ERCOT, PUC, and deregulation got us here

[horn4life 3784]

What you have to love about Republicans is how much lip service they give to not raising taxes, yet a fuck up that could be fixed that costs Texas consumers $16,000,000,000 in 32 hours.... well.... it's something that "just happened."

When I drive around and see fucking toll roads everywhere and I think... wonder what $16,000,000,000 might do fixing roads? Or any other thing you might want to invest in.  Instead it's a $16,000,000,000 fleecing of Texas citizens to enrich certain businesses who the GOP worked with to DESIGN this system.  And then not to change it much, because it's designed for industry not people.

[elfenix 34344]

2 hours ago, horn4life said:

What you have to love about Republicans is how much lip service they give to not raising taxes, yet a fuck up that could be fixed that costs Texas consumers $16,000,000,000 in 32 hours.... well.... it's something that "just happened."

When I drive around and see fucking toll roads everywhere and I think... wonder what $16,000,000,000 might do fixing roads? Or any other thing you might want to invest in.  Instead it's a $16,000,000,000 fleecing of Texas citizens to enrich certain businesses who the GOP worked with to DESIGN this system.  And then not to change it much, because it's designed for industry not people.

$16,000,000,000 is just the overcharge.  the whole fuckup easily cost another $16,000,000,000 on top of that because we weren't at $9,000/MWh for just 32 hours, it was that price for 4 days.  whole total for this man made disaster was probably $100,000,000,000 and 100+ lives. 

Edited April 14, 2021 by elfenix

[bolverk 29740]

11 hours ago, Grade of D as in David said:

I assume Ted Cruz already booked a trip to Cabo.

Don't be silly -- he's heading up to Canada. After all, it is getting a bit muggy out.

[cactusflinthead 27609]

 

[JimmyJames 12271]

13 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

Said it before and I’ll say it again. The problem will not be fixed until the republicans who caused it are finally thrown out of office. Playing with fire again next winter. 

[Dahobbs 17704]

 

I debated on here or in the Abbott thread.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office knew of looming natural gas shortages on February 10, days before a deep freeze plunged much of the state into blackouts, according to documents obtained by E&E News and reviewed by Ars.

Quote

 

Abbott’s office first learned of the likely shortfall in a phone call from then-chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas DeAnne Walker. In the days leading up to the power outages that began on February 15, Walker and the governor’s office spoke 31 more times.

Walker also spoke with regulators, politicians, and utilities dozens of times about the gas curtailments that threatened the state’s electrical grid. The PUC chair’s diary for the days before the outage shows her schedule dominated by concerns over gas curtailments and the impact they would have on electricity generation. Before and during the disaster, she was on more than 100 phone calls with various agencies and utilities regarding gas shortages.

After the blackouts began, Abbott appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that wind turbines were the driving force behind the outages.

Wind turbines were a factor, but only a small one. Wind in Texas doesn’t produce as much power in the winter, and regulators don’t typically rely on wind turbines to provide significant amounts of power. Instead, regulators anticipated that natural gas and coal power plants would meet demand.

In public, Bill Magness, then-CEO of ERCOT, the state’s electric grid regulator, didn’t seem concerned about the approaching weather. In a virtual meeting on February 9, Magness said, “As those of you in Texas know, we do have a cold front coming this way... Operations has issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everyone is up to speed with their winterization and we’re ready for the several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way.” During the two-and-a-half-hour public portion of the meeting, Magness devoted just 40 seconds to the unusual weather.

 

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/texas-gov-knew-of-natural-gas-shortages-days-before-blackout-blamed-wind-anyway/

Other bits: 

"On February 12, the Railroad Commission issued an emergency order dictating which customers should be prioritized for natural gas deliveries, and late on February 14, Texas’s grid finally began collapsing. In two text messages sent around midnight, ERCOT chief Magness told Walker that some wind turbines had frozen and several fossil fuel generators had tripped offline. Blackouts began just before 2 am, February 15. Walker promptly notified the governor’s office.

