Did ya hear TX is freezing over?

[npaden]

Since Texas gets 90% of it’s electricity from fossil fuels it’s real tough to blame this event on green energy.

Care to back that up with facts? Texas actually gets a pretty high % of it's electricity generation from wind. It's one of those things that is pretty hard to put an exact number on but generally it is reported to be a little over 20%. The problem is that it fluctuates wildly. In the spring when electric use is low, the wind generation is giant. Sometimes as much as 50% of the electric demand. The peak wind generation last year was in June at 24 Gigawatts. The other day when the rolling blackouts were going, wind accounted for less than 1 Gigawatt of generation. The usage was around 45 Gigawatts at the time.

You can actually get real numbers pretty easily instead of pulling them out of the air.

Current load conditions - http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/loadForecastVsActualCurrentDay.html

Current wind generation - http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.html

The wind is actually blowing a little today so the wind generation is actually over 10% right now. It was less than 2% the last few days when the rolling blackouts were going though.

There were actually several wind turbines that were frozen and not turning through all of this even when the wind was blowing. The people that posted the pictures just didn't make a trip out to west Texas to take a picture, they grabbed a stock photo of a frozen wind turbine that happened to be a few years old and from a different country. Trust me, you don't want a wind turbine to sling a load of ice off the blades spinning at 100+ mph.

 

[npaden]

If you want you can get the breakdown for generation by type for every 15 minute increment for the entire year.

Generation

View data on DC ties, generation outages, resource plan details and scheduled generation, and find forms to submit generation and outage data/requests.

www.ercot.com

Even if you look at it by day it is pretty dramatic, some days wind produces over 500 megawatts and other days it can be under 50 megawatts. Pretty amazing that they can forecast and plan for that kind of fluctuation.

The end result is that fossil fuels and nuclear have to be ready to make up 100% of the demand at any given time and when it came down to it they weren't able to this time. Lots of discussion on why, but in my opinion, building a 100+ million dollar powerplant to only sell electricity when the wind isn't blowing is part of the reason.

 

[mtmiller]

There were actually several wind turbines that were frozen and not turning through all of this even when the wind was blowing. The people that posted the pictures just didn't make a trip out to west Texas to take a picture, they grabbed a stock photo of a frozen wind turbine that happened to be a few years old and from a different country. Trust me, you don't want a wind turbine to sling a load of ice off the blades spinning at 100+ mph.

I understand there were, your number, "several", turbines that were frozen. I do think it was rather devious to post a picture of a helicopter presumably thawing wind turbines in TX. There are enough idiots out there that eat that shit up as truth. Maybe it was just humor? I will agree with you, I don't want to be in the in the area of a wind turbine when it is shedding ice. Similar to my apprehension to bridges, buildings and semis at 75mph when they are shedding.

I appreciate the links you provided. Big fan of factual data, so I will check it out.

 

[BigHornRam]

If you want you can get the breakdown for generation by type for every 15 minute increment for the entire year.

Generation

View data on DC ties, generation outages, resource plan details and scheduled generation, and find forms to submit generation and outage data/requests.

www.ercot.com

Even if you look at it by day it is pretty dramatic, some days wind produces over 500 megawatts and other days it can be under 50 megawatts. Pretty amazing that they can forecast and plan for that kind of fluctuation.

The end result is that fossil fuels and nuclear have to be ready to make up 100% of the demand at any given time and when it came down to it they weren't able to this time. Lots of discussion on why, but in my opinion, building a 100+ million dollar powerplant to only sell electricity when the wind isn't blowing is part of the reason.

Throw in the Texas growth rate. More people means more electricity consumption. Building new power plants take time and probably play a part here.

Texas Population 1900-2023

Chart and table of population level and growth rate for the state of Texas from 1900 to 2023.

www.macrotrends.net

 

[npaden]

I understand there were, your number, "several", turbines that were frozen. I do think it was rather devious to post a picture of a helicopter presumably thawing wind turbines in TX. There are enough idiots out there that eat that shit up as truth. Maybe it was just humor? I will agree with you, I don't want to be in the in the area of a wind turbine when it is shedding ice. Similar to my apprehension to bridges, buildings and semis at 75mph when they are shedding.

I appreciate the links you provided. Big fan of factual data, so I will check it out.

It would be interesting to play with the numbers a bit. Nuclear has roughly half the generation of wind overall, but if you look day by day it is sometimes producing more than wind and rarely even double or quadruple. Looking in January 2021 on the 15 minute increment at 14:30 on 1/22/21 wind was generating 235.9 megawatts. There were other times where wind was generating over 5,000 megawatts. Nuclear produced a high of 1,280 megawatts and a low of 1,275 megawatts. What that means is that fossil fuel has to be ready to fill in whatever the difference is.

I read a nice little article on how they are working on forecasting the wind generation down to 5 minute increments so they can have the fossil fuel generation ramping up and down to fill the void. Other than this recent fiasco, the only negative is that you end up with longer and longer periods of time with those very expensive power plants idling and not making any money. The wind gets all the tax credits and the investors in the fossil fuel power plants are left with empty pockets.

