Morning. The #TexasFreeze continues & grid operator ERCOT is still reporting >31,000 MW of thermal generation capacity out as of 9AM CT. Down slightly from a peak of 34,000 MW reported yesterday afternoon (ercot.com/news/releases/…) but still >40% of thermal capacity in state!
Wind power is currently producing about 4,000 MW, or 2/3 of the ~6,000 MW that ERCOT was counting on wind to contribute during winter peaking events. Solar is coming online now and helping during daytime, exceeding the <300 MW it is counted on for in system planning.
Main story continues to be the failure of thermal power plants -- natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants -- which ERCOT counts on to be there when needed. They've failed. Of about 70,000 MW of thermal plants in ERCOT, ~25-30,000 MW have been out since Sunday night. Huge problem.
ERCOT started directing electric utilities (like Oncor or Austin Electic) to start rolling blackouts or involuntary emergency load shedding at 1:25am on Monday morning, with 10,500 MW shed during that late morning. That's ~2 million homes worth of load ercot.com/news/releases/…
Throughout Monday, many thermal power plants remained offline, as freeze-offs + fuel shortages in gas pipelines forced large numbers of natural gas plants offline. Many coal plants likely struggled as well w/frozen coal piles, but breakdown of thermal outages by fuel type unclear
1 nuclear reactor at South Texas Station (STS-1) also failed yesterday, NRC data confirms. That's 1,280 MW of lost capacity also (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tex…)
nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc…
In short, ALL generation types are getting hammered.
This is an equal opportunity "clusterfuzzle" as @gmbutts put it. So put aside your technology favoratism and tech tribalism for today please!
In sheer numbers, natural gas-fired units are largest thermal capacity in Texas, accounting for ~56,000 MW or 66% of total capacity ERCOT was planning to have available during winter peaking events. The large majority of outages during this event are also at gas-fired plants.
This #TexasFreeze event is FAR outside what ERCOT planned for. Their 2020/2021 Winter Resource Adequacy Assessment estimated a worst case scenario "Extreme Pead Load/Extremee Generation Outages" scenario that included 13,953 MW of total thermal outages ⤵️

ercot.com/content/wcm/li…
So in sum, total thermal generation outages of 25,000-30,000+ MW during the past 36 hours are more than DOUBLE what ERCOT considered an "Extreme Generation Outages During Extreme Peak Load" event! That is where the disaster is stemming from. (Wind underperformance is secondary).
Additionall, ERCOT predicted a seasonal peak demand of 57,699 MW with a "Extreme Peak Load" scenario adding 9,509 MW to that, for a total "extreme" scenario of 67,208 MW.

Reality: On Sunday night, ERCOT recorded a new peak winter 69,150 Megawatts between 6 and 7 p.m on 2/14!
So what is leading to widespread and long-lasting electricity outages in Texas?

1. Total electricity demand was ~3,000 MW over the "Extreme Peak Load" scenario ERCOT planned for.
2. Thermal power plant outages were 10,000-16,000 MW over the "Extreme Generator Outages" scenario.
Those two factors together account for the entirety of the 10,500-16,500 MW of emergency load shedding -- aka rolling (or not so rolling) blackouts that ERCOT has reported over the past 36 hours (see ercot.com/news/releases/… and ercot.com/news/releases/…)
Those of you who have heard that frozen wind turbines are to blame for this, think again. The extreme demand and thermal power plant outages are the principle cause.

Wind & solar have variously over & under-performed the ~6,200 MW ERCOT was planning for from these resources.
At times, wind + solar output was ~4,000-5,000 MW below what ERCOT was counting on them form, and that certainly is part of the story, but much smaller than the total thermal capacity outages, and also less prolonged. Much of the past 36 hours, wind+solar has exceeded 6,200 MW.
Finally, note that in addition to widespread blackouts from major generation failures, there are also localized power outages from transmission & distribution failures affecting numerous customers. Downed lines, overloaded transformers, etc. Networks also fail in extreme weather.
That's a basic summary of what's going on right now. Conditions are still bad in Texas. Last night was frigid and I've seen many reports of interior temps reaching the 40s in people's homes. That's terrible and can be deadly. We don't know the full toll of this emergency yet.

