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3 million without power in Texas

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by Ronald Doles, Feb 16, 2021.

  1. Ronald Doles

    Ronald Doles Active Member

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    A big winter storm has hit the midwest extending down to the Mexican border. 3 Million customers are without power due to rolling blackouts in Texas.

    There are a number of electrical grids that are interconnected to form 3 main power grids in the U.S. The eastern grid covers most of the U.S. as far west as the Rockies. The western grid covers all the states west of the Rockies and the Texas grid.

    Power grid.jpg

    Texas' interconnections with the other grids doesn't have enough capacity to be much help when a Winter storm of this size or extreme Summer heat causes big demands and rolling blackouts are the result.

    Texas gets almost 25% of it's electricity from wind and nearly half of that was out of service due to the machines freezing up. That would only amount to 12% of their total generating capacity. The cold and snow has hampered operations of some of their coal plants and natural gas pipelines as well.

    Windmills installed in northern states have de-icing equipment which allows them to continue to operate in freezing conditions. The de-icing option is expensive and Texas thought that they wouldn't need it and then this storm cripples their wind production. This is the second time in a decade that a Winter storm has affected their windmills but it is a bigger problem now because wind is providing nearly a quarter of their electrical energy.

    It just makes the point that we need some transmission and energy infrastructure updates before we even think about adding millions of EV's to the mix.
     
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  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    i'm not sure that is correct, but agree we need infrastructure. let's hope congress comes through, but i'm skeptical.
     
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  3. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    There's a school of thought that millions of BEVs that are connected to the grid could actually help alleviate some of these problems, or at least serve as an emergency power source for the home when the lights go dark.
    A million BEVs connected to a really smart grid that have amps in their cans can act as a VERY VERY large battery, and most power grid problems occur during very brief surge periods.
    This would require regulations and standards as yet unwritten, and BEVs are in the "VHS or Betamax" stage of development - and remember what happened to BOTH of those standards.

    Sounds like some states need to require utilities to stop playing in "The Street" and give their customers (and regulators) a REAL WORLD power budget (both kinds.) Wind has advantages....and there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that COULD BE created HERE instead of sending ratepayer's checks overseas.
     
  4. vvillovv

    vvillovv Senior Member

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    Do the Tesla superchargers also go down when there is an outage like the one in TX?

    All those BEV's stuck going nowhere could also be an issue, I'd think. Plus the dropping temps don't make matters any more appealing.
    @ETC a few more standards to add to the mix are wax, vinyl and discrete quad, reel2reel (about 5 versions), 8 track, cassette, CD, DVD, BlueRay and I few others lesser knowns.
    But there are probably members here that still use one or more of those obsolete technologies. I still have one of two of them on that list, and a VHS box and a stereo receiver, now both unlooked for lack of use.
    Trash or Treasure ......
     
  5. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    Don't know.
    I suspect that if you don't see a bunch of solar cells near-by then they are probably affected as well - or they all might have PowerWalls installed.

    I'm sure that some EVangelist will weigh in.....;)

    BEV drivers are range sensitive.
    I suspect that some will get caught short but people run out of gas in power outages too.

    Darwin is a fair grader. There's no curve.
    You don't get extra credit for being PC, but it IS a pass-fail test.
     
  6. vvillovv

    vvillovv Senior Member

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    Those would have to be some mighty large powerwalls to keep a rack of 10 superchargers up for very long.
     
  7. AzusaPrius

    AzusaPrius Senior Member

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    Last day to save $200 @ PlugOutPower.com on a PlugOut kit to turn your prius into a generator for your home.

    Use code: pres2021

    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
  8. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    We need the updates without EVs. Needing them before many EVs is a question of time of use. Even with a BEV, a household's main use of electricity will be air conditioning. With the BEV likely being charged at night, that household's demand amount won't increase, just last longer. Which does help in running some power plants more efficiently.

    Chargers don't work without electricity, but many gas stations won't with the power out too. Emergency generators are the solution for both, and they can be set up beforehand with predicted major storms. Tesla has sent owners warnings with such predictions to keep the car fully charged in case of power outage, and have even unlocked capacity of cars locked for shorter range during those times.

    Media formats aren't exactly comparable to charging standards. How many VHS deck makers included a Betamax slot just in case the buyer had those tapes? The cost of including both CHAdeMO and CCS plugs on a DC charger is a small fraction of the charger's total price. So many have both. Superchargers can do the same if the licensing and ego issues are ever resolved. Though Tesla owners have adapter options for CHAdeMO and CCS.

    The j1772 standard for AC charging is very likely as set as the plug to your TV or can opener.
     
