Yeah, there will be someone to blame- The Republican Governors of TX.
As the power crisis in Texas continues to leave many without heat during a winter storm, Governor Greg Abbott has tried to shift fault onto renewable energy sources. But Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins says Abbott himself is largely to blame.
“The fold of this lies squarely on [former Governor] Rick Perry and the current governor, Greg Abbott,” Jenkins told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Thursday. “They and their team passed the regulations to tell people whether or not they need to winterize. They chose not to tell companies to winterize—that need to winterize—which in a regulatory environment for a commodity is telling people not to winterize.”
ERCOT’s grid has only very limited and low-capacity interties, but the Texas Panhandle and part of northeastern Texas are not on ERCOT’s grid; they’re in the Southwest Power Pool, so the Saskatchewan power could indeed reach those areas. See the SPP map.
Sounds like there were a lot of cheap idiots who didn’t buy the winter upgrade for various components of the energy system, including gas wells and pipelines, powerplants including gas and nuclear, etc. Article. Article.
That’s really interesting. One thing I was thinking, when they initiate “rotational load shedding” (just learned this term), do they do that by cutting off production from some sources? Texas kicked off the blackouts at 1:25 that morning, so that’s about the right timing.
Indeed, both SA and TX had poor grid management from what you described, with TX having the added onus of failing to heed “lessons learned”.
Having the system default be that the generation asset safes itself upon detecting a more-than-momentary issue with the transmission load is a normal practice in both design and management. Because an overload at a generating plant or a main transmission switch can mean you lose it for months, not just days. But the utility has to have in mind possible scenarios for when they design the control protocols for what backs up what when. ISTM part of the problem in TX was that they took it for granted that they could always just throttle up the other conventional plants, light the peaking units, and do rolling interruptions on the fly. And that they expected that effects would be localized and not all across the place.
But isn’t the term “electrical grid”, which suggests that what happens in A may affect what happens in B? Or am I over-thinking what passes for “regulatory analysis” in the free state of Texas?
Basically: winterizing wind turbines is understood and doable; but it costs money. Texas didn’t think they needed to spend the money.
The total amount of money people will need to spend repairing damage from this is going to be considerable; though I don’t know whether they’ll count everybody’s broken pipes in official figures. Plus which, of course, there were lives lost.
The point of “100 year” analysis is to tell what preventative measures should be taken, not to say what is rare and shouldn’t be. A given permanent structure has a very high chance of experiencing at least one 100 year event during its lifetime.
If the judge is overseeing a case related to the matter and he’s commenting on it, based on the evidence presented in court, then we can safely say that the judge is a nut since - whether he has greater access to evidence or not - you can’t comment on a case you’re overseeing. (My skim through the article said that he isn’t - but feel free to correct that if wrong.)
If the judge is not overseeing a case, then he has no greater access to evidence than you or I and his view on the matter has about as much authority as mine or yours.
It is worth noting that wind power works just fine in cold climates. Loads of examples of it.
That the people who built them in Texas went cheap and did not build them for a cold snap is not an indictment on wind power. It is an indictment on the cheapskates who built them. Live in a state that eschews regulation and things like this result.
This is true of other power generation methods in Texas which also failed due to the cold.
Yes, as the shipment of power from
Saskatchewan demonstrates. We’ve been hovering around -35 C for the past two weeks, with no power shortages. The polar vortex came through us en route to points south.
That doesn’t mean Texas should build everything as if they will routinely get -35 cold snaps every winter. There is always a cost benefit analysis to these things. However, there should be a way to build a bit more robustness into the system to deal with these events, shouldn’t there? (Not an EE, obviously, so I’m just speculating there. )
I think the point is that the government should make sure there are fall-backs when things get weird in their power production.
Texas decided they hate regulations so much they will just leave it up to each provider to do as they see fit. That works fine in a normal, predictable environment but falls apart when special circumstances occur.
This was one of those and Texas had no recourse to cover short-falls in power and people died as a result.
Or am I over-thinking what passes for “regulatory analysis” in the free state of Texas? 