Yearning for Cozumel weather

[horn34]

Was the business district lit up ok?

Why has Austin Energy kept power on in downtown Austin?
Austin Energy has gotten a lot of questions about why it has chosen to keep the power on in downtown Austin through the entirety of the controlled outages. Here is the reason:

“The downtown network is excluded for now from load shedding (power outages) during controlled outages mandated by ERCOT. This is a complicated, inter-connected network which includes critical buildings like the Dell Seton Medical Center, warming centers, the COVID-19 Alternate Care Site, Capitol Complex and Austin City Hall, as well as other critical infrastructure and government buildings. Shutting down the downtown network would also cut off electricity to these critical buildings, which may also house vital communications equipment.

“Austin Energy is working with the Building Owners & Managers Association and the Downtown Austin Alliance in asking their members to curtail non-essential power use.”

 

[lionfish-eater]

Go wind power, what could go wrong

What is wrong is that none of Texas's energy production was weatherized as recommended many times in past years.

Oil and gas energy production failed because no efforts were made to upgrade for weather.
Wind failed because no effort was made to weatherize the turbines.
Wind and solar are used all over the world in climates much worse than what Texas just experienced.

But if you want to blame it on the green new deal go right ahead, no new info is likely to change your mind.

"Citing an official with the state's Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT), The Texas Tribune reported that as of Tuesday afternoon "16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, was offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy."

"Texas is a gas state," Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told the Tribune. "Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now."

But that hasn't stopped Texas Republicans like Abbott and Rep. Dan Crenshaw from attempting to blame frozen wind turbines for outages that could continue for days, endangering lives and coronavirus vaccines.

In response to Abbott's "Hannity" interview, Texas voting rights advocate Charlie Bonner tweeted, "He is lying. People are dying, and he is on Fox News lying to you. We are living in fear and Greg Abbott is playing politics with our lives."


'He Is Lying. People Are Dying': Calls for Texas Governor to Resign as He Blames Power Outages on Wind and Solar

 

[ggunn]

What is wrong is that none of Texas's energy production was weatherized as recommended many times in past years.

Obviously, it was an economic decision. Why spend the money to insure against something that is unlikely to happen? Well, this is why.

The same thing happened in the lower 9th Ward in New Orleans; what Katrina wrought upon the levee system between the City and Lake Pontchartrain was thought to be so unlikely that the Levee Board elected not to spend the money to shore it up. Look what happened.

 

[DandyDon]

What is wrong is that none of Texas's energy production was weatherized as recommended many times in past years.

We have had good leaders at times, but not in recent years.

 

[gopbroek]

ERCOT is 100% to blame for this. Once things get back to normal, the press will start digging and expose the unbelievable incompetence of ERCOT during the last 2 weeks and especially Sunday night.

As I understand it the major loss of generation was the gas fired plants supply lines freezing up and since they are by far the largest electricity source it had the largest effect. But it was reported that half the wind turbines stopped producing, that is a very large percentage of failures. We were actually lucky that more of our power wasn't produced by wind.
By the way my current contracted power provider is 100% wind. As best as I can tell its a privately held corp ( Green energy exchange, part of ATG Clean Energy Holdings, Inc) so I haven't been able see how they are doing financially via a stock price but if they were unable to produce and had to buy power on the spot market they may go bust leaving their customers scrambling. This is what happened to many providers back in 2011.

 

[DandyDon]

We were actually lucky that more of our power wasn't produced by wind.

Haha, right. I don't want turbines on my farms, and they had to reroute around one of mine, but wind turbines work fine in northern states and colder countries that prepare better. Our power companies took cheaper approaches.

