.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

20 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

To make this work the complex system as a whole must find a way to pay for the generators, whether or not they are producing electricity.

This is precisely what caused the problem in Texas in the first place. Wind gets paid for capacity, not produced power. This in complete contravention to existing market forces. Distort the market enough and you end up with the carnival mirror situation in Texas where nothing is what it seems. It's happening elsewhere too and will create even further distortions to stable grids and markets. 

[Symmetry + 109]

40 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

This is precisely what caused the problem in Texas in the first place. Wind gets paid for capacity, not produced power. This in complete contravention to existing market forces. Distort the market enough and you end up with the carnival mirror situation in Texas where nothing is what it seems. It's happening elsewhere too and will create even further distortions to stable grids and markets. 

Ward finally realizes it wasn't winds fault, it was mismanagement and market forces.

Almost like wind energy had near nothing to do with the problem.  Reality.

Now stop badmouthing poor application of valid technologies.  

Edited March 11, 2021 by Symmetry

[turbguy + 1,540]

46 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

This is precisely what caused the problem in Texas in the first place. Wind gets paid for capacity, not produced power. This in complete contravention to existing market forces. Distort the market enough and you end up with the carnival mirror situation in Texas where nothing is what it seems. It's happening elsewhere too and will create even further distortions to stable grids and markets. 

Since Texas is said to be an energy-only market, that implies that sources get paid for production, not the nameplate.

I ask for a reference. (I could not find any, but Google can be frustrating). That would be of interest.

Perhaps you posted it previously and I overlooked that info.

Edited March 11, 2021 by turbguy

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

51 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

This is precisely what caused the problem in Texas in the first place. Wind gets paid for capacity, not produced power. This in complete contravention to existing market forces. Distort the market enough and you end up with the carnival mirror situation in Texas where nothing is what it seems. It's happening elsewhere too and will create even further distortions to stable grids and markets. 

Well parsed, sir!

That is exactly what they had in Texas: a carnival mirror where nothing is what it seems. No matter which mirror you looked in, there was Queen Wind, getting all the attention. Wind was everywhere--and why not--they were indeed getting paid for production, not for the actual use of electricity. Can you imagine how much angst there is in Texas these days? If you think this energy story has been spun like cotton candy here on this forum you should see what it's like in hundreds of meetings. 

In the final analysis, wind is going to be wired to Florida. Natural gas will once again get the attention it deserves in Texas. Now, if Texas goes blue, that could all shift again, but for the foreseeable future they're going back to the basics.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

8 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

That's not a "meaningless" number. The NG plants had been denigrated, converted to a shadow of their former selves. Still, when called upon, they did indeed increase productivity by 450%--no small feat for a bunch of castoffs that had been replaced by windmills. 

 

That's interesting. What was the historical maximum amount of gas-fired capacity in ERCOT, when did that maximum begin to decline, and what was the nominal capacity on 14 February?

You use the term "denigrated", Do you mean that these generators are no longer well-maintained?  I has assumed from my (very casual) reading that the current NG generator fleet was assumed to be in working order.

[turbguy + 1,540]

19 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

That's interesting. What was the historical maximum amount of gas-fired capacity in ERCOT, when did that maximum begin to decline, and what was the nominal capacity on 14 February?

You use the term "denigrated", Do you mean that these generators are no longer well-maintained?  I has assumed from my (very casual) reading that the current NG generator fleet was assumed to be in working order.

Don't forget, "450%" didn't work for this event. 

Where were those that were operating, and then tripped???

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

I'm getting sick and tired of doing everyone's homework for them. 

Read em and weep

Quote

Another Take on the Failure of Wind vs. NG

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-spins-into-the-wind-11613605698?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

 

Texas Spins Into the Wind

An electricity grid that relies on renewables also needs nuclear or coal power.

 

 

While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin. 

Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.

 

Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday ("The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage") that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.

Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.

Texas has about 30,000 MW of wind capacity, but winds aren’t constant or predictable. Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants. 

