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32 minutes ago, turbguy said:

I get to wondering, who will all the insurance companies start to subrogate their pay-outs against.

Insurance companies are not going to let this one get a "pass", as they can argue that it was man-made.

I hear Insurance Companies have these guys and gals called "lawyers".

This should be fun.

In California, more than 98% of the "emergency"  power outages in 2020 were "PSPS" (Public Safety Power Shutoffs). The other shutoffs were our two very short rolling blackouts. The PSPSs were a direct consequence of the courts assigning all of the financial losses of the 2017 wildfires to PG&E. That's the courts, not the politicians. So 7 years of drought (possibly caused by climate change, itself possibly caused by humans) plus failure by federal and state agencies to clear dead trees (possibly caused by climate change, itself possibly caused by humans) and the highly lucrative century-old wildfire suppression industry, all left us with a wildfire waiting to happen, and PG&E gets the entire financial blame. PG&E then declares bankruptcy and also starts PSPS to avoid getting blamed for new wildfires. Everybody loses.

Liability law is based on centuries of case law that all comes down to extracting the money from anyone who has money and bears any tiny amount of the responsibility for the harm. So yes, the insurance companies will go after every company in Texas who has money.

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(edited)

17 hours ago, turbguy said:

Those are the total generation energy amounts at the END OF THE HOUR, not the START OF THE THE HOUR.  At least you are examining the correct time range, rather than showing charts from the period of January 21 through February 17 to make a point. 

ERCOT engineers knew the grid was on the way trouble beforehand!   Gas had already dropped 2500 MW from midnight to 2:00AM.

Declaring an emergency late brings down the grid!

Better time granularity will help.

Sorry, due to the new site bug ( @CMOP spill in aisle 3), I was unable to post the images I had and tried to cobble something together. Realize I had 3 windows open on my small mobile device and was copying and pasting between. Another "artifact" of this site is if you leave in the middle of creating a post, when you come back it's about 50/50 whether you get it back. To safeguard against that I try to copy everything I've done into a paste buffer, which of course negates the ability to copy paste from the spreadsheet. That's where going back and editing a post comes in real handy, but that's broken too …

I think another point about the time frame you're looking at is it's O'Dark Thirty in the morning! Not a lot of light bulbs shining then, so power demand should be lower, no? It is cool that you've worked on the supply side and at least have some concept of the Scale of these generating facilities. That picture you posted elsewhere of the workers building the CT equipment was enlightening, especially if the viewer zoomed in enough to see the people for scale. 

Edit. I see the bugs I reported are cleaned up already, thank you. 8000B2E6-B6D1-48CA-A5AA-201D756EF562.png

Edited by Ward Smith
Tested edit and images insert. Oddly, image shows in edit window but not on page?
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(edited)

17 hours ago, turbguy said:

That's the same link I posted days ago! It doesn't say what you think it does. ERCOT asked for a blanket release for this emergency event. DOE responded with an FU that required case by case approval per generator, and to add insult to injury, mandated fines for each and every generator exceeding their quota. You need to parse through the legalese. I guarantee a Trump administration would have granted the blanket approval they asked for, but Xiden did promise a dark winter… maybe the only campaign promise he's delivered on. 

For contrast, read what the Texas railroad commission Issued as an emergency order. Texas response, cowboy up. DC response, bunglecrats as usual. 

Edited by Ward Smith
Added TRRC comment
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(edited)

36 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

That's the same link I posted days ago! It doesn't say what you think it does. ERCOT asked for a blanket release for this emergency event. DOE responded with an FU that required case by case approval per generator, and to add insult to injury, mandated fines for each and every generator exceeding their quota. You need to parse through the legalese. I guarantee a Trump administration would have granted the blanket approval they asked for, but Xiden did promise a dark winter… maybe the only campaign promise he's delivered on. 

You expected that such relief would not have some "strings attached"?

Relief was granted. Not the kind ERCOT asked for, but it was granted.

Actually, I was surprised that DOE put a price floor of the additional generation ("not less than $1500 /MWH").  Not that it was a barrier at the time, with spot prices FAR above that.  Are those the "fines" you believe are specified in the order?

