TX power grid failures.

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whiterussian1974
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TX power grid failures.

Post by whiterussian1974 »

While 1 million are without power, the skyscrapers are still all lit up. Commercial Customers pay a higher rate than Residential. So keep that beautiful wattage supplied to empty office buildings, while cutting it to people trapped in their homes.

Even Industrial Civic "warming centers" have had their power cut. I'm not sure why they don't have nat gas boilers, but apparently not. Or at least it's not being reported. Maybe they still have heat, but just not light. The Mayor just keeps complaining that the Warming Centers have had their power cut by ERCOT (Council that is responsible for maintaining electrical throughput during emergencies.)

Our Gov is pissing himself and demanding Electrical Company resignations. But he doesn't mention that HE cut their Operating and Emergency Plant Budgets to the bone, and so they can't profitably operate plants that have no budgets. When others freeze and can't be used, there aren't any on standby, because of the Gov's orders. Yet HE blames THEM.

And Uncle Joe wants to cut Gas production. Which means that the Peak Power Plants can't function during peak usage requirements. Extreme heat or cold. Or be used to supplement when some stations go down.

Some in our Statehouse want to tie TX into the National Grid. LA is 12k customers without power, so those Senators think that LA will cut power to 1 million of their people, in order to shunt that Electricity to TX users? Same with OK and NM? They will cut their own Citizens' power to shunt it to us? LOL Really?

ERCOT says that it's TX growing dependence upon non-conventional "Green" sources that caused this problem. That the Wind turbines won't turn bc they are weighted down with ice. And the Solar panels are covered in Ice.

Similar to Southern CA's blackout caused by the wind blowing at the wrong times, and the Sun not shining at night...

https://www.click2houston.com/news/loca ... er-outage/

(This site says that it can't determine the image sizes. But I copy/pasted this whole from a post that I made on another site. So hopefully you can click the links and see the pictures.)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuUqn5CXIAA ... name=small

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuUsCl9XYAI ... name=small

https://twitter.com/JoseOsa/status/1361 ... 56/photo/1
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The Death of One is a Tragedy, a million only a statistic.-Stalin
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johndoe3
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Re: TX power grid failures.

Post by johndoe3 »

One aspect of Texas' current problem is loss of natural gas in areas, something that doesn't happen in cold weather areas farther north. How can that happen? It's been posited that it is due to 2 causes, both self-induced. The major one is how the natural gas pumping stations used to maintain the flow in the pipeline are powered. In the past and in most places, a small amount of natural gas is tapped from the pipeline to run the local pump. Because anti-carbon fuels people complained about the emissions these pumping stations caused, they demanded that natural gas pipeline companies change over to electric pumps. Texas jumped onboard, replacing with electric pumps, the previous pumps using natural gas--loss of system robustness.

You can guess what happened when loss of electricity occurred--a negative feedback loop. No pumping of natural gas occurred with the loss of electricity, and when the flow of natural gas in the pipeline ceased, then the electrical generating stations using natural gas for generating power ceased to supply power. This led to further loss of electrical generating capacity in Texas.

The second issue in Texas is that there is no storage capacity of natural gas to use in cold spells. Instead, because natural gas production is so great in Texas, they rely on new production just in time as needed. So...lose electricity so no pumping of natural gas, and loss of capability to supply natural gas at a time when it is critically needed.

If the above is correct, then the people of Texas were screwed over by the decision makers in government and the power companies and natural gas companies together making a series of decisions which led to the current debacle. The ERCOT oversight committee should have been the ones to see all this and demand more system robustness.

The fact that Texas has its own grid system is not the cause of any problems this week. After all, the Texas grid is connected to the Eastern US grid, the Western US grid and Mexico grid systems through an AC--DC--AC connection to isolate them. They can purchase power from these outside grids and have been purchasing from Mexico the last week; or they can sell power from the Texas grid to outside grid systems. No, Texas having a separate grid is a net positive for Texas, since either the Eastern US or Western US grid going down for whatever reason will not drag the Texas grid into going down.
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whiterussian1974
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Re: TX power grid failures.