Wind turbines at times this month have generated more than half of the Texas power generation, though this is only about a quarter of the system’s power capacity. Last week wind generation plunged as demand surged. Fossil-fuel generation increased and covered the supply gap. Thus between the mornings of Feb. 7 and Feb. 11, wind as a share of the state’s electricity fell to 8% from 42%, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). 

Gas-fired plants produced 43,800 MW of power Sunday night and coal plants chipped in 10,800 MW—about two to three times what they usually generate at their peak on any given winter day—after wind power had largely vanished. In other words, gas and coal plants held up in the frosty conditions far better than wind turbines did. 

It wasn’t until temperatures plunged into the single digits early Monday morning that some conventional power plants including nuclear started to have problems, which was the same time that demand surged for heating. Gas plants also ran low on fuel as pipelines froze and more was diverted for heating.

“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Electric Reliability Council of Texas senior director Dan Woodfin said Tuesday. The wind industry and its friends are citing this statement as exoneration. But note he used the word “today.” Most wind power had already dropped offline last week. 

Gas generation fell by about one-third between late Sunday night and Tuesday, but even then was running two to three times higher than usual before the Arctic blast. Gas power nearly made up for the shortfall in wind, though it wasn’t enough to cover surging demand.

 

Between 12 a.m. on Feb. 8 and Feb. 16, wind power plunged 93% while coal increased 47% and gas 450%, according to the EIA. Yet the renewable industry and its media mouthpieces are tarring gas, coal and nuclear because they didn’t operate at 100% of their expected potential during the Arctic blast even though wind turbines failed nearly 100%.

 

The policy point here is that an electricity grid that depends increasingly on subsidized but unreliable wind and solar needs baseload power to weather surges in demand. Natural gas is crucial but it also isn’t as reliable as nuclear and coal power.

Politicians and regulators don’t want to admit this because they have been taking nuclear and coal plants offline to please the lords of climate change. But the public pays the price when blackouts occur because climate obeisance has made the grid too fragile. We’ve warned about this for years, and here we are. 

 

 

[Symmetry + 109]

2 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

I'm getting sick and tired of doing everyone's homework for them. 

 

 

Please stop.  Give yourself some personal time; you may have noticed your internet chatter is non-productive.

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Symmetry

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

17 minutes ago, Symmetry said:

Please stop.  Give yourself some personal time; you may have noticed your internet chatter is non-productive.

 

Dude, I get that you're an ignorant moron, but you're the one arguing about the 450% number, right there in the quote. Why don't you just apologize and quit the site, you only humiliate yourself when you try to go toe to toe with me. 

[Symmetry + 109]

15 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Dude, I get that you're an ignorant moron, but you're the one arguing about the 450% number, right there in the quote. Why don't you just apologize and quit the site, you only humiliate yourself when you try to go toe to toe with me. 

You think you win!

Fantasy!  You are the best entertainment.

Ward is frustrated reality is not the way he thinks it should be.

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Symmetry

[NickW + 2,714]

6 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

This is precisely what caused the problem in Texas in the first place. Wind gets paid for capacity, not produced power. This in complete contravention to existing market forces. Distort the market enough and you end up with the carnival mirror situation in Texas where nothing is what it seems. It's happening elsewhere too and will create even further distortions to stable grids and markets. 

Are you saying there is a different mechanism from the production tax credit?

Production tax credit (I recall 1c / kwh) is reliant on producing power. 

[turbguy + 1,540]

7 hours ago, NickW said:

Are you saying there is a different mechanism from the production tax credit?

Production tax credit (I recall 1c / kwh) is reliant on producing power. 

I'm searching for an answer to the same question, as well. I cannot seem to find how a generator in Texas gets paid for capacity (nameplate), and not actual generation.

(Also, I think the PTC is almost 2 cents per KWH sold, phasing out over time).

[NickW + 2,714]

41 minutes ago, turbguy said:

I'm searching for an answer to the same question, as well. I cannot seem to find how a generator in Texas gets paid for capacity (nameplate), and not actual generation.

(Also, I think the PTC is almost 2 cents per KWH sold, phasing out over time).

Thanks for the update on PTC. Good poin that they are also time limited so eventually expire and the operator then only gets the commercial rate.  I always assumed this was for electricity produced otherwise you could import a load of clapped out early 1990's wind turbines and claim for the capacity. 

