TX backouts prevented w/renewable energy

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
1

… Texans are starting to understand that they can’t rely on a crumbling fossil fuel infrastructure and a State House leadership wedded to it.

A year after Texas cold spell, study shows renewable energy could avoid blackouts
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/02/20/texas-ener…

“If we got another storm this year, like Uri in 2021, the grid would go down again,” said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “This is still a huge risk for us.”

Now, a recent study shows that electricity blackouts can be avoided across the nation — perhaps even during intense weather events — by switching to 100 percent clean and renewable energy, such as solar, wind and water energy.

intercst

11 Likes
2

And why not? It’s been shown that the big black-out of 2021 the renewables faired BETTER than the fossil generation did.

We’re on the green energy program with Perdernales Electric Coop. All renewable power generation, for almost no added surcharge to their normal rates.

4 Likes
3

A year after Texas cold spell, study shows renewable energy could avoid blackouts

But can it prevent brownouts? Not the electricity type but the red state politicians pooping, then spreading, infinite crap all over everything, thus burying their states in it.

2 Likes
4

INTERCST quoted: “During the winter, low sunlight may also render solar panels not as useful. In this case, the wind turbines and solar panels are complementary energy sources. If both were to fail at a point, then another energy source, such as geothermal or hydroelectric, could kick in.”

With minimal winter sun, and the solar panels frozen over with 2 inches of ice…they produced little power.

15% of wind turbines were off line. So 85% remained on line.

And no…there sure wasn’t enough wind power to complement the missing solar.

And if you think ‘other’ renewable energy sources, such as geothermal and hydro could kick in - I’ve got news for you. There are no big rivers, Niagara Falls, giant rivers of OR/WA, massive rivers of Ontario in TX. Every other state steals water from the Rio Grande and by the time it gets here it’s not much more of a wandering wide stream with zero hydro capacity. There are a few ‘hot springs’ in TX way way way south along the border but nothing massive like CA sitting on active volcanos or HI…which still isn’t producing much power from geothermal despite the best US location for it - and same for CA.

Which leaves half the power to fossil fuel sources. Which now also heat a majority of homes, provide hot water.

Putting in ‘heat pumps’ will actual increase electricity demand - at $15,000 a home or more. Payback - likely never. Unless you use a lot of hot water - an electric heat pump will just up electricity usage and probably have 10 year payback at which point if you are lucky you replace it again. If not, every 5-7 years as the now crappy compressors fail.

Yeah…line up…for $15,000 or $20,000 battery systems for your house… great idea. To go along with your $20,000 in rooftop solar…which won’t help you much when your solar panels ice over then get 2 inches of snow on top …for 3 days…and your battery lasts 1 night.

and do it before 2030 because this article writer said the planet will implode unless you do!

Oh, right…

As to 'borrowing ’ power from Iowa…ho ho…when it was 2 below in TX it was 15 below in IA and they were doing all they could to keep the lights on there! No extra power to lend TX and of course, with less than 6 million people, that’s way less than the population of just Houston TX… so how much ‘spare capacity’ you think they have? Hmmmm…

Manwhile…in Iowa…

Meta Agrees To Buy Iowa Wind Farm’s Entire Capacity To Power Nearby Data Center Campus

https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/data-center/meta-data-c…

Gee…I wonder where Meta is going to get it’s power when the wind dies? Don’t think they plan on shutting it down on a ‘power emergency’ either, do you?

t.

2 Likes
5

As to 'borrowing ’ power from Iowa…ho ho…when it was 2 below in TX it was 15 below in IA and they were doing all they could to keep the lights on there!

100% Renewable Energy Needs Lots of Storage. This Polar Vortex Test Showed How Much.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20022019/100-percent-rene…
In the depths of the deep freeze late last month, nearly every power plant in the Eastern and Central U.S. that could run was running…Using energy production and power demand data, they showed how a 100% renewable energy grid, powered half by wind and half by solar, would have had significant stretches without enough wind or sun to fully power the system, meaning a large volume of energy storage would have been necessary…

Schauer’s analysis shows storage would need to go from about 11 gigawatts today to 278 gigawatts in the grid regions that include New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest and parts of the South. That’s roughly double Wood Mackenzie’s current forecast for energy storage nationwide in 2040…

Schauer points out that advances in energy storage will need to be more than just batteries to meet demand and likely will include technologies that have not yet been developed.

DB2

3 Likes
6

Schauer’s analysis shows storage would need to go from about 11 gigawatts today to 278 gigawatts in the grid regions that include New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest and parts of the South.

And batteries still don’t store gigawatts.

They may store gigawatt-hours, but not gigawatts. That’s more or less like storing a speed.

