Electric blackout - Is it all over Texas?

[Johnwayn34]

When you reduce coal & nuclear plants and go with clean renewables this is the price you pay. I’ve worked for an Electric Coop for 20+ years and this is the first time this has ever happened. Yes there are more people living here than in recent years but wind turbines and solar will not ever replace the generating power of good ole fashioned coal plants. Hence the problems we are having right now!

[SaintBlaise]

There is a great big **** heap of truth! And where does the fault lie??? LIBERAL EFFING IDIOTS!

Their reps will be along shortly with hollow, hair brained, unrealistic, replies..as per their usual.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well, here you go.

Texas power disaster may be strongest case yet for renewable energy

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/texas-power-disaster-may-be-strongest-case-yet-for-renewable-energy-11613526470?mod=article_inline

[JTRichardson]

Going on hour #26 w/o power in Tomball.

In bed with two jackets, a beanie, my wife, 5 blankets and 2 dogs.

My dang feet are still cold!

[Beleg]

Funny that we get better information here than the leftist media.

[switchback]

We haven’t had power since sunday morning at 2am. Other side of the street came on last night or this morning but not my side.

[switchback]

We haven’t had power since sunday morning at 2am. Other side of the street came on last night or this morning but not my side. Still out. Thank God we bought a generator a very long time ago for back up. Neighbors sleeping in cars or warming up in cars around here in Fort Worth. Going on day 4.

[wellingtontx]

This whole thing is an absolute disaster.

I feel terrible for those without power or water. I want to point the finger at someone, but it seems the list may be long based on the information I have read. Removal of coal burning plants, too much reliance on alternative energy.....where does the fix start ?

[flywise]

This whole thing is an absolute disaster.

I feel terrible for those without power or water. I want to point the finger at someone, but it seems the list may be long based on the information I have read. Removal of coal burning plants, too much reliance on alternative energy.....where does the fix start ?

The fox should start by looking at who all profited from the turbines and if any of them are on this board.
Second remove anyone who suggest green energy make up more than 2% of our energy production.
Then permit about a dozen new gas or coal type plants

[Smeone]

Do you happen to know how far west will stay on SPP? Is it only LP&L territory that is going to ERCOT? I tried to find a map the other day out of curiosity, but didn't find anything.

http://www.lpandl.com/uploads/general/lubbock-electric-service-areas-2015.jpg

I might be wrong, but I believe it is the LP&L service area, BUT not all of it the green pink and red will still be all or partial getting power from Excel

LP&L screwed this up somehow when it all first started LP&P said (and it seemed true because Excel did not say different) that Excel basically told LP&L that they were exiting the residential wholesale power generating business and were only going to be selling wholesale commercial energy to large users.....well of course that does not work well for Lubbock so Lubbock needed something different

LP&P has some generating plants, but they are OLD and they looked at buying two near Odessa that were not being used and were new, but that would have required transmission lines and it would have basically left LP&P on an island of their own captive to the natural gas market and those plants and with only LP&L drawing the power from all the generating capacity (which is not efficient)

but somewhere along the way in LP&L had signed a contract with Excel (SPP) for some power and that runs through 2035) and some through a group buying West Texas Municipal for win that seems to have ended in 2020

https://www.lubbockonline.com/news/2018-01-09/lpl-s-contracts-electricity-after-2021-wrinkle-revived-discussion-electric

I am not sure if the Excel contract was signed just before or just after Excel decided to tell Lubbock "no more residential wholesale power" but it seems like it was just before

a long time back Excel had come into Lubbock and "overbuilt" their own lines on the LP&L power poles in a bunch of areas to offer competition so you could have two people next door getting power from two different lines off of the same pole (your lights out next door on which happened from time to time), but in 2009 Lubbock bought that out when Excel decided they wanted out and Lubbock was going to strip down those extra wires and transformers ect and reuse them elsewhere, but I don't think they have been very proactive about that

it was not long after that when the need for Lubbock to find new wholesale power for residential came about and LP&L started looking for what to do

I cannot remember the excact timing between the buyout of the Excel lines and customers and Excel saying to LP&L no more power for wholesale residential

it looks to me like Excel had a somewhat change of heart and wanted to again sell more wholesale power (including residential not just large commercial) and to do that they needed LP&L back, but LP&L did not want to contract with SPP for the rest of what Excel could not provide so Lubbock said "here are some areas that still have your overbuilt lines hanging we will buy enough from you for those needs" and LP&L still services the actual lines and poles, does the billing, and the rest will be ERCOT supplied

I believe South Plains Coop and all the rest are staying SPP

[Smeone]

This whole thing is an absolute disaster.