  9. dbstoo

    dbstoo Senior Member

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    My son is in Texas. They announced a rolling blackout and the power in their town was cut on schedule. Then, the story goes, they could not get it switched back on. That's not too surprising since there was 9 inches of snow in an area that almost never snows.

    Personally, I would not want to use MY BEV as a grid storage unit. Not that I have one, but my PHEV is part of my emergency contingency plan. I know that I can travel 500 or so miles in my car even after the battery is drained. The last thing I would want is to find myself in the middle of a natural disaster with my battery badly depleted.

    I agree with the idea that the infrastructure should be updated with or without BEVs in the mix. Along with EVs the grid also has to handle the widespread use of heatpumps and A/C.

    I got a chuckle out of the mention that gas stations can continue to supply gas in a storm if they have a generator (quite true) and that superchargers could do that too. (huh????) I had visions of the 20 station supercharger on I-5 at Harris Ranch in California with a dedicated 10MW peaker plant to keep the superchargers running during a power outage. It's quite doable, but power plants require maintenance and are not cheap to design, build and install.

    Dan
     
  10. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    A power outage tracker right now shows 4.15 Million customers in Texas out of electric power, out of 12.48 Million total customers. When I first glanced this morning, more than 4.4 Million were out, over 1/3rd of all customers.

    A separate news article indicated that spot natural gas prices had spiked 100X in TX and OK, as many wells freeze. I haven't checked any others sources of energy prices.
     
  11. Ronald Doles

    Ronald Doles Active Member

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    If wind is 23% of Texas energy generation and half of the wind turbines or about 12% went offline, what happened to the other 88% of their energy generation. Then I read this:

    "This weather event, it's really unprecedented," ERCOT senior director of system operations Dan Woodfin said Monday, pointing to the 1940s as the last time Texas faced this combination of Arctic temperatures and wind chills. "Most of the plants that went offline during evening and morning today were fueled" by coal, gas, or nuclear power, he added. About 40 percent of Texas electricity comes from natural gas-fired plants, followed by wind turbines (23 percent), coal (18 percent), and nuclear power (11 percent), the Journal reports, citing ERCOT's 2020 data.

    You look at Chernobyl or Fukushima and there were safety factors that are really a balance of budget/safety. If only.........

    I wondered why wind turbines don't go offline in the northern states where these low temperatures are more common. They purchased what is the equivalent of a defroster system for them. Texas looked at what they thought was a worst case weather scenario and decided against the defrosters.
     
  12. I'mJp

    I'mJp Senior Member

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    Lot of folks lost water as well. Turns out that the power was unplugged from the water utilities as well...

    Hope that they did not do that to the hospitals.
     
  13. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Now I see an article saying the same for wholesale electric prices:
    Texas wholesale electric prices spike more than 10,000% amid outages | Reuters

    Spot prices exceeded $9,000/MWh on Sunday, vs $30/MWh on Wednesday.

    "ERCOT can be more susceptible to wholesale price spikes because it does not have a capacity market, which pays power plants to be on standby during peak demand and weather emergencies, for example. ERCOT’s model means consumers are not paying for generation that may never be called into action.

    But early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions caused many generating units – across all fuel types – to trip offline and become unavailable. That forced more than 30,000 megawatts of power generation off the grid, ERCOT said in a news release."

    The earlier natural gas item:
    Natural gas prices increase 100 fold due to frozen wells in Oklahoma, Texas | KOMO
     
  14. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Over the last several years, there's been an increase in mutual and pension fund managers filing shareholder resolutions with the companies they invest in to say "in your annual reports, please include information on what you are doing to anticipate and mitigate risks to our investment that are foreseeable in changing climate expectations." Maybe such reporting could have led to reconsidering whether a "worst case weather scenario" looking backward still makes sense as a "worst case weather scenario" looking forward. (Or, perhaps, it could have led only to some clown standing at a podium saying he doesn't get how "warming" could lead to Arctic air arriving in Texas.)

    Naturally, the SEC's answer during the last administration was to make it harder for shareholders to file resolutions.
     
  15. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    I imagine that the extreme demand payed a much bigger part in systems tripping than a 12% loss of supply. Most people's HVAC systems were probably running 24 hours a day and still not keeping up since they and the homes aren't designed for that much of a heat demand. Plus, the heat pumps aren't going to do much, so the resistance heaters come on. That much colder than normal probably more than double electricity demand. They'd have had blackouts even without the wind turbines freezing. We had a cold snap a couple weeks ago that was nothing like what Texas has and our heating ran for over 12 hours one day. I bumped the setting down a degree but couldn't do much more because of my wife's 90-year-old mother staying with us. Guess where she's going on Friday. Yup. Houston. Bad timing, mom!! :whistle:
     
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  16. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Not to mention they also have natural gas generating plants in the mix, but gas got prioritized to homes using it for heat.

