The UT-lead report on the impact of Winter Storm Uri on the @ERCOT_ISO grid has been released!

The report was funded by @PUCTX and allowed for a deeper look at what happened than has been previously made public.

energy.utexas.edu/ercot-blackout… A few things I found most interesting:

The weather forecast models were all over the place leading up to the event, and the picture of how bad things were going to get were not clear until just before.

Things looking tight this afternoon. When temps in major TX cities hit high 90s at the same time is when the ERCOT grid typically faces its highest levels of stress. Things look a bit better now, but we do appear to be down about 9,000 MW of thermal generation today.

ERCOT released data about generator outages by fuel type, clarifying some of the confusion around this original chart. Using a backcast (what would have been produced given actual wind speeds and sunlight), this chart shows how much of each fuel type "didn't show up" during Winter Storm Uri in ERCOT.

Unpopular take: Scarcity prices in electricity markets aren’t designed to bring more power plants on in real-time, the energy market auction does that. Scarcity prices are meant to be long-term signals to build new power plants. Scarcity prices are generally set by reserves levels, as reserves drop, scarcity prices get higher. In ERCOT, when reserves get below 2000 MW, scarcity price adders push wholesale market prices to market cap of $9k/MWh.

ERCOT, the Q&A thread [so far].

Q: What is going on?
A: The current weather event in Texas is beyond anything that we have experienced in modern memory. I don’t recall another time when all 254 counties in TX were under a winter storm warning. 1/ Q: Why is the power out?
A: The electricity grid has to be balanced at all times. Every bit of electricity that is being consumed has to essentially be instantly generated in a power plant (or discharged from a battery)... 2/

Wonk city thread on *my* latest paper w/ @SamC_Johnson (he did the work & wrote it) & @MichaelEWebber

Understanding the impact of non-synchronous wind and solar generation on grid stability and identifying mitigation pathways

Free for 35 more days! 1/15

authors.elsevier.com/a/1aNOk15eiezx… tl;dr

We modeled high levels (>90% energy) of RE in ERCOT. More renewables = lower system inertia, but manageable. Current system (w/ inertia constraint) can get up to 80% RE w/o problems, further with system changes. 2/15

Hey everyone! New paper alert: “Evaluating rotational inertia as a component of grid reliability with high penetrations of variable renewable energy” Free for 40ish more days! h/t to 1st author @SamC_Johnson for doing all the work ;) @MichaelEWebber 1/15
authors.elsevier.com/c/1Z5hA1H~c~7Y… In this paper we looked at how large amounts of renewable energy on the grid could run into inertial constraints and how the grid might respond under such circumstances. We use a PLEXOS model of the @ERCOT_ISO as a case-study. 2/15

Is it finally #infrastructure week?? As part of the current @EnergyUT study: The Energy Infrastructure of the Future, we have started compiling the value of the current energy system. Some things that might be useful in thinking about the #GND First, the electricity sector. To rebuild the current (~2016) system tech for tech would cost about $5T, but that system is more than halfway depreciated, so it will need investment even for BAU. Also, we would likely not rebuild exact as-is going forward (coal, etc.)

An energy and economics themed thread on biomass in Deep East Texas, the part of Texas I call home.

You know electricity demand is high in Texas when the biomass plant is running!

It’s high heat rate makes it expensive to operate, so it doesn’t run that often. This 100MW @SouthernCompany biomass plant runs mainly off of forestry product residue - wood that has been chipped into mulch-sized pieces.