A PTC however incentivises the owner to keep them working. 

The only capacity type payment I am directly aware of is in the UK in the situations where emergency gensets are called in, on an as needed basis which I have previously described. 

These get payment in two parts. 1 for having the gensets available on call for a minimum specified period of time and if called upon an agreed feed in tariff. 

[Boat + 1,323]

You guys correct me if my take away is wrong. Texas was using 47% wind pre storm. Past experiences led Texas think that 10% might be available during a hard storm. 
What I don’t know is if wind dropped below that 10% threshold  that in theory spells trouble. 
Regardless of the numbers some type of calculation must exist.

The next question would be how that calculation would change as weatherization to turbines happen. Is existing weatherization tech good enough or does more need to be done to have more confidence. 
Obviously other energy sources had their problems. New additions like batter storage may have their problems in a hard storm. 
It would be interesting to know, going forward, the attempted solutions, their cost and how these changes to electricity infrastructure change the “calculations”of confidence. 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Boat

[turbguy + 1,540]

45 minutes ago, Boat said:

You guys correct me if my take away is wrong. Texas was using 47% wind pre storm. Past experiences led Texas think that 10% might be available during a hard storm. 
What I don’t know is if wind dropped below that 10% threshold  that in theory spells trouble. 
Regardless of the numbers some type of calculation must exist.

The next question would be how that calculation would change as weatherization to turbines happen. Is existing weatherization tech good enough or does more need to be done to have more confidence. 
Obviously other energy sources had their problems. New additions like batter storage may have their problems in a hard storm. 
It would be interesting to know, going forward, the attempted solutions, their cost and how these changes to electricity infrastructure change the “calculations”of confidence. 

To make the grid more resilient to bad weather will require "hardening" of almost all forms of generation, fuel supply, transmission systems, and deployment of demand management and hard storage.  There's no straightforward easy answer.  It's all gonna cost the consumers, unless they are satisfied with "the way things are". 

Rotating blackouts are are the only form of significant demand management available with the grid's current form.  The real issue arose when the distribution companies ran out of other "non-critical infrastructure" circuits to rotate TO.  Many consumers were thus "rotated" with an "off" period of several days, instead of an hour or so. This was caused by the vast, widespread nature of this particular weather event. It did not affect just ERCOT, it spanned over many other states, causing plenty of white knuckles outside of ERCOT.

Even with "hardening", man cannot make the grid so bulletproof that it can withstand everything mother nature could throw at it.  That said, it certainly can be hardened against very cold weather snaps.

I do not believe the wind industry has an effective solution (yet) to severe icing.   It can be detected, but if severe, the current response is to shut down and set the brakes.

Edited March 11, 2021 by turbguy

[Ecocharger + 1,463]

Weatherization looks to be more feasible going forward with NG than with wind or sun.....the future is with a dependable source.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Big-Energy-Emerges-As-Winner-From-Texas-Winter-Storm.html

No more risky experiments.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

2 hours ago, turbguy said:

I do not believe the wind industry has an effective solution (yet) to severe icing.   It can be detected, but if severe, the current response is to shut down and set the brakes.

 

3 hours ago, Boat said:

You guys correct me if my take away is wrong. Texas was using 47% wind pre storm. Past experiences led Texas think that 10% might be available during a hard storm. 

Now we're getting somewhere. Texas had come to rely on an awful lot of wind contribution to the grid. They felt they could generate 86,000 megawatts of electricity during the summer (when the wind is blowing) and 67,000 in the winter (when it usually is not). Growing up pulling early "spring" calves out in storms like that, I can tell you that there is frequently a substantial wind chill factor as the thermometer falls to freezing, with a light drizzle turning to rime, but when it gets to freezing, God pretty well turns off the wind machine. As the temperature keeps on falling, the drizzle turns to sleet, then snow, but it's frequently dead calm--kind of pretty unless you have to go outdoors or don't have heat. So that's the wind, right there. Gone. 

14 hours ago, turbguy said:

Don't forget, "450%" didn't work for this event. 