Would another administration have done something with less strings?  Perhaps. I doubt the the prior president would even be able to understand what was going on, much less even read the order.

And to be honest, you really don't get much more generating output with environmental discharge relief.  That said, every little bit helps.

Edited by turbguy
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(edited)

AHA!  Site Working.  EVERY BLACK DOT ON THIS CHART NEEDS AN EXPLANATION!  THAT INCLUDES WIND!

 

ERCOT FREQ.jpg

Edited by turbguy
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3 hours ago, wrs said:

The electricity for the wells in the Permian is provided I believe in large part from the wind turbines.

That would seem to put a whole lot of this failure event into perspective, wouldn't it?

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...and then, there is this comparison to the 2011 event.  WOAH!!!

Clipboard01.jpg

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6 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

That would seem to put a whole lot of this failure event into perspective, wouldn't it?

I do not know what the "wells" need for supply.  I assume that compressor stations do.  In any event, that power can be transmitted back IN through ERCOT, without congestion, if your local generation is off.  

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4 minutes ago, turbguy said:

I do not know what the "wells" need for supply.  I assume that compressor stations do.  In any event, that power can be transmitted back IN through ERCOT, without congestion, if your local generation is off.  

That is a point that gave me pause.  Are gas supplies coming directly from the wells, or do they come from some sort of post refinement process and storage system?

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1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

I think another point about the time frame you're looking at is it's O'Dark Thirty in the morning! Not a lot of light bulbs shining then, so power demand should be lower, no? It is cool that you've worked on the supply side and at least have some concept of the Scale of these generating facilities. That picture you posted elsewhere of the workers building the CT equipment was enlightening, especially if the viewer zoomed in enough to see the people for scale.

I would also believe that residential loads, at least, be reduced at O'Dark Thirty, too.

That said, SOMEBODY(S) were demanding it.

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@Selva @CMOP

Still cannot start a new discussion.  Any news on when this might be fixed?

BTW, do appreciate all efforts to get the glitches worked out.  Perhaps manual flight?  :) 

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1 minute ago, turbguy said:

I would also believe that residential loads, at least, be reduced at O'Dark Thirty, too.

That said, SOMEBODY(S) were demanding it.

Gas treatment plants

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1 minute ago, Dan Warnick said:

That is a point that gave me pause.  Are gas supplies coming directly from the wells, or do they come from some sort of post refinement process and storage system?

I'm certainty not well versed i the nat gas industry, but you gotta at least clean it up (whatever that entails)), compress it to pipeline pressure (something like 1000 PSIG or so), cool it off (if required) after compression,and control the whole thing.

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7 minutes ago, turbguy said:

I'm certainty not well versed i the nat gas industry, but you gotta at least clean it up (whatever that entails)), compress it to pipeline pressure (something like 1000 PSIG or so), cool it off (if required) after compression,and control the whole thing.

I could literally say there's books full of info on the subject. This scratches the surface

Whoops, meant to use This link to the actual book

Edited by Ward Smith
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15 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

That is a point that gave me pause.  Are gas supplies coming directly from the wells, or do they come from some sort of post refinement process and storage system?

I don't know much about NG in Texas. In California, most of our gas at peak demand comes out of withdrawal wells in our enormous NG storage fields, where is was cleaned up before it was stored. Most of that was received via pipelines, so it was cleaned up even before it reached California.

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(edited)

16 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

I could literally say there's books full of info on the subject. This scratches the surface

Whoops, meant to use This link to the actual book

Thanx.  A stroll through that shows kinda what I expected. A chemical process plant full of pressure vessels, sprays, pumps, chemicals, filters, and controls.   In other words, lot's of money.

What DID surprise me was the amount of (produced?) water that comes from the well.  That's gotta be a filthy fluid to deal with...

Edited by turbguy
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(edited)

,,,and I see that current ERCOT system conditions have recovered most of the time error.  It's now about a second and a quarter behind.  I remember seeing more than 50+ seconds behind real time during the emergency.

