What's going on with the power failures in Texas?

[testcase]

Power lines can come down when they get covered in ice. It happens more often than people think.

[AllGold]

testcase wrote:
Power lines can come down when they get covered in ice. It happens more often than people think.

I'm a northerner so I'm well aware of that. But is that the real problem in Texas? I don't think so because they're talking about rolling blackouts and not having enough power generation capacity.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

The old saw still holds true: Everything's bigger in Texas...

[Diana]

The power consortium that most of (at least) Texas and Oklahoma uses is under strain due to extra demand for electricity AND the record cold freezing up the natural gas pipelines. Much of the electric generation is now done using natural gas, not coal; solar arrays only work when they are exposed to the sun and not covered by snow; wind turbines don’t work well in periods of light winds or in instances of extreme cold. The last time I remember cold like this around here with single digit highs and negative lows, is perhaps in the mid 1980’s, and even then I don’t think it got quite as cold as we are currently experiencing. And I’m not even talking wind chill here.

We are expecting another storm to come through, dumping another 4-8 inches of snow, starting tomorrow afternoon. Yay us.

The electric/gas companies are asking people to turn down their thermostats, unplug large appliances, forgo using the oven or the clothes dryer, anything to help relieve the strain on the system. The alternative is rolling blackouts.

[Michael]

I'd bet that outside of major cities most people don't have natural gas/propane. I'd bet it's electric backup heat pumps. Most of those heat pumps are using the strip heaters during this cold. When mine does that, the electric meter spins very fast!

[bobinmurphy]

There are a couple of things going on that have contributed to the problem in Texas. One is that a lot of natural gas is being diverted from power plants to supply home heating. (We need more pipelines to deliver a reliable gas supply to power plants.) The other big one though is the problem with the West Texas windmill farm. Originally it wasn't tied into the Texas power grid so a deal was struck to sell all that wind generated energy to the cities of San Antonio and Houston. A special high-line was built along I-10 to do just that. But with this winter storm about half of the windmills are frozen up and not generating anything, and the remainder are not running at full potential. (What people don't realize about windmills is they require a fair amount of wind to reach cut-in speed, more wind to reach maximum output and they shut down in high winds for damage control. What people only see though is the maximum possible energy that might be produced.) Anyway, the windmill farm right now is only supplying about 1/4 to 1/3 of the maximum energy it could produce under the right conditions - and the two hardest hit areas for power shortages right now are San Antonio and Houston. For the rest of us a lot of power is being diverted to help the hardest hit areas.

[modelamac]

That is NOT true. Motors and heaters use the most electricity. A fan/blower is a motor with blades on the end, or a squirrel cage on the end.

Just ask any restaurant owner. He has cold storage rooms that have refrigeration compressors, a multiple exhaust fans over the grills, exhaust fans to move heat out of the kitchen, and large heating/cooling units on the roof to keep the dining area happy. Ask him about his electric bill.

AllGold wrote:
Sure, but furnace blowers don't use that much electricity so they're not the reason the grid is overloaded.

[Lemon Drop]

To help folks in Texas, there is a list of groups you can donate to at the end of this article.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/15/...ssion=true

[Lemon Drop]

bobinmurphy wrote:
There are a couple of things going on that have contributed to the problem in Texas. One is that a lot of natural gas is being diverted from power plants to supply home heating. (We need more pipelines to deliver a reliable gas supply to power plants.) The other big one though is the problem with the West Texas windmill farm. Originally it wasn't tied into the Texas power grid so a deal was struck to sell all that wind generated energy to the cities of San Antonio and Houston. A special high-line was built along I-10 to do just that. But with this winter storm about half of the windmills are frozen up and not generating anything, and the remainder are not running at full potential. (What people don't realize about windmills is they require a fair amount of wind to reach cut-in speed, more wind to reach maximum output and they shut down in high winds for damage control. What people only see though is the maximum possible energy that might be produced.) Anyway, the windmill farm right now is only supplying about 1/4 to 1/3 of the maximum energy it could produce under the right conditions - and the two hardest hit areas for power shortages right now are San Antonio and Houston. For the rest of us a lot of power is being diverted to help the hardest hit areas.

Windmill farms supply very little energy in Texas. They are not the cause of widespread outages.

The big majority of the plants that are not working well now are powered by coal, oil and gas.

[modelamac]

Why is coal still used in Texas? Unbelievable!