DALLAS (AP) – The power outages that plague Texas in unprecedented Arctic temperatures expose weaknesses in an electricity system designed when the weather’s seasonal shifts were more consistent and predictable – conditions that most experts say no longer exist.
Of course, this is not just happening in Texas. Utilities from Minnesota to Mississippi impose glowing suspects to alleviate the tension on electric grids over the past few days under great demand. And power outages have become a ritual of summer and fall in California, partly to reduce the chances of fatal wildfires.
But the fact that more than 3 million Texans bones have lost their electricity in a state that prides itself on its energy independence underscores the seriousness of a problem that is occurring in the U.S. with increasing frequency.
WHAT HAPPENED IN TEXAS?
The drop in temperature led Texans to turn on their heaters, including many inefficient electrical ones. Demand has risen to levels usually only seen on the hottest summer days, when millions of air conditioners are running at full tilt.
The state has a generating capacity of about 67,000 megawatts in the winter compared to a peak capacity of about 86,000 megawatts in the summer. The gap between the winter and summer supply reflects that power stations go offline for months during months when demand is usually less intense and there is not as much energy coming from wind and solar sources.
But planning for this winter could not imagine that the temperature was cold enough to freeze natural gas supply lines and prevent wind turbines from turning. According to the Texas Electric Reliability Council, which operates the state’s power grid, there were 46,000 megawatts of power across the country by Wednesday – 28,000 from natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants and 18,000 from wind and solar power.
“Each of our sources of power has underperformed,” said Daniel Cohan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston. tweeted. ‘Each of them is vulnerable in different ways to extreme weather and climate events. None of them were adequately weathered or prepared for full weather and conditions. ‘
The staggering imbalance between supply and demand in Texas in Texas has also pushed prices from about $ 20 per megawatt hour to $ 9,000 per megawatt hour in the state’s freewheel wholesale market.
This raised the question of whether some generators buying in the wholesale market might have had a profit motive to prevent them from buying more natural gas and simply shutting it down sooner.
“We can not speculate about motivating people that way,” said ERCOT CEO Bill Magness. He added that generators told them they were doing everything possible to supply power.
WHY IS THE STATE NOT READY?
Gas-fired plants and wind turbines can be protected from winter weather – this is often done in colder, northern states. The problem arose in Texas after a freeze in 2011 that also led to downtime and power outages. A national group for electrical industries has developed overwintering guidelines that operators must follow, but this is strictly voluntary and also requires expensive investments in equipment and other necessary measures.
ERCOT official Dan Woodfin said the upgrades to the plant after 2011 limited the downtime during a similarly cold moment in 2018, but this week’s weather was “more extreme”.
Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, dismissed ERCOT’s claim that freezing point was unpredictable this week.
“This is nonsense,” he said. ‘Every eight to ten years we have very bad winters. This is not a surprise. ”
In California last week, regulators ordered the state’s three major utilities to increase their power supply and possibly improve plants to avoid another supply shortage like the one that erupted in California six months ago. and led to a continuous effect on about 500,000 people for several hours at a time.
“One big difference is that leadership in California realizes that climate change is happening, but that does not appear to be the case in Texas,” said Severin Borenstein, a professor of business administration and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. has been studying power supply issues for over 20 years.
WHY THE NEED TO ROLL BLACKOUTS?
Net operators say the outflow of power outages is a last resort when demand for power overwhelms supply and threatens to create a wider collapse of the entire power system.
Usually utilities obscure certain blocks or zones before turning off the power to another area, then another. Areas with hospitals, fire stations, water treatment plants and other important facilities are often spared.
By deploying the eclipse, it’s not supposed to be a neighborhood going an unfairly long time without power, but that was not always the case this week in Texas. Some areas never lost power, while others were darkened for 12 hours or longer because the temperature dropped in the single digits.
WHEN DO THEY APPEAR?
Rollovers are usually caused when reserves fall below a certain level. In Texas, just as in California in August last year, network operators say utilities need to reduce the burden on the entire system, and it is up to the utility industry to decide how to do it.
In Texas, the network operators and utilities knew at least a week of the dire weather forecast this week. Last weekend, they called for power savings, and ERCOT tweeted that residents “should pull out the new, new appliances you bought during the pandemic and use them only once.”
The residents’ light-hearted attempts at humor were lost, of which little or no was said in advance when their homes would lose power. Once the outages started, some utilities could not provide information on how long they would last.
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO REDUCE ROLLING BLACKOUTS?
Start with the obvious steps: When power companies or network operators warn that there are problems with the arrival, turn off your thermostat and avoid using large appliances. Of course, these steps are sometimes easier said than done, especially during record temperatures.
As elsewhere, Texans may be more willing to adjust their thermostats a few more notches if regulators set up a system that would require households to pay higher prices during periods of peak demand and lower rates at other times.
“People are setting up their furnaces now because there is no financial incentive for them not to do so,” Borenstein said.
Experts also say more fundamental – and costly – changes need to be made. Generators must insulate pipelines and other equipment. Investments in storing and distributing electricity will help. Stricter building codes would make homes in places like Texas better insulated against the cold.
Texas, which has a network that is largely disconnected from others to avoid federal regulations, may need to reconsider the thing-alone strategy. There may be pressure on the state to require generators to keep more plants in reserves for times of peak demand, a move he has resisted so far.
“The system as we built it does not meet the standards we would like to see,” said Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “We need to do a better job. If it pays more for energy to have more reliability, it’s a conversation we’ll have to have. ”
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Koenig reported from Dallas, Liedtke reported from San Ramon, California. Paul Weber of the AP contributed to this story from Austin, Texas.