 

[horn34]

As I understand it the major loss of generation was the gas fired plants supply lines freezing up and since they are by far the largest electricity source it had the largest effect. But it was reported that half the wind turbines stopped producing, that is a very large percentage of failures. We were actually lucky that more of our power wasn't produced by wind.
By the way my current contracted power provider is 100% wind. As best as I can tell its a privately held corp ( Green energy exchange, part of ATG Clean Energy Holdings, Inc) so I haven't been able see how they are doing financially via a stock price but if they were unable to produce and had to buy power on the spot market they may go bust leaving their customers scrambling. This is what happened to many providers back in 2011.
View attachment 642699

ERCOT is in charge of grid demand forecasting, monitoring plants for preparedness and directing local utilities to shed load. They failed miserably at every one.

 

[cozcharlie]

I assume all these posts will be deleted as non Cozumel related, but @lionfish-eater ‘s post is pretty accurate. I say reasonably accurate because the exact mix/magnitude/underlying causes of a bunch of interrelated issues is difficult to determine in real time. Analyzing energy markets was exactly my job for decades—even I am not sure yet of exactly how much blame to place where at this point. Wind clearly underperformed, but it wasn’t the primary driver of the issues and probably not even the secondary driver of the issues. @gopbroek correctly points out wind might be a bigger issue in the future if it’s share continues to grow. Weatherization at power plants would have helped but that is useless for the gas plants if there isn’t natural gas available on the pipeline system. Also, don’t blame ERCOT. I am sure they could have done a little better but the elected and appointed officials above them (governor/legislature/public utility commission) would have never allowed them to implement the very costly measures needed to prevent this sort of an issue. In terms of ERCOT demand forecasting they have been warning for 10 days or so about pending high demand. If you want someone to predict once in 30 year weather a few months out consult your local astrologer. You should also be very thankful they ordered local utilities to shed load. If they hadn’t they would have gone into cascade failure and the entire state would have gone dark and stayed that way for a good while (would make current outages look like child’s play )

Just as background , some preliminary industry estimates say US daily natural gas production has declined approximately 15Bcf/day in the past couple of weeks, presumably concentrated in TX/OK area. EDIT: This production decline is due to a variety of cold weather issues that are collectively referred to as “freeze-offs” in the industry and are explained further in the link at the bottom. I included an industry graph of US lower 48 production at the bottom. This is just one estimate but the only one I could find given I no longer have access to a bunch of very expensive data since I left my job to spend more time in Coz. This is a rough estimate because TX and Oklahoma don’t require nearly the disclosure from pipeline companies that the rest of the country does (blame your elected state officials for this —TX is often referred to as a black hole in the industry due to the lack of pipeline data ). This production decline would be spread across tens of thousands of wells if not hundreds of thousands of wells. As a frame of reference ,if that estimated decline is correct it is roughly equivalent to turning off the entire natural gas production of Canada—which is the 5th or 6th largest producer in the world.

Natural gas prices traded yesterday for delivery today in OK evidently hit just under $1,000/mmbtu. That is equivalent to $6,000 per barrel oil or $140/gallon gasoline. I saw a graph for Katy Hub outside Houston that peaked at $350–not as high as OK but still insane. I am using the prices primarily to indicate how scarce natural gas is in the region right now despite the fact a huge amount of gas demand is missing from power plants that aren’t running.

Less wind and more natural gas generation clearly isn’t the solution to that problem. Coal generation usually doesn’t perform too well either when you need it. More nuclear would be insanely expensive and politically impossible and also can have issues. What you probably need is for the gas units to have fuel switching ability to run diesel instead of gas and incentive to keep large inventories of diesel on hand. Diesel that wouldn’t even be needed at all for years at a time. This is a lot of money for something that happens every 30 years or so to this magnitude (we had a smaller magnitude incident 10 years ago ). There hasn’t been the political will for it even though the tail risk was potentially there. Batteries are not a solution for multi day power shortages in case someone was going to suggest that. A few hours maybe, but cost for days would be insane.