3 Likes
7

Nothing will be done about our blackouts. State Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they are pretty much up for sale and that they’re more than willing to step on any town, city, or county that inhibits businesses from doing what they will.

12 Likes
8

And batteries still don’t store gigawatts.

They may store gigawatt-hours, but not gigawatts. That’s more or less like storing a speed.

Faulty logic. Grain silos don’t store megatons but a million of them together do. Same with batteries. Batteries can de designed for various uses. A starter battery produces a lot of juice for short bursts. Golf cart batteries are designed for lower power output but long duration.

Grid batteries can likewise be designed for grid stabilization (short term) and longer term outages (not there yet - supply constrained).

It’s an engineering problem and a mining problem.

The Captain

3 Likes
9

If Texas was part of the NATIONAL grid system they could buy electricity from any number of states such as California, Nevada. Utah and even Florida through the distributed energy infrastructure. But when you run your state like a third world country you get what you paid for.

28 degrees outside and 72 degrees inside.

OTFoolish

1 Like
10

"If Texas was part of the NATIONAL grid system they could buy electricity from any number of states such as California, Nevada. Utah and even Florida through the distributed energy infrastructure. "

If TX were a COUNTRY we’d be like #5 for power production in the world.

Yeah, I can just see NM, LA, MS, AL forking up tens of billions of dollars to build massive high voltage (million volt type) power lines to be able to borrow power from CA (which runs out of power during the summer, right?) and NV - now struggling to keep the lights on now that the water level in their lake is at record lows and dropping year after year.

Tens of billions of dollars for a power line that is used 2% of the time or less, and sits idle the rest of the year.

Remember, there are more people in the DFW(Dallas-Ft Metroplex) area than in the whole state of OK. Or AR, or NM. You think the less than 4 million folks in NM are willing to fork up hundreds of millions extra in electricity bills to build gigantic power lines ACROSS their state so TX can ‘borrow’ power from further west? And nope, with just a few million people, NM doesn’t have a whole lot of power to spare either.

And MS? You think the poor folks of MS are willing to double their power bills to build gigantic power lines across their state so that TX can ‘borrow power’ from FL? We’re not talking a few watts, but Gigawatts. Ya gotta be joking. Meanwhile, those power lines sit idle, need to be maintained through hurricanes and blizzards, are an eyesore for a mile around…

Nope…you’re visions of ‘the grid’ are so simple you need to go back and actually run some numbers.

Those 10s of billions, if fed dollars, would be better spent hardening the TX power system itself.

t

2 Likes
11

In New Hampshire it did NOT cost us BILLIONS of dollars to install high voltage transmission lines for power from HYDRO QUEBEC.

One, the power comes into the system in Maine and gets sent out to the grid from there, so the high voltage transmission lines from Northern QUEBEC are shorter.

Second, any cost for the high voltage lines is shared across the different states that are on the grid.

And a Third FACT is that Texas doesn’t want the Federal money because it comes with Federal oversight.

Finally 5th in the world? I believe that places Tx behind California and New York State.

OTFoolish

1 Like
12

And batteries still don’t store gigawatts.

They may store gigawatt-hours, but not gigawatts. That’s more or less like storing a speed.

Faulty logic. Grain silos don’t store megatons but a million of them together do.

Faulty logic indeed. Grain can just sit there. Electricity can’t - by its nature it is a current. A storage device has to store a certain rate of flow for that current, for a certain amount of time. That isn’t like a ton of grain, it’s like a ton of grain every hour. But the silo can’t store a flow of grain, it can only store grain - and eventually it gets full (or empty depending on which way the flow is going) and the flow of grain must stop or turn elsewhere. Same for a battery.

I’m looking at the label on a USB battery. It doesn’t have a storage capacity in watts. It has a storage capacity in amp-HOURS (10,000 mAh). Which you multiply by volts to get watt-HOURS.

Separately, it also has a flow rate: 5 volts, 2 amps. AKA 10 watts. But this measurement doesn’t say how long a fully-charged battery can sustain that flow - for that you have to divide the storage capacity (in watts) by the flow rate. (5 hours.)

Those are two different measurements, and to fully understand the storage device you need both. (Although in some contexts, if you have sufficient knowledge you can get by with a reasonable assumption for one of them - e.g. nearly all USB devices need 5V power at no more than 2 amps.)

This article is claiming to tell us the storage capacity needed, but using a unit of measure that only tells a flow rate. They are WRONG - about either the unit of measure or the associated number, and I have no idea which. Very few people are familiar enough with the specific market in question to confidently make a reasonable assumption about either measurement. I am not one of those people.

And this is one of those things that is very easy to get right, and not even a subject of political or social debate. They are training people to accept and expect information that is wrong. That is not a good thing for a news organization to do.

