Interested in Utility Scale Renewables ? Delve into ERCOT

[SageBrush]

ERCOT is the regulatory body for Texas utilities. It is exceptional in being transparent and having tons of accessible data. Here is an introduction:

Texas Going Big On Renewables: Phase II Has Started | CleanTechnica

 

[jbcarioca]

Given current events the weaknesses of ERCOT become highly visible:
Why weren't generators winterized before Texas winter storm? | khou.com
Interestingly not all of Texas neglected winterization:
El Paso spared rolling blackouts partly due to being outside ERCOT system | KXAN Austin
Following the infamous 2011 winter storm, ERCOT studied the issues and did nothing while El Paso Electric winterized their production and distribution systems. The results are clear.

The prime culprit appears to have been resistance by producers, who did not want to spend the money needed to winterize nuclear, wind, batteries, gas lines, gas generators, coal or anything else. As a result when they were needed peakers could not operate and few producers could operate. Even emergency generators were not winterized. [Bizarrely, some completely renewable interconnected systems went off line because their generation had minimal demand side and the load management systems were too antiquated to cope with overloads of production without shutting down. Most current technology load management systems can deal with this if programmed properly.]

Predictably, perhaps, renewables opponents from the Governor down all first blamed renewables, although several included other sources too.

The aftermath, this time seems likely to be somewhat more forceful. The producers are powerful political contributors, though, so to remains to be seen what happens. Contrasting non-ERCOT areas from ERCOT ones seems likely to spawn a lively debate.

Summary: privatizing grid, sources and types does not eliminate the necessity for high standards that apply to all participants. The EU has some relevant standards, as does the UK and a few other places. Whether those are used is another question. Similarly, the current mess has shuttered the majority of the Mexico electricity also, especially since much of the gas now comes from a recently activated Texas pipeline. Naturally, none fo it had been winterized.

Future note: given the reality that Arctic warming is one of the most extreme on the planet, we can expect that regular and dramatic collapse of the polar vortex will happen, resulting in more frequent extreme weather from Greece (take a look at the Parthenon this week) to Northern Mexico to everywhere in the direct northern path to those places. That happened in 2011, now is happening and certainly will happen again in less than another decade.

Winterization and Summerization both are urgently needed for ERCOT and most global grid suppliers and uses. Battery storage and renewables can help greatly but the traditional sources must also be adapted now!

Right now versions of this story are being discovered in many places. National governments and transnational regulators have little time to fix this set of problems.
All these things were predictable and avoidable.

 

[SageBrush]

Winterization and Summerization both are urgently needed for ERCOT and most global grid suppliers and uses. Battery storage and renewables can help greatly but the traditional sources must also be adapted now!

Fair assessment. One other interesting detail I don't see being talked about:

ERCOT is mostly electricity islanded in order to avoid outside regulation. They do have one small (?) interconnect eastward, and surprising to me, an inter-connect to Mexico. So one not small part of their resiliency breakdown is their voluntary semi-isolation. That is one of the prices a state pays when it cannot play nice with others. It is irony (of the type I like) that their inter-connect to Mexico was I presume unhelpful because it in turn relied on Texas NG

As an aside, I'll wager that gulf coast off-shore wind development gets a more favorable audience in the future since it is naturally protected from freezing events. If they can protect it from hurricanes, that is.

---
I wonder what fraction of Texas realizes that their AGW denialism costs are coming to roost, and are only going to grow in leaps and bounds.

 

[papab]

It looks like Texas free market, libertarian bent is coming back to bite them. I don't understand why Musk is putting a plant there.

"Ercot’s authority is somewhat limited. In 2011, the last time freezing weather caused rolling outages, it released best practices for power generators to follow, but it couldn’t require anything, said Adrian Shelley, Texas office director of Public Citizen, an advocacy group."

"While some pointed to wind power as a culprit, as of early Tuesday wind shutdowns accounted for 3.6 to 4.5 gigawatts -- or less than 13% -- of the 30 to 35 gigawatts of total outages, Ercot’s Woodfin said."

"Texas lacks the long-term planning processes that other parts of the country employ. In the east, grid operators run capacity markets that act like insurance policies. Generators are paid to guarantee that their supplies will be available on the most extreme hot and cold days. If they don’t show up, they face stiff penalties. Texas has instead left it up to prevailing prices and industry."

