It works most years.

Short and to the point.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-gov-greg-abbott-tells-224945035.html

Charlie

100%

Thats what I've been asking.... What power does Ercot have over power plants. Apparently they didn't have any.... pointing fingers doesn't get us anywhere. We know what the cause was, and it looks like Abbott will handle it. Lets go

I thought we wanted less government regulation?
THF is a confusing group.

Yep, engineers don't always make good business decisions and bean counters don't always make good engineering decisions. We'll see what shakes out of this, hopefully something productive that benefits consumers. I'm not going to hold my breath...

In this case, I guess you have to decide between feeling less regulated or warm and not thirsty.

Charlie

Yep. We had 4 days of no power due to a winter storm that has happened once in 37 years and people want to find a scape goat and spend billions of dollars.

Maybe people will pick up an extra case of water here and there to put away from now on.

Preach capitalism and self reliance but don't know what to do when it gets cold out and the heater kicks off.

From Merriam Webster... Turbine = a rotary engine actuated by the reaction or impulse or both of a current of fluid (such as water, steam, or air) subject to pressure and usually made with a series of curved vanes on a central rotating spindle.

Just sayin...

Charlie

I hired in with a fella from Iran. We were taking a field trip one day during training with one of the rotating equipment engineers. He took us up on one of the big compressor decks with a machine that ran on 1700# steam and mentions the "turbine cap". I looked at the guy from Iran and said "I bet you know quite a bit about those turbine caps..." I'm glad he has a good sense of humor.

Atmos Energy was sending out warnings that users needed to turn down the thermostats on heating units and water heaters. That in in itself was a warning that the natural gas delivery system was about to get into big trouble.

Next, the nuclear plants were having to slow out put because of cooling water problems, the water was freezing up. I believe it was said the Matagorda Bay Nuclear power plant was shutdown.

BIL said every form of energy failed us. NG was the biggest failure, followed by coal.... I think energy diversity is a good thing. We don't want to have all our eggs in one basket.

Build nuclear.

Of what was up and running what percentage of capacity of each was actually available...

Energy diversity is only as good as the infrastructure and delivery ... It's pointless to do 1/5 right. No such thing as a blanket checks. Appropriate budget according, Dont bow to BS Subsidies.

The government need to protect us from this horror ever happening again...

Its the state grid........ of course government is gonna be involved.....

I could tell it was fake just from reading it.

As mentioned in the link, 2011 was alot of fun as well, remember the introduction of Cobblestone ice? They made alot of noise after, but did nothing. I recall it vividly as it was #1 son's first TYHP deer hunt and we spent the weekend in the Lexington area sleeping in my Avalanche with a tent on it. That was some kind of cold...

Charlie

I don’t remember It.

I think a lot of folks are confusing the NG failure part of this. NG fired power plants were up and running, and stayed up and running to my knowledge. That's what they are built to do, how they are designed. That's one of the reasons why there are so many Gas Turbine Generators in each one of these plants. It's not just for output, but also for reliability purposes. I have not yet seen or heard of any cooling towers in these plants freezing up causing plants to shut in (talking about NG fired PP's, not refineries etc). Was there ice on the cooling towers, yes. That's a regular occurrence in Winter, but the water still flows (like leaving your faucets on at your house but on a MUCH larger scale) and continues to get circulated. Now if I'm proven wrong on this after this weather event, then I'll own it.

What I do know is that there was a failure of our NG delivery systems. NG fired power plants don't have a lot of on-site storage, and relies on gas to be piped in. Piping refined/dry gas in is not a problem, it doesn't freeze like wet gas can that you're pulling out of the ground for processing. The problem here is that some unrefined wet gas in piping/valves etc did freeze. That created a shortage of gas to feed the turbines in the power plants. Using the available gas to warm people's homes took priority over feeding power plants, so of course the operators had to reduce electrical output due to decreased feed gas.

The problem wasn't the Winterization of NG fired power plants overall (yes there will always be something to freeze up & fix, but the plant stays running). The problem was with our NG delivery systems, that's where we need to focus our Winterization efforts and money going forward. I wrote all of this because a lot of folks keep lumping NG fired power plants and NG delivery system failures all together and say things like "gas failed us". We have plenty of NG resources in the ground. What we need are more NG fired power plants to keep up with our population increase, and a bigger/better prepared NG delivery system. Wind & Solar needs to only be used as a cushion to our more reliable resources.