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2020-21 Winter weather; bring it on


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16 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Do you think ERCOT manages power plants, their construction, and M&O?

If you want to talk about increasing supply, which I agree is a problem during the few extreme events, why aren’t people asking for more generation facilities? 

Be angry, but maybe asking to doxx and beat people up that work for a not for profit isn’t the best approach. Call me simple, but I just think that a once in a lifetime event event shouldn’t drive the wholesale change of our utility system/power grid that delivers cheap power, effectively, 99% of the time. 

Now explain me why we aren't connecting to our neighboring grids to meet the deficit

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Just read that texags thread and that gonemaroon guy says he’s an energy trader and seems to know what he’s talking about and he’s laying a very large share at the feet of ERCOT. Starts on page 7. Says we were minutes from the entire state being blacked out. Also seems like we’re pretty much fucked and if you don’t have power now don’t expect it until Thursday.

https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/3182697/7

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3 minutes ago, lazytexasfan said:

my brother has been without power for 30 hours. he's on south lamar by uchi

i have power at my house at Stassney and Manchaca. it's literally 4.5 miles away and I'm not sure how i can get him to my house. his rwd is not going to get him here. this is fucking insane

post in the announcement/sticky thread to see if someone can get you help.

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48 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

I would venture to guess that about 2% of the people screaming fuck ercot actually fully understand our electricity market/regulators and what is causing the issue.

I mess around with utility stuff for work semi regularly and I would admit that I understand probably 10% of how this works. 

Imagine being California where this shit happens regularly, and then get back to me about how the Texas version sucks. 

Denand>Supply. Period. You don’t blow up the utility market to fix demand that is driven by extreme weather that occurs once every hundred years. We can talk increasing supply, but you’d have to head to the CR to discuss why that won’t happen. 

this is the electrical grid equivalent of 'virus gonna virus'

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3 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Also looks like we’re saving the big energy companies over a billion dollars by having the lights off due to short positions on energy costs.

https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/3182697/10

Thanks for doing your part!

is he implying that power is off to save them $1B+?

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16 minutes ago, immamac said:

We have enough generation facilities - they are intentionally abandoned and turned off or not prepared to continue generation for 3 days of continuous below freezing (not even fucking crazy temps, just out of the norm for Texas) - Stop acting like this is weather that no one on earth knows how to deal with or generate electricity in. It's cold for Texas, it's not cold with frame of reference to places that actually get cold. This is where preparation comes in, and that's why this is criminal negligence. The unpreparedness of the generation providers and the regulatory commission that oversees them IS THE PROBLEM here, not the lack of generation facilities you fucking rube.

We haven’t had this cold of weather in Texas since what 1909? It’s not normal HERE, that’s the point. Our facilities and their maintenance schedules weren’t built for NY, they were built for Texas. Maybe you’re the fucking rube? 

Oh and btw, wind makes up about a quarter of our electricity production in Texas. A bunch of frozen turbines creating 0 electricity doesn’t help. 

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8 minutes ago, lazytexasfan said:

my brother has been without power for 30 hours. he's on south lamar by uchi

i have power at my house at Stassney and Manchaca. it's literally 4.5 miles away and I'm not sure how i can get him to my house. his rwd is not going to get him here. this is fucking insane

I would tell him to risk and drive slow.

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4 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Hope everyone without power is doing okay. I turned down my thermostats to 65 last night and woke up to a cold damn house, so I can’t imagine what you folks have had to endure with no power for these long stretches.

Yep, we've been running at 65 and the gas fireplace has been on for 3 days.  We are one of the lucky ones.  My entire family in NW Hills has been without power for 31 hours.

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How difficult is it to drive in Austin in a non 4wd vehicle?
Need to go get my parents. They told us their power came back on, but didn't tell us it went off again an hour later.
 