This entire thing is insane on the Spot electric market. There are people buying and selling electricity at $9 per KWH! Generally retail rates are in the 10 to 12 cent range per Kwh and wholesale rates are 4 to 8 cents per kwh so $9 is astronomical. We have a client who's power cost for the last 5 days exceeded their power cost for the entire year last year. It is insanity right now.

 

[BigHornRam]

It would be interesting to play with the numbers a bit. Nuclear has roughly half the generation of wind overall, but if you look day by day it is sometimes producing more than wind and rarely even double or quadruple. Looking in January 2021 on the 15 minute increment at 14:30 on 1/22/21 wind was generating 235.9 megawatts. There were other times where wind was generating over 5,000 megawatts. Nuclear produced a high of 1,280 megawatts and a low of 1,275 megawatts. What that means is that fossil fuel has to be ready to fill in whatever the difference is.

I read a nice little article on how they are working on forecasting the wind generation down to 5 minute increments so they can have the fossil fuel generation ramping up and down to fill the void. Other than this recent fiasco, the only negative is that you end up with longer and longer periods of time with those very expensive power plants idling and not making any money. The wind gets all the tax credits and the investors in the fossil fuel power plants are left with empty pockets.

This entire thing is insane on the Spot electric market. There are people buying and selling electricity at $9 per KWH! Generally retail rates are in the 10 to 12 cent range per Kwh and wholesale rates are 4 to 8 cents per kwh so $9 is astronomical. We have a client who's power cost for the last 5 days exceeded their power cost for the entire year last year. It is insanity right now.

Great job explaining what is happening here. In a way even those in Rio Linda can understand.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

This entire thing is insane on the Spot electric market. There are people buying and selling electricity at $9 per KWH! Generally retail rates are in the 10 to 12 cent range per Kwh and wholesale rates are 4 to 8 cents per kwh so $9 is astronomical. We have a client who's power cost for the last 5 days exceeded their power cost for the entire year last year. It is insanity right now.

Not only is wind down, but gas lines have frozen, and trucks can't get to pad sites so operators have had to shut in lots of wells. (If your tank battery fills up and you cant get trucks to it you have to shut in your well so no gas either). Compounding that the electricity outages have shut down, natural gas plants.

Henry hub has been hanging around $3, spot prices are over $1000 in Texas and the Midcon.

Pretty crazy stuff.

 

[SAJ-99]

Other than this recent fiasco, the only negative is that you end up with longer and longer periods of time with those very expensive power plants idling and not making any money. The wind gets all the tax credits and the investors in the fossil fuel power plants are left with empty pockets.

This entire thing is insane on the Spot electric market. There are people buying and selling electricity at $9 per KWH! Generally retail rates are in the 10 to 12 cent range per Kwh and wholesale rates are 4 to 8 cents per kwh so $9 is astronomical. We have a client who's power cost for the last 5 days exceeded their power cost for the entire year last year. It is insanity right now.

The same thing happen to Texas in 1989...and 2011. This isn't new. There are a lot of reasons, but Texas is a closed grid, by choice. I guess because it doesn't want the federal gubment messing around in their power markets, or something. Who knows what Texans think or why. But anyway, if Texans choose not to spend money on a plant to supplement renewable power, that is on them. I guess the rest of us will keep giving them diesel when it gets cold.
Regarding renewables, it clearly shows the need for storage.

 

[noharleyyet]

The same thing happen to Texas in 1989...and 2011. This isn't new. There are a lot of reasons, but Texas is a closed grid, by choice. I guess because it doesn't want the federal gubment messing around in their power markets, or something. Who knows what Texans think or why. But anyway, if Texans choose not to spend money on a plant to supplement renewable power, that is on them. I guess the rest of us will keep giving them diesel when it gets cold.
Regarding renewables, it clearly shows the need for storage.

There it is fellas....and ladies

 

[npaden]

The same thing happen to Texas in 1989...and 2011. This isn't new. There are a lot of reasons, but Texas is a closed grid, by choice. I guess because it doesn't want the federal gubment messing around in their power markets, or something. Who knows what Texans think or why. But anyway, if Texans choose not to spend money on a plant to supplement renewable power, that is on them. I guess the rest of us will keep giving them diesel when it gets cold.
Regarding renewables, it clearly shows the need for storage.

Ever run an electric heater off of a battery? It doesn't work. Electricity doesn't do a very good job heating. A heat pump works but only down to about 40 degrees. Geothermal is actually a better option than trying to store electricity to provide heat. It's expensive, but way more reliable than wind or relying on a frozen battery to attempt to provide heat using a terribly inefficient method.

You know what does a great job of heating? Fuel! Coal, Natural Gas, Wood, etc....

 

[npaden]

Not only is wind down, but gas lines have frozen, and trucks can't get to pad sites so operators have had to shut in lots of wells. (If your tank battery fills up and you cant get trucks to it you have to shut in your well so no gas either). Compounding that the electricity outages have shut down, natural gas plants.

