23 ms·

And what was the financial impact of the blackouts that happened in the last few years? During that event the solar was effectively zero, and wind was close to

by kyrra 4y ago

And what was the financial impact of the blackouts that happened in the last few years? During that event the solar was effectively zero, and wind was close to that. Plus too many gas plants were in maintenance or froze/broke, which caused outages. If Texas would have still been fully on gas/coal/nuclear, would there have been a blackout? If they would have invested more in nuclear, what would be the financial impact? Would it have operated better in the freeze? There are trade off with every decision made. I'm trying to sus out of the state would be better off spending money in a different way.

black_13 4y ago
Texas energy problems are not from technology but from poor governance.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
andsoitis 4y ago
Like the sibling said, poor governance. Wikipedia on the 2021 Text Blackout (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis): State officials including Republican governor Greg Abbott[13] initially blamed[14] the outages on frozen wind turbines and solar panels. However, data showed that failure to winterize power sources, like wind turbines and natural gas infrastructure, had caused the grid failure.[15][16] Texas's power grid has long been separate from the two major national grids to avoid federal oversight, though it is still connected to the other national grids and Mexico's;[17] the limited number of ties made it difficult for the state to import electricity from other states during the crisis.[18] Deregulation of its electricity market beginning in the 1990s resulted in competition in wholesale electricity prices, but also cost cutting for contingency preparation.
- roenxi 4y ago
  The Wikipedia article mentions "The winter storm caused a record low temperature at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport of −2 °F (−19 °C) on February 16, the coldest in North Texas in 72 years.". A bad outage in a 1:70 year event may be reasonable governance. If you demand people gold-plate the grid to prepare for a few bad days every 70 years, it'll really hurt all the other 69 years and however many days because a lot of money gets spent for a contingency that happens rarely. It might make more sense to just have warm shelters ready, rather than try and make the grid robust. Give the market a chance. Plus, practically, a 1:70 tail event is usually outside a regulator's tolerance for preparation too. COVID springs to mind as something on a similar timeframe.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    It was a total fluke and hit at least 2/3 of the state, most cold blasts don't do that. I was lucky and near a hospital, so my power only went out a couple of hours and I had 2 families (friends) come and live with me for 3 days or so. They cleaned out my larder, but honestly I enjoyed my time with them immensely. However, climatologists predict it will happen more often as the jet stream that usually keeps most of the arctic air out of the state is getting weaker of the years.
  - katbyte 4y ago
    It also happened in 2011, and nearly again in 2014: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/22/texas-power-grid-extreme-weather/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/22/texas-power-grid-ext... The market has abjectly failed customers in texes - but the utilities made off like bandits charging outrageous amounts each time. The texes power grid is broken and the market won’t fix it. There is a reason the regulations they don’t want to implement exist.
    - roenxi 4y ago
      > It also happened in 2011, and nearly again in 2014 Texas has cheap power though. If I were moving to the US for some reason, I'd consider Texas for it's cheap power then try to mitigate the risks myself. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean that changing it makes it better. You're assuming that 100% reliability is the only acceptable outcome. It is possible 99% reliability and alternate mitigation is the best outcome. If people prepare for the power grid going down from time to time that will also prepare for other events and build up resiliency. People freezing is really bad. Relying on a large and complex system working in extreme events is also bad, however. This is one for Texans to resolve for themselves, but there is a story here where the problem is actually the resiliency to the grid failing rather than the failures themselves. Cheap power + good emergency procedures is probably going to be a really cheap path, plus hit a whole heap of alternative disaster planning scenarios.
      - katbyte 4y ago
        Texes has cheap power? https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2022/06/02/were-in-trouble-electric-rates-in-texas-have-surged-over-70-as-summer-kicks-in/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2022/06/02/were-i... I would argue that when your power bill can skyrocket suddenly due to poor governance and mismanagement of the grid and you pay 1000s you do not have “cheap” power. Other states, provinces, and countries manage to deliver even cheaper power, consistently, without the grid failures and profiteering thanks to regulation. People shouldnt be dead because power companies want to make more money.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Also, inadequate home insulation. https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/03/14/like-power-generators-texas-homes-are-not-built-for-winter/ https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/03/14/lik... "Peak heating load in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas-managed grid matched the amount of generation that failed. Electric heating was nearly twice the load ERCOT had to drop. No vast heating peak, no shortage." "Two-thirds of Texas homes were built before statewide home energy codes began in 2001. Half the state’s homes still leak hot or cold air and have little or no wall insulation, limited attic insulation, and low-efficiency single-pane windows." Improving insulation would also reduce the summer cooling peak in power demand, and allow shifting of some of that daily load to off peak times by pre-cooling homes.