7 Likes
13

If Texas was part of the NATIONAL grid system they could buy electricity from any number of states such as California, Nevada. Utah and even Florida through the distributed energy infrastructure.

Yes, and Arizona and New Mexico would be THRILLED to have the necessary power lines strung across their territory, providing no benefit to either state, so that Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, etc. could buy power from California.

When Massachusetts has a power shortage, why don’t THEY buy power from California?

The US mainland doesn’t have two power grids, Texas versus everyone-else.

It has three.

The western grid has most of Montana, Wyoming, and New Mexico, all of Colorado and all mainland states west of those four, plus bits of the western edge of South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, and maybe a tiny bit of Kansas. The divide between it and the eastern and Texas grids goes through areas with vast quantities of empty space (and maybe mountains). The few big cities near the divide have even more vast quantities of empty space on one side, and are hooked into the grid on the other side.

The cost of building and maintaining a high-capacity power line is mostly a function of its capacity, its length, and the terrain it goes through. So running a power line through a vast quantity of empty space, followed by mostly-uninhabited mountains, is expensive. That expense must be paid for as long as the line is kept available and ready, no matter how little it’s used - jacking rates.

14

OTFOOL:“Finally 5th in the world? I believe that places Tx behind California and New York State.”

"In 2019, Texas had a total summer capacity of 125,117 MW through all of its power plants, and a net generation of 483,201 GWh. "

“Texas produces and consumes far more electrical energy than any other U.S. state. It generates almost twice as much electricity as the next highest generating state, Florida. Texas has an expanding variety of generating sources to meet consumption growth. Installed wind capacity grew to 28,800 MW and solar capacity grew to 3,100 MW at the end of 2019.[3”

source: WIKI

Texas plans to add additional 100,000 MW capacity by 2030 to cover the increased population by then.

Texas leads the country in wind power generation.

additional:

“We expect U.S. utility-scale solar generating capacity to grow by 21.5 GW in 2022. This planned new capacity would surpass last year’s 15.5 GW of solar capacity additions, an estimate based on reported additions through October (8.7 GW) and additions scheduled for the last two months of 2021 (6.9 GW). Most planned solar additions in 2022 will be in Texas (6.1 GW, or 28% of the national total), followed by California (4.0 GW).”

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50818#:~:tex….

“Triple crown: Texas again takes top spot in U.S. electricity, wind and gas-fired power rankings”

"Once again, Texas is clearly the national leader in energy production,

The EIA’s latest State Energy Report notes Texas’ preeminent position in electricity, oil and gas and utility-scale wind energy production. In the latter, according to the EIA, Texas had installed 30.2 GW of wind power by December 2020, or nearly 30 percent of the U.S. wind turbine generation portfolio.

Texas also totaled more than 46,245,000 (46.2 million) MWh in net electricity generation for June 2021, the EIA state report shows. Florida was second at 22.6 million MWh, with Pennsylvania third at 21.4 million MWh."

https://www.power-eng.com/news/triple-crown-texas-again-take…

hmmmm…not only does TX generate more power than FL, it generates TWICE as much as Florida - the next largest generator, and plans to nearly double power generation capacity by 2030

Texas population is growing by leaps and bounds - all the natives fleeing their high tax states for greener territory, plus a million or more border crossers a year with many remaining in TX.

t.

15

And batteries still don’t store gigawatts.

You are right, of course. The immense amount of storage needed is a problem if one wants to go 100% renewable.

This report for California from a few years ago brings up what they refer to as the “gigawatt-day problem”.

How to Choose a Climate Friendly Electricity System for the Future
http://ccst.us/publications/2014/2014climate.pdf
"Because of the possibility of infrequent but large scale weather events that may suppress wind and/or solar output for many hours or days at a time), a longer term risk assessment is part of the analysis required when adding significant amounts of wind and solar energy to the system, particular when thinking about a future where dispatchable fossil capacity is limited due to greenhouse gas constraints.

"Citing a recent study model by Short and Diakov (2013), researchers found that they could provide roughly 50% of annual demand with intermittent generation (using 2005 Western Interconnect load data and a geographically diverse set of wind and solar farms) and 50% with dispatchable fossil, but there were numerous periods throughout the year when the combination of wind and solar output is less than 10% of peak demand.

“Even with some storage added, there are periods of time where there is no leftover wind or solar power to charge the storage reservoir. The interplay between variable resource output, meteorology, the availability and scale of electricity storage, the efficacy of non-generations options, such as demand-response, urgently demand more detailed investigation.”

DB2

1 Like
16

The utility companies in Maine are trying to get another electric power transmission line built to carry power to Massachusetts and Connecuticut where they can get more money per Kwh. The state government stands behind it as it brings in more revenue.