Where were those that were operating, and then tripped???

And then we're left with natural gas--see immediate above. What happened to all those wells? 

My family has been selling natural gas from the Anadarko Basin since the fifties, in weather perpetually worse than this, and we've never had a freeze-off. They have them in the Permian, but when you read a lot of these posts it sounds like everyone thinks these are a lot of stupid people down there running the grid. That's not the case; they're just not talking a lot. But some things are coming into focus. 

The Permian shale basin is so chock full of natural gas (almost 100% methane) that it makes it hard to get the oil out. We're talking billions of cubic feet of methane. Many very small operators can afford to drill and frack but can't afford to reserve pipeline space for natural gas, thus all the venting and flaring. The Texas Railroad Commission is trying to be as fair as possible, so some very high-flow wells are choked down. When you choke down a natural gas line the pressure rises. When you raise the pressure on natural gas and lower the temperature you have activated the greatest cause of water in gas forming ice cages around methane--the fabled clathrates that have been mentioned. Clathrates are everywhere in nature: the Mackenzie Delta in the Canadian Arctic, the Siberian Arctic, the ocean floor in the GOM, and even where the Pacific tectonic plate makes a subduction under the North American plate about 80 miles off the Oregon Coast--the so-called "Hydrate Ridge." These things are rigid when formed, snow-white with cup-like depressions, and trillions of tons of methane (as well as CO2) are stored as hydrates deep in the oceans of the world. They call it a "sink" but it's more like a "freezer." So that's clathrates/hydrates. 

And then there's plain old ice. This is not exactly dry gas we're talking about; dry gas is more in the Marcellus and Utica and even the Haynesville. They remove most of the water from the Permian gas but not all. There has been a lot of talk about water freezing to ice in the Christmas tree valves or water forming clathrate traps around the guest molecule methane (using van der Waal's forces). I'm sure there was both, but was that enough to explain a natural gas failure? 

Well, a clue might be the fact that FERC is snooping around, even though ERCOT is not under any kind of federal umbrella (this might have something to do with Texas going red when a blue president was chosen). Another might be that a lot of REP's (Retail Electricity Providers--there are about 130 in Texas) are saying that buyers of NG on the wholesale market decided to sit this out, because of profit concerns. Griddy is already pointing the finger at PUCT, saying they allowed wholesale buying a lot longer than was needed--at great cost. 

What I'm saying is that there is a lot more to the Texas Puzzle than meets the eye. The one incontrovertible, no-other-way-to-spin-it fact is that the wind died down and the blades and gear-works froze in the drizzle--all within about two hours time. The second is that there were some freeze-offs and I strongly suspect it had something to do with chokes raising pressure as the temperatures dropped. But I've also a strong suspicion that there was a lot of good-old-fashioned financial wizardry going on too, and if my suspicion is borne out, the truth will finally make its way to the light . . . especially with FERC asking questions. 

Loss of wind energy + some freeze-offs in NG valves + wholesale buyers opting out of the network = nearly half the energy feed to the grid went offline. In that setting let's hear it for Bill Magness, who prevented a black-out, which in turn prevented a black start from a cold grid, a process that would still be underway at a time when Texas is preparing for another storm. 

This is my last desperate effort to try to present the situation in toto. And please, if you haven't done so, go back up and read that Wall Street Journal article that Ward posted 9 entries up. Since Mr. Trump left office the WSJ is almost as liberal as the rest of them so you can't say it was written with a conservative, gas-friendly bent. If you read it, you won't harp again that this was a natural gas problem, not a wind problem, and you might start thinking, hmmmmm, maybe this wasn't just a simple weather problem.   

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

^^^ This

Basic math

That disqualifies the Eejit 

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

6 hours ago, Boat said:

You guys correct me if my take away is wrong. Texas was using 47% wind pre storm. Past experiences led Texas think that 10% might be available during a hard storm. 
What I don’t know is if wind dropped below that 10% threshold  that in theory spells trouble. 
Regardless of the numbers some type of calculation must exist.