csours 4y ago
A nuclear power plant went down when it's lake froze. Coal power plants did the same. Natural gas fared better when the supply wasn't frozen, because natural gas turbines don't require intensive cooling that steam generation does. And yes, it's really ironic that steam generation had to stop due to lack of cooling on the coldest day of the year. Wind Turbine gearboxes froze up (oil congealed, not froze) because they were too cold and also not winterized. They could have been but they weren't. Solar could have powered some people's homes, but most home solar turns off when the grid turns off.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  When it is overcast in Texas residential solar doesn't really generate an appreciable amounts of power. It is grid tie so despite what many people think they don't have any power in the case of the grid going out. I know of a few folks on co-op power that are allowed to have Tesla powerwall (or similar). But in that case they can't sell power back into the grid economically. The reason why the 2021 freeze was so intense is that during the day we didn't get sun, we had cloud cover 24 hours a day. It's entirely normal to get freezing nights in most of Texas. But by 10 AM stuff is back up to a temperature that it's 40 F or so because of the sun. When we get days upon days or freezing nights followed by even just overcast weather, that is when it becomes an issue.
  - abathur 4y ago
    Not sure I'd blame the cloud cover over the polar airmass wrt intensity. I think we had at least a couple sunny days in Houston (I remember opening blinds to get as much free heat as possible) and still didn't get out of the low 20s iirc.
noneeeed 4y ago
Twice as much capacity was taken offline from gas, coal and nuclear generators than from wind or solar. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... In all cases it was because the infrastructure wasn’t hardened for the weather. This is something that they have now been doing I believe, although how ready they are will only be found out at the next big freeze. Wind works fine in cold weather if you build it with the weather in mind. Cold states like Michigan have wind turbines and do just fine https://empoweringmichigan.com/how-do-wind-turbines-work-in-cold-weather/ https://empoweringmichigan.com/how-do-wind-turbines-work-in-...
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  A more accurate thing to say is that turbines need to be heated in cold weather, which has an effect on their cost and operation efficiency. In places where a deep freeze is unlikely it’s usually better just to shut them down in extremely cold weather.
  - noneeeed 4y ago
    As do natural gas and other energy systems, as demonstrated in my point that twice as much gas/coal/nuclear generation was turned off during the Texas feeeze. All generation systems need to be adapted to the weather, Texas energy producers of all kinds decided not to, the blackouts were the result.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jackmott42 4y ago
Solar worked fine during the winter storm.
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  Only if the house was equipped with a battery, which is not common. There’s a NEC requirement that solar power stops when the grid goes down to prevent power islands. The only way around this is a battery. Also lithium batteries can’t charge in sub-freezing temperatures without permanent damage.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    Solar isn't limited to homes, does Texas not have any solar farms on the grid? TFA doesn't clarify this.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      There are solar farms in Texas, a bit over 8GW installed so far with several large projects planned to come online soon. I've driven past some pretty large solar fields out in far west Texas. It's an interesting scene seeing extremely flat lands all the way to the horizon filled with some randomly placed rusty old pump jacks, massive arrays of solar panels, and massive wind turbines in the distance.
shagie 4y ago
There's an NPR podcast series about that - The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1004840920/the-disconnect-power-politics-and-the-texas-blackout https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1004840920/the-disconnect-power... The issue is how they set up the grid and avoided any federal regulation. Additionally, the market structure that it uses is designed to be running as close to being a blackout as possible without actually blacking out in the name of "an efficient market".
GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
If someone in Texass experiences a blackout, they can just go to https://comparepower.com/ https://comparepower.com/ and select a different provider, right?
- _JamesA_ 4y ago
  The correct site is https://powertochoose.org https://powertochoose.org but your observation of having a pseudo-choice of energy providers still stands.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
What are you even talking about? We had that awful blackout, and it sure as heck wasn't renewables, it was the fossil fuel power plants and gas plants that provided for them. I hate to see it but you really should go look up the real causes of the blackout. It was winterization at fossil fuel plants (gas and electric) if you want the short version. It's not like we have constant blackouts. could we improve the grid? Of course and by a lot. Are we experiencing 3rd world power grid conditions? Not even close.