In Texas’s Black-Swan Blackout, Everything Went Wrong at Once

 

[papab]

Although, I wouldn't call it a black swan event, only one thing happened, it got colder than they planned for

 

[jbcarioca]

Fair assessment. One other interesting detail I don't see being talked about:

... and surprising to me, an inter-connect to Mexico. So one not small part of their resiliency breakdown is their voluntary semi-isolation. That is one of the prices a state pays when it cannot play nice with others. It is irony (of the type I like) that their inter-connect to Mexico was I presume unhelpful because it in turn relied on Texas NG

...

That is a crucial and horrible effect. A year ago a NG pipeline was activated that went from Texas to Monterrey and surrounding areas. The net effect was to destroy electricity for much of populated Mexico when Texas died. The pipeline froze.
Natural gas shortage triggers major power outage; nearly 5 million affected

 

[nwdiver]

Predictably, perhaps, renewables opponents from the Governor down all first blamed renewables, although several included other sources too.

I'm so tired of this insanity from people that know better. Blaming wind turbines for rolling blackouts is like blaming an Army for losing Air Superiority....

 

[jbcarioca]

It looks like Texas free market, libertarian bent is coming back to bite them. I don't understand why Musk is putting a plant there.

"Ercot’s authority is somewhat limited. In 2011, the last time freezing weather caused rolling outages, it released best practices for power generators to follow, but it couldn’t require anything, said Adrian Shelley, Texas office director of Public Citizen, an advocacy group."



"Texas lacks the long-term planning processes that other parts of the country employ. In the east, grid operators run capacity markets that act like insurance policies. Generators are paid to guarantee that their supplies will be available on the most extreme hot and cold days. If they don’t show up, they face stiff penalties. Texas has instead left it up to prevailing prices and industry."

In Texas’s Black-Swan Blackout, Everything Went Wrong at Once

It's a little unbelievable that I am about to defend part of ERCOT, not all, but part. A quick look through ERCOT 2011 event reports how they knew that lack of winterizations was the primary cause of outages then. However the producers and transmitters (e.g gas pipelines, gas generators, wind turbines, coal supplies, coal-fired generators) all did not want to spend the money to protect for inclement weather. In response to the same event El Paso, for example, chose to build a new weatherized gas fired plant because that was more efficient that weatherizing an old plant. The other non-ERCOT parts fo Texas in the Panhandle and East found their multi-State grid participants were required to weatherize.

Inherently I do not think most of the ERCOT structure necessarily is faulty. The board of directors and other control, however, is primarily responsible to and controlled by the energy providers and transmitters, NOT users. Thus they chose to ignore any extreme conditions (cold, heat, flood, windstorms) except for those that were so frequent that the investors would choose to invest in mitigation. Changing the control to have energy users more influential would change the outlook. For example, battery storage was until now classed as generation, not storage, which acted to suppress battery usage, thus decreased system resilience. That is unsurprising since the generators (especially gas-fired peaker plants) knew that battery storage would stabilize the grid, thus reduce peaker profitability. (see Hornsdale Power Reserve and Autobidder reviews).

With large corporate users and residential users permitted to participate in ERCOT markets, the system would become instantly more stable and resilient. Were energy users of any type involved directly to influence performance standards the investments to introduce more extreme weather mitigants the net benefits would be advantageous for everyone, other than gas peaker plants. Of course pipelines would have reduced value also.

ERCOT has acted to enhance pipeline operators and gas-fired plants above all else. FWIW, that has been the norm for much of the grid structures around the world. The only flaw for ERCOT structure is that the Texas gas industry has been encouraged above all else. Why? That is where the political contributions reside. What decent Texan is not an oilman? Excising that systemic flaw would make ERCOT work quite well. After all it has accommodated wind and solar, just not their storage. Of course, not their weatherization either.

 

[SageBrush]

It's a little unbelievable that I am about to defend part of ERCOT

I don't particularly blame ERCOT either, except to the extent that they did not stand up to the industry's refusal to weatherize.

But as you say, that is not an ERCOT problem, that is a TEXAS problem that lets industry write the rules and restricts the regulatory authority role to facilitation and cooperation amongst its members.

As a generator, if my decision making is solely about profit then it makes little sense to spend on weatherizing when the return is a measly couple extra days of sales every decade of so. And even less motivation since I get to price gouge when it happens.

 

[Bob A]

Now all that remains is for the cost of damage repairs - flooding, freezing, possibly deaths - to roost back on ERCOT.

 

[rdunniii]

ERCOT has no power. After the last event ERCOT sent generators a list of best practices but generators said 'spend money on single event that lasts a couple of days once in a blue moon? not a chance'.

