02/17/2021 – Texas
As consumers, we often don’t think about the sources of our electrical grid. Until that is, the lights go out. The unprecedented winter storm of 2021 has caused nearly 4 million homes to lose power in Texas. But the deadly storm is only partially to blame for the blackouts. Usually, we find that storms cause a break in the distribution of power. As such, power lines become physically broken and brave crews are sent out into the elements to restore power.
Source: ERCOT.com
Understanding How Power is Generated.
It may be an oversimplification but many people are under the false belief that there is some sort of battery station somewhere that delivers electricity to their home when they need it. Aside from the technical aspects of electricity storage within the wires and transformers themselves, which can deliver power to a single wall switch without delay, there is no actual “battery” storage of our electrical grid. It would simply be physically impossible to store the 86,000 megawatts of electricity needed by Texas customers. In reality, power is generated on demand. And that’s the root of the problem in Texas.
According to ERCOT, 24.8% of the generating capacity in Texas comes from wind farms. At least 50% of the wind farms were knocked offline in the great Texas Blackout of 2021. It turns out that the blades were not designed with de-icing mechanisms and they simply seized up. At the time of construction, it was determined that such additional cost was not worth the benefit in a state that rarely sees such conditions.
Clearly, the over reliance on wind power in a state that is rich in oil & gas is a problem that is a result of politics, not technology. However, the windmills were not the only factor in the blackout.
One nuclear reactor and several coal-fired plants went offline, but “Texas is a gas state,” Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas, told The Texas Tribune. And “gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now.” Instruments and other components at gas-fired power plants iced over, and “by some estimates, nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures,” as electric pumps lost power and uninsulated pipelines and gas wells froze, the Tribune reports.
But technical failures are only a symptom. This blackout was the result of poor decisions by politicians and mismanagement by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers — representing about 90 percent of the state’s electric load. As the independent system operator for the region, ERCOT schedules power on an electric grid that connects more than 46,500 miles of transmission lines and 680+ generation units. It also performs financial settlement for the competitive wholesale bulk-power market and administers retail switching for 8 million premises in competitive choice areas. ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature. Its members include consumers, cooperatives, generators, power marketers, retail electric providers, investor-owned electric utilities, transmission and distribution providers and municipally owned electric utilities.
(Description from ERCOT website.)
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle (02/16/2021), Governor Greg Abbott stated that board members of ERCOT needed to resign and he called for a restructure of ERCOT. Currently, ERCOT has a 16-member board of directors. The current chair is Sally A. Talberg, who lives in Michigan and just took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Bill Magness of Austin, TX has been the President & CEO since 2016. Magness will likely have more to answer for than Talberg.
On the same day that Abbott conducted an interview for the Houston Chronicle, Magness told WFAA that more than 70 of the state’s 680 power plants were not working. “The amount of demand that it’s put on the electric system far exceeds any extreme forecast we’ve had in the past,” Magness said. “We need to recalibrate based on what we’ve seen with the storm system.” But Magness provided no explanation as to “why” they weren’t working or whose responsibility it was to keep them online.
Meanwhile, much of Texas is still without power as of this printing and ERCOT is providing little comfort to those in need.