What if Texas’s grid wasn’t independent?

[rooster]

I find myself wondering if Texas’s grid wasn’t independent and was tied into the east coast would we all have experienced brown outs or rolling black outs because of the loss of so much generation capacity?

this might be a dumb question. I work in power industry but am no where near this particular problem or question.

 

[ghuns]

I find myself wondering if Texas’s grid wasn’t independent and was tied into the east coast would we all have experienced brown outs or rolling black outs because of the loss of so much generation capacity?

this might be a dumb question. I work in power industry but am no where near this particular problem or question.

Kansas City was having rolling blackouts the other day too. Being part of the 17 state, Southwestern Power Pool, didn't help them much.

 

[IndyIN]

I'm no expert, but I live in Texas and have had intermittent power over the last few days. My opinion is that there would have been capacity within the system if they were linked. That is the easy answer, I think.

I think the more difficult root cause is why capacity was down. Summer is high energy utilization for Texas and winter is typically low utilization. We make it work during the summer, so why was it a problem now? The grid isn't a battery, input and output have to be matched for it to all work. The input was down to match typical Texas winter conditions/energy utilization and couldn't ramp up quick enough for increased demand.

I do believe that some plants were "frozen" but that they were purposefully down prior to the bad weather. I'm personally very interested in hearing if preventative maintenance was taking place (i.e. not able to come up quickly) or if the utilities plain thought the forecast was BS.

 

[indykid]

Heard but cannot confirm that part of the problem was the natural gas fired generators were down because the gas was liquefying due to the extreme cold.

 

[ghuns]

Funny how Texas is bashed far and wide in the media for their shortcomings in an unprecedented weather event but California gets praised as a beacon of green energy and year after year they fail to keep the lights on because it's summer.

 

[deo62]

I'm no expert, but I live in Texas and have had intermittent power over the last few days. My opinion is that there would have been capacity within the system if they were linked. That is the easy answer, I think.

I think the more difficult root cause is why capacity was down. Summer is high energy utilization for Texas and winter is typically low utilization. We make it work during the summer, so why was it a problem now? The grid isn't a battery, input and output have to be matched for it to all work. The input was down to match typical Texas winter conditions/energy utilization and couldn't ramp up quick enough for increased demand.

I do believe that some plants were "frozen" but that they were purposefully down prior to the bad weather. I'm personally very interested in hearing if preventative maintenance was taking place (i.e. not able to come up quickly) or if the utilities plain thought the forecast was BS.

Like you said ,peak season for them is summer. They schedule their maintenance for the winter months.

 

[breakingcontact]

Electricity is a "just in time" product. When it isn't balanced, we get what we had in Texas recently. Moderating that over a larger grid would have reduced the effects.

That being said, Texas does a lot of unique things, often to their benefit. Like read about how much of the minerals they control out into the ocean compared to other states (except FL).

Unique history, usually to their benefit.

 

[Jaybird1980]

Heard but cannot confirm that part of the problem was the natural gas fired generators were down because the gas was liquefying due to the extreme cold.

Not sure if there is much truth to this.
I believe Texas is one of the largest storage states for NG, were are talking like 500+ billion cubic feet.
And NG is usually stored at temps down to very low temps.

 

[jsx1043]

Rooster, you beat me to a Texas grid fail thread...I was thinking about this last night and was wanting to start a discussion about it.

I know we have a lot of folks in various sectors of the power industry, as well as folks from Texas, so I was curious about explanations of the issues that are not MSM talking points. It appears to me that there’s an overabundance of pearl clutching about the situation there and that one of the talking points is that Texas is “special” in that it has it’s own grid and is not part of a bigger national network.

The other side of the coin is that all that “green” energy from the windmills is clearly not sufficient, amongst their other “non-green” construction, operation, maintenance, disposal and environmental impact. Both sides appears to trying to play politics with the situation so it would be great to get to the nuts and bolts of the situation.

 

[OZZY.40]

We are tied with them. All 4 power grids are tied together through DC (direct current) ties. Our grid can send them power through this tie however, you can only push power so far before voltage drop become a problem, and transmission lines have a limit on how much power they can handle. If there were AC (alternating current) ties, we could send them more voltage and frequency support which could be a benefit (assuming they need that support). DC can transfer power farther whereas AC can help in the form of voltage and frequency support.