Right now Elon is all high on all the stuff that Texas lets him do but when his Austin factory is up and running and gets shut down for days during the next event and costs him money I wouldn't be surprised to see him build his own generation capability. How much battery capacity would it take to run the factory for several days or maybe a week. Oh, and everyone needs to show up for work as scheduled regardless of the conditions just like he did in Fremont. How much additional battery capacity will be needed at the factory to keep all those Cybertrucks charged to enable people to get to work because the grid at their home is offline. Especially seeing as how people will be using their Cybertruck battery to keep their homes up and running when they are not at work.

 

[SageBrush]

ERCOT has no power. After the last event ERCOT sent generators a list of best practices but generators said 'spend money on single event that lasts a couple of days once in a blue moon? not a chance'.

Right now Elon is all high on all the stuff that Texas lets him do but when his Austin factory is up and running and gets shut down for days during the next event and costs him money I wouldn't be surprised to see him build his own generation capability. How much battery capacity would it take to run the factory for several days or maybe a week. Oh, and everyone needs to show up for work as scheduled regardless of the conditions just like he did in Fremont. How much additional battery capacity will be needed at the factory to keep all those Cybertrucks charged to enable people to get to work because the grid at their home is offline. Especially seeing as how people will be using their Cybertruck battery to keep their homes up and running when they are not at work.

Since Giga-factory makes batteries, all Elon might have to do would is to build a connection infrastructure.

Wouldn't that be something. Actually, any battery factory in the world can be considered for co-development of emergency storage

 

[mspohr]

I don't particularly blame ERCOT either, except to the extent that they did not stand up to the industry's refusal to weatherize.

But as you say, that is not an ERCOT problem, that is a TEXAS problem that lets industry write the rules and restricts the regulatory authority role to facilitation and cooperation amongst its members.

As a generator, if my decision making is solely about profit then it makes little sense to spend on weatherizing when the return is a measly couple extra days of sales every decade of so. And even less motivation since I get to price gouge when it happens.

ERCOT is the regulator and they failed to regulate. It's called regulatory capture. It's a problem everywhere but probably more-so in Texas.

 

[SageBrush]

ERCOT is the regulator and they failed to regulate.

No. Failure would imply that ERCOT did not successfully discharge its scope of duties.

Weatherization of generator assets is not within ERCOT's scope.

The 'R' in ERCOT has to due with managing the assets available so they do not step on each other's toes or damage the grid; and its other main scope of duty is to balance demand with supply. ERCOT prevented grid destruction this week. That was no simple task.

If Texas wants ERCOT to regulate resilience and reserve, it will have to change ERCOT's scope.

 

[Actaeon]

Although, I wouldn't call it a black swan event, only one thing happened, it got colder than they planned for

No. The weather (temperatures and conditions) was accurately forecast 10 days before the events.

 

[mspohr]

No. Failure would imply that ERCOT did not successfully discharge its scope of duties.

Weatherization of generator assets is not within ERCOT's scope.

The 'R' in ERCOT has to due with managing the assets available so they do not step on each other's toes or damage the grid; and its other main scope of duty is to balance demand with supply. ERCOT prevented grid destruction this week. That was no simple task.

If Texas wants ERCOT to regulate resilience and reserve, it will have to change ERCOT's scope.

I think Elon has pointed out that the R stands for Reliability and that ERCOT has failed the R part.

 

[papab]

No. The weather (temperatures and conditions) was accurately forecast 10 days before the events.

Yes, perhaps the weather was accurately predicted, but No, they did not plan for it.

 

[CrazyRabbit]

there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle and they all need to work together. even if the powerplants were all winterized, NG production could not keep up. texas agriculture commissioner reported that dairy's are dumping milk because NG has been shutoff and milk can't be pasteurized, also hatchlings have been lost which will effect chicken supplies all because NG can't keep up.
OMG, now the chicken wing shortage will continue...

 

[Tessaract]

Fair assessment. One other interesting detail I don't see being talked about:

ERCOT is mostly electricity islanded in order to avoid outside regulation. ...

Exactly. As an electical engineer I was shocked to learn that Texas has almost no grid interconnection out-of-state. It's a basic premise of electical grid resilience that it needs to be interconnected to other locales that have different consumption, generation, and weather patterns in order to not put all your eggs in one basket. It seems that multiple basic enginering and reliability principles are being ignored in Texas, with the resultant present mess.

And ignorant politiitans blatantly bought by the fossil fuel interests. I hope Texans remember this at the next election... but I have no great expectation that they will.

 

[nwdiver]

And ignorant politiitans blatantly bought by the fossil fuel interests.

It's really more of a cult now....

Texas Mayor Resigns After Saying ‘The Weak Will Perish’ Amid Snowstorms