That was the only time Walker’s diary or logs mention wind power. After the two late-night text messages from Magness, Walker’s report does not mention wind power again. But it does reference gas curtailments more than 70 times over the next four days, a possible reflection of the scope, severity, and impact of the shortages.

The power outages soon found their way back to natural gas suppliers. “The concerns related to natural gas moved from concerns about curtailment to concerns about electric outages for gas producers,” Walker wrote on February 15. Power plants, short on gas, couldn’t generate enough electricity to power the infrastructure that kept gas flowing from suppliers to users, including the power plants themselves. It created a feedback loop that compounded the problem further. “I met with and informed the office of the Governor about the situation,” Walker wrote. “I interacted throughout the day with ERCOT and the Governor’s office related to the ongoing issues.”

Between when the outages began and when Abbott appeared on Fox host Sean Hannity’s show on February 16, Walker had spoken with the governor’s office more than 50 times. By this time, natural gas production in the South Central US, which includes Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas, was down 30 percent, representing a loss of 7 percent of all US production."

 

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33900]

the rate at which republicans commit atrocities against their own voters is just fucking staggering.

[cactusflinthead 27609]

 

[JimmyJames 12271]

20 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

Not gonna bump it but a whole bunch of DT assholes gave me all sorts of shit for claiming that hundreds of people died because of this colossal republican fuck up.

[Guest Lobo]

I'm sure some of those folks would dismiss this report of many hundreds of fatalities as, "They're double counting a lot of those deaths because some of those people had cancer or heart conditions or were old."  

Yeah, that's not how Carbon Monoxide works.  

[JimmyJames 12271]

5 hours ago, Lobo said:

I'm sure some of those folks would dismiss this report of many hundreds of fatalities as, "They're double counting a lot of those deaths because some of those people had cancer or heart conditions or were old."  

Yeah, that's not how Carbon Monoxide works.  

If that chart is correct the number of actual snowvid deaths could exceed 1000, not that our republican asshole politicians and their mouthbreathing sheep supporters would ever acknowledge that.
 

And unlike Covid, every single one of those deaths can be laid directly at the feet of the Texas Republican assholes in our government and their total incompetence. 

[Captainant 27862]

Paying for the storm: Electric, power and gas companies could seek billions in ratepayer-backed bonds, loans

Quote

Most Texans will likely have higher charges on their power bills for years to come to cover gas utilities', electric cooperatives' and electric companies’ financial losses from the storm and prevent customers from having to pay huge bills in a short time.

Lawmakers are close to passing bills that would allow companies to seek billions of dollars in state-approved bonds backed by charges on customers’ bills to stabilize the state’s distressed energy market.

After state electricity regulators set power prices at the maximum rate, $9,000 per megawatt-hour, and natural gas fuel prices spiked during the storm, many companies — especially natural gas utilities and rural electric cooperatives — were financially wrecked. Others owe massive debts to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Lawmakers may soon approve around $4.5 billion in ratepayer-backed bonds for natural gas utilities and another $2 billion in such bonds for electric cooperatives.

 

The Senate also approved a proposal in the early hours of May 27 to allow electric companies, including retail electric providers, to finance an additional $2.1 billion for electricity that companies paid for but never received during the storm, as well as additional charges from the high wholesale power prices. The Senate has pushed hard for a financial remedy to the infamous 32-hour period during the week of the storm when regulators kept wholesale power prices at the $9,000 cap after more electric generation came online. Many people dubbed that controversial decision a regulatory pricing error.

Additionally, House Bill 4492 would loan $800 million to ERCOT through the State's Economic Stabilization fund, known as the rainy day fund, to pay for debts to the grid operator. ERCOT acts as a transaction house for the electricity market, so when companies couldn't pay their debts after the storm, other companies got shorted for the electricity that they sold. ERCOT will pass on the cash to companies that are owed money.

