DALLAS (AP) – The power outages that plague Texas in atypical Arctic temperatures are exposing the weaknesses of an electrical system designed when seasonal climate changes were more consistent and predictable – conditions that most experts believe no longer exist. .
This is not only happening in Texas, of course. Minnesota utilities on Mississippi imposed continuous blackouts to ease the tension in the electricity grids, which have suffered from high demand during the past few days. And power outages became a summer and fall ritual in California, in part to reduce the chances of deadly forest fires.
But the fact that more than 3 million frozen Texans 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 United States with increasing frequency.
WHAT HAPPENED IN TEXAS?
High temperatures have caused Texans to turn on their heaters, including many inefficient trams. Demand has reached levels normally seen only on the hottest summer days, when millions of air conditioners operate at full throttle.
The state has a generating capacity of around 67,000 megawatts in the winter, compared to a maximum capacity of around 86,000 megawatts in the summer. The gap between winter and summer supply reflects plants that are shut down for maintenance during the months when demand is typically less intense and there is less energy from wind and solar sources.
But planning for this winter did not envision temperatures low enough to freeze natural gas supply lines and prevent wind turbines from turning. As of Wednesday, 46,000 megawatts of power were offline across the state – 28,000 of natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants and 18,000 of wind and solar power, according to the Texas Electric Reliability Council, which operates the grid’s power grid. state.
“All of our power supplies have performed poorly,” Daniel Cohan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, tweeted. “Each of them is vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events in different ways. None of them has been adequately exposed to the weather or prepared for a complete realm of climate and conditions. “
Texas’ astonishing imbalance between 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 free wholesale energy market.
This raised questions as to whether some power generators that buy in the wholesale market may have had a profit motive to avoid buying more natural gas and simply shut down instead.
“We can’t speculate about people’s motivations that way,” said Bill Magness, ERCOT’s CEO. He added that the generators said they were doing everything possible to supply power.
WHY WAS THE STATE NOT PREPARED?
Gas powered plants and wind turbines can be protected against winter – this is done routinely in the coldest northern states. The issue arose in Texas after a 2011 freeze that also led to power plant shutdowns and blackouts. A national electrical industry group has developed winter preparedness guidelines to be followed by operators, but they are strictly voluntary and also require expensive investments in equipment and other necessary measures.
An ERCOT official, Dan Woodfin, said the plant’s updates after 2011 limited shutdowns during a similar cold wave 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 this week’s freeze was unpredictable.
“This is absurd,” he said. “Every eight to ten years we have very bad winters. This is not a surprise. “
In California, regulators last week ordered the state’s top three utilities to increase their power supply and potentially make improvements to power plants to avoid another supply shortage like the one that emerged in California six months ago and resulted in blackouts that affected about 500,000 people for a few hours at a time.
“A big difference is that the leadership in California recognizes that climate change is happening, but it doesn’t seem to be the case in Texas,” said Severin Borenstein, professor of business administration and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied power supply issues for more than 20 years.
WHY THE ROLLING BLACKOUTS NEEDED?
Network operators say continuous blackouts are the last resort when energy demand overwhelms supply and threatens to create a broader collapse of the entire energy system.
Public utilities normally block certain blocks or zones before cutting power to another area, then to another. Often, areas with hospitals, fire departments, water treatment plants and other important facilities are spared.
With blackouts, no neighborhood should go through an unfairly long period without power, but it wasn’t always the case this week in Texas. Some areas never lost energy, while others were blacked out for 12 hours or more as temperatures dropped to single digits.
WHEN DOES IT OCCUR?
Continuous blackouts are usually triggered when reserves fall below a certain level. In Texas, as in California last August, network operators tell utilities to reduce the load on the entire system, and it’s up to utilities to decide how to do this.
In Texas this week, network operators and utilities have known about the terrible weather for at least a week. Last weekend, they launched appeals for energy conservation and ERCOT tweeted that residents should “turn off the new and sophisticated devices you bought during the pandemic and used it only once”.
Carefree attempts at humor were lost by residents, few or none of whom were informed in advance when their homes would lose energy. After the outages started, some utilities were unable to provide information on how long they could last.
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO REDUCE ROLLER BLACKOUTS?
Start with the obvious steps: when power companies or network operators warn of problems coming, lower the thermostat and avoid using major appliances. Of course, these steps are sometimes easier said than done, especially during record temperatures.
As elsewhere, Texans might be more willing to adjust their thermostats a few more steps if regulators imposed a system that required households to pay higher prices during periods of peak demand and lower rates at other times.
“People start their ovens now because there is no financial incentive not to,” said Borenstein.
Experts also say that more fundamental – and expensive – changes must be made. Generators must isolate pipelines and other equipment. Investments in electricity storage and distribution would help. Stricter building codes would make homes in places like Texas better isolated from the cold.
Texas, which has a network largely disconnected from others to avoid federal regulation, may have to rethink its strategy of acting alone. There may be pressure on the state to require power generators to maintain more reserve plants for peak demand times, a measure it has resisted so far.
“The system as we built it is not working to 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 involves paying more for energy to be more reliable, this is a conversation we will have. “
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Koenig reported from Dallas, Liedtke reported from San Ramon, California. Paul Weber of AP contributed to this story from Austin, Texas.