    I splurged at last on a heated mattress pad. Oh my goodness it is nice. I've since bumped the night setback on the thermostat down another degree Celsius (or a couple degrees Fahrenheit, if you will), and can probably go further and still sleep perfectly comfortably. In a way, this is just finally getting around to taking the same ideas from the Prius hunkering threads and applying them indoors.

    I think lowering the setback temperature has also noticeably extended the life of fruit, bread, etc., between my very infrequent COVID grocery trips. That won't continue into the warm months, of course, but it's nice while it lasts.
     
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  17. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    I'm seeing elsewhere that ERCOT planned for a winter demand peak of 67 GW, but starting tripping out when they hit 69 GW:

    “No one’s model of the power system envisioned that all 254 Texas counties would come under a winter storm warning at the same time."

    The freeze knocked out 30 GW of generating capacity, of which only 5 GW was wind power. All kinds of thermal plants had to shut down when some of their equipment froze: natural gas, coal, even nuclear. But natural gas had the largest chunk of the shutdowns, also suffering from a supply shortage as other gas users also increased their demand.

    Texas has also cheaped-out on certain resiliency measures that are common elsewhere:

    "Wind turbines, for instance, can be equipped with heaters and other devices so that they can operate in icy conditions — as is often done in the upper Midwest, where cold weather is more frequent. Gas plants can be built to store oil on-site and burn the fuel if needed, as is often done in the Northeast, where natural gas shortages are more common. Grid regulators can design markets that pay extra to keep a fleet of backup power plants in reserve in case of emergencies, as is often done in the Mid-Atlantic.

    But all of these solutions cost money, and grid operators are often wary of forcing consumers to pay extra for safeguards if they don’t think they will be needed.

    “Building in resilience often comes at a cost, and there’s a risk of both underpaying but also of overpaying,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “It’s a difficult balancing a
    ct.”"



    A glimpse of the future in Texas: Climate change means trouble for power grids | The Seattle Times
    Texas produces more power than any other state. Here's why it went dark anyway - CNN

    Note also that North America has three primary independent electric grids: Eastern, Western, and Texas. (Smaller grids include each Hawaiian Island and many self-contained Alaskan and northern Canadian regions and towns.) Within an inter-tied grid, everything is phase-locked, so energy can be fairly easily shuttled around and shared, within the capacities of the big transmission lines. But shipping energy between grids requires very specialized equipment, so is limited.

    Eastern U.S. and Eastern Canada are tied together. Similarly, Western U.S. and Western Canada are tied together. But Texas is Texas.
     
    #17 fuzzy1, Feb 16, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2021
  18. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Do you get a chuckle over the Prius Prime having a charge mode.:)

    Tesla has deployed generator powered chargers to Supercharger locations during busy holiday weekends in the past. No reason why it couldn't be done for emergencies. There'll be less chargers available, and charge times will likely be longer. Still better than no charging until the grid is back up.
     
  19. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Weren't we talking about exactly this just three days ago? Power failures, water storage towers, and backup power for the pumps? :)

    I think we're going solar | Page 3 | PriusChat

    Or maybe I shouldn't expect more from places that don't prepare for repeats of previous ice storms(*), or issue building permits for major housing developments inside the storage pool area of flood control reservoirs.

    (*) I know they've had serious ice storms there previously. I had a job interview in Dallas nearly 40 years ago, and faced very severe winter road conditions getting to my nearest PNW airport to fly there. And compared winter experiences with one of my interviewers, a Minnesota or Michigan transplant. During his first Dallas winter, he merrily drove to work one morning after an overnight ice storm, wondering why there were almost no other cars on the road but numerous in the ditches. Only after getting to work and finding the doors locked, did he finally turn on the radio to discover that everything was closed. Being from a far northern state, it had never occurred to him to not go into work in such conditions.
     
    #19 fuzzy1, Feb 16, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2021
  20. dbstoo

    dbstoo Senior Member

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    Yes, I chuckled when I found out that the Prime had that function on my first long trip. And then I used it that day so that I could showcase the electric mode for family at the end of the day.

    The picture of the 10Mw backup generator just for superchargers was funny because the Cat 10MW model natural gas generator is 10 foot wide, 15 foot tall and 45 foot long. Add an enclosure and you have quite an eyesore. Well, some would say that. I'd say it was cool. :)