That implies that ERCOT literally lost over 50 seconds of generation, even with the generation on line, below the demand, while keeping the grid up.  Think about that.

The only way to overcome the time error is to operate overfrequency (over generate) for some period.

Clipboard01.jpg

Edited by turbguy
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The bottom line, all equipment for all sources of equipment can be weatherized. This requires competent detailed regulations. What is required should not be left up to any supplier. Texas got hammered and rightly so killing dozens and 10’s of billions in damages because their idiots. We’ll see next election if the citizens will vote the idiots out of office. 

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(edited)

4 minutes ago, Boat said:

The bottom line, all equipment for all sources of equipment can be weatherized. This requires competent detailed regulations. What is required should not be left up to any supplier. Texas got hammered and rightly so killing dozens and 10’s of billions in damages because their idiots. We’ll see next election if the citizens will vote the idiots out of office. 

Texas did not deserve this.  The weather is not subject to politics, no matter how hard we try.

You expect politicians to tell the truth, or point fingers.

I expect the latter.

The news cycle on the event is just about over.

The lawyers are barely getting started.

Edited by turbguy
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https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/rick-perry-suggests-texans-prefer-191900865.html
 

Perry said Texans would rather remain in the dark if it meant keeping the federal government out, he told House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) office in a blog post published Wednesday.
 

Yep Texan forefathers lost a few good men to Indians and a few more to Mexicans to live in freedom and have slaves. A few good men is a small price to pay rather than the the Feds regulating some weatherization. Suck it up, bury your dead, fix your plumbing and God bless Texas. 😁

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Just now, turbguy said:

You expect politicians to tell the truth, or point fingers.

I expect the latter.

The news cycle on the event is just about over.

The lawyers are barely getting started.

Lawyers always show up after a disaster, and they get paid even if the lawsuits are frivolous or worthless. Of course, if lawyers get ahead of the facts they can be sued themselves for abusing the legal process.  And the courts have recently shown a willingness to accept countersuits against lawyers for this reason. 

The bottom line for the Texas disaster is obvious, an overreliance on wind-generated electricity is a recipe for disaster when above-peak demands are made against the system.

In this case, even the gas-generated electrical supplies were dependent upon wind-generated electricity in order to function at the multiple levels required when the wind system failed. The failure of the wind generation created a domino impact upon the gas-generated sources.

The entire system was designed to fail under a cold weather scenario. 

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19 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

Wow!  I had no idea.  Thanks.

 

1 minute ago, Ecocharger said:

Lawyers always show up after a disaster, and they get paid even if the lawsuits are frivolous or worthless. Of course, if lawyers get ahead of the facts they can be sued themselves for abusing the legal process.  And the courts have recently shown a willingness to accept countersuits against lawyers for this reason. 

The bottom line for the Texas disaster is obvious, an overreliance on wind-generated electricity is a recipe for disaster when above-peak demands are made against the system.

In this case, even the gas-generated electrical supplies were dependent upon wind-generated electricity in order to function at the multiple levels required when the wind system failed. The failure of the wind generation created a domino impact upon the gas-generated sources.

The entire system was designed to fail under a cold weather scenario. 

BANG! 

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Hey, could one of you start a blog on Dr Racheal Levine, Ron Paul, puberty blockers, gender affirming health care, genitalia mutilation and transition surgery for minors.

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2 minutes ago, Boat said:

https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/rick-perry-suggests-texans-prefer-191900865.html
 

Perry said Texans would rather remain in the dark if it meant keeping the federal government out, he told House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) office in a blog post published Wednesday.
 

Yep Texan forefathers lost a few good men to Indians and a few more to Mexicans to live in freedom and have slaves. A few good men is a small price to pay rather than the the Feds regulating some weatherization. Suck it up, bury your dead, fix your plumbing and God bless Texas. 😁

Do you think the US Civil War REALLY ever "ended"?   I beleive i just got badly depressed.

If Texas want's to stay off other interconnects, that's their choice.  It seems to work just fine the VAST majority of the time.

I just scratch my head how they manage to avoid the Feds, since they DO have ties to other interconnects.  They just are not synchronous ties.

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