Post by whiterussian1974 »

Great post John. I'll pass this info along, crediting you as my Source. :D

Politicians trying to blame the Industry, for the Regulations and Practices that GOVERNMENT wrote, and enforced upon the Industry.

YIKES! :shock:
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Re: TX power grid failures.

Post by johndoe3 »

Just remember, the poor government regulations in Texas for the electrical and natural gas systems was put into place over a couple of decades, as were poor decisions to change over to electrical pumps on natural gas pipelines. The current members on the ERCOT Board did not make all these bad decisions, their predecessors on the Board bear guilt too.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, 1/3rd of Mexico is experiencing rolling electrical blackouts due to the what is taking place in Texas. Why? Mexico buys a lot of natural gas from Texas for electrical generation. Because Texas fumbled the pumping of natural gas with electrical pumps, they cannot deliver the natural gas to Mexico that was under contract. So...the Mexicans are blaming Texas for their electrical blackouts--and rightfully so.
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whiterussian1974
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Re: TX power grid failures.

Post by whiterussian1974 »

johndoe3 wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:50 pm Just remember, the poor government regulations in Texas for the electrical and natural gas systems was put into place over a couple of decades, as were poor decisions to change over to electrical pumps on natural gas pipelines. The current members on the ERCOT Board did not make all these bad decisions, their predecessors on the Board bear guilt too.
Yes, that is partially my point.

This thread is largely aimed at the Gov Abbott. He is all over the airwaves demanding that ERCOT and Electrical Company execs resign. But he neglects that they are only following STATE rules put into place by prior Politicians who curried favor with the Greens. If the Gov was willing to budget for a hardening and redundancy in the System, this all could have been avoided.

Return to gas-powered pumping stations that don't freeze up during icing conditions as the electrical wires can break or the Substations can go offline.

Don't demand such a heavy reliance upon wind and solar. They are great to augment production, but can't be depended upon during emergencies.

And contract with MOBILE power generation Industry. Here in Houston, Stewart and Stevenson make 53' shipping containers into mobile electrical generators for use in remote locations. They made TONS of them during the Iraq/Afghan incursions and occupations.

They are also used in Alaska where a village of 35 houses need emergency power for when the Wires or Transformers cease working during ice storms. And even in TX, OK, SD, etc oilfields where the cost of installing permanent infrastructure is remote temporary locations makes no financial sense. These Trailers generate plenty of scalable generation for the small outposts while construction is underway.

They are also useful if the Gov't is willing to lease them after storm devastation where the areas would otherwise go weeks wo power. IE: hurricanes on coastal or island areas.
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whiterussian1974
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Re: TX power grid failures.

Post by whiterussian1974 »

https://www.stewartandstevenson.com/power-rental/ wrote:Standby & Emergency Generators

Our power rental fleet is one of the largest in the Southwest. Our generator solutions range from 100 to 2000 kW and are utilized for both standby and emergency applications.
Stewart & Stevenson / Detroit Diesel 350 kW diesel generator set, 263 Hrs - CSDG # 2276
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-ml0nMB0gw

Stewart & Stevenson 400KW Diesel Generator 100375
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7_PcUHUDMo

A Nuclear reactor generates the same power as 640 of these units. Just imagine that!
1280MW / 2MW = 640 units. And there are between 20 and 100 of these massive units sitting around at any given time. If they connected 20x2MW units to Houston, 400 MW of power would keep a LOT of water pipes from bursting. Even if the home was at 35*F inside, the heat would waft up into the attic insulation where the pipes are. That means no 28*F hard freezes even when freezing rain is falling upon the roofs.

And our Mayor told us not to have our faucets drip to prevent pipes bursting. Thankfully, one reporter called him on that at the News Conference today.

How many millions of $ at just 2k$ of damage per home x 1k homes? $2 million.
The Darkest Corners of Hell are reserved for those who remain Neutral!-Dante
The Death of One is a Tragedy, a million only a statistic.-Stalin
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0101silent
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Re: TX power grid failures.

Post by 0101silent »

Have you seen the energy markets in Texas?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1tVbFZUrOFM

Can any comparison be made between energy shortages in Texas and gasoline shortages in Venezuela?
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