Sadly it was my industry that dropped the ball. Texas is over dependent on gas for power grid use because when times are good its the cheapest possible power plant to construct in capital costs. Coal and nuclear is nearly double to.triple as much. Record cold froze the well gathering lines and trucks couldn’t run to take away produced water so wells.got shut in and gas supply dropped by half or more. Gas went to over a $100 mmbtu thats insane. Its normally $3 to 5
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/
While methane doesn’t freeze until minus 273 degrees the water that is produced with it at the well head does and the gathering lines are plastic on the surface which during normal Texas winter’s rarely freezes due to the high salt.content and 100_130f temps out the earth but in single.digits over days time the ground cold sinks and the lines freeze.
Thank you. That’s the first good explanation I’ve seen for why natural gas well output fell precipitously.
People should not be over reacting to a once every 100 year temperament event. So many bad laws, policies, regulations come into being from doing that. Many parts of Texas will see highs 70+ all next week.
Gas availability has been tight outside of Texas as well. SPP (Southwest Power Pool) had entered the EEA-3 level with rolling blackouts twice since this event started, but nowhere near the extent that ERCOT has. I think SPP learned from the last polar vortex some 4 or so years ago - I know we did. We winterized all of our CC and CT plants.
Note that SPP is part of the Eastern Interconnection but there is still a finite limit as to how much power can be moved from one area to another. The transmission lines and substation equipment all have a limited capacity.
I’m looking at ERCOT’s numbers today. Wind is down to just over 1000 MW, wheels it was around 4000 yesterday. Both nowhere near the nameplate capacity of over 21,000 MW, but keep in mind that the wind isn’t always blowing at the optimum level. In fact, it is more often NOT blowing at the optimum level.
One large utility in Kentucky has a plan whereby they will start a lot of their gas turbines ahead of the cold weather and run them at minimum load to avoid any freezing issues. Of course, they also have an abundance of coal generation.
Thanks for your post #79. It has the most insight (along with your linked article) into this event as any post in days. A few responses to your post (like Meyer’s 167) help as well.
Money spent promoting wind and solar did not give independence in sudden severe cold. Instead those non-maturely engineered sources gave false confidence. The real workhorse meeting extreme demand should have been Gas fired plants which were unable to respond because the abundant gas wells, plants and pump stations sending gas to the Natural Gas fired power plants did not have sufficient money spent on them to winterize them to the level this storm required,
While the gas does not freeze, of course, there is high mineral content water accompanying it that is usually not a problem due to heat that comes with it and mineral slats, but the length and depth of the cold caused freezing components to wells, pumps and pressure plants.
A MCF on this scale seldom has a single point of failure. Natural gas gathering and transport failed. Well wastewater collection failed which caused wells to be shut down. Many NG and coal plants weren’t winterized. And wind turbine and solar panel output plummeted. Throw in a lack of redundancy and NG storage and you have a royal mess.