The Texas power grid is on the verge of another fatal collapse. Green energy is absent
By Paul Homewood
h/t George Herraghty
First it was Alberta, now it’s Texas:
The situation on the Texas power grid this week is going to be a crucial test not just for the grid’s managers at ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), but also for natural gas suppliers and generators. As weather conditions continued to evolve and deteriorate across the state, ERCOT has issued a conservation request to business and private customers to be in effect from 6am to 10am CST, a time of peak power demand and low renewable production.
ERCOT’s request blamed the latest failure of the state’s huge wind industry on “unseasonably low wind” conditions, but the reality that the wind tends to die down as temperatures drop is one of the most open secrets in the history of weather. ERCOT officials cannot control weather conditions, obviously, but they can anticipate they will get a lot less wind contribution than their models predict whenever the weather is not ideal. That’s just a given.
Equally obvious is the fact that they will get zero generation from the state’s ballyhooed solar farms when the sun isn’t shining, and ERCOT’s managers should have learned last summer that the battery storage facilities will also fail to deliver much whenever the weather is too hot or, as it is this week, too cold.
The state’s generation mix taken from ERCOT’s app at 7:19am. Monday tells that story pretty clearly. What we see is 0 per cent contribution from solar, 0.8 per cent from power storage, and just 6.8 per cent from wind. Meanwhile, the “fossil fuels” so detested by the state’s legacy media sites were kicking in 84.9 per cent of total generation, with a whopping 67.2 per cent coming from the state’s natural gas industry.
So, as is always the case on the Texas grid despite all the renewables-boosting propaganda from the state and national media, the situation for consumers will come down to whether natural gas producers can keep their wells pumping, natural gas pipeline companies can keep the gas flowing through their pipelines, and natural gas power generators can prevent their plants from freezing up. A lot of that failed to happen during Winter Storm Uri in February, 2021, and massive blackouts lasting for days at a time resulted in the deaths of 300 or more of my fellow Texans.
The problem was made a lot worse back then because ERCOT turned off the electricity to wells, compressors, and pipelines. ERCOT, Texas regulators, and the industry itself have worked to get grid-critical sites properly identified since 2021 to prevent that mistake from happening again. If that claim is accurate, then the grid should be able to maintain service to all Texas customers during this severe weather event. If that claim is not accurate, then there could be trouble.
But the bottom line here in either event is clear: The success or failure of the Texas power grid when the chips are down is entirely related to the performance not of renewables, but natural gas. This is a time for the industry to shine. All Texans should be grateful to the thousands of men and women working in the gas industry to make that happen.
David Blackmon had a 40 year career in the US energy industry, the last 23 years of which were spent in the public policy arena, managing regulatory and legislative issues for various companies. He continues to write and podcast on energy matters
I actually disagree with David’s conclusions – it’s not natural gas that’s performance that’s at stake. The real problem is that over the years, Texas has shut down far too much dispatchable capacity.
Any power grid needs ample spare capacity, because there are always issues of reliability and, of course, transmission problems in freezing weather. Meanwhile the gas fleet gets older.
The only option open to Texas is to immediately embark on an expansion of its gas and coal plants, to avoid problems in future years.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Hands up anyone who is not surprised that the Texas power grid is on the verge of another fatal collapse.
Hands up!
‘The only option open to Texas is to immediately embark on an expansion of its gas and coal plants, to avoid problems in future years.’
Blackouts are an option.
Likely, in fact. State actions have poisoned the well. Years of embracing renewables and threatening coal and gas means there will be no expansion. There will be problems in the future. This is just the beginning.
Government killed nuclear. They are killing coal and gas. Sayonara.
How could illegal immigrants help?
“Dear electricity consumers, because of our net zero policies to try and transition away from those evil fossil fuels, the electricity grid is going to be stretched over the coming period, so pleas ration your energy use so we don’t have blackouts and kill people. To help, make good use of your log burners.”
We have only known for a couple of thousand years that cold weather tends to reduce wind speeds. Or that Night time and winter light also tends to play havoc with solar power. How on earth are our elite supposed to know those obscure facts?
I’m only surprised they didn’t blame ‘the unseasonably low wind’ on climate change.
Good bring it on we need visible hard hitting TV to show the folly of what the climate evangelists are pushing onto the populous.
If Texas experience hasn’t shown the alarmists that renewables are inept as a national power source, then, they deserve everything coming from the cold, hungry, impoverished masses
Several different figures for Texas coal reserves. Global Energy Monitor:
“Texas has an estimated 13.7 billion tons of coal reserves. “
2 seasons running, surely public backlash must have an effect now?
There is nothing the public can do. They are screwed til government gets their hands off energy. And that is not coming soon.
Absolutely spot on about dispatchable capacity shortage being the key variable, as it was for the Valentine Day blackouts. In the cold weather, with the plants turned up to 11 (by special dispensation from the EPA because of the anticipated capacity shortage), the risks of plant tripping out are significant, and if there is no spinning reserve left… you get a cascading blackout just as happened at 1:52 a.m. back then. That knocked out so much plant that the grid frequency fell to around 59.3 Hz – the level at which automated load shedding takes place. But so much capacity had been tripped out and corresponding load shed that they ended up without power supply to key compressors. Up to that point, they had been scraping by.