The next question would be how that calculation would change as weatherization to turbines happen. Is existing weatherization tech good enough or does more need to be done to have more confidence. 
Obviously other energy sources had their problems. New additions like batter storage may have their problems in a hard storm. 
It would be interesting to know, going forward, the attempted solutions, their cost and how these changes to electricity infrastructure change the “calculations”of confidence. 

I do not think you are correct. I think that ERCOT calculated that wind in February cannot be depended on for more than 6000 MW, period, based on the strength of the winds. This is before any consideration of outages due to either icing or extreme cold. The icing caused a very brief drop even below this expected floor, to a low of 4000 MW. This drop did not coincide with the later excess demand spike and loss of gad-fired generation that forced the rolling blackouts.

So, to answer your question, additional winterization would not affect the 6000 MW number: the number (apparently) made the incorrect assumption that no winterization was needed. Winterization MIGHT make the 6000 MW floor more realistic. I might make more sense to simply drop the floor to zero for planning purposes and spend the same winterization money to avoid the NG production freeze-offs. Remember, extreme icing is statistically even more rare than extreme cold. Most of the icing occurred early in the weather event as the upper-level temperature was dropping through the freezing point.

[Mutiny 0]

I have been following Oil Price for a while now and occasionally dip into this thread since it started, first post.  Knowing how some are really into this, I thought I'd post this video that came out today.  Food for thought.  It's by a Professor of Disruption from Stanford University (oh my god, California!).  I've followed his work for many years.  His claims from 4 years ago seemed fantastical, but the reality is it is moving faster than his charts predicted.  Most won't want to take the 18 minutes to watch it, but it will give you something different to think about on this specific issue. Titled "A New Energy Report by RethinkX".   https://youtu.be/YJ-HlykM1LU

[Boat + 1,323]

11 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

 

Now we're getting somewhere. Texas had come to rely on an awful lot of wind contribution to the grid. They felt they could generate 86,000 megawatts of electricity during the summer (when the wind is blowing) and 67,000 in the winter (when it usually is not). Growing up pulling early "spring" calves out in storms like that, I can tell you that there is frequently a substantial wind chill factor as the thermometer falls to freezing, with a light drizzle turning to rime, but when it gets to freezing, God pretty well turns off the wind machine. As the temperature keeps on falling, the drizzle turns to sleet, then snow, but it's frequently dead calm--kind of pretty unless you have to go outdoors or don't have heat. So that's the wind, right there. Gone. 

And then we're left with natural gas--see immediate above. What happened to all those wells? 

My family has been selling natural gas from the Anadarko Basin since the fifties, in weather perpetually worse than this, and we've never had a freeze-off. They have them in the Permian, but when you read a lot of these posts it sounds like everyone thinks these are a lot of stupid people down there running the grid. That's not the case; they're just not talking a lot. But some things are coming into focus. 

The Permian shale basin is so chock full of natural gas (almost 100% methane) that it makes it hard to get the oil out. We're talking billions of cubic feet of methane. Many very small operators can afford to drill and frack but can't afford to reserve pipeline space for natural gas, thus all the venting and flaring. The Texas Railroad Commission is trying to be as fair as possible, so some very high-flow wells are choked down. When you choke down a natural gas line the pressure rises. When you raise the pressure on natural gas and lower the temperature you have activated the greatest cause of water in gas forming ice cages around methane--the fabled clathrates that have been mentioned. Clathrates are everywhere in nature: the Mackenzie Delta in the Canadian Arctic, the Siberian Arctic, the ocean floor in the GOM, and even where the Pacific tectonic plate makes a subduction under the North American plate about 80 miles off the Oregon Coast--the so-called "Hydrate Ridge." These things are rigid when formed, snow-white with cup-like depressions, and trillions of tons of methane (as well as CO2) are stored as hydrates deep in the oceans of the world. They call it a "sink" but it's more like a "freezer." So that's clathrates/hydrates. 

And then there's plain old ice. This is not exactly dry gas we're talking about; dry gas is more in the Marcellus and Utica and even the Haynesville. They remove most of the water from the Permian gas but not all. There has been a lot of talk about water freezing to ice in the Christmas tree valves or water forming clathrate traps around the guest molecule methane (using van der Waal's forces). I'm sure there was both, but was that enough to explain a natural gas failure? 

