Texas power outages: why blackouts happen as temperatures drop

The Texas power grid was on the verge of failure after a cold spell brought record low temperatures, snow and blackouts across the state. Millions of Texans were left without power and some people questioned why a state that produces more energy in the United States is unable to keep the lights on. Disinformation about the blackout has also begun to spread online, falsely blaming wind and solar energy.

Approximately 4 million people in Texas had to deal with disruptions for most of the week, due to the freezing of power generators and natural gas pipes, hampering the state’s production capacity. This led the Texas Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT), which manages the state’s electrical grid, to manage continuous blackouts to prevent a grid failure. ERCOT ended emergency conditions on Friday because no further interruptions were necessary.

ERCOT operations are back to normal and we are no longer asking for energy conservation. Thank you for helping the grid during this difficult time.

– ERCOT (@ERCOT_ISO) February 19, 2021

Here’s what you need to know about Texas power outages.

What happened to energy in Texas?

Last weekend, a winter storm hit Texas, bringing freezing cold to the state. As temperatures began to drop to their highest on Monday morning, generators at power plants across the state began to freeze and go offline, leading to a significant decrease in energy production. At the same time, the demand for energy increased as people increased the thermostat.

Almost 50% of the energy generated by Texas comes from natural gas, with the other half divided between coal, wind, nuclear and solar. Because of the cold, however, the gas cannot even get out of the ground through the pipes. ERCOT says 46,000 megawatts were offline on Wednesday. One megawatt is enough to supply about 200 homes a year. There are 70 to 80 plants shut down on Wednesday, 680 across the state. Thermal energy – natural gas, coal and nuclear – represented 28,000 of these megawatts, while wind and solar represented the other 16,000.

“The ability of gas generators to produce, especially in full production, was affected by the impact of the freeze on the supply of natural gas,” said Bill Magness, ERCOT president and CEO, during a live broadcast on Wednesday. “Therefore, recovering these resources is the central solution for recovering people’s power.”

Approximately 40% of generators shut down due to the cold. The significant drop in energy generated led to continuous blackouts across the state, as ERCOT tried to maintain a balance between supply and demand to avoid a “catastrophic” blackout. This caused the interruption to last much longer than predicted by ERCOT.

As for preparing power plants for extreme cold to prevent generators from freezing, Dan Woodfin, senior director of ERCOT system operations, says there are national standards being considered, but they are not yet mandatory.

“These are voluntary guidelines for individual generation companies to decide to do these things,” said Woodfin. “They have a financial incentive to be able to participate in the market to accompany those [regulations] and stay online, but there are no regulations at this time. ”

He explained that in northern states, power generators are usually located in buildings, which helps to protect them in winter. Texas, however, keeps generators outside to make full use of them in the summer months, when energy demand is high, with more homes using air conditioning. Having these generators indoors would cause an increase in heat and prevent them from being used to their full capacity. According to Woodfin, there are best practices for keeping generators online during cold weather, but they were not enough with extremely low temperatures.

Texas has its own independent power grid and is not connected to the Eastern Interconnection and Western Interconnection networks that cover the rest of the country. The state can obtain energy from neighboring states and Mexico, but the amount available is limited. It also didn’t help that neighboring states needed all the electricity to meet demand.

The audio of a February 9 meeting of ERCOT employees suggested that they may not have taken the winter storm as seriously as they could, reported the local news agency KSAT-12 on Friday. During the two-hour, 28-minute meeting, the approaching winter storm was discussed for less than 40 seconds, KSAT-12 said. ERCOT CEO Bill Magness replied to the channel: “I think it was the first thing I mentioned when I started reporting the advice … we certainly received a lot of communications from us, and if what I said indicated that we were not worried, I just I was trying to notify the board that this is something we have to keep an eye on because it is coming towards us. “

What’s the matter with people blaming wind and solar energy?

Confusion over the cause of the blackouts began to spread on social media on Tuesday, especially among state government officials.

“The reason for the blackouts is complex, but in short: Texas has learned many lessons from Cali, over-subsidized renewable energy and pushed out basic energy like natural gas,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, tweeted Tuesday.

A similar sentiment came from his Texas Republican counterpart, Ronny Jackson, who said on Facebook on Tuesday: “Our dependence on renewable energy needs to be reviewed IMMEDIATELY.”

But on Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, also a Republican, pointed to the freezing of natural gas as part of the problem.

“The reason that energy is not available to its viewers is because the power generators froze and their equipment was unable to generate energy. In addition, the natural gas flowing into these power generators, which is also frozen,” Abbott told ABC-13 in Houston.

On Tuesday night, however, Abbott went to Sean Hannity’s Fox News program and gave a different explanation of what happened.

“Our wind and solar power has been shut down, and they are collectively 10% of our electricity grid, and this has put Texas in a situation where power was lacking across the state,” he told Hannity. “As a result, it shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas.”

According to ERCOT officials, however, most of the energy lost came from thermal energy, which is mainly made up of natural gas, not wind or solar.

“As of 9 am,” the organization said in a press release on Wednesday, “approximately 46,000 MW of generation were forced to shut down the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of these, 28,000 MW are thermal and 18,000 MW are wind and solar. ”

Abbott seemed to ignore his comments on Wednesday at a press conference in Austin.

“I was asked on a TV show about renewable energy, and I answered that question,” said Abbott. “All the sources of energy that the state of Texas has been compromised.”

When will the power return?

On Wednesday, ERCOT did not provide a specific time when power would be restored, but said the best scenario was Thursday morning. On Thursday, it was reported that most customers had their lights on and the network was stable. On Friday, normal conditions were restored.