Ercot -- Electrical reliabilty council of Texas

[FredC]

If you have heard about of the rolling black outs in Texas you may have heard we did not have enough generating capacity, that may be wrong. We have solar farms that did not produce anything with heavy overcast during the first part of the storm then frozen up wind mills , but the real problem was circuit breakers taking out natural gas , coal and nuclear power plants. Probably cascaded at 2:30 in the morning. 30,000 megawatts of capacity off line and having to restart generation. FEDs have been clamoring for the locals to shut down more coal plants remember us when they push for more electric cars, you will need electrical capacity to replace all the gas pumps.


I am typing in the dark with the router and internet computer running on backups. Got in from spending 2 hours getting water to the cattle after dark to a dark house and ate cold pizza. Power came on about 6:15 this morning and was going to take a shower, no water. AARRGG!!!
Fed the cattle this morning but could only bust up the ice on the troughs as the hose that I would have given them water with is frozen up besides only a trickle is coming out. Would have tried to track the pigs with the snow on the ground but no time. I know I have many typing errors do do not quote me i will fix them when the lights come back on.

Corrected the flagrant errors.

[Whig]

God be with you Fred during these trying times of global warming effects. Thank God the Republican governors are saving us all! (NOT!)

Hope your water heats up quickly and you have no further problems.

[FredC]

AUSTIN, TX, Feb. 15, 2021 – The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is beginning to restore some of the power lost due to the winter weather event in Texas.

As of 4 p.m., approximately 2,500 MW of load is in the process of being restored – enough power to serve 500,000 households.

"ERCOT and Texas electric companies have been able to restore service to hundreds of thousands of households today, but we know there are many people who are still waiting," said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness. "It’s also important to remember that severe weather, mainly frigid temperatures, is expected to continue, so we’re not out of the woods."

At this time, the grid operator is instructing transmission owners to shed approximately 14,000 MW of load, down from 16,500 MW earlier today.

At approximately 1:25 a.m. this morning, ERCOT entered its third and highest level of emergency operations because electric demand is exceeding the available supply. Controlled outages are occurring to protect the electric grid from uncontrolled, cascading outages.

While the grid operator was already contending with frozen wind turbines and limited gas supplies to generating units on Feb. 14, a significant number of additional generating units tripped offline when the weather worsened overnight.

Approximately 34,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this event.

Controlled outages will likely last throughout the evening and into tomorrow as ERCOT works to restore the electric system to normal operations.
Copied and pasted from the Ercot web site.

So some of the gas plants went off line because of lack of natural gas. WHAT! I can look out the window and see dozens of flares from wasted gas at night. If you look at night time photos of this region you will see an arc of light below San Antonio millions of cubic feet of gas are flared each day because the operators could not be bothered to pipe it to the distribution lines.
No mention was made of the nuclear plant that went off line, I know they had to SCRAM the reactor when the breakers tripped but sure how long it takes to get it safely back on line. I wish ercot or somebody would list which plants are off line, when they are expected back but I guess they are too busy scrambling to do that. I do not even know which nuclear plant went off line.
This could be you next with hackers, loss of old plants, unreliable green energy, distribution bottle necks and increasing load form electric cars. I was moving cows last Friday and while under the 475KV transmission line i could hear the lines humming. Normally you just hear the insulators crackling with leakage on humid days. Could tell the lines were really loaded.

[butlersrangers]

"Fred" - Texas weather, temperatures, and power-outages are on the National News.

I hope things get back to normal for the people of Texas and other parts of the South, real quick!

Hopefully, the public gains a better awareness of the complexity of good energy policy, the need for diverse energy sources, redundancy in the system, and assuring American Energy Independence.

[FredC]

The photo shows me carrying water from the shop to the cattle pens yesterday morning, got the hose thawed last night and they drank a couple hundred gallons. Blue trace on the bottom shows when the security camera had power, looks like 50% to me. Talked to the president of the rural water supply this morning and they have no idea when we will get water.

[butlersrangers]

Gosh Fred, there will be a new KCA nickname for you: "Water Boy" !

When we had horses, I use to hate long stretches of sub-zero weather. It meant that the barn hydrant might freeze-up and having to carry water buckets from the house.

Even worse was losing the well pump with power outages. That meant filling 'Jerry-Cans' at the closest water supply, driving them home and lugging them to the barn.

I can only begin to understand the ordeal you are going through - More work and the pay's the same!

Our wind was out of the East for part of last night. Lake Huron put 15 inches of snow in our driveway.

We had "Packzi Power" for our Snow Shoveling this morning!

[FredC]

Forgot about our Kiobassa Brand sausage. Polish family here that makes it. Should be a good calorie source also, besides tasting good. If we had dependable power last week I would have put some in the crock pot with sauerkraut, it makes pretty good sandwiches. Power here has been on since 4:30 this morning and is on more than not lately. Water came back yesterday a 4:00PM.
Not sure if I will start machining as the power may not be completely dependable yet. Maybe assemble parts today.

Fed the cattle from the county road as my dirt roads in the ranch are pretty much impassable. Neighbor drove by I asked how he was doing " Lovely" was his answer, "Never better" was my reply. Getting acclimated and the cold does not feel as bad, plus there is some thing to your observations about our Texas cold. The humidity and in the early instance blowing mist made it hard. Not nearly as bad when it is was 10F with the fluffy dry snow. You take for granted flipping a switch will turn the lights on and opening the tap and water comes out. It is bad when you open the tap and here a sucking sound, negative water pressure!

I only shoveled about 40 feet of sidewalk to the driveway and apartment. Had a flat steel shovel that the snow stuck to. I guess you professionals have better equipment. Man that was a lot of snow you had there, BR. 25 years ago I had some training in Elmira NY on the new lathe and it was educational listening how they dealt with snow. I especially remember one fellow talking about dumping it in his neighbor's back yard with a front end loader. Sounded like fun and games!

[butlersrangers]

The Detroit area does not generally get much snow. IMHO - It is all about wind direction and temperature.

If Lake Huron is 'open water' (not frozen over) and the wind comes out of the East or North-East, we can get serious snow.

If the wind is out of the West or South-West, (normally it is), Lake Michigan keeps the severe weather on the west-side of the state and Ohio seems to get punished!

Now Buffalo and Schenectady, N.Y., are "snow machines". Their people know snow!

There are numerous locales in Northern Michigan that are in the "300 Club". My parents were from one of those areas, with over 300 inches of annual snowfall. As a kid, I was jealous of my cousins, who lived up there!

[FredC]

In the week or 2 that I was in New York the term "lake effect snow" was used quite often in the weather forecasts.

[butlersrangers]

Years ago, my wife and I were in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in November. It was near freezing and we saw three snow flakes.

In Buffalo, N.Y., maybe 17 miles away as the crow flies, they were getting 24 inches of snow!