The Rolling Chain of Events Behind Texas Blackouts
What happened yesterday to cause the rolling power blackouts across Texas?
State Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, in a phone call with the Tribune today, stressed that conclusions are still tentative but said a chain reaction of problems involving the state's coal and gas plants appeared to be the cause — and wind plants were having trouble, too. So far no blackouts have been ordered today.
Electricity demand spiked in Texas yesterday as the cold weather struck, setting a wintertime record for usage. Summer usage is higher, but winter also can bring strong demand because about two-thirds of Texas homes ...
Comments (11)
Jason Stanford via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Love how Frasier speculated that anti-pollution devices caused the power plants to go down before he had conducted any investigation.
And not for nothing, but this sounds fishy:
"'We didn't have enough available gas,' Fraser said. An affidavit filed yesterday with the Railroad Commission by Trip Doggett, the head of ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, said that 'certain gas suppliers may be curtailing natural gas to electric utilities or electric generation customers.' Koenig, of Luminant, confirmed that 'one of our gas plants has been curtailed due natural gas supply restrictions.'"
Edward P. Martin
As we piece all this together, we should note that yesterday's winter usage was not unprecedented.
Prior TX record for winter energy use was 55,878 megawatts in Jan. 2010. Yesterday, we used 56,334 MW, less than 1% more. I know some state officials would love nothing more than to say "this was a random weather event" but that's just not true.
Michael Goggin
Thanks for the article Kate. A few important things to point out:
Texas's wind plants were producing the amount they had been forecast and scheduled to provide when Texas began experiencing rolling blackouts. The 3,500 to 4,000 MW that wind turbines were producing yesterday morning kept the lights on for millions of Texans. Based on what was reported in your article as well as the information I've received from wind plant owners in Texas, any effect the weather may have had on wind plants appears to have been limited to a very small number of wind turbines, and didn't substantially affect the fleet's overall output, as evidenced by the fact that the wind fleet was producing at the level grid operators had been counting on. I wish I could say the same for the 50 fossil-fired power plants that went offline yesterday.
Michael Goggin,
American Wind Energy Association
Kurt Johnson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I personally think it goes a lot deeper than just reporting the comments of the liteguv and other public officials. When the price of power jumps by a factor of 30, does anyone suspect that the power generators have incentive not to be on the grid?
M. D.
It makes me nervous when the press and elected officials become chummy. Since when does regurgitating elected officials constitute news? When will the Tribune tell us how much wealth was transferred on the wholesale power market because of some "frozen pipes?"
I'd like to know exactly how the decisions were made at ERCOT to cut power. I want to know WHO made the calls to which plants and WHO made the decisions about which exact circuits to shut down.
Weather-related unit outages caused hourly wholesale power prices in Texas to soar 60-fold to $3,000 per megawatt-hour, up from about $50 where they usually trade. That's comparable to about $3 per kilowatt-hour for residential users, though most Texas home-owners have long-term power deals with suppliers that protect them from short-term price spikes.
Wholesale power for Thursday delivery traded in the $325 range, up from about $70 for Wednesday, as cold weather was expected to persist until Friday.
ERCOT forecast peak demand would top 55,000 megawatts on Wednesday and 57,000 MW on Thursday before dropping to about 47,000 MW on Friday.
M. D.
It would also be helpful if the Tribune put any controlled blackouts in Texas since deregulation (really, a regulated oligopoly) into context with the California electricity crisis. It is estimated that particular market manipulation in California cost $40-$45 billion dollars while cutting electricity to a couple of million people.
Any investigators should look for files labeled "Deep Freeze" because my guess is that these guys are the same traders who worked at Enron, and those guys loved their codenames.
M. D.
probably should have said "deregulated oligopoly" rather than "regulated"
Goddamn, this crap pisses me off.
BurningFeet
"Fraser, who chairs the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, noted that they had new emissions-control technologies, and said one question was how those technologies had handled the cold."
Would someone, anyone, like a fifth grade science teacher, explain to this moran how emissions control is what happens after coal is burned? If he's going to be a mouthpiece for dirty coal, at least he should sound smarter than a grade school kid.
M. D.
It'd be nice to know what the Governor knows about this... conveniently, he's in San Diego.
jpt51
"We didn't have enough available gas…." "(O)ne of our gas plants has been curtailed due natural gas supply restrictions." If true, Texas officials in charge of regulation have not been doing their jobs. No other state had similar problems. Are we slaves to the Enron types that will gouge the public at the 1st opportunity? We have more freezes ahead this season. Someone needs to get their act together ASAP. Other sources report some plants were down for routine repairs. There was plenty of advance notice this storm was coming. Why in the world would a company not postpone the work or even schedule it at this time of year?
namoyer
So, ng supply restrictions??? And, who caused that? Way too much spin (and, by the way, not enough units kept as spinning reserve), loads of BS, and truth??? More likely major transmission systems were becoming unstable due to cold, and so, residents cut off. If transmission lines fall down, days/weeks needed to restart. Let's see some public humiliation of utitilies' execs and the ERCOT (oxymoron) morons, public floggings, and major financial penalties that the shareholders pay, not the ratepayers. As for TxPUC investigations--just like the 3 blind mice, chop their heads off with a carving knife!