We’ll see tomorrow morning. The worst of the power demand should be tomorrow morning. It got as low as 28 this morning out here in the suburbs southwest of Houston but should be closer to 20 tomorrow and we’re not going to climb solidly out of the 30s until Wednesday.
But as I noted above, we’ll not get as much precipitation this time around and it will be several degrees warmer than Feb 2021.
Yes, there’s been some additional preparation but even if there aren’t any issues, it’s not really indicative of much. It’s hard to judge how ready you are for a once in a generation storm until the next one hits - and this front isn’t close to being such a blizzard. Or even a blizzard in the first place, at least down here (they’re getting plenty of blizzard further north from what I’m seeing).
These kinds of temps are pretty rare around here but we’ve had 2 or 3 such episodes over the last 3 or 4 years, which is indicative (but of course not conclusive) of climate change destabilizing all that cold polar air mass more than has been usual.
Geez, yeah, they mean reduce usage as possible, not to totally shut down heating in freezing weather.
Peak demand is expected around 8am tomorrow and there’s already reserve capacity being brought online to account for it (basically peak summer capacity that is usually offlined for maintenance and such). But local outages are still completely possible, of course.
The other night, my mom (in Cleveland) deliberately turned up her thermostat, just so, if the power were to go out, the house would stay warm for longer (she has gas heat, but her furnace still requires power for a few minor things).
Some folks do the opposite around here in hurricane season. If there’s a storm coming, they’ll turn down the thermostats to build up some cold air in case the power goes out.
Latest word is ERCOT is asking Texans to conserve power between 6 and 11am and between 5 and 9pm tomorrow.
From the power company, measures being asked from homeowners include: avoiding the use of dishwashers/washing machines/dryers, setting thermostats down 1 to 2 degrees and setting ceiling fans clockwise on low to push warm air down, and stuffing rolled towels/blankets under leaky or drafty doors/window sills
Pretty much the last update is the grid held up. Demand was up at record levels but there was sufficient capacity.
As above, it wasn’t a full test - there was significantly less precipitation and temperatures were 5-10 degrees warmer than the Feb 2021 blizzard. One more cold evening expected but temperatures should rise pretty quickly tomorrow with clear skies.
So, things went pretty much as expected, which has me somewhat worried. People tend to fight the last battle, not the one coming up. So some overreacted to some extent this time based on the forecasts, but they may not take a future weather event as seriously as they should. And the state is probably still not really prepared for a storm like Feb 2021 to hit again.
The situation on the Texas power grid this week is going to be a crucial test not just for the grid’s managers at ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), but also for natural gas suppliers and generators. As weather conditions continued to evolve and deteriorate across the state, ERCOT has issued a conservation request to business and private customers to be in effect from 6am to 10am CST, a time of peak power demand and low renewable production.
I slid past that it was a “comment” from an energy industry insider and, mistakenly reading it as a news article initially, wondered if the Telegraph was posting from an alternative reality where “renewables-boosting propaganda from the state *** media” is common and the “state’s legacy media” detests fossil fuels. Because as I recall, the last debacle (1) involved fossil-fuel infrastructure failing just as much as (if not more than) renewables but (2) the media-political spin in the aftermath was that the grid crashed due entirely to renewables, which by some dark-magic mechanism actively made the electrical system worse than if we relied only on good ole’ Amurrrrrican fossil fuels as God intended.
Also, every time I see ERCOT’s unreliable prognostications and tap-dancing (which to be fair, as a non-Texan I usually see when something’s gone wrong), I think something that probably a lot of Brits reading this in the Telegraph thought: “You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.”
When the grid went down in 2021, renewables actually outperformed and provided more than projected supply (albeit lower supply than in the summer), so they did not ‘fail’ in any conventional sense.
They did fail to make up for all the natural gas plants freezing over, so there’s that. And provided a convenient scapegoat
“could be”?!
It was published 2 days ago about an event that happened 2 days ago. He “thought” it could be bad and was just wrong.
I’m trying to figure out this alternate reality where something went horribly awry. Things went largely as projected. And it is just flat wrong about how renewables fared in 2021
Some of the windturbines failed because they weren’t winterized, something that’s routinely done in most other states. And they weren’t winterized because ERCOT doesn’t require it. I’m fairly certain this was discussed upthread (3 years ago), but am too lazy to read through it all to find the relevant posts.
This is true but they still provided more than the amount of power they were projected to at the time - fewer went offline than expected.
Yes, it was a lower bar, but the bar was easily cleared. And renewable was still scapegoated at the time, until that became untenable (except to some industry affiliated editorialists apparently)
The issue was predominantly an issue of the natural gas supply pipes and plants which failed at a much higher rate than expected and where much of the focus of the last few years has been.
