Enjoyed talking to public radio listeners yesterday @TPRNews. A few highlights:
(1) Anyone who blames wind energy for this is wrong. (2) The main problem was failure in gas, coal, and nuke plants and with gas supply. tpr.org/environment/20…#txlege#txenergy 1/4
(3) Renewables generally, though not at all times, overperformed, including right now... #windenegy is a big reason power is back. (4) #Gas, for now, should not be considerd reliable. It's not always available when most needed. About 1/3 of the gas plants are *still* out. 2/4
(5) Get water and power flowing to people again, and then let's start looking for solutions. (6) Blaming accomplishes little but we need our state's leaders to accept responsibility. 3/4
Tonight, at 5:30 with very little notice, the Texas Public Utility Commission met. Those interested can listen here at the link below. Pay special attention to the exchange with a concerned Texan
They gave until Monday at 3pm for Retail Electric Providers (REPs) to ask to be a "Provider of Last Resort" (POLR). This is the backstop for when other REPs go out of business, as many will, their customer get transferred to larger REPs like @reliantenergy and @txuenergy
Customers don't get to choose their POLR and Reliant and TXU are pushing hard to be the POLR. Customers can switch later. There's a problem: there will be far less REPs to switch to after likely dozens of companies fail. @apoorv_bh89 called this:
A thread on the #ERCOT situation below but most importantly, if you're in TX, if you can, reduce usage today between 4-10 and again tomorrow between 5-9am.
More below on what's happening now, what's driving this kind of event and what needs to be done.
Every 6 months, ERCOT creates the SARA, seasonal assessment of resource adequacy. Their forecast was 24% lower than what will likely be peak demand today. They also had an extreme weather forecast. That was somehwere around 10% lower than what we're likley to see tomorrow.
Winter peak demand forecast was 57,699. Current day forecast is ~71,000MW and tomorrow around 75,000MW. Their extreme peak load forecast was for 67,208MW, obviously undershooting by a lot. ercot.com/news/releases/…