Henry hub has been hanging around $3, spot prices are over $1000 in Texas and the Midcon.

Pretty crazy stuff.

And this summer driving through the oil fields at night all you could see was natural gas being flared because it would cost more to transport than it would bring.

If we want to talk about the need for storage, we may want to discuss storage facilities for natural gas. That does burn and create heat pretty efficiently. But then again it fires very clean and creates lots of electricity too if the wind isn't blowing and you can sell the electricity.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

And this summer driving through the oil fields at night all you could see was natural gas being flared because it would cost more to transport than it would bring.

If we want to talk about the need for storage, we may want to discuss storage facilities for natural gas. That does burn and create heat pretty efficiently. But then again it fires very clean and creates lots of electricity too if the wind isn't blowing and you can sell the electricity.

Current field rule you can flare for 10 days after the wells is brought online after that you have to shut-in. The are a lot of moving parts when your bringing on wells with short timelines, it's not uncommon to have the well completed and the gas line not in place. Oil is trucked away, and you have to flare the gas.

You can also get special flaring waivers for extenuating circumstances, stuff happens.

Generally speaking you are only going to flare wells that mostly produce Oil with some gas, if you are drilling gas wells you don't turn on the wells until you have the pipe installed. So yeah driving out past Midland to NM lots of flaring as wells are coming on as those are mostly oil wells, probably some flaring in the Eagleford, but I doubt you see much flaring in the Barnett or Haynesville. For instance I doubt people see much flaring around Lake Arlington and there are a ton of wells there.

Currently the largest producer of electricity in Texas are Natural Gas Plants.

 

[npaden]

Current field rule you can flare for 10 days after the wells is brought online after that you have to shut-in. The are a lot of moving parts when your bringing on wells with short timelines, it's not uncommon to have the well completed and the gas line not in place. Oil is trucked away, and you have to flare the gas.

You can also get special flaring waivers for extenuating circumstances, stuff happens.

Generally speaking you are only going to flare wells that mostly produce Oil with some gas, if you are drilling gas wells you don't turn on the wells until you have the pipe installed. So yeah driving out past Midland to NM lots of flaring as wells are coming on as those are mostly oil wells, probably some flaring in the Eagleford, but I doubt you see much flaring in the Barnett or Haynesville. For instance I doubt people see much flaring around Lake Arlington and there are a ton of wells there.

Not sure what the rules are but between Plains, Texas and Artesia, NM you can see wells flaring on a pretty regular basis. Often as many as 20 in visual at a time. On existing fields that I haven't seen a drilling rig on in a long time. The number of wells flaring sure seems to be directly in relation to the price of natural gas but I'm sure they are following the rules.

 

[SAJ-99]

Ever run an electric heater off of a battery? It doesn't work. Electricity doesn't do a very good job heating. A heat pump works but only down to about 40 degrees. Geothermal is actually a better option than trying to store electricity to provide heat. It's expensive, but way more reliable than wind or relying on a frozen battery to attempt to provide heat using a terribly inefficient method.

You know what does a great job of heating? Fuel! Coal, Natural Gas, Wood, etc....

Yeah, some day they will invent an electric furnace. Oh the glory of that that day.

 

[hank4elk]

500 years of written history of Tejas. Texas for you newbies. Eastern Nuevo Mexico for 300.
Many written accounts of blizzards hitting Tejas. Cost Coronado many lives & hit a couple other "Expeditions". Ran Santa Ana back across the Rio Grande and sent Sam Huston fleeing to the "Piney Woods", finally home to LA for the winter.....and one, 10 years ago.

Enough flairing waste & leaking wells & pipelines in NM to power the country. A fraction of what is going on in Tejas.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

Not sure what the rules are but between Plains, Texas and Artesia, NM you can see wells flaring on a pretty regular basis. Often as many as 20 in visual at a time. On existing fields that I haven't seen a drilling rig on in a long time. The number of wells flaring sure seems to be directly in relation to the price of natural gas but I'm sure they are following the rules.

Yeah your driving through mostly NM, totally different regulatory system, 60 days to flare.

Generally speaking the Texas RRC is pretty strict about flaring.

 

[BigHornRam]

Yeah, some day they will invent an electric furnace. Oh the glory of that that day.

How about a gas furnace that doesn't require electricity for ignition?

 

[npaden]

Yeah, some day they will invent an electric furnace. Oh the glory of that that day.

I didn't say there wasn't electric heat, I actually live in an all electric home and have an electric furnace (with a heat pump that does great when temperatures are over 40 degrees).

I said electric heat is not efficient. You need to create the electricity first and then convert it to heat. You don't see many electric furnaces up North where it actually gets cold simply because it is not cost efficient to heat with electricity.

 

[Trial153]

Our make the world Texas policy would work just fine if we didnt have the damn EPA. All woes track back to the feds.

 

[noharleyyet]

Our make the world Texas policy would work just fine if we didnt have the damn EPA. All woes track back to the feds.

What make the world Texas policy?