Guest “The Best Plans of Mice and Men …” by David Middleton
Note: I originally titled this post with the title “The Day After Tomorrow: ERCOT Fail Edition” and ERCOT failed. But I changed the title because even though the outage was system-wide, wind power went completely out, the sun never appeared, while natural gas, coal, and nuclear power were all that kept the entire state of Texas from freezing in the dark. Despite these facts, some media reports that wind power saved the day while fossil fuels and nuclear power failed.
Reporting from the Dallas Ice Station
Current weather conditions at 6:30 a.m .: 21 °F (-6 °) with about 3-6 inches of snow on the ground. The normal low on February 17th is 40 °F (4 °C) … it is now ~ 10 °C below normal. This is a huge improvement on my previous report. Both the weather and the electricity situation appear to be improving. The weather situation was inevitable, but the electricity situation was inexcusable. Almost the entire power grid in Texas is monitored by ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and ERCOT, which failed completely in the “Reliability” department.
Many on the right have wrongly put the blame on frozen wind turbines, many on the left idiotically put the blame on natural gas and coal, and lagged on nuclear power plants. The errors in handling the icy weather were system-wide.
The power situation is catastrophic and will likely not be resolved tonight
February 15, 2021 at 2:50 p.m. by Eric Berger
Millions of customers in the greater Houston area continue to experience some of our coldest weather conditions in decades without the benefit of electricity to heat their homes. (Full disclosure, I’m one of them, and CT has been since 2 a.m. I’m typing this from my office wearing a winter jacket.)
To understand what is going on and when power might return, I spoke to Kenny Mercado, Executive Vice President of Electric Utilities at CenterPoint Energy, this afternoon.
First of all, it is important to understand how power generation works in Texas. Power plants across the state generate electricity from natural gas, coal, wind, sun, and other sources. All of this is fed into the grid, which is administered by the Texas Electric Reliability Council. Then it’s up to companies like CenterPoint to deliver power to your home through the network of cables and masts. (Reliant, the sponsor of Space City Weather, markets and sells electricity to the customer. You are not directly responsible for its generation or delivery.)
What happened
As of 2:00 p.m. Monday, approximately 1.1 million of CenterPoint’s 2.6 million customers in the greater Houston area will be without power. According to Mercado, customers with no power are unlikely to get power back today and possibly not tonight – when temperatures are expected to hit almost all record lows.
Two things happened last night to add to these outages. First, demand across the state is extraordinarily high, Mercado said. And then, from around 1 a.m., the generating units began to shut down. This is almost certainly due to extremely cold conditions. Eventually, about a third of the expected capacity went offline. This included a handful of freezing wind turbines, but the bulk of the volume loss was due to coal and natural gas plants going offline.
[…]
Space city weather
This remark is nonsensical:
Eventually, about a third of the expected capacity went offline. This included a handful of freezing wind turbines, but the bulk of the volume loss was due to coal and natural gas plants going offline.
Eric Berger, Space City Weather
“A handful of ice cold wind turbines”? At least half of the wind power capacity has been decommissioned since Sunday. It’s just a “handful” in the sense that wind power makes up only 20-25% of Texas electricity production. If you start with just two hands full of wind turbines and lose one hand to frostbite, you’ve probably only lost a handful … [/SARC]
“Most of the volume loss was due to coal and natural gas plants going offline”? Well, not a slate Sherlock. Around 70% of ERCOT’s generation capacity consists of natural gas and coal-fired power plants. Of course, most of the volume losses were attributable to natural gas power plants. However, coal and nuclear power plants (all two) have remained relatively untouched.
The fact is that almost all of the electricity currently being fed into the ERCOT network comes from natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants.
Ryan Zom, Clear Creek Resource Partner
Here is the latest ERCOT daily capacity mix:
RRP
The breakdown for February 16, 2021:
| MWh | %. | |
| Wind generation | 73.395 | 6% |
| Solar power generation | 20,134 | 2% |
| Hydropower generation | 3.833 | 0% |
| Different generation | 682 | 0% |
| Natural gas production | 759.708 | 65% |
| Coal production | 204,655 | 18% |
| Nuclear generation | 98.394 | 8th% |
| total | 1,160,801 | 100% |
RRP
Fossil fuels made up 83% of our electricity generation yesterday. Fossil fuels + nuclear power plants accounted for 92%.
Although there is a lot to do, ERCOT had a “dress rehearsal” for it in 2011. At least then, they used rotating failures successfully. We haven’t lost any electricity, while many of our friends have run out of electricity since early Monday morning.
Texas has more wind power capacity and natural gas production than many, if not most, nations. That cluster tailcoat is inexcusable and an embarrassment for the Great State of Texas. We now know that President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry were 100% right when they asked FERC to keep our coal and nuclear fleets operating.
Oct. 2, 2017, 5:11 p.m. EDT
Rick Perry instructs FERC to complete final resilience pricing action in 60 days
Rod Adams contributor
energy
[…]
Suitable resources for network reliability and resilience are all resources that:
1. is an electricity generation resource that is physically located in a Commission-approved independent network operator or regional transmission organization;
2. Able to provide essential energy and ancillary reliability services including, but not limited to, voltage support, frequency services, operational reserves and reactive power;
3. Has a 90-day on-site fuel supply that enables operation in the event of an emergency, extreme weather, or natural or man-made disaster;
4. Complies with all applicable federal, state and local environmental laws, rules and regulations; and
5. Is not regulated by any state or local regulator on service charges
All approved nuclear power plants and a significant part of the existing coal power plants can meet these requirements today.
[…]
Forbes WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 29: (AFP OUT) US President Donald Trump (L) greets Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, while Vice President Mike Pence (R) applauds after Trump made remarks at the Department of Energy’s Unleashing American Energy event hat on June 29, 2017 in Washington, DC. Trump announced a number of initiatives, including his administration’s plan to roll back energy generation and development regulations. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool / Getty Images)
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