtube.com/c/FascinatingHorror - they aren't quite as in depth but cover a lot of different events.
- namibj 6y agoThanks for the link. And yes, my wording seemed weird, even to me.
- pridkett 6y agoMost of this is correct, but thankfully, wind turbines do not appear to be frozen. In fact, current wind power to the grid is 4300MW. The predicted level is about 2450MW for right now. That’s difference amounts to the entire reserve power in their grid. You can see this on the ERCOT page (it’s a popup which is hard to link from mobile). If wind wasn’t doing so well things would be even more painful. Everything else you said appears to be spot on.
- netsec_burn 6y agoTheir press release from Feb 24th indicates that yesterday they were frozen. Perhaps not today, however. http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225151 http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225151
- heyflyguy 6y agoThey were frozen. De-icing helicopters un-froze them.