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EE2B

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Posts posted by EE2B

  1. Without criticizing you specifically or your company, it seems like something is very wrong with the system when a generation company can just make a "business decision" to shut down in conditions such as these.  Something needs to be established to indemnify companies like yours from extraordinary losses.

    We are not a power generation business. We generate our own power and could put it back on the grid, but that’s not our business.
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  2. Something that I have yet to see mentioned in these articles - and don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with the conclusions that ERCOT fucked up and the competitive system isn't far enough forward-looking to incentivize grid improvements- is that this happened on the back half of a four day gas trading weekend. So not only was it a five or six sigma weather event, it was also really bad timing on the trading calendar. Had this happened on a non-holiday weekday, a lot of the power supply issues would have been avoided or minimized. (Some other poster way upthread alluded to this when he was talking about buying gas for his power plant)
    For the most part, these resources are traded and managed "day ahead", meaning that gas is purchased and power sold and plants brought up or down the immediate day before. (There is something else called "real time" but that is more like fine tuning what is already up and running, you don't usually startup cold power plants in RT)
    It's hard enough to schedule and manage supply for normal weekends, which cover Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Saturday and Sunday have lower demand than Monday, but you have to trade the same amount of product for each day and then you manage it during the day after the schedule is set. Saturday and Sunday positions will sometimes get closed out at a loss with the expectation that Monday's profit will make up for it. 
    For Monday holidays, they add Tuesday to the weekend package, so now you are trading four days of equal volumes and price but you have a different load profile on each of those days. 
    Last Friday, when the cold was on its way here, it was already in Oklahoma and points north, and that caused gas prices to spike in those areas. Where gas is normally $2 or $3 per MMBTU it was $100 or more. And it was so cold up north that a lot of their wells were frozen off and unable to supply, so they were buying gas in South Texas and shipping it north, which made the price of South Texas gas - "Houston Ship Channel", "Waha", "NGPL STX" - spike as well, FOR THE WHOLE FOUR DAY WEEKEND. Instead of the usual $3, it was trading $200. 10-20x higher than it has ever traded. 
    Well, ERCOT underestimated the demand on Monday and a lot of Texas generators woke up on Friday and looked at the Ship Channel price for the four day package and said, "Fuck that. That's too expensive." and they shut their plants down for the 4 day weekend. Then when the shit hit the fan on Monday, those plants were all cold and there wasn't any gas to run them anyway because it had all been exported north AND the wells in Texas were frozen off too AND one of the STP nuclear units got shut down because the water intake was freezing.
    And that's how you end up with no power supply when demand is going through the roof. 
    As I said at the beginning, had this happened on a normal weekday, a lot of those resources would have been online and available. The bad forecast for the back end of a four day weekend with record gas prices is a big part of why the power grid went down. 
    Also, as mentioned above, Houston generators got socked the hardest because there is a very large amount of gas generation here AND it is a gas trading hub AND it typically doesn't get as cold here so the plants are more susceptible.

    Spot on. That was me that brought this up earlier. We committed last Friday for a specific volume of gas expecting the price to be in the $30/unit range. We were notified after the commitment that the price is $356/unit, but at that point we’re committed whether we use the gas or not. So basically we said Friday that we will purchase 20 units of gas Saturday, Sunday & Monday. When they told us the pricing it was to late, we were in. That’s why we shut the fuck down Monday morning and are still down. We’re waiting on pricing for this weekend to decide if we stay down through the weekend or not. In the mean time do you care to guess how much shit has frozen and busted with everything being down? FM Global hates this shit.
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  3. How many hours did it take for that to happen? My mom and stepdad are probably gonna get one soon. I know I am.

    I can’t remember what the hour count was on it. It can’t be that high. If I’m remember correctly you are close to us. We used Nantz Electric and they did a good job for us. They coordinated with the electric and gas folks (meter needed to be changed out for a larger one). I dealt with them and they handled everything else.
  4. Sorry for dumb question but....do you find out oil switch is bad at regular tuneup or when you need it and it won't start?  I'd imagine reliability is key spec on these things 
     
    And how old is yours?  Thanks

    It quit one day when the power went out. I had the switch ready for them to install when they came out. The manual is pretty good about having all the part numbers and I’ve been able to find everything thus far.
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  5. I have no understanding of this but who prices the gas that high?  Is it like a commodities market doing that?  It seems kind of criminal to raise prices like that during a winter storm almost like price gauging during a hurricane.  

    I’m not really sure how that side of it works. I’m pretty sure that we have to tell them daily what our usage for the next day will be and then they give us the price. From my minimal understanding, the price for Friday sets the price for the weekend. When we told them on Friday what we would use the next two days they came back with 356 per unit. That locked our price in for the weekend. On Monday the decision was made to shut all but one boiler down and get gas usage as low as possible until the price comes back down. It’s absolutely insane, but when your the only provider you can do whatever you want.
  6. fab9695b1022011f3053822647da0cd5.jpg
    Quick comment on this. At the facility I work at our gas price per unit went from 30 to 356 sometime last Friday evening. Our normal daily gas cost is somewhere in the neighborhood of 200k/day. With the rate increase, our gas cost per day went to right around 2.6 million/day. The decision was made on Monday that it was cheaper for us to shutdown than it was to pay the 2.4 million increase in gas cost. I can absolutely see why some facilities would chose to shutdown instead of paying these insane gas prices. They priced the gas so high that people can’t afford to continue to run until the weather warms up and the gas prices go down.

  7. We have a 22KW Generac with auto transfer switch that runs on natural gas. It was right at $8500 installed. I’ve had the oil pressure switch go out and had to replace the battery and terminals, but otherwise it’s been good. The only upgrade I made when we bought it was had them install copper cable from the generator to the switch instead of aluminum since it was going to run across the house. I’m not in Houston so I can’t recommend a dealer.

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  8. I live less than 10 miles from a coal plant that hasn’t been shut down. WTF is my power off? 

    Probably because they produce power for another area or even another state. It bullshit that some of these places build in one state and supply power to another. Hell we could put power back on the grid here, but the state won’t let us.
  9. I had no idea neighborhoods used joint propane systems. So strange to me. 
     
    I have my heat up super high (75) to get heat through the walls to the pipes, but im also on natural gas.  So i wont be draining the grid.

    Um actually you are just doing the same thing to another utility. The gas companies have the same worries about meeting the demands. In fact they put a cap on the amount of gas my facility can use this week. If we exceed it we run the risk of heavy fines or even them shutting our shit off. So yea, the gas companies are just as concerned as the electric providers.

  10. The morning sun made its way
    Through the wind shield of my Chevrolet
    Whiskey eyes and ashtray breath
    On a chert rock gravel road
    What the hell did I do last night
    That's the story of my life
    Like tryin' to remember words
    To a song nobody wrote

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