by kyrra 4y ago

black_13 4y ago

Texas energy problems are not from technology but from poor governance.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

andsoitis 4y ago

Like the sibling said, poor governance. Wikipedia on the 2021 Text Blackout (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis): State officials including Republican governor Greg Abbott[13] initially blamed[14] the outages on frozen wind turbines and solar panels. However, data showed that failure to winterize power sources, like wind turbines and natural gas infrastructure, had caused the grid failure.[15][16] Texas's power grid has long been separate from the two major national grids to avoid federal oversight, though it is still connected to the other national grids and Mexico's;[17] the limited number of ties made it difficult for the state to import electricity from other states during the crisis.[18] Deregulation of its electricity market beginning in the 1990s resulted in competition in wholesale electricity prices, but also cost cutting for contingency preparation.

roenxi 4y ago
The Wikipedia article mentions "The winter storm caused a record low temperature at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport of −2 °F (−19 °C) on February 16, the coldest in North Texas in 72 years.". A bad outage in a 1:70 year event may be reasonable governance. If you demand people gold-plate the grid to prepare for a few bad days every 70 years, it'll really hurt all the other 69 years and however many days because a lot of money gets spent for a contingency that happens rarely. It might make more sense to just have warm shelters ready, rather than try and make the grid robust. Give the market a chance. Plus, practically, a 1:70 tail event is usually outside a regulator's tolerance for preparation too. COVID springs to mind as something on a similar timeframe.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  It was a total fluke and hit at least 2/3 of the state, most cold blasts don't do that. I was lucky and near a hospital, so my power only went out a couple of hours and I had 2 families (friends) come and live with me for 3 days or so. They cleaned out my larder, but honestly I enjoyed my time with them immensely. However, climatologists predict it will happen more often as the jet stream that usually keeps most of the arctic air out of the state is getting weaker of the years.
- katbyte 4y ago
  It also happened in 2011, and nearly again in 2014: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/22/texas-power-grid-extreme-weather/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/22/texas-power-grid-ext... The market has abjectly failed customers in texes - but the utilities made off like bandits charging outrageous amounts each time. The texes power grid is broken and the market won’t fix it. There is a reason the regulations they don’t want to implement exist.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    > It also happened in 2011, and nearly again in 2014 Texas has cheap power though. If I were moving to the US for some reason, I'd consider Texas for it's cheap power then try to mitigate the risks myself. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean that changing it makes it better. You're assuming that 100% reliability is the only acceptable outcome. It is possible 99% reliability and alternate mitigation is the best outcome. If people prepare for the power grid going down from time to time that will also prepare for other events and build up resiliency. People freezing is really bad. Relying on a large and complex system working in extreme events is also bad, however. This is one for Texans to resolve for themselves, but there is a story here where the problem is actually the resiliency to the grid failing rather than the failures themselves. Cheap power + good emergency procedures is probably going to be a really cheap path, plus hit a whole heap of alternative disaster planning scenarios.
    - katbyte 4y ago
      Texes has cheap power? https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2022/06/02/were-in-trouble-electric-rates-in-texas-have-surged-over-70-as-summer-kicks-in/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2022/06/02/were-i... I would argue that when your power bill can skyrocket suddenly due to poor governance and mismanagement of the grid and you pay 1000s you do not have “cheap” power. Other states, provinces, and countries manage to deliver even cheaper power, consistently, without the grid failures and profiteering thanks to regulation. People shouldnt be dead because power companies want to make more money.
pfdietz 4y ago
Also, inadequate home insulation. https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/03/14/like-power-generators-texas-homes-are-not-built-for-winter/ https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/03/14/lik... "Peak heating load in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas-managed grid matched the amount of generation that failed. Electric heating was nearly twice the load ERCOT had to drop. No vast heating peak, no shortage." "Two-thirds of Texas homes were built before statewide home energy codes began in 2001. Half the state’s homes still leak hot or cold air and have little or no wall insulation, limited attic insulation, and low-efficiency single-pane windows." Improving insulation would also reduce the summer cooling peak in power demand, and allow shifting of some of that daily load to off peak times by pre-cooling homes.

