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Daniel Cohan Profile picture
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13 Jun, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Solar keeping the lights on in ERCOT today. Unusually tight and pricy for a warm but unexceptional June weekend afternoon, with winds slow. ImageImageImage
I’m seeing tweets of brief power outages in parts of Texas today as supply got tight and prices spiked. Does anyone have details on that?
Potential projected capacity shortage Monday, June 14 Image
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Daniel Cohan Profile picture
16 Jun
ERCOT debuted "extreme scenarios" in its summer SARA, but downplayed them without justification as "1-in-100" events. In fact, power plant outages are double their worst case and wind output low. Solar has saved us this week, but the grid seems unready for an August heat wave. ImageImage
It also seems erroneous to call Uri a one-in-100 event, as shown in this research by my colleague Prof. James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…
cee.rice.edu/news/was-febru… Image
So far, demand hasn't topped 70 GW (and fortunately stayed below forecasts today), but it could reach 80 GW in an August heat wave. We'll need most power plants back online and perhaps a few new solar farms to handle that. Image
Read 5 tweets
Daniel Cohan Profile picture
13 Apr
Back near $2,000/MWh on a mild spring day, with many of our power plants down for maintenance
Awfully tight for a mild spring day
Power plant outages have remained high since the February blackouts
ercot.com/content/wcm/ke…
Read 9 tweets
Daniel Cohan Profile picture
30 Mar
Article leads with two companies that went bust, before eventually noting that DOE loan guarantees netted a $2B profit, funded Tesla and other successes, and brought down the costs of solar, wind, and EVs. Sounds like a success to me. nytimes.com/2021/03/29/cli…
So Obama’s program netted $2B, helped turn wind and solar into thriving industries, boosted Tesla and EVs, and created jobs, but it's called "not particularly effective?” Sounds like a success worth emulating, rather than focusing on “Solyndra syndrome” yet again.
So the bill “didn’t have a big impact,” but it made it “cheaper to reduce emissions,” “created political support for doing so,” and “gave a jolt to EV manufacturing”?? Sounds like Dems are right to “go bigger — much bigger,” rather than get hung up on “Solyndra syndrome.”
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Cohan Profile picture
17 Feb
So many of the misleading narratives about the #TexasBlackout are missing a fundamental understanding of our electric power supply, and its mutual vulnerabilities with our gas systems. We're facing an _energy systems_ crisis, not just an electricity crisis.
To understand why, we can begin by seeing how ERCOT generates power on average. Nearly half is from gas. Wind topped coal last year for the first time. We have just 4 nuclear units, little hydro, and solar soaring from a small base.
That supply provides power for most but not all of the state. And the grid is contained within Texas, with very little transmission linking to the rest of the country or Mexico. So what happens in Texas, stays in Texas.
Read 31 tweets
Daniel Cohan Profile picture
16 Feb
Wind has been producing ~1.5 GW less than ERCOT expected for a winter peak event, solar ~1 GW more than expected, & nuclear running 100%. Meanwhile, >30 GW of fossil plants, mostly natural gas, went down. So of course the narrative is -- frozen wind turbines! 🤦‍♂️
#RollingBlackouts
See here for more details
#TexasFreeze #RollingBlackouts
Correction to my earlier tweet: It appears there was a temporary outage at one of the four nuclear units in Texas, around 6 am Monday, according to this post by @Atomicrod. Others remained at 100% output.
atomicinsights.com/south-texas-pr…
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Cohan Profile picture
15 Feb
ERCOT expected to get low capacity factors from wind and solar during winter peak demand. What it didn't expect is >20 GW of outages from thermal (mostly natural gas) power plants.
ercot.com/gridinfo/resou…
#TexasFreeze #RollingBlackouts
Note that ERCOT's worst case scenario, based on 2011 freeze, included 9,509 MW of outages, not the >20,000 MW that's down today. Much deeper freeze this time, and natural gas is scarce given heating needs.
ercot.com/content/wcm/li…
Although ERCOT only expected 269 MW of solar during winter peak demand, we may actually get over 3,000 MW at times today. That's more solar than existed in ERCOT two years ago.
#TexasFreeze #RollingBlackouts
Read 11 tweets

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