-8c in texas ...thats gotta be a marketing topic?

[oneoff]

So having too much electricity is the problem? You have been telling us the opposite, that we wont have enough! Make up your mind.

Cant you just turn down some gas or other dispatchable sources when there are lots of renewable sources and ramp up the other sources when renewables are low? That's what system operators are designing their systems to do. I am assuming they have this figured out at the AESO in Alberta?

But don't let that stop you and your friends on Agrisilly blaming renewables every time the power goes out. Even on systems where there are hardly any renewables. LOL

An emphatic "No". to ham stringing base load production. In practice what happens is dispatchable sources schedule maintenance periods; or are decommissioned or not able to be brought back online; especially on short notice. They become "Uneconomic"
Supposedly not needed. Until found absolutely essential. Like WTK happened?

If you want to know why the natural gas system failed in Texas; numerous operators from cooler to colder climates could diagnose the problem in an instant. Freeze ups from wellhead to point of use occur within hours of temperature changes both a bit above and below the freezing point (0C or 32F). The cure is relatively minute methanol injections. Much preferably...before the fact.

For those who need to be told more than once. Prevention of the problem is so much easier; unless never needed. Screw up and the Texas situation happens. It is not an accident; it can be for seen; even guaranteed at first temperature changes through and near the freezing point of collecting moisture; and first at points of gas flow restriction .

This provides a lesson for renewable energy promoters too. No energy for periods where there is no wind or sun. Ergo imminent problems if not fully prepared. That shouldn't be on heads of primary base load producers. Rest of intermittent electrical supply possibility also can't be guaranteed by anyone because of obvious valid reasons.
Again; it should be up to those who claim they can produce so much cheaper. Let them foot the bill and be responsible for any addiditional unreliability they add to participation in the grid. After all they claim to be able to be showing the profits; and should be responsible for added complications of systems.

[oneoff]

Weather risk and storm damage is a risk factor in every electrical system. There was lots of risk before wind and solar systems ever came into the picture.

See above post.... It needs to be read at least another time.

[chuckChuck]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/texas-power-outages-alberta-1.5917052 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/texas-power-outages-alberta-1.5917052

Lessons for Alberta from the Texas power blackout

Everything is bigger in Texas, even the power market spikes
Joshua Rhodes and Blake Shaffer · for CBC News · Posted: Feb 17, 2021 2:11 PM MT | Last Updated: February 17

This column is an opinion from Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin, and Blake Shaffer, a professor at the University of Calgary.

The frigid Arctic air that gripped Alberta for much of the last two weeks has descended on the U.S. Deep South. But unlike Alberta, Texas and its surrounding regions aren't designed for this type of weather.

Buildings are designed to shed heat, not keep it in. Power systems are built to meet the extreme peaks of sweltering summer heat, not mid-winter cold.

Pushed to the brink, with record-breaking demand for this time of year coupled with power supply failures across the spectrum of fuel types, the Texas grid was forced to shut off pockets of power to millions of consumers around the state in an effort to ration available supply and avoid a catastrophic, system-wide blackout.

In short, it's an event that will be discussed for decades by electricity traders. It's the stuff of nightmares for power market designers and grid operators, and a dangerous situation for millions of Texans without heat.

So what happened? Who's to blame? And what lessons can Alberta take from this event?
What happened in Texas

In essence, the situation in Texas came down to classic supply and demand.

At one point, all 254 counties in the state of Texas were under winter storm warnings. These historic, state-wide, cold temperatures led to record demand for energy that drove electricity prices from their typical mid-$30s into the thousands of dollars per megawatt-hour, and natural gas from $3 to several hundred dollars per MMBtu.

When there still wasn't enough supply, the electricity grid had to initiate rotating outages that have lasted for days, leaving many Texans in the cold.

On paper, Texas had the capacity to manage this record demand. But the Texas grid is built for summer: it measures its reserve margins and resource adequacy against being able to provide electricity on hot summer afternoons when the entire state is demanding power for air conditioning.

One major takeaway from this experience is how ill-prepared Texas's infrastructure is for these extreme cold events, and how that differs from their ability to meet summer peaks.
Freezing temperatures and a power system not designed for them resulted in a lack of gas supply and soaring natural gas prices during the Texas power outage. (Blake Shaffer)

Simply put, Texas's infrastructure doesn't invest in the type of insulation and cold weather protection that is the norm in Alberta — because by and large, they rarely need it.

In the end, many natural gas wells and other infrastructure froze in Texas and surrounding regions, limiting supply in this time of high demand. Other thermal assets, such as coal and natural gas power plants, also experienced issues with frozen water intakes, and some wind capacity has been lost to icing.

This squeeze on not just one, but two, energy sectors (gas and electricity) that are closely interconnected has pushed both of them beyond what they were designed to handle, causing both to fail.

It foreshadows the future for Alberta. We skated through our recent cold snap with nary a suggestion of system emergency, because our fuel delivery and power infrastructure is built for those types of extremes. However, it may be a far different story when we have to grapple with temperatures in the 30 C and even 40 C range in summers to come.
Who's to blame?

It's only natural in the aftermath of a serious event like the Texas power outage is that people will be quick to seek and assign blame. Many are all too eager to find any excuse to reinforce their pre-existing notions about the unreliability of wind, blaming the outages on a dearth of wind power.

But answers aren't so simple, and it will take time to fully dissect this event.

What we do know is that wind performed, for the most part, roughly as expected: a small fraction of its maximum capability, but roughly in line with what the Texas system counts on for reliability purposes in the winter.