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. Fucking fuck. 

[tx 3 putt 77618]

On 4/14/2021 at 7:22 AM, horn4life said:

What you have to love about Republicans is how much lip service they give to not raising taxes, yet a fuck up that could be fixed that costs Texas consumers $16,000,000,000 in 32 hours.... well.... it's something that "just happened."

When I drive around and see fucking toll roads everywhere and I think... wonder what $16,000,000,000 might do fixing roads? Or any other thing you might want to invest in.  Instead it's a $16,000,000,000 fleecing of Texas citizens to enrich certain businesses who the GOP worked with to DESIGN this system.  And then not to change it much, because it's designed for industry not people.

[horn4life 3784]

On 5/27/2021 at 12:17 PM, Captainant said:

Paying for the storm: Electric, power and gas companies could seek billions in ratepayer-backed bonds, loans

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. Fucking fuck. 

It's the basic model for every government function the GOP presents as a Solution.  When they oh so rarely attempt to offer any solution at all.  

[Texas007 195]

Thanks to everyone who has contributed on this thread. It has been a great read.

The system did perform as intended. It is set up to financially incentivize generating units to stay online during these type of events. A generator who tripped offline not only lost out on a huge pricing profit opportunity but were also responsible for buying back the power they failed to deliver. If a South Texas 1.2-GW unit trips offline while prices are at $9K/MW-hour it is essentially losing $360,000 every minute it is down.  Over 30-hours that adds up to $648,000,000!

Most, if not all, companies made weatherization improvements after the 2011 event. Some obviously did better and more than others. Some were just lucky (i.e. able to maintain fuel supplies). However, the open energy market operated in Texas is volatile and that means making a profit is difficult and margins are tight. A "low" probability event doesn't always add up to taking additional action in spite of the high consequences. Especially if your already having a hard time maintaining a profit. That is why a lot have sold off, shut down, and/or filed for bankruptcy. Removing the $9K cap would increase consequences of a trip and make weatherizing more of a priority (i.e. higher consequence = more risk mitigation). Removing the cap would also seemingly cause increased volatility.  

Market volatility also means investors are hesitant to dump funding into bringing on new generating units. A breakthrough in batteries would be great but if you really think it could happen in the next ten to fifteen years why would you even think about building a new combined cycle plant? There is no guarantee of short term profits and it could be mothballed before the loan is paid off.

One last thing: connecting our grid to the national grid is almost a non-starter. It would require a massive infrastructure upgrade and even more important a system wide shutdown and black start. The grid would potentially be down for days if not weeks.

[Satchel 6949]

Why didn’t the 2011 winterization improvements prevent what we just experienced in February? What did the legislature do to prevent a reoccurrence in the future?

[Fudge Nuggets 19229]

5 hours ago, Texas007 said:

One last thing: connecting our grid to the national grid is almost a non-starter. It would require a massive infrastructure upgrade and even more important a system wide shutdown and black start. The grid would potentially be down for days if not weeks.

This sounds like complete bullshit.

[Guest Lobo]

5 hours ago, Texas007 said:

 

One last thing: connecting our grid to the national grid is almost a non-starter. It would require a massive infrastructure upgrade and even more important a system wide shutdown and black start. The grid would potentially be down for days if not weeks.

The new season of "Revolution" sounds fucking lame.  

[tx 3 putt 77618]

6 hours ago, Texas007 said:

One last thing: connecting our grid to the national grid is almost a non-starter. It would require a massive infrastructure upgrade and even more important a system wide shutdown and black start. The grid would potentially be down for days if not weeks.

 

that's a quicker turn around than a winter storm 

[Zepol87 9198]

"Performed as intended" seems like a stretch after the bullshit a few months ago 

[Guest Lobo]

"Performed as intended" sounds a lot like Dan Patrick's wife's user reviews on their honeymoon.  