I feel terrible for those without power or water. I want to point the finger at someone, but it seems the list may be long based on the information I have read. Removal of coal burning plants, too much reliance on alternative energy.....where does the fix start ?

as best I can tell the fix will have to start with a large new "clean coal" plant that is set for BASELINE power that runs pretty much all the time

trying to add another (or several) natural gas plants adds more to the same issue.....you simply cannot get around the nature of natural gas collection and distribution and even if you run more pipelines or increase the existing ones because of the nature of the "collector" system for gas and oil and similar products you are just making it a bigger issue if and when there are issues

unless of course you are willing to pay for and lay the infrastructure for a near redundant system to serve all or a portion of things

look at it like internet bandwidth.....you can pull in a big fiber cable and have massive amounts of bandwidth for cheap if you light all that fiber.....but one drunk guy having a bad day on a backhoe that did not dial 811 Dig Tess digs up that cable and you have a massive amount of people with no internet in that area until that cable is fixed

so they way they work it is they build "rings" around areas (like freeway loops) and then they build big cables off those rings to different places (like interstates) and those go to other places and hit their rings and then finally hit exchange centers where national and international traffic is handed off to large backbones and of course those exchange centers have lots of connections coming out of them

like roads from Houston to dallas....there is the easiest way to go, but if it is down there are dozens of other back roads and once you get to dallas there are main loops to get around it, but other ways to get through or around it if needed

well with natural gas (and oil) there are a lot fewer backup ways to get to places and the "roads" or "fiber" (IE pipelines) often run mostly in a single direction from an area of gas production to an area of gas use and or distribution to other areas of use

so just expanding that infrastructure is similar to just making I-45 larger and then when there is a major wreck or a bridge down or some other issue (like icy roads) you just have a larger piece of infrastructure that is not usable

or it is like dragging in more fiber right next to the existing fiber.....so when Elmer Wayne has a bad day and digs that backhoe in the ground he digs up two large bundles of fiber instead of one.....and more people have no internet

so with coal....again you can make a massive pile of it at the plant weeks ahead of time with little real threat of it blowing up when Elmer Wayne farts or lights up a joint behind the tool shed at lunch

coal comes on a railroad track not a pipeline so totally different infrastructure

coal is not used as a cooking fuel or a home heating fuel at the residential level so there is no increase demand on "coal" and the "coal infrastructure" from millions and millions of small users during times like these like there is with natural gas


large batteries are also a solution and should have already been used because of the nature of wind especially in west Texas

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/texas-wind-farms-paying-people-to-take-power-5347

the wind blows at night in the summer when power use is low....so those wind turbine users PAY people to take the power so they can still make a profit with the tax credits.....this is hardest on a large coal plant because coal is slow to power up and power down (way slower than even natural gas especially a smaller gas fired plant)

so it is difficult for a large coal plant to run all the time and eventually to run at all because it is hard on equipment and inefficient as hell to power up and power down all the time especially with coal, but the same with natural gas

so when you add in "evil big coal" EPA regulations you cannot blame wholesale power companies from taking coal plants offline

so batteries should be in place now (now that the technology is FINALLY catching up even from back in 2008 was the above was written)

BUT there is still an issue.....batteries should be for a day to day peak off peak mitigation or perhaps two days......at some point you have to ask how many days of battery backup do we build for

do we build for if the wind does not blow for 2 nights and the sun does not shine for 2 days.....or do we build for a week event like now....or what about a possible 10 day event

because of course with batteries you have to recharge them at some point....and if the event is so extreme and last so long that you cannot ever get excess power on the grid to recharge them.....well then they simply go dead and you have that much less power to supply once they are dead and that much more demand when you can possibly get some excess power on the grid

and of course when in normal times you have only a day or two in a row with no sun and a night or two with little to no wind it is somewhat cost inefficient to have 5 to 7 days of backup batteries sitting there only being partially discharged

so what the answer really should be is a couple of large nuclear plants that are built fortified as hell (I am not sure the ones in Texas meet that right now for the cold factor, but they should), a few large coal plants that are "clean" spread around the state because of the above factor of coal and storage and demand and those should run all the time

then there should be various sized natural gas plants from large that run all the time even if not at full power and then some smaller plants spread onto different natural gas distribution systems and parts of the ERCOT grid that can spin up and down more efficiently

and then wind and solar in areas where that is efficient with probably 3 or 4 day battery backup right in the area

you spin up and down those smaller natural gas plants combined with the wind and solar and the batteries to keep the plants running as efficiently as possible and to keep the batteries topped of constantly and you draw from the batteries to mitigate highest day to day demands and to keep the smaller natural gas plants spinning at the most efficient levels for the longest periods of time

in my opinion it will never work with only natural gas or with massive wind and solar and batteries unless you want to pay huge amounts of money 9especially for batteries) and you want to sit and wait for the next "event" when you find out that relying on things that are built massively yet are not extremely predictable (like a pile of coal next to a few power plants) just means a larger disaster when "the event" happens

[PineWoodArcher]

Investigate who is running ERCOT !

[Geezy Rider]

I don’t know what the reasons are (not too sure I’d understand even if I did) and I don’t know what the fix is but what I do know is that I’m really pizzed that my in-laws, in their 80’s, have been without power for 62 hours. I see towns and cities lit up and government buildings with power but the old folks have frozen water in their toilet bowls. That stuff ain’t right.

[MAP]

anybody in new braunfels still with out power or water?

[Smeone]

Investigate who is running ERCOT !

http://www.ercot.com/committee/board

[MAP]

If any of ya'll are in New Braunfels and dont have water, gas, or electric I have all of those and your welcome to come over if you need. I would have offered sooner but the past 2 days everything seem to be going off for an hour and then back on for an hour, so far its been steady today. If you need to take a shower, cook some food, or watch tv for awhile let me know....I will say that I have several dogs here, I'm "sheltering" a few during this cold snap.