Natural gas, oft-touted for its ability to provide reliability in power grids with large shares of renewables, was beset with struggles.

Freezing temps led to shut-in production in a system not designed for these temperatures. This resulted in a lack of gas supply and soaring natural gas prices — in some cases 100 times typical pricing. During the Texas outage event, over 30,000 MW of thermal power plants, or 35 per cent of thermal power capacity, was offline.
Alberta and Texas put their faith in the market when it comes to the power grid. Over the years, this has worked reasonably well. Alberta’s and Texas’s power markets tend to result in lower — but more volatile — prices. (Blake Shaffer)

In short, no single fuel is to blame, nor would a different market design have saved the day. Texas ended up in the proverbial perfect storm of having both an extreme demand shock and correlated supply failures at the same time.

Takeaways for Alberta

Alberta and Texas share many similarities in their power grids.

Both are historically based around fossil fuel generation, with recently growing shares of wind and solar. Both have limited electrical connections to their neighbours, leaving it largely up to themselves to manage their reliability. And both operate, uniquely in North America, under what is called an "energy-only" market — paying competitive generators solely for the energy they produce.

While the rest of the continent adds a layer of capacity payments to ensure sufficient power generating capability to keep the lights on, or relies on a traditional, regulated system of utilities (over-)building to meet their customers needs, Alberta and Texas put their faith in the market, letting wholesale power prices rise to what may seem at times astronomical levels.

more.....

[jazz]

There is no lesson for Ab from Texas. What an idiotic article. Ab has never had a province wide grid meltdown. The NG facilities are all winterized and coal is at the ready when needed. There are interconnections to BC and Sask and MB through Sask.

And wisely Ab has kept its idiotic green virtue signaling projects at a minimum.

The lesson is for all the woke crowd pushing net zero and renewables. Adding any type of renewable generation reliant on weather and susceptible to it at the same time makes it much more fragile and its the stupidest thing we could ever do.

[chuckChuck]

IN OTHER WORDS
Anything that generates power only when the sun shines or wind blows and doesn’t work in an ice storm , etc , can contribute nothing to solutions required.

System operators and designers know very well that solar and wind are intermittent and design enough back up into the system to cover off intermittent renewables.

What happened in Texas is demand went through the roof and the fossil fuel sources failed and wind and solar were still putting out a predictably small winter amount.

So the reality is the Texas was not prepared for an extreme winter weather event. Alberta on the other hand is well prepared for winter.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

So the reality is the Texas was not prepared for an extreme winter weather event. Alberta on the other hand is well prepared for winter.

You are getting so close to having an epiphany.
Can you think of any reason why any region of the globe would be finding themselves unprepared for record cold temperatures, and unseasonable winter conditions?
Is there any theory that has been widely touted in recent decades that would make everyone complacent that these types of events are not going to occur now or into the future?
In fact, can you think of any widely held "beliefs" that might have caused most to be preparing for the exact opposite phenomenon?
Do you think if those who subscribed to this new theory had studied weather history, instead of wasting all of their resources and attention creating and relying on future climate models, they might have thought it prudent to prepare for weather such as this?

At some point, beliefs have to be tested against reality. That just occured for many, too early to know if the lessons will be learned.

[oneoff]

You are getting so close to having an epiphany.
Can you think of any reason why any region of the globe would be finding themselves unprepared for record cold temperatures, and unseasonable winter conditions?
Is there any theory that has been widely touted in recent decades that would make everyone complacent that these types of events are not going to occur now or into the future?
In fact, can you think of any widely held "beliefs" that might have caused most to be preparing for the exact opposite phenomenon?
Do you think if those who subscribed to this new theory had studied weather history, instead of wasting all of their resources and attention creating and relying on future climate models, they might have thought it prudent to prepare for weather such as this?

At some point, beliefs have to be tested against reality. That just occured for many, too early to know if the lessons will be learned.

Right on.........and an additional note that Sask has invested in gas caverns since 1964. Too bad renewables don't have a backup plan when all gas generation is caused to be ceased be in less than a decade.
Looks like promoters haven't even heard of planning.

[checking]

Many thanks for the picture.


The rest of the story was that the Texan's light sabre discharged overnight, and that he found himself sealed inside the frozen carcass with no way out. Preparing for inevitable death his mind wandered to all the good and poor decisions he had made in his life. One memory he struck on was how many times he had voted Republican in his life. He felt so small he crawled out the carcasses a**hole.

[Hamloc]

You are getting so close to having an epiphany.
Can you think of any reason why any region of the globe would be finding themselves unprepared for record cold temperatures, and unseasonable winter conditions?
Is there any theory that has been widely touted in recent decades that would make everyone complacent that these types of events are not going to occur now or into the future?
In fact, can you think of any widely held "beliefs" that might have caused most to be preparing for the exact opposite phenomenon?
Do you think if those who subscribed to this new theory had studied weather history, instead of wasting all of their resources and attention creating and relying on future climate models, they might have thought it prudent to prepare for weather such as this?

At some point, beliefs have to be tested against reality. That just occured for many, too early to know if the lessons will be learned.

I think what is instructive here is that many media articles blame the fact that Texas has a basically private for profit generation system and that greed kept these companies from properly preparing for cold weather. They were more worried about profits according to some articles. Now water lines are freezing and water treatment facilities are not functioning so boil water advisories have went out. Personally I think it is fairly simple as AB5 suggests, it is damn cold in Texas and everybody believed that cold weather was a thing of the past!

[Guest]

Poor climatards are wringing their hands in dismay with all the coverage Texas “prairie winter” is getting