[TwiceHorn 31627]

Well, it's a fucked-up system, so yeah it performed as intended -- fucked-up.

[Mdhorn 5990]

On 5/21/2021 at 12:29 PM, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

the rate at which republicans commit atrocities against their own voters is just fucking staggering.

Trump pulled all the cover away and there was nowhere to hide. Now they know with absolute certainty their followers are dumb shits that will not only support this but also send them money for their lawyer fees and campaigns. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

7 hours ago, Texas007 said:

Thanks to everyone who has contributed on this thread. It has been a great read.

The system did perform as intended. It is set up to financially incentivize generating units to stay online during these type of events. A generator who tripped offline not only lost out on a huge pricing profit opportunity but were also responsible for buying back the power they failed to deliver. If a South Texas 1.2-GW unit trips offline while prices are at $9K/MW-hour it is essentially losing $360,000 every minute it is down.  Over 30-hours that adds up to $648,000,000!

Most, if not all, companies made weatherization improvements after the 2011 event. Some obviously did better and more than others. Some were just lucky (i.e. able to maintain fuel supplies). However, the open energy market operated in Texas is volatile and that means making a profit is difficult and margins are tight. A "low" probability event doesn't always add up to taking additional action in spite of the high consequences. Especially if your already having a hard time maintaining a profit. That is why a lot have sold off, shut down, and/or filed for bankruptcy. Removing the $9K cap would increase consequences of a trip and make weatherizing more of a priority (i.e. higher consequence = more risk mitigation). Removing the cap would also seemingly cause increased volatility.  

Market volatility also means investors are hesitant to dump funding into bringing on new generating units. A breakthrough in batteries would be great but if you really think it could happen in the next ten to fifteen years why would you even think about building a new combined cycle plant? There is no guarantee of short term profits and it could be mothballed before the loan is paid off.

One last thing: connecting our grid to the national grid is almost a non-starter. It would require a massive infrastructure upgrade and even more important a system wide shutdown and black start. The grid would potentially be down for days if not weeks.

Is this post a joke?

[JimmyJames 12271]

6 hours ago, Satchel said:

Why didn’t the 2011 winterization improvements prevent what we just experienced in February? What did the legislature do to prevent a reoccurrence in the future?

The legislature is still republican so the answer is absolutely nothing.

[tx 3 putt 77618]

27 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Is this post a joke?

[Bullneck 19235]

On 5/27/2021 at 7:29 AM, Lobo said:

I'm sure some of those folks would dismiss this report of many hundreds of fatalities as, "They're double counting a lot of those deaths because some of those people had cancer or heart conditions or were old."  

Yeah, that's not how Carbon Monoxide works.  

Dude, you can't count them as winter freeze deaths because they really died of Covid.  

[jimmyjazz 46302]

2 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

This sounds like complete bullshit.

That's because it is.

[Guest Lobo]

3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

That's because it is.

Nope, it’s legit.  We can’t plug into the National grid because it’s 220, and ERCOT is 219.  Whatever it doesn’t take. 

[Texas007 195]

2 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

This sounds like complete bullshit.

A full connection of the Texas grid with the western or eastern grids would require a matching of the frequencies. This could only be accomplished by dropping load and slowly bringing it back online and would be no small task.

We already have DC or variable frequency transformer connections to the other grids that alleviate the need to match frequencies but it is severely limited (5 connections at ~1100-MW). There was talk of building a "super station" out west that could transmit 5-GW but I think that was scraped or significantly scaled down.  Point is it would take billions of dollars to build enough connections that wouldn't require matching frequency.  

[Guest Lobo]

I have a euro adapter for my wife’s straightening iron from our honeymoon.  Would that help?

[jimmyjazz 46302]

4 minutes ago, Texas007 said:

A full connection of the Texas grid with the western or eastern grids would require a matching of the frequencies. This could only be accomplished by dropping load and slowly bringing it back online and would be no small task.