csours 4y ago

A nuclear power plant went down when it's lake froze. Coal power plants did the same. Natural gas fared better when the supply wasn't frozen, because natural gas turbines don't require intensive cooling that steam generation does. And yes, it's really ironic that steam generation had to stop due to lack of cooling on the coldest day of the year. Wind Turbine gearboxes froze up (oil congealed, not froze) because they were too cold and also not winterized. They could have been but they weren't. Solar could have powered some people's homes, but most home solar turns off when the grid turns off.

sidewndr46 4y ago
When it is overcast in Texas residential solar doesn't really generate an appreciable amounts of power. It is grid tie so despite what many people think they don't have any power in the case of the grid going out. I know of a few folks on co-op power that are allowed to have Tesla powerwall (or similar). But in that case they can't sell power back into the grid economically. The reason why the 2021 freeze was so intense is that during the day we didn't get sun, we had cloud cover 24 hours a day. It's entirely normal to get freezing nights in most of Texas. But by 10 AM stuff is back up to a temperature that it's 40 F or so because of the sun. When we get days upon days or freezing nights followed by even just overcast weather, that is when it becomes an issue.
- abathur 4y ago
  Not sure I'd blame the cloud cover over the polar airmass wrt intensity. I think we had at least a couple sunny days in Houston (I remember opening blinds to get as much free heat as possible) and still didn't get out of the low 20s iirc.

noneeeed 4y ago

Twice as much capacity was taken offline from gas, coal and nuclear generators than from wind or solar. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... In all cases it was because the infrastructure wasn’t hardened for the weather. This is something that they have now been doing I believe, although how ready they are will only be found out at the next big freeze. Wind works fine in cold weather if you build it with the weather in mind. Cold states like Michigan have wind turbines and do just fine https://empoweringmichigan.com/how-do-wind-turbines-work-in-cold-weather/ https://empoweringmichigan.com/how-do-wind-turbines-work-in-...

ed25519FUUU 4y ago
A more accurate thing to say is that turbines need to be heated in cold weather, which has an effect on their cost and operation efficiency. In places where a deep freeze is unlikely it’s usually better just to shut them down in extremely cold weather.
- noneeeed 4y ago
  As do natural gas and other energy systems, as demonstrated in my point that twice as much gas/coal/nuclear generation was turned off during the Texas feeeze. All generation systems need to be adapted to the weather, Texas energy producers of all kinds decided not to, the blackouts were the result.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jackmott42 4y ago

Solar worked fine during the winter storm.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago
Only if the house was equipped with a battery, which is not common. There’s a NEC requirement that solar power stops when the grid goes down to prevent power islands. The only way around this is a battery. Also lithium batteries can’t charge in sub-freezing temperatures without permanent damage.
- pengaru 4y ago
  Solar isn't limited to homes, does Texas not have any solar farms on the grid? TFA doesn't clarify this.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    There are solar farms in Texas, a bit over 8GW installed so far with several large projects planned to come online soon. I've driven past some pretty large solar fields out in far west Texas. It's an interesting scene seeing extremely flat lands all the way to the horizon filled with some randomly placed rusty old pump jacks, massive arrays of solar panels, and massive wind turbines in the distance.

shagie 4y ago

There's an NPR podcast series about that - The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1004840920/the-disconnect-power-politics-and-the-texas-blackout https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1004840920/the-disconnect-power... The issue is how they set up the grid and avoided any federal regulation. Additionally, the market structure that it uses is designed to be running as close to being a blackout as possible without actually blacking out in the name of "an efficient market".

GartzenDeHaes 4y ago

If someone in Texass experiences a blackout, they can just go to https://comparepower.com/ https://comparepower.com/ and select a different provider, right?

_JamesA_ 4y ago
The correct site is https://powertochoose.org https://powertochoose.org but your observation of having a pseudo-choice of energy providers still stands.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

What are you even talking about? We had that awful blackout, and it sure as heck wasn't renewables, it was the fossil fuel power plants and gas plants that provided for them. I hate to see it but you really should go look up the real causes of the blackout. It was winterization at fossil fuel plants (gas and electric) if you want the short version. It's not like we have constant blackouts. could we improve the grid? Of course and by a lot. Are we experiencing 3rd world power grid conditions? Not even close.