Decent industry article for background on gas issues.
[Terminal Frost - Extreme Cold Wreaks Havoc with Natural Gas Producers, Power Generators, and Everybody in Between]

 

[sefuchs]

I assume all these posts will be deleted as non Cozumel related, but @lionfish-eater ‘s post is pretty accurate. I say reasonably accurate because the exact mix/magnitude/underlying causes of a bunch of interrelated issues is difficult to determine in real time. Analyzing energy markets was exactly my job for decades—even I am not sure yet of exactly how much blame to place where at this point. Wind clearly underperformed, but it wasn’t the primary driver of the issues and probably not even the secondary driver of the issues. @gopbroek correctly points out wind might be a bigger issue in the future if it’s share continues to grow. Weatherization at power plants would have helped but that is useless for the gas plants if there isn’t natural gas available on the pipeline system. Also, don’t blame ERCOT. I am sure they could have done a little better but the elected and appointed officials above them (governor/legislature/public utility commission) would have never allowed them to implement the very costly measures needed to prevent this sort of an issue. In terms of ERCOT demand forecasting they have been warning for 10 days or so about pending high demand. If you want someone to predict once in 30 year weather a few months out consult your local astrologer. You should also be very thankful they ordered local utilities to shed load. If they hadn’t they would have gone into cascade failure and the entire state would have gone dark and stayed that way for a good while (would make current outages look like child’s play )

Just as background , some preliminary industry estimates say US daily natural gas production has declined approximately 15Bcf/day in the past couple of weeks, presumably concentrated in TX/OK area. I included an industry graph of US lower 48 production at the bottom. This is just one estimate but the only one I could find given I no longer have access to a bunch of very expensive data since I left my job to spend more time in Coz. This is a rough estimate because TX and Oklahoma don’t require nearly the disclosure from pipeline companies that the rest of the country does (blame your elected state officials for this —TX is often referred to as a black hole in the industry due to the lack of pipeline data ). This production decline would be spread across tens of thousands of wells if not hundreds of thousands of wells. As a frame of reference ,if that estimated decline is correct it is roughly equivalent to turning off the entire natural gas production of Canada—which is the 5th or 6th largest producer in the world.

Natural gas prices traded yesterday for delivery today in OK evidently hit just under $1,000/mmbtu. That is equivalent to $6,000 per barrel oil or $140/gallon gasoline. I saw a graph for Katy Hub outside Houston that peaked at $350–not as high as OK but still insane. I am using the prices primarily to indicate how scarce natural gas is in the region right now despite the fact a huge amount of gas demand missing from power plants that aren’t running.

Less wind and more natural gas generation clearly isn’t the solution to that problem. Coal generation usually doesn’t perform too well either when you need it. More nuclear would be insanely expensive and politically impossible and also can have issues. What you probably need is for the gas units to have fuel switching ability to run diesel instead of gas and incentive to keep large inventories of diesel on hand. Diesel that wouldn’t even be needed at all for years at a time. This is a lot of money for something that happens every 30 years or so to this magnitude (we had a smaller magnitude incident 10 years ago ). There hasn’t been the political will for it even though the tail risk was potentially there Batteries are not a solution for multi day power shortages in case someone was going to suggest that. A few hours maybe, but cost for days would be insane.

View attachment 642712
Decent industry article for background on gas issues.
[Terminal Frost - Extreme Cold Wreaks Havoc with Natural Gas Producers, Power Generators, and Everybody in Between]

Thank you CozCharlie! Great info and thanks for sticking to facts instead of playing the blame game towards a president or an administration!

 

[driftwood]

We all have to remember that the Texas power grid is designed for peak usage in the summer months.

In this case, we have had five (5) separate cold fronts in the past week. This is an unprecedented event that is unlikely to reoccur in our life times. Right now, I have electric service for 5 hours without interruption. First time since Friday.

One thing we have learned is that the wind generated energy in Texas should not be included in the "base load" planning unless it is winterized. Second, maintenance schedules need to be spread out over longer portions of the year.

Folks in Texas feel sorry for those suffering a heatwave in New York or Chicago while to us its just another day. Now the shoe is on the other foot.