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More from @JesseJenkins

17 Feb
Update: it looks like the Texas Commission ordered ERCOT to be prepared to further increase electricity price cap from $9,000/MWh to up to 50x the spot price for natural gas, if necessary to keep incentive for gas generators to run.
That means is spot gas prices are above $180/MMBtu, the market price for electricity could rise above the $9,000/MWh cap that normally occurs during power supply scarcity. @EIAgov is reporting $350/MMBtu spot price in Houston today, so that may be in effect now! Image
Maybe they will do this retroactively? The current prices reported by ERCOT are still $9,000/MWh including adder to reflect demand shutoffs ongoing. ercot.com/content/cdr/ht…
Read 5 tweets
17 Feb
#TexasBlackout update, 9:24am Central time: the grid operator @ERCOT_ISO's latest data is STILL reporting over 30 GW of thermal generators offline. ERCOT's 'extreme' generator outage scenario planned for just 14 GW. Image
Wind power is also at only 1,000 MW, below ~1,500 MW ERCOT planned for in an 'extreme low wind' scenario. So that's not helping either, but a far smaller contribution to supply shortage than the 30,000 MW of thermal plant outages that have persisted since Monday morning. Image
Demand served now is 44,539 MW, well below ~69,000 MW of peak demand experienced on Sunday in similar temps as today. We can't know the counterfactual of how much demand there would be if supply was adequate, but its probably on order of 20,000 MW higher than current levels. Image
Read 11 tweets
16 Feb
This is not correct. The PUCT statement says NOTHING here about gas generators disconnecting. It says that the Commission directed ERCOT to raise electricity prices to $9000/MWh during demand disconnects to reflect the scarcity conditions underway. #TexasFreeze #TexasBlackout
ERCOT runs the state electricity market and operates the generation & distribution system. Early Sunday morning, as generators went offline due to various reasons, ERCOT initiated an emergency and directed distribution utilities to start demand shutoffs (shutting off substations)
The way ERCOT's electricity market is supposed to work, if there is involuntary demand shutoffs like this, the price should be at the maximum allowed price or price cap, which is $9,000/MWh (typical prices are $30-40/MWh for context).
Read 15 tweets
15 Feb
Update: I've been digging into ERCOT's opaquely labeled Hourly Resource Outage Capacity data here. Current hour report below. Here's how to read it:

TotalResourceMW = Thermal Geneators (gas/coal/nuclear) out right now / forecasted for next hours

1/
TotalIRRResourcesMW = portion of 'intermittent renewable resource' (IRR) capacity, aka wind & solar, that is not producing. This appears to be the total capacity of about 25.1 GW of wind + 3.8 GW solar minus current wind/solar output. This is NOT all forced outages (eg icing up)
ERCOT only counts on 6.1 GW of wind for winter peaking capacity and 269 MW of solar, so any number in the TotalIRRResourcesMW column < 22,531 means wind & solar are *overperforming* ERCOT planning expectations. So slight better than that at moment.
Read 6 tweets
15 Feb
Confidential info from a market participant in ERCOT: As of ~10 AM Eastern time, the system has ~30 GW of capacity offline, ~26 GW of thermal -- mostly natural gas which cant get fuel deliveries which are being priorities for heating loads -- and ~4 GW of wind due to icing.
That is a HUGE amount of gas capacity offline, about 30% of total ERCOT capacity and ~half of the natural gas fleet, according to Dec 2020 Capacity Demand and Reserves report here: ercot.com/content/wcm/li…

Devastating for reliability.
If we look at Winter planning scenerio ERCOT was using for 2026/27 (table below), they were planning for a peak demand of 67,512 "based on normal weather." Demand last night (in 2021 not 2026/27!) was 69,150

30,000 MW of outages right now = 42% of demand!
Read 18 tweets
14 Feb
As we talk about how to ensure a just & equitable transition to a net-zero emissions economy (see e.g. NASEM nap.edu/resource/25932…), I highly recommend @OPB's Timber Wars podcast, which documents a tumultous economic transition that shaped my home state opb.org/show/timberwar…
A transition to a net-zero emissions economy can drive a net increase of 0.5-1 million jobs by 2030 and 2-3 million by 2050, according to the @Princeton NET-ZERO AMERICA study, but that topline hides significant regional and local economic transformations & potential dislocations
I was too young to remember living through these days, but I grew up in the economic and physical landscape it left behind. This history is in my blood, in the names and historic economic centers of the places I grew up.
Read 6 tweets

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