Also the “empty space” you are worried about is cheaper to buy verus, say, urban real estate. How much do you think it costs to buy right of way through New York City either above or below ground? Plus what about offshore wind farms and their transmission lines? How much does it cost to run and maintain those lines versus land lines but they are still doing it and making money.

Massachusetts buys electricity from the eastern power pool which sources its power anywhere from Quebec, Canada to New York State and beyond. It is called a pool for reason as once you put your electricity into the mix you really can’t tell one electron from another simliar to throwing a gallion of water into a swimming pool that everyone can use as needed.

The question still remains, that if the Texas ELECTRIC grid is so great how come so many people died during their cold spell?

OTFoolish

1 Like
17

OTF:“The question still remains, that if the Texas ELECTRIC grid is so great how come so many people died during their cold spell?”

the TX grid would have been in great shape if TX wasn’t busy honoring commitments to ship half it’s natural gas production to the Northeast so they don’t freeze.

Next time, maybe we’ll simply stop sending gas north and use it ourselves to power the natural gas backup plants that work a lot better than solar at night. Duh!

How many people died in CA heat waves? Start counting - when the juice went out?

How many died in CA fires that required CA to shut down power lines to entire areas and towns? 100,000 cut off… did Grandma survive without the oxygen machine? Likely no…

I remember the Northeast blackout of about 1965 or so…entire region of NY including NYC in the dark in the winter time. One relay tripped out and took NY into the dark for 8 hours or more. 4-5 hours in Troy NY where I was at the time. It was freezing cold. We had a nice old military generator at the ham radio club. Every hospital around tried to ‘borrow it’ but it was bolted down to concrete pad and going nowhere.

Problems get fixed and keep in mind that was RECORD SETTING cold spell - a 1 on 100 years storm. It’s been fixed.

Oh and by the way…OK, AR, LA had rolling blackouts too then …what about their grids and the fact they were CONNECTED TO THE EASTERN GRID? Duh!

Get over it. TX building 100 GW more renewables in the next 10 years. 4 times as much as the second largest state has now has (combined all power sources).

t.

1 Like
18

Ummmm, Did I say that California has a great electrical grid? Also didn’t Texas have to issue warnings again this year about another cold spell? Didn’t Cryptominers have to cut back on power usaage to help hospitals?

The only thing missing this year in Tx was the blame game by Gov. Abbott of the renewable energy sources. Curious for a state that is building solar farms like crazy.

The 1965 NE blackout happened on November 6th which was hardly the dead of winter. The real cause of the blackout was a defective power line leading into southern Ontario, Canada from Upstate New York. The outage spread from Pennsylvania to Ontario, Can.

1965 blackout? Why not go back to 1865 when they ran short of whale oil?

OTFoolish

2 Likes
19

“1965 blackout? Why not go back to 1865 when they ran short of whale oil?”

Yes, and thank goodness, it was FOSSIL fuels in the form of kerosene that provided light.

No one heated with kerosene those days. People used good old carbon laden fuels - firewood.

Abe Lincoln read his books by candle light and fire place light as did everyone else. Candles were fairly expensive unless you made your own.

Some cities had ‘town gas’ from charcoal…

then thank goodness, Edison perfected the light bulb and burned megatons of coal to provide light - until Niagara Falls power plant was finished a lot later.

I"d rather have tons of windfarms in TX that work into the evening hours and a bit at night rather than solar that has yet to work one bit at night. We’ll have both. More than any other state. More than most countries in the world.

t.

20

The 1965 NE blackout happened on November 6th which was hardly the dead of winter. The real cause of the blackout was a defective power line leading into southern Ontario, Canada from Upstate New York. The outage spread from Pennsylvania to Ontario, Can.

I remember that all too well. I was an 18 yo infantry private living in barracks in London Ontario just three weeks away from getting on an airplane ( https://g.co/kgs/z31kZZ ) to single handedly strike fear into the hearts of the Soviet Union’s 40,000 tank crews! My battalion had moved over months before but I and 3 others were underaged so we were kept busy with back to back specialist courses that looked impressive when I finally made it. At one point they had booked me for jump school but a young Lt showed up and pointed out that I had to be 18 and took my place.

I learned to love military training courses, they really knew how to cram a whole lot of knowledge into a very short timeframe. Then they would let you play with the cool tools. One of the courses was APC driver mech but then they added Water Ops at the end. Months after I was established “over there” as a very young private I was tasked to teach Water Ops (river crossing) in of all places Hamelin Germany of Pied Piper fame.

Anymouse <fun times and we only sunk one APC … one of the command ones with the high back end>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M577_Command_Post_Carrier