Thread by @maggiekb1

I've been seeing a lot of tweets blaming Texas blackouts on wind power. Minnesota's wind turbines operate down to about -20. We've had to turn them off before when it did get too cold, but the problem in Texas is not "renewables are bad", it's more complicated than that ...

https://twitter.com/XcelEnergyMN/status/1361421800077369348

First off, a polar vortex is ... kind of a big deal rare event. The kind of thing you wouldn't necessarily expect a power provider in the American South to be prepped for. Some of this is just on the "yup, shit does happen" side of things.

A polar vortex is going to hit a grid that isn't used to those temperatures hard. Regardless of what you're powering it with. We uh ... we have some issues up here sometimes with freezing gas and coal plants, too.
energynews.us/2019/02/27/mid…

And, in fact, you are seeing a lot of fossil fuel production freezing up in Texas right now. In fact, the majority of electric capacity offline in Texas seems to be natural gas.

https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1361348544154664961

Again, this is falling into the "shit happens" category. The Texas grid was prepared for normal Texas weather -- not a super rare mega cold event.

https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1361351680399302657

BUT, the blackouts in Texas are also not >just< about bad weather that is extremely out of the ordinary.

It's also about the way the Texas grid is set up. The US electric grid is split into three parts: Everything east of the Rockies, everything west of the Rockies, and Texas.

What this means, in practical terms, is that when the Texas grid is out of balance -- when demand outstrips supply -- it's harder for them to pull in electricity from someplace else to make up the shortfall.

So this is a case of extreme bad weather across a state, coupled with an electric system that isn't set up to easily get outside help when things go bad statewide.

Also, I don't much right now about the choices that were made about power supply this weekend or maintenance choices made overall by ERCOT (the agency that manages the Texas grid). But let's be frank, those questions are gonna get asked in the next few weeks.

And it's not just generation and transmission (long distance movement of electricity) having problems. Local distribution (usually under the purview of the utility you pay for power) is having problems with this cold, too.

https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1361425704924012547

Long story short: The Texas blackouts are about infrastructure maintenance, how we prepare for rare events, and what happens when rare events become less rare.

What they are not: A referendum on the reliability of any particular energy source.

Here's a great piece by @j_timmer at @arstechnica that gets more in depth into some of the stuff I'm talking about here: arstechnica.com/science/2021/0…

Let's all take a moment to bask in the perfection of John's photo caption:

OH haha I almost forgot to tell you. Do you know WHY Texas is its own whole separate grid?

Literally there is no good reason. (Quebec is also its own separate grid if that tells you something.) It's political. Not technical.

https://twitter.com/maggiekb1/status/1361425836008734724?s=20

Love to have my own separate grid so I can stick it to the feds and also struggle with blackouts because I don't have good interconnection.

texastribune.org/2011/02/08/tex…

Also, what the hell. I wrote this book about the electric grid over a decade ago, so there is stuff that is out of date. But if you are finding yourself interested in how the grid works and why it's set up the way it is ... you can read my book for more! amazon.com/Before-Lights-…