Texas ’power grid has been put in the national spotlight amid a deadly winter storm that left 2.7 million homes without electricity since Wednesday morning.
The grid that normally carries electricity to Soviet homes and businesses under cold temperatures, causing unexpected blackouts.
In the midst of the chaos, here are five important things to know about the state’s power grid.
It is almost completely isolated from other networks
There are three major energy networks in the continental United States: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection.
The first two networks provide power to large parts of the country, while the Texas network provides power exclusively to Lone Star State. This also means that Texas receives very little of its power beyond state lines.
“There are only a few gigawatts of what we call direct current links to other parts of the network,” said Carey King, deputy director of the University of Texas at the Austin Energy Institute.
Wade Schauer, director of research for energy and renewable energy in the Americas at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting and research firm, he said on the hill that in the networks of other countries in the country, “there have been quite large energy transfers” during the current crisis.
“There’s no real capacity to import a lot of energy into the ERCOT grid,” Schauer said, referring to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the nonprofit corporation that manages the grid’s energy flow.
Only a few portions of Texas remain outside the ERCOT system.
Local news have reported that the city of El Paso, where power is supplied by Western Interconnect, has been largely spared from disruptions facing other parts of the state.
“If these residents were to experience essentially the same time for the most part and not have as many power outages, it would be good information to know the possible vulnerability of the ERCOT network,” King said.
It is subject to less federal regulation
Because the Texas power grid only operates in the state, it is not subject to the oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a government body that regulates interstate transmission.
This makes Texas an atypical value in terms of FERC rules.
Former Governor of Texas Rick Perry
Rick Perry PENDING ENERGY: Five Things to Know About Texas Tension Power Grid | Biden Honeymoon with Green Groups Electric Vehicles Are Ready to Help Biden Fight the Climate Five Things You Need to Know About Texas Power Grid Voltage Rick Perry: “Jeans would be without electricity for longer” to “keep out the federal government” MORE (R), who served as Secretary of Energy during the Trump administration, suggested this week that compensation is worthwhile, even with the current power outages at low-freezing temperatures.
He said the Texans “would be without electricity for more than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” though blog post where he made the observation, he said the comment was made “partly rhetorically.”
Schauer of Wood Mackenzie noted that markets in other states have mechanisms in place to help ensure that companies that generate electricity can meet demand during times of peak intensity, such as extreme weather events.
“Other markets have performance penalties and things that require generators to be available for a certain amount of time on peak winter days, and that’s not really a feature of the ERCOT market,” he said.
The network is not well equipped to withstand low temperatures
Many Texas facilities are not equipped with the same type of insulation that could be found in the northern states.
Wind turbines do not overwinter like those in the northern U.S., while machinery for other power sources is not as isolated, making water intake a problem in cold temperatures.
Making these upgrades could come at a substantial cost.
“It’s about how much investment to protect the grid from something that would be very unlikely. And that kind of cold in Texas would be very unlikely, but here we are,” said Thomas Overbye, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M University College Station.
Varun Rai, director of the University of Texas at the Austin Energy Institute, said more needs to be done to ensure the state is prepared for such storms. Equipment must be kept warm, regular maintenance is needed to prevent trees from falling, and houses must be properly insulated, he said.
“These kinds of events are actually a routine event every year in those parts of the country,” Rai said, referring to the northeast and midwest. “It is entirely possible to maintain the operation of a network on a very large scale.”
Dependence on natural gas helped fuel the lack of energy
Natural gas is Texas ’largest energy source, accounting for 40 percent of the state’s energy.
But in a region ill-prepared for single-digit temperatures, this source of energy was trapped in an unfortunate cycle.
Natural gas producers need electricity to run compressors, but electrical systems were forced by the cold weather and lack of natural gas.
“Another thing this event has brought home is the interdependence of our electricity and natural gas systems. We get most of our electricity from natural gas and we need electricity to run natural gas systems, and both they’re very tense from the cold, ”Daniel Cohan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, told The Hill earlier.
“You have the two systems that need each other to work and you both experience an increase in demand and a loss of supply at the same time,” he said. “This is really a story of how fragile systems can be when they depend so much on natural gas in an extreme weather case.”
Other fuel sources have also had problems in the cold weather, with some ice-covered wind turbines due to the lack of protections common in other parts of the country.
However, the renewable source struggled much less than natural gas.
Wind production fell 1 gigawatt below the 6 gigawatts officials predicted would be needed to meet winter demand, while coal, natural gas and core electricity fell 30 gigawatts below more than 60 gigawatts. which was expected to be delivered.
Some critics, especially Republicans, have tried to blame renewable energy for power outages.
“Our wind and our lot went out,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) told Fox News. “This pushed Texas into a situation where it lacked power at the state level. … It just shows that fossil fuel is needed.”
His statements provoked reactions contrary to the importance of the contribution of other fuel sources to the situation in Texas.
“I’m offline for a few days and I’m back to a GOP government that is to blame for policies that it hasn’t even implemented for its own failures,” he replied on Twitter. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-CortezBoebert responds to criticism over gun storage in Zoom background On The Money: Biden faces left-wing reaction on student loans | Where are the things to the extent of relief from COVID-19 | Retail Sales Bounce Five Things You Need to Know About Texas Power Grid Voltage MORE (DN.Y.), referring to Abbott’s invocation of the Green New Deal in his critiques of renewable energy.
The state had winter blackouts in 1989 and 2011
It’s not the first time Texas has dealt with continued blackouts.
The 1989 blackouts occurred in the midst of a cold spell in December, while the 2011 blackouts took place during the first week of February, when wind and unstabilized cold temperatures affected Texas and neighboring New Mexico.
In total, approximately 1.3 million power customers were out of service in the peak of the 2011 event on February 2 and a total of 4.4 million were affected from February 2-4.
In a report after the 2011 blackouts, FERC and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation recommended measures that included increased wintering measures.
He report he said electricity generating companies operating within the ERCOT system “did not adequately prepare for winter”, citing inadequate insulation and a failure in training operators and maintenance personnel in winter preparations.
Rai said it is not clear exactly how many recommendations in this report were adopted, but that this week’s results indicate that more needs to be done.
“If these recommendations were implemented and taken seriously on a large scale and with strict implementation … you would still see some disruptions,” he said.
“But it is how massive and profound the failure has been. If these recommendations were taken seriously and more proactive work was done … we would not have gone out of 34 gigawatts of power a couple of days ago, “he added.” When you look at the result, there were a lot of things that seemed to be left on the table “.