Thread by @douglewinenergy

Failure is a teacher but we seem to not be learning our lessons. Lots of repeat failures from Uri during Elliott:
- Permian gas output⬇️3.4bcf/day (>20%)
- Gas distribution failed many Texans
- Gas (& coal) plants had tons of problems which I detail in the 🧵below. 1/
#txlege

First, the gas system as @MichaelEWebber put it so well, showed its "flimsiness" again. Nationally outages were 16%. In the Permian it was 22%. Not good. To lose that much gas production with no snow & ice is not a good sign to say the least. #txenergy 2/ finance.yahoo.com/news/deadly-wi…

More on power plants later in the thread, but note that >40% of the coal plants in the state were offline at some point. Coal is costlier than wind & solar and it literally kills people, so if it's not there in extremes, why do we have it?!
#energytwitter

https://twitter.com/cohan_ds/status/1608183283602591744?s=20&t=wvPfLswUstsKbB-xygy0UA

ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas wrote to DOE asking for an emergency and said 11GW of gas & coal (purposefully not saying thermal bc nukes stayed on) was offline. After he sent the letter, that number went up to 12.5, far above ERCOT's expectations. #txlege 4/

https://twitter.com/douglewinenergy/status/1606775693697851393?s=20&t=wvPfLswUstsKbB-xygy0UA

It's unclear what caused Atmos' problems. Gov Abbott has ordered an investigation but I have little confidence we'll learn much. (Anyone heard the conclusion of the AG's Uri investigation? Right, me neither.) #txenergy 5/
texastribune.org/2022/12/28/gre…

The gas system is opaque by design. That puts the public at risk but #txlege is highly unlikely to do anything about it, as evidenced by the push back on ERCOT even keeping track of gas production. #energytwitter 6/ palestineherald.com/news/ercot-loo…

While the gas system is opaque, we have some insight into power plants. Credit to PUC for requiring reports of all outages w/in 3 days telling which plants were out & for how long. Should tell us why they were offline but about 50% say only "Other." Still, it's something. 7/

For those who think new gas will solve it: WattBridge built 10 brand new gas plants last year (pictured below). All of them went offline @ 4AM 12/23. Ten plants produced a combined zero megawatts for several hours during peak demand.
#txlege 8/
spglobal.com/marketintellig…

How did @nrgenergy do? Not well.

Of its 4 coal plants in Ft Bend County (Parish), ALL had major problems.
-Unit 8 has been offline since May.
-Unit 7 was offline most of 12/23 and 12/24.
-Unit 6 was offline all day 12/24.
-Unit 5—brave Unit 5—managed to produce @ 34%.

But wait, NRG has two other coal plants. One of them lost 75% of its ouput due to "inlet air problems," "fuel limitations," and "exhaust problems."

The other only lost ~10-20% of its ouput, so that's something I guess @nrgenergy can feel good about.
#energytwitter #txlege 10/

NRG also owns a lot of gas plants (according to their website, see below, they are 1% renewable).

How'd those do?

They have 5 units at Cedar Bayou in Chambers County. FOUR of them had outages. (Happily, these plants were running by the night of 12/23.)
#energytwitter 11/

@cpsenergy, over tons of community objections, built a coal plant in the late '00s, completing it in 2010. It has caused San Antonio's rates to go up. It didn't work during Uri & it didn't work (again) last week. Spruce 2 lost 285 MW (36%) of its rated capacity during Elliott.

At the same site, Calaveras Lake (do NOT eat fish out of that lake), CPS has two gas plants. They were 80% offline until 2pm on 12/23 (700MW offline). Two other CPS gas plants (Braunig) were down 224MW.

All told, about 1.3GW of gas & coal generation from CPS was offline.

A few others:
-Golden Spread (a co-op in the Panhandle) lost 60% of its gas power output. Reason: "fuel limitations."

-Constellation's Colorado Bend lost 610MW (~50%) due to "feedwater problems" and 3 units at Handley in Ft Worth had "fuel limitations" (cont)
#txlege 14/

-Ennis Power Station 361MW of gas 100% offline the entire event. Reason: "other"
-LCRA: Sam Gideon gas plants 70% (421MW) offline. Reason: "feedwater" & "other
- Calpine: Guadalupe, 3 of 6 gas units offline 12/23AM (533MW) reason: other.
- Talen's Barney Davis: 325MW out 12/24AM

Here's one to induce some flashbacks. Brazos Electric Co-op had 3 of 6 gas plants offline. Reason: "cold weather related."

It was all fixed right?

Vistra had half the output of 4 gas plants in Hays Co. offline mostly due to "fuel limitations."
#txenergy

There are more—many more—but that's all I've got time for now. It will be interesting for all of us to watch what kinds of questions are asked about all of these problems during the #txlege session and at future meetings of the @txrrc and @PUCTX.
#Txenergy

These power plant owners had to sign attestations that everything that broke during Uri was fixed. Were they right? If not, what are the consequences?

There were a lot of problems during a cold snap with no snow and ice. Doesn't bode well.
#txlege #energytwitter

The warning lights are flashing red. New gas plants won't solve this. Too much correlated risk. We've got to have better regs of gas production, pipelines, and fossil plants to protect the public. Need to focus on demand side, too. Long way to go. End/🧵 #txlege