DALLAS (AP) – Uninterrupted electrical disturbances plaguing Texas at Arctic temperatures are exposing weaknesses in an electrical system designed when seasonal changes in weather were more consistent and predictable, conditions most experts believe which no longer exist.
This doesn’t just happen in Texas, of course. Minnesota utilities in Mississippi have imposed continued blackouts to relieve the tension of the flaming power grids under great demand over the last few days. And power outages have become a summer and fall rite in California, partly to reduce the chances of deadly forest fires.
But the fact that more than 3 million bone-chilled jeans have lost their electricity in a state that prides itself on its energy independence underscores the seriousness of a problem that occurs in the U.S. with increasing frequency.
WHAT HAPPENED TO TEXAS?
Falling temperatures caused the jeans to turn on the heaters, including many inefficient electric ones. Demand rose to levels normally seen only on the hottest days of summer, when millions of air conditioners run at full tilt.
The state has a generating capacity of about 67,000 megawatts in the winter compared to a maximum capacity of about 86,000 megawatts in the summer. The gap between the winter and summer supply reflects power plants that are kept offline for maintenance during the 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 did not imagine temperatures low enough to freeze natural gas supply lines and prevent wind turbines from spinning. On Wednesday, 46,000 megawatts of power were offline statewide: 28,000 for natural gas, coal and nuclear plants and 18,000 for wind and solar, according to the Texas Electric Reliability Council, which operates the state’s power grid. state.
“Each of our power supply sources performed poorly,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston. he tweeted. “Each of them is vulnerable to extreme weather and climate phenomena in different ways. None of them were adequately air-conditioned or prepared for a complete realm of time and conditions.
The striking imbalance between Texas ’energy supply and demand also caused prices to skyrocket from about $ 20 per megawatt hour to $ 9,000 per megawatt hour in the state’s wholesale free energy market.
This raised questions about whether some power generators they buy in the wholesale market could have been for-profit to avoid buying more natural gas and simply shutting down.
“We can’t speculate on people’s motivations this way,” said Bill Magness, CEO of ERCOT. He added that the generators had told him they were doing their best to provide power.
WHY WASN’T THE STATE PREPARED?
Gas plants and wind turbines can be protected from the winter weather: it is routinely done in northern and colder states. The problem arose in Texas after the 2011 freeze that also caused power plant shutdowns and shutdowns. A national power industry group developed winterization guidelines that operators must follow, but they are strictly voluntary and also require costly investments in equipment and other necessary measures.
ERCOT official Dan Woodfin said plant upgrades after 2011 limited shutdowns during a similar cold storm in 2018, but this week’s weather was “more extreme”.
Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, rejected ERCOT’s claim that this week’s freeze was unpredictable.
“That’s nonsense,” he said. “Every eight to ten years we have very bad winters. That’s not a surprise. “
In California, regulators last week ordered the state’s top three utilities to increase electricity supply and make improvements to the plant to prevent another supply shortage like the one in California. six months ago. and caused continuous blackouts that affected about 500,000 people for a few hours at a time.
“A big difference is that leadership in California recognizes that climate change is happening, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in Texas,” said Severin Borenstein, a professor of business administration and public policy at the University of California. California, Berkeley, which has been studying power supply problems for more than 20 years.
WHY THE NEED TO MAKE BLACKOUTS?
Network operators say continued blackouts are the last resort when energy demand overwhelms supply and threatens to create a wider collapse of the entire electrical system.
Utilities typically cover certain blocks or areas before cutting off power to another area and then to another. Areas with hospitals, fire stations, water treatment plants and other key facilities are often saved.
Through the blackouts, no neighborhood is supposed to spend an unfairly long period without power, but that wasn’t always the case this week in Texas. Some areas never lost power, while others were turned off for 12 hours or more as temperatures dropped from the digits.
WHEN DO THEY GIVE?
Continuous blackouts are usually triggered when reserves fall below a certain level. In Texas, as in California last August, network operators are telling utility companies to reduce the burden on the entire system, and it’s up to utility companies to decide how to do it.
This week in Texas, network operators and utilities knew about the weather forecasts as bad for at least a week. Last weekend they launched appeals for energy conservation and ERCOT tweeted that residents should “disconnect the new luxury appliances you bought during the pandemic and used only once.”
Cheerful attempts at humor were lost to the residents, few of whom were informed in advance when their homes would lose power. Once the outages began, some utility companies were unable to provide information on how long they could last.
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO REDUCE ROLLING BLACKOUTS?
Start with the obvious steps: When power companies or network operators warn you of problems, reach for your thermostat and avoid using large appliances. Of course, these steps are sometimes easier said than done, especially during record temperatures.
As elsewhere, jeans might be more willing to adjust their thermostats a few more notches if regulators imposed a system that required households to pay higher prices during periods of peak demand and other lower rates.
“People are targeting the ovens now because there’s no financial incentive for them not to,” Borenstein said.
Experts also say more fundamental and costly changes need to be made. Generators should insulate pipes and other equipment. Investments in electricity storage and distribution would help. Tighter building codes would make homes in places like Texas better insulated from the cold.
Texas, which has a network quite disconnected from others to avoid federal regulation, may need to rethink the “go-it-alone” strategy. There could be pressure for the state to require power generators to keep more plants in reserve for times of peak demand, a step it has so far resisted.
“The system the way we built it doesn’t work by the standards we’d like to see,” said Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “We have to do a better job. If that means paying more for energy to be more reliable, we need to have a conversation. “
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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.