Since then I guess nobody bothered to do anything? Supposedly it's all described in this here document (I can't actually open it, probably because someone in ERCOT is real scared of GDPR): http://www.ercot.com/content/meetings/other/keydocs/2011/201...
Here's a twitter thread by some rando who remembered what happened in 2011 and dug out the report: https://twitter.com/kidstatic/status/1361914818307981314?s=2...
The folks in the El Paso area (which is not regulated/managed by ERCOT) are going just fine it appears:
> El Paso Electric said they always try to prepare for the future and after a winter storm in 2011, the utility company worked towards replacing and upgrading their equipment. Many generators now have antifreeze protection.
* https://kvia.com/news/el-paso/2021/02/15/el-pasos-not-seeing...
"THE EVENT
The strong arctic front that arrived in North Texas on February 1, 2011 was the most intense cold wave for the majority of the state of Texas since December 1989. The event was so severe that the National Weather Service issued a rare Wind Chill Advisory for much of the state. The arctic front reached deep into Texas and sustained below freezing temperatures as far south as Corpus Christi. Much of North Texas experienced record setting sleet and snow, producing blizzard conditions and temperatures well below freezing for up to 100 hours. Snowfall occurred as far south as San Antonio, with snowfall totaling up to seven inches in North Texas. This winter storm was also accompanied by sustained winds of 30-40 mph with gusts as high as 51 mph.
The icy conditions of this winter storm resulted in the closing of both DFW Airport and Dallas Love Field. In addition, Dallas-Fort Worth area water utilities reported hundreds of water main bursts during the event, compared to expected four to five on an average winter day. ERCOT also reported a new record winter peak of 56,334 megawatts.
The winter weather event of February 1-5, 2011 was determined to be a one in ten year event for some regions of Texas in terms of low temperature extremes and duration. Lows during the period were in the teens for five consecutive mornings and there were many consecutive hours below freezing temperatures throughout Texas. Taking these temperature extremes into account, and coupling them with the sustained winds of this event, it is estimated that the resultant convective heat loss (wind plus ambient temperature) event suffered by many Texas generation facilities approached a one in 25 year severity. (Reference: Weatherbank, Inc.)
Generating unit issues that affected reliability were mostly attributed to frozen instrumentation due to convective heat losses greater than instrumentation design, faulty instrumentation heat tracing or compromised insulation. It is normal practice for the operating units to add incremental protection against these extreme winter weather events. Typical examples are wind breaks and heat sources applied to high risk areas.
In addition, the cold and wind affected the units that were not operating. Units in cold start status are less prone to derates/trips if they are dispatched to minimum stable load (MSL) before the onset of extreme winter weather. Bringing all units to MSL gives ERCOT maximum flexibility in responding to grid emergencies.
HOW IT AFFECTED ERCOT
The high load demand, coupled with generation issues within ERCOT, resulted in actions from ERCOT that triggered an Operating Condition Notice (OCN) issued for cold weather at 08:55 on February 1. The event level escalated to an EEA2A (Energy Emergency Alert) declaration at 05:18 on February 2 to deploy responsive reserves, followed quickly by an EEA3 declaration at 05:58 on February 2 to begin shedding firm load to maintain system frequency at 59.8 Hz or greater. The event continued until ERCOT cancelled the EEA at 09:58 on February 3. "
Good estimate.
I don't even necessarily believe it was malicious (unless you consider cost cutting to make a profit malicious, which, maybe you'd have an argument there), just potentially lazy.
This is the sort of thing we should have some baseline regulations to support -- critical infrastructure should be designed to support a temperature range of X to Y, where X is a record cold times some factor and Y is a record heat times some factor.
Meanwhile the folks in the El Paso area (which is not regulated/managed by ERCOT) