Texas electrical grid issues

[EdLaCrosse]

The only way to correct the imbalance is to build more thermal generation capacity. And that takes years. And no one is going to build thermal in Texas under the current system. Some are willing to do so if they receive capacity payments, which is not part of the current scheme and would probably require legislation. Again, years away not even including permitting and construction leadtimes.

I agree. I was hoping that someone studying what happened in February might actually come up with ways to create an environment favorable to building more thermal capacity as a way to improve reliability. If they didn't have any related ideas, then what did they actually come up with? Nothing, I suspect.

 

[EdLaCrosse]

And therein lies the problem. An efficient market abhors excess, in this case thermal capacity. Since capacity payment will have to cover expenses to design, build, operate, and waste electric, it’s essentially the same as if the state were to build it themselves unless that is passed on to the consumers thru PUC regulatory fees for ‘surplus in case needed’ capacity.

I for one am willing to pay for reliability, especially if I can get an idea of how much reliability I am buying. It does me no good to get a cheap rate per kwh if those kwhs can't be delivered.

 

[EdLaCrosse]

That's the point, NOBODY EXPECTED THIS. You weren't so omnipotent to have foreseen it, yet you're expecting others to?

I'd like to be able to expect the designers of our grid to tell us what to expect, in terms of reliability.

I didn't say drip, I said drain. Full on winterize after the realization the power may not be back on soon. I was very fortunate in that I only lost power for 16 hours, but I was fully prepared to winterize the entire house if the inside temps got close to freezing. Even with the water on, I routinely paid very special attention to every single exterior hose bib, and every water line that ran on an exterior wall.

Congrats on your ability to be fully prepared. I'm curious, though, how to you drain the cold water line that feeds your washing machine?

Mine is technically an ornament too, being a ceramic log, tempered glass front, no forced air, gas fired box. Still, I put my 2 D batteries in it and fired that sucker up even before the power went out. Guess what, in those 16 hours my big house only dropped to the low 60's. As you can imagine, I was quite amazed. Either way, any heat input is better than none.

I don't have a space to put 2D batteries. I lit my fireplace at 8:30 in the morning, just after my power went out. The temperature in the house was in the 60s. By 10:00, the temperature was in the 50s right next to the fireplace. Further away, the fireplace had no impact on the temperature in my house.

Not even close to suggesting that. I'm suggesting you do exactly what I did. The power went out for me at 6:30am, and I woke up by 7:00am. Ten minutes later I was outside, and everything at my equipment pad was drained. It's really, really easy. I was then at zero risk of losing my equipment. Power came on late that evening, but I left it drained for two more days to make sure power would be stable. It was, so I popped the drain plugs in and turned the equipment back on. 10 more minutes spent, and the pool was back up and running. That was time well spent, in my opinion.

Again, my compliments on your ability to react quickly. In retrospect, I should have drained everything on the pad, but I didn't expect the power to be out for so long. Based on what I heard from Oncor, I was expecting to be back up and running within an hour. After waiting an hour and not getting power, my drains were all frozen. I did cut the power to my pumps. That saved me some money.

No you don't. You just need to decide what being without power is worth to you. You need to decide if being without power is more of an inconvenience than the money you'll spend to not be. Period.

Being without power for an hour or a few minutes, to me, is not as bad as being without power for 75 hours. Stated differently, being without power for an hour is an inconvenience. Being without power for 75 hours is a disaster. What can I expect from our grid?

In February we were unable to, for various reasons, bring it online when we needed it.

What are these "various reasons". Can we "fix" them? We were told by Oncor that in our area there were special problems that couldn't be overcome in the short term. What were these problems? Can they be prevented?

Our grid isn't any less reliable than any other, from the data I've seen posted around. If you want good "data" on which to base your "personal" decisions, what you're really looking for is advice you agree with. It still boils down to what is uninterrupted power worth to you, financially? If you have natural gas at the house you are well within your ..uh.. power to have it with a whole-home generator setup.

Reliability, to me, is the probability that I will have power when I need it. That said, the reliability in my area was execrable in February -- way worse than almost any other place in Texas and way worse than any other place in the country.

 

[toddnjoyce]

I for one am willing to pay for reliability, especially if I can get an idea of how much reliability I am buying. It does me no good to get a cheap rate per kwh if those kwhs can't be delivered.

At what price? In the time it takes to plan, gain approval, build, and bring online new capacity, we have no idea of what baseline load needs to be for the future, so you either always chase capacity or accept risk. Right now risk acceptance is the tradeoff for not interconnecting.

It’s also not like you can buy HV parts off the shelf; most have very long lead times. @Vaquero can probably expand on that based in his experience.

 

[no2gates]

Yes, wind and solar (to a lesser extent because solar generation is small) are the primary contributors.

What happens often when the weather is its' hottest? The wind dies. So recently when it started warming up, wind was only producing between 1 and 3 GW. The maximum wind production is around 25 MW if I recall correctly. 17-20 MW is not unusual. An unexpected outage in a thermal plant and we have a crisis.

Nah, just put up a podium in front of a wind farm then have Pelosi talk to them. Bam! plenty of wind now.

 

[Lost Spurs]

A question about gas. I gave it ran to my house. Stove, furnace and fake fireplace. I do not have, but have known folks with a hookup on the side of the house for a grill. This was up north, I assume the utility is the same.

My question is, how stable is the gas supply and delivery during a grid down scenario. During snowmageddon I was able to use my stove to cook and the gas worked to the furnace as soon as the power was on. It the gas system managed by pressure and not requiring electricity?

Can you get a fitting installed on the house to run the grill with then hook a generator up if needed?

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[pronstar]

They’re very stable in most neighborhoods, methinks.
Much more stable than anything carrying electricity IMHO

You can get fittings to hookup all sorts of things, including what you’re proposing


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[mongoose]

A question about gas. I gave it ran to my house. Stove, furnace and fake fireplace. I do not have, but have known folks with a hookup on the side of the house for a grill. This was up north, I assume the utility is the same.

My question is, how stable is the gas supply and delivery during a grid down scenario. During snowmageddon I was able to use my stove to cook and the gas worked to the furnace as soon as the power was on. It the gas system managed by pressure and not requiring electricity?

Can you get a fitting installed on the house to run the grill with then hook a generator up if needed?

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Yes

 

[EdLaCrosse]

At what price? In the time it takes to plan, gain approval, build, and bring online new capacity, we have no idea of what baseline load needs to be for the future, so you either always chase capacity or accept risk. Right now risk acceptance is the tradeoff for not interconnecting.

I'm willing to pay my fair share of the cost of building and maintaining a system that delivers adequate electric power reliably. We can discuss about how to calculate that but reliability is worth something to me. It seems clear right now that we have insufficient baseline capacity to do that, so we need more. There are constraints in place to prevent us from building adequate baseline capacity that need to be examined and removed if possible.

I'm sure it's not easy to predict demand for electricity, but people and companies get paid to do so. We have to do better than we're doing now.

What's going to happen when businesses begin to relocate elsewhere because Texas does not have a reliable electrical grid?

 

[oldag]

At what price? In the time it takes to plan, gain approval, build, and bring online new capacity, we have no idea of what baseline load needs to be for the future, so you either always chase capacity or accept risk. Right now risk acceptance is the tradeoff for not interconnecting.

It’s also not like you can buy HV parts off the shelf; most have very long lead times. @Vaquero can probably expand on that based in his experience.

Interconnection with other ISO's has its own risks, and they are significant. Remember some years back when a minor problem in the upper midwest snowballed all the way to the Atlantic and put many millions without power?

We can never predict the future, but we can reasonably estimate future demand (never perfectly, of course).

 

[oldag]

A question about gas. I gave it ran to my house. Stove, furnace and fake fireplace. I do not have, but have known folks with a hookup on the side of the house for a grill. This was up north, I assume the utility is the same.

My question is, how stable is the gas supply and delivery during a grid down scenario. During snowmageddon I was able to use my stove to cook and the gas worked to the furnace as soon as the power was on. It the gas system managed by pressure and not requiring electricity?

Can you get a fitting installed on the house to run the grill with then hook a generator up if needed?

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Better, but not foolproof. Still takes power (often electrical) to run compressor stations and keep those gas lines supplied. Some gas fired power plants got shut down because their gas supplier had no power.

 

[GoPappy]

I decided to bite the bullet and have a whole house generator installed. We dont have natural gas or propane, so I’ll have to buy or lease a propane tank and have it buried.

The cost is significant, but so is the risk of future power outages. For me, the peace of mind of knowing I can heat and cool my home outweighs the cost of the system.

 

[GoPappy]

By the way, if you’re on the fence about having a whole house generator installed, realize that the wait time to get it installed is several months.

I expect to be singing Christmas carols when mine is installed. Or, at best, eating leftover turkey and dressing.

I’ve got a portable inverter generator and a window a/c unit that will get us through any short term troubles in the meantime.

 

[Axxe55]

Here are some thoughts I have about a back-up generator for your house that permanently mounted and hard-wired into the home.

I would opt for a unit that is capable of using dual or even triple fuel sources.Sort of back up for the back-up, or redundancy. While unlikely, that a person would lose all sources of utility during a black-out or during inclement weather, it could happen.

 

[Mike_from_Texas]

Here are some thoughts I have about a back-up generator for your house that permanently mounted and hard-wired into the home.

I would opt for a unit that is capable of using dual or even triple fuel sources.Sort of back up for the back-up, or redundancy. While unlikely, that a person would lose all sources of utility during a black-out or during inclement weather, it could happen.

Fuel definitely needs to be a consideration. I wish I had done more research before buying my 22kw Generac generator. It runs at 3600rpm air cooled and consumes 4’ish gallons of propane per hour. With a 250 gallon tank I won’t last long if needed.

In hindsight I would have bought a Cummins/Onan 30kw unit that uses a 2.0L 4 cylinder liquid cooled engine that only runs at 1800 rpm and the fuel consumption is similar. I would have also put in a larger propane tank.


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[pronstar]

Fuel definitely needs to be a consideration. I wish I had done more research before buying my 22kw Generac generator. It runs at 3600rpm air cooled and consumes 4’ish gallons of propane per hour. With a 250 gallon tank I won’t last long if needed.

In hindsight I would have bought a Cummins/Onan 30kw unit that uses a 2.0L 4 cylinder liquid cooled engine that only runs at 1800 rpm and the fuel consumption is similar. I would have also put in a larger propane tank.


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That’s a huge benefit of an inverter gennie…they can vary rpm based on load, which can result in large fuel savings.

I’m getting mine installed in a week or two. It’s dual fuel, so I’m going to keep both gas and 40-lb propane tanks at the ready.


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[ZX9RCAM]

I have several 5 gal cans of old fuel I need to dispose of.

 

[Brains]

I have several 5 gal cans of old fuel I need to dispose of.

Should I keep an eye out for the smoke cloud?

 

[ZX9RCAM]

Should I keep an eye out for the smoke cloud?

Ha!
If I was smart, I would have poured them into the gas tank after a few weeks.