Well, a clue might be the fact that FERC is snooping around, even though ERCOT is not under any kind of federal umbrella (this might have something to do with Texas going red when a blue president was chosen). Another might be that a lot of REP's (Retail Electricity Providers--there are about 130 in Texas) are saying that buyers of NG on the wholesale market decided to sit this out, because of profit concerns. Griddy is already pointing the finger at PUCT, saying they allowed wholesale buying a lot longer than was needed--at great cost. 

What I'm saying is that there is a lot more to the Texas Puzzle than meets the eye. The one incontrovertible, no-other-way-to-spin-it fact is that the wind died down and the blades and gear-works froze in the drizzle--all within about two hours time. The second is that there were some freeze-offs and I strongly suspect it had something to do with chokes raising pressure as the temperatures dropped. But I've also a strong suspicion that there was a lot of good-old-fashioned financial wizardry going on too, and if my suspicion is borne out, the truth will finally make its way to the light . . . especially with FERC asking questions. 

Loss of wind energy + some freeze-offs in NG valves + wholesale buyers opting out of the network = nearly half the energy feed to the grid went offline. In that setting let's hear it for Bill Magness, who prevented a black-out, which in turn prevented a black start from a cold grid, a process that would still be underway at a time when Texas is preparing for another storm. 

This is my last desperate effort to try to present the situation in toto. And please, if you haven't done so, go back up and read that Wall Street Journal article that Ward posted 9 entries up. Since Mr. Trump left office the WSJ is almost as liberal as the rest of them so you can't say it was written with a conservative, gas-friendly bent. If you read it, you won't harp again that this was a natural gas problem, not a wind problem, and you might start thinking, hmmmmm, maybe this wasn't just a simple weather problem.   

WSJ requires a subscription. So out of 67,000 MW ERCOT dependeded on wind production in a worst case scenario of 6,000 MW. That’s less than 10%. Let’s hope Texas math is better than it’s election math. 
I gambled a bit in my youth and my bet says weatherized wind will continue to grow and compete with other energy sources. We’ll see. Can’t wait for the Texas legislature and Gov to release reports about the investigation and their version of mandated fixes.

When the suing starts for failed MW’s who’s gonna pay the highest settlement.

[NickW + 2,714]

16 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

^^^ This

Basic math

That disqualifies the Eejit 

This article makes no mention of outturn forecasting which all transmission operators should be undertaking for weeks / months ahead of schedule to take account for factors which remove or reduce the output of generating sets. 

• Traditionally this would account for conventional plant taken out of use for for maintenance 
• It also builds in factors such as reduced output from thermal plant in high summer months 
• More recently it builds in expected outputs from intermittent resources such as wind and solar. 

As Dan states ERCOT expected no more than 6000MW from wind and in the event got 4000MW. Therefore the outturn forecast would never have built in more than 6000MW from wind sources and probably shaved a % off of that for variability. 

 

[turbguy + 1,540]

“Everybody’s trying to throw ERCOT, wind and power plants under the bus, but it’s the gas system that primarily failed us,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “And the gas system is really a Railroad Commission thing.”

“With gas prices being low - and storage being full - the risk of 2-3 days of possible freeze-off every several years is a risk that Gulf Coast producers have been willing to take,” Black & Veatch said in its report.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/freeze-risk-texas-natural-gas-supply-system-power-16020457.php

Edited March 12, 2021 by turbguy

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

^

Would this be the Michael Webber who was trained as a mechanical engineer and is co-director of the Clean Energy Incubator Program at the University of Texas?

Gosh, I would expect a guy like that to offer a totally unbiased opinion on the root of the problem. 

His usual outlets are: The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, The Daily Telegraph--all known for their conservative bent, of course. 

Puh-leese!

[NickW + 2,714]

This is interesting, in the interests of actually considering potential solutions to this problem. 

There are at least 10 potential close loop pump storage sites across Texas with 150 Gwh of capacity around San Antonio and Amarillo. In addition another 10 50 Gwh sites. 

NationalMap (terria.io)