So the entire eastern and western grids are synched to some master clock?  Really?  Nothing ever phases in and out, even a fraction of a Hz?

Get out of here with "black start, maybe weeks" fear-mongering.  

[Texas007 195]

1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

So the entire eastern and western grids are synched to some master clock?  Really?  Nothing ever phases in and out, even a fraction of a Hz?

Get out of here with "black start, maybe weeks" fear-mongering.  

Frequency loss is exactly why we had rolling blackouts and almost lost the grid. Yes, a fraction of a Hz fluctuation (~0.1) would have catastrophic affects. Why do you think we have an eastern and western grid? 

[Guest Lobo]

Because of the jet stream?

[jimmyjazz 46302]

6 hours ago, Texas007 said:

Frequency loss is exactly why we had rolling blackouts and almost lost the grid. Yes, a fraction of a Hz fluctuation (~0.1) would have catastrophic affects. Why do you think we have an eastern and western grid? 

But it doesn't take weeks to get there.

[freyguy 4305]

The grid fluctuates throughout the day, and the operators tweak it as such.  You can link grids as well.  It would obviously cost money and resources to maintain, but it can be done.  We're not trying to go to Mars here.  We're dealing with physics that's been understood for over 100 years.

[Gengs1 2583]

Reading about power distribution, Half of Japan is 50 Hz and other half is 60 Hz and somehow they were able to combine the grids into one giant one, so someone telling me that 60 HZ in the states can’t be combined? Add some giant Solid State converters? 

[Updawg 2287]

Lubbock is joining the Texas grid this weekend. Only going to lose power for a couple of minutes during the transition

Supposedly

[Texas007 195]

Holy shit, I said it could take weeks. India connected their different grids and it took 2 - 3 days to synchronize. Lubbock is one relatively small load and they may be able to sync in short succession. Every time a generator comes online it has to sync and does so in minutes. However, to join the whole state with another grid would require bringing on load in pieces and if oscillations started to occur they could lose it and have to start the process all over. People were freaking out over frequency during the winter event because they were worried about losing the grid. They were worried because they knew losing the grid would take at best case days to restore. People have been advocating for decades to increase resiliency and connect the grids. Yes, the technology is there to do it but there are significant hurdles to accomplish that.       

[tx 3 putt 77618]

12 hours ago, Texas007 said:

Frequency loss is exactly why we had rolling blackouts and almost lost the grid. 

 

what caused that frequency loss ?

[Guest Lobo]

15 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

what caused that frequency loss ?

Some guy named Kenneth.

[jimmyjazz 46302]

Look, my direct experience is on the customer side -- invented, patented and manufactured megawatt class UPS systems for two decades -- so it's not a direct analogy, but it's not exactly cracking the atom to walk one source onto a grid such that the frequencies match.

I mean, I've been reading about tying together the US grid for almost 30 years, perhaps with high voltage DC at the links, perhaps not, but this fear-mongering just SCREAMS that you're a beneficiary of the independent Texas grid.

[Updawg 2287]

Probably a former Enron employee

[cactusflinthead 27609]

Ready?

 

[cactusflinthead 27609]

Forced generation outages.

Uh huh. I'm sure you're going to ask questions and do not one damn thing.

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33900]

Abbott and Ercot are really gonna FAFO, aren't they? There is going to be some major outage and Texans are literally going to fry. First they froze, now they're going to die of heat exhaustion. Just fucking unbelievable.

[Surly Bevo 25226]

Well in this topsy turvy world we live in at least we can still rely on the Energy Reliability Council of Texas continuing to be unreliable.  So we got that going for us....

[wildcat09 29440]

They're going to be making the same "request" every week for the entire summer.

[Firemans4Horn 18132]

Failed state

[Gooby 640]

Now seems about the time when Ted Cruz would tweet something out about California's unreliable energy grid.