If instead plant could have run at design capacity, outages would have been fewer before the time of the trip – and having adequate spinning reserve would have prevented the trip altogether. Despite the production shut-ins there was actually sufficient gas to run the power stations thanks to dry gas in storage and cessation of LNG liquefaction operations. Gas storage is a prominent feature because it covers for offshore (and onshore) production outages during hurricanes – it’s not there just for winter, but also to help meet the summer peak demand in hot weather.
The two prior Texas blackouts were BOTH caused by a shortage of natural gas to needed to meet high demand during very cold weather.
Wond and solar power were NOT the cause
Few conservatives studied the post blackout reports.
I did.
While they jumped to conclusions about wind power.
Natural gas production in Texas severely declines in the rare very cold weather. The problem has never been addressed.
Natural GAS PRODUCERS WILL GET FROZEN WELLHEADS FROM WATER VAPOR IN THE GAS BEFORE IT IS REFINED, SO THEY MAY STOP PRODUCTION FOR A FEW DATS . THIS ONLY HAPPENED TWICE SO FAR, IN 2011 AND 2021. bUT NEVER FIXED.
Natural gas plants have no on site gas storage so some of them will e out of gas — not enough just in time production for all power plants and home . business use.
WIND POWER CAN BE VERY LOW OR NEAR ZERO FOR AN HOUR OR MORE every WEEK IN TEXAS
.NO BLACKOUTS IN THE TEN YEARS FROM 2011 TO 2021 UNTIL THERE WAS A SHORTAGE OF NATURAL GAS.
WIND POWER WAS NOT THE CAUSE EVEN AS RABID CONSERVATICVES, HIGHLY BIASED AGAINST WIND POWER (FOR GOOD REASONS) JUMPED TO CONCLUSIONS ABOYT TEXAS WITH NO DATA.
February 2011 Texas blackout
very few windmills
February 2021 Texas blackout
Lots of windmills
The number of windmills made no difference,
” … caused by a shortage of natural gas …”
Coal: stockpile the fuel at the coal-fired power stations
Nuclear: don’t schedule refuelling during winter. My guess is that it’s technically possible to stockpile the fuel at the nuclear power stations.
Nice piece of shouty drivel there. The gas grid used to have its own generation plant but some dumb president with big ears called Obummer made them connect to the grid so that now when there are grid problems you make it much worse by causing problems in the gas flow. A simple solution is to have coal fired plants that used stockpiled coal that does not get affected by the weather. The drop out of the wind generation caused the grid problems that required rapid disconnection of loads to prevent the total collapse of the grid and the need for a black start that as far as I am aware has never been done anywhere.
The 2021 blackout in data
Data doesn’t lie . Official reports do.
The frequency nadir captured at Wayback. The actual nadir is almost certainly lower, at least somewhere on the grid, and quite sufficient to trigger automated load shedding.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210215075245/http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_conditions.html
This might make a difference…
Texas LNG expects to close its project financing in 2024 with construction commencing shortly thereafter. An equipment order is expected to be granted in conjunction with financial close of the project. The first LNG exports from Texas LNG are expected to be shipped in late 2027 or early 2028.
https://texaslng.com/companynews/news-and-announcements.html
They could tap into their own stores of LNG in emergencies?
They did last time by shutting down the liquefaction plants, freeing the gas for use in homes and power stations. Building extra LNG capacity indicates an expectation of higher local production that needs a market. Demand is unlikely to fall by much since higher wind penetration serves to knock out baseload and extra gas is required to fill in when the wind fails. Cheap gas makes it harder for other energy supply to compete., and rising curtailment and periods of zero value output will make wind less competitive without more subsidy.
I wonder what makes up the rest of the supply? Imports from other states? As for woodburners in Texas – do they have many large forests in Texas?
A blackout in 2021 — not in any other weel from in the 10 years after 2011 to 2021 with hours of little wind output practically every week. that would be 520 weeks with no problems And no blackouts in the three years since then
. Why?
Because every Texas blackout was caused by low gas supplies in the very cold days of the blackout.
Texas windmills rarely go for a week without an hour or more of very low wind power. never causing a blackout.
Exposed coal piles outdoors can freeze up under unusual weather conditions and that could cause problems too.
” Exposed coal piles outdoors can freeze up under unusual weather conditions and that could cause problems too. ”
In the UK, this was a problem in 1947. I would be surprised if mechanical handling equipment in the 21st century couldn’t deal with any frozen coal stockpile, assuming it’s on hard standing, which it should be at a power station
In 2021 the low gas supplies were caused by interruption to electricity supply to pipeline compressors. Until that happened (due to running out of reserve generation capacity and the near simultaneous trip of several power stations in consequence) there was no real problem with gas supply that the system was unable to cope with.
Across the pond, in the U.S., we “shifted the Sun” by creating Daylight Savings Time to facilitate the harvesting of crops back in the 19th Century. Perhaps Texas should follow suit with a new Green Energy Time? You know, start the work day around Noon so the Big Yellow Star can have time to wake up and work its magic on the wind and the PV panels. Just a thought. Hey, we’re saving the planet here so get with the program.
And now vis Blackout News – apt website name – the grid operator in Baden-Wuerttemberg is asking for consumption to be reduced to avoid a blackout and be prepared for brownouts to stop it going down. I presume it is just the skill of the grid engineers in dropping parts of the grid in time to prevent the whole grid going black and finding out what a black start looks like.
You state an important point that is often missed in these discussion post. Thank you.