 

[Jaybird1980]

Kansas City was having rolling blackouts the other day too. Being part of the 17 state, Southwestern Power Pool, didn't help them much.

It takes generating stations to stop a rolling blackout. The reason they weren't more widespread is because of the other generation being able to account for it quickly and get it stabilized.

 

[bobzilla]

It was a multi-faceted failure. You had NG plants having feed issues due to the temps so while they were running, they were not running at peak capacity. The wind turbines icing because there was no need to install de-icing on the blades in a place never expected to see those temps. On top of the general maintenance that was being scheduled and several facilities had just shut down for that 3 weeks ago.They couldn't be brought back up in time to be helpful.

So it wasn't one thing, it was a tower of dominoes that came tumbling down because someone opened a window and let a breeze in.

 

[HoughMade]

Heard but cannot confirm that part of the problem was the natural gas fired generators were down because the gas was liquefying due to the extreme cold.

-265F ?

Why did my natural gas running up into the house in an uninsulated steel pipe not liquify when it was below -20F during the polar vortex? Did it get colder than that in Texas?

 

[Jaybird1980]

We are tied with them. All 4 power grids are tied together through DC (direct current) ties. Our grid can send them power through this tie however, you can only push power so far before voltage drop become a problem, and transmission lines have a limit on how much power they can handle. If there were AC (alternating current) ties, we could send them more voltage and frequency support which could be a benefit (assuming they need that support). DC can transfer power farther whereas AC can help in the form of voltage and frequency support.

MISO has part of eastern Texas, so we could get some AC capability into some areas. Not sure how much DC they could receive that would be useful for them after converting it back to AC, unless they just needed some for exciters at startup, but I would assume they have the same battery storages we do for this.

I haven't exactly stayed up on where in Texas is experiencing the current problems

 

[rooster]

I do know that the new plant I martinsville has problems in the cold because it was designed without a skin. This leads to having to cover particular part of the plant with scaffold shelters and heaters. That said I don’t know why if they had a few days notice they didn’t get their scaffold providers ( all power plants pretty much have these guys onsite or available within a shift) to get some plastic shelters put up to stop the freeze up.

hell it’s common practice even in plants that are skinned and designed for colder climates.

 

[IndyIN]

ERCOT is the non-profit grid operator here in Texas, and they have a page that shows capacity and demand in almost real-time http://www.ercot.com.

As someone who has very much been interested as the temps dropped in my house the last couple of days, a lot of my problems were the result of failed equipment that didn't come back online after they cycled zones.

This is what San Antonio looked like on Tuesday. These were long outages, not rolling blackouts.

 

[OZZY.40]

MISO has part of eastern Texas, so we could get some AC capability into some areas. Not sure how much DC they could receive that would be useful for them after converting it back to AC, unless they just needed some for exciters at startup, but I would assume they have the same battery storages we do for this.

I haven't exactly stayed up on where in Texas is experiencing the current problems

One thing to consider for DC is that there is a converter station on each end of the line to convert it back to AC. DC is used to keep each power grid separate in case a collapse happens to one grid it won’t spread nation wide.

 

[Jaybird1980]

One thing to consider for DC is that there is a converter station on each end of the line to convert it back to AC. DC is used to keep each power grid separate in case a collapse happens to one grid it won’t spread nation wide.

Yes, but when they convert is when they will experience losses. The DC could be used to bring units back up. Not sure how much capacity they would actually gain after conversion.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

WTHR just did an interview with a "Hoosier stuck in Texas". The gal was saying that "nobody was warned about this storm." I find that hard to believe. I'm pretty sure their weather forecasters were probably talking about it for at least a couple of days before it hit. I'd be really surprised if they weren't.

 

[IndyIN]

WTHR just did an interview with a "Hoosier stuck in Texas". The gal was saying that "nobody was warned about this storm." I find that hard to believe. I'm pretty sure their weather forecasters were probably talking about it for at least a couple of days before it hit. I'd be really surprised if they weren't.

It was all over the news for a week prior. I just don't think most people believed it.