Smoky. It’s really a non starter. I’ve seen 50+ abandoned cars. Are you sure you don’t have someone to help you out? I can probably do so later this afternoon. DM me.
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4 minutes ago, lazytexasfan said:

my brother has been without power for 30 hours. he's on south lamar by uchi

i have power at my house at Stassney and Manchaca. it's literally 4.5 miles away and I'm not sure how i can get him to my house. his rwd is not going to get him here. this is fucking insane

Can you pick him up? I live at William Cannon and West Gate. I drove to pick up my cousin at S. 1st and basically Oltorf because they weren't comfortable driving in the snow. Roads were navigable. I'm in a Mazda CX-5 so it's just a front-wheel drive car. The biggest issues were people that don't know how to drive in the snow - mostly people actually going too slow and getting stuck or not being able to get up hills. You need to be very cautious, but you also can't go too slow or you'll get stuck in the snow. 

I did see a taxi cab running yesterday. Maybe see if you can get an uber or a lyft or a cab? 

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18 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Now explain me why we aren't connecting to our neighboring grids to meet the deficit

I don’t understand enough to know why they aren’t doing that or how that works. Seems like a good idea if possible, but I assume it isn’t as easy and quick as plugging in an extension cord.

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Last night sucked other than falling asleep on the recliner in front of a fire listening to true crime stories. Walking up 3 hours later to freezing and no fire sucked. 

Might just idle the vehicle for 5-6 hours tonight to actually get some sleep. At least there isn't a gas shortage. It's my only way to get warm

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10 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

That's good right?  Unless I'm getting my supply and demand colors reversed.

it looker fairly good last night, and I went to bed thinking foolishly that I was in the clear. 8 hours of no power later I can tell you that I'm not relying on that whatsoever.

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Good news: our power has continued to stay on.

Better news: MIL's power at the ranch outside of Harper came on at 11PM Monday after 48+ hours out. They've got plenty of firewood but their well house only had about 48 hours left of fuel left. BIL still probably has a very dicey drive into "town" today for fuel.

FML news: our cold water supply to the kitchen sink has frozen. Had the hairdryer on it for about 30 minutes so far w/ no change. All other interior lines are flowing.

 

UPDATE: 45 minutes of hairdryer thawed the line. Team Steady Flow is now Team We Running These Faucets Hard.

Edited by GhostOfTomJoad
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Just now, Enchubben said:

Which part? 

 

The turbine stuff. IIRC it was twofold. First that wind is actually outperforming the supply projections that ERCOT has for this time of year, and second that it's only a small portion of overall energy. Solar has a small shortfall, but the big under-delivery is NG+Nuclear+whatever else is left (Coal?).

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Load was 75,000 forecasted and they only had say 65,000MW of generation so they knew for damn near a week that they would have to do rotational outages. Rotational outages are a big deal, but it's orderly and not a black out. They knew this and were prepared for it, the odd thing is they never alerted the public to the extent of having to curtail and rotate that many people on and off. But that is what it is. In that case since it's basically never been done you know damn effing well the CEO of ERCOT and every brain trust in the entire organization should have been in that room. This is a HUGE HUGE HUGE deal in itself.

From that point / what I am saying is they knew they had to cut load they knew they were going to do it and then they didn't do it on time and when they needed to. Instead they sat there and watched the **** hit the fan beyond a point of repair. This is what happened / they are going to try to blow smoke up everyone's ass.
 

(The above is from gonemaroon at Texags)

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Smoky. It’s really a non starter. I’ve seen 50+ abandoned cars. Are you sure you don’t have someone to help you out? I can probably do so later this afternoon. DM me.
Appreciate that.

I ended up phoning a friend. As it turns out he's already made two other trips to pick up parents.

We're going to let the ice melt a bit before attempting.
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tldr-shower won’t drip-turn off or on? Once again only worrying about one problem at a time, just went back to our house, temp is 59 so power had to be on sometime during the night/morning. But now it’s off and don’t know how long. Anyway, if one shower won’t push water, is it better to try to get it to drip or just leave it off in case it is frozen? I didn’t read the pipes page a few back.

 

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More from gonemaroon at Texags (just posted)/ his stuff is easy to read because his posts are all mostly in blue due to likes:

Why the **** is Vistra's stock price up when their assets are frozen up not operating at all and prices are capping at $9,000?  

Oh I know, once they cut the power to your home they are getting paid for $9,000 on their hedges and remaining solid fuel that is online.  

Suddenly they went from being massively short and facing billions in losses to flat to long and printing money at the states expense.

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8 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

Load was 75,000 forecasted and they only had say 65,000MW of generation so they knew for damn near a week that they would have to do rotational outages. Rotational outages are a big deal, but it's orderly and not a black out. They knew this and were prepared for it, the odd thing is they never alerted the public to the extent of having to curtail and rotate that many people on and off. But that is what it is. In that case since it's basically never been done you know damn effing well the CEO of ERCOT and every brain trust in the entire organization should have been in that room. This is a HUGE HUGE HUGE deal in itself.

From that point / what I am saying is they knew they had to cut load they knew they were going to do it and then they didn't do it on time and when they needed to. Instead they sat there and watched the **** hit the fan beyond a point of repair. This is what happened / they are going to try to blow smoke up everyone's ass.
 

(The above is from gonemaroon at Texags)

4
    ...
 
 
gonemaroon
 
 
 
 
12:38p, 2/15/21 
 
I had a conversation with Bloomberg / I am going to make sure the questions about generation outages and the control room at ERCOT's handling of load shedding are asked - I promise you ERCOT and the PUCT are going to CYA for big generation outages and their own stupidity. Everyone I know in Texas is sitting in the cold thinking outages are rotating and they'll have power soon.  

The price of LMP right now is about $1400 no where near the price cap telling me they could be turning load back online because they have the room and they are not doing it. It's pissing me off to no end.
15
    ...
 
 
gonemaroon
 
 
 
 
12:39p, 2/15/21 
 
If anyone knows of any person in the press personally that is covering this - point them my way please. PM me

The entire system of checks and balances failed on this one, and everyone is suffering due to it.
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1 minute ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


I’ve never been in a hurricane. How long is power out after an average hurricane makes land fall?

I'm not sure how you would calculate an average.  They prioritize the work to get the most people back soonest.  I'm at the end of a spur that was out that only served about 8 houses.  I was without power for 3 weeks after Ike.

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1 minute ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


I’ve never been in a hurricane. How long is power out after an average hurricane makes land fall?

Not a hurricane, but my roomies lived in Nashville last year when the tornado hit the city. Her power was out for a week, but that was due to power lines being destroyed. That’s why she’s confused like, wait, so the lines are ok, they just can’t turn on the power?? Yeah we live in a third world country. Thanks republicans. 

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clear paste

+++

The ERCOT market design is fatally flawed,” said Ed Hirs, the University of Houston energy fellow. “It was never a matter of if it would fail. The only question was when.”

Hirs is a highly-regarded source on energy markets and distribution who -- in 2013 predicted grid failure would occur in Texas if the market wasn’t redesigned.

Hirs said ERCOT, which acts like an air traffic controller and manages the power grid for 85% of Texas customers, has no mechanism to penalize the companies that actually generate the power. Hirs said those generators typically focus their efforts on the summer months -- when they expect their power plants to have high demand.

Not so in the winter.

“They leave them turned off,” he said. “They’re not winterized, there’s no antifreeze, they’re not oiled, they’re not staffed. They’re not ready to respond in a short term emergency like this.”

 

As a result, Hirs said the generators had no incentive to ready additional power plants ahead of this arctic blast. With more people continuing to move to our state, Hirs believes the system is unsustainable.

“The solution’s going to be to restructure the entire electricity market for Texas,” he said. “This has been a fool’s errand since it was passed into law 20 years ago. And it just totally needs to be revamped.”

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