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I realize it's not much comfort, but if you're seeing the pictures of lit up Texas skylines at night and thinking "all the power is going to heating up empty office buildings!" you should be aware that's just not really true.
(I'm a civil emergency ops and energy nerd okay)
(I'm a civil emergency ops and energy nerd okay)
Most downtown areas have vital services and utilities prioritize those during rolling blackouts. That includes police stations, central fire stations, and city halls, which most importantly tend to house the Emergency Operation Centers critical to incident response.
The grid is oddly shaped and complex. Usually with load shedding events there's no "turning off power to one building" and instead the choice is disabling power for large sections of a city at a time.
Consider that the hazmat response team for a whole metro area may be at the big fire station downtown, next to the people in the EOC who are coordinating multi-agency disaster response. All have backup power of course, but that's limited and only covers small parts of the system.
The largest consumers of electricity are not commercial building lights, but instead industrial businesses. Chemical processing, refining, mining, paper, steel, concrete, etc. These have Demand Response programs in place to reduce load when needed (note: ERCOT's is voluntary).
The HVAC in large commercial buildings are often more efficient central units and may use nat gas. Most Texas homes use resistive electrical heating with vents designed for cooling. Fluorescent lighting is nothing compared to every house in the state pulling 10-40kW nonstop!
Which leads to the crux of the matter: Texas has its own grid, isolated from the West and East grids except for small HVDC interconnects. This event hit all of Texas, all at once, rocketing demand while reducing all available supply. There's no easy out here.
Normally Texas has its highest electricity demands during the summer heat, so this is a time when many plants are doing routine maintenance. Others had problems due to the extreme cold. A nuclear reactor dropped off the grid because a pipe froze. Murphy's law...
And no, it's not because of frozen wind turbines either. There's a lot of demand for nat gas that's disrupting supply for electricity generation on top of all this. Wind is normally sporadic anyways. https://twitter.com/ctraywick/status/1361715146176024578
There are of course many ways the Texas grid could be improved. Joining the two main US grids or adding interconnects. Better regulations on the power market like mandatory demand response. Increasing reliable and clean nuclear power. Better winterization of plants.
This is very likely due to climate change and its effects on the jet stream. We should expect future storms to be worse, and focus on how to mitigate the impacts of them while reducing our carbon emissions drastically.
I mostly stuck to the immediate cause above. To understand why everything is like this, I recommend: https://twitter.com/historianess/status/1361661596498558977
A great technical analysis of the generation failures in the ERCOT grid, and how this event has doubled and at times tripled what was planned for as a worst case winter scenario. https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1361691683222654980
Disaster planning like this is based on data from past years, but climate change will amplify future "unprecedented" weather events beyond anything thought of as realistic.
We will face many similar "growing pains" as we learn how to adjust to our new reality.
We will face many similar "growing pains" as we learn how to adjust to our new reality.
Fascinating thread by the always wonderful Katie Mummah on the Texas nuclear power plant that dropped off the grid due to a frozen pipe: https://twitter.com/nuclearkatie/status/1361776682252730372
Correction: most likely a sensor that failed due to cold, not a frozen pipe as has been reported.
Keep in mind, not a dangerous event at all, just unfortunate when so many other plants have shut down due to the weather and power is needed badly. https://twitter.com/nuclearkatie/status/1361912172448608256
Keep in mind, not a dangerous event at all, just unfortunate when so many other plants have shut down due to the weather and power is needed badly. https://twitter.com/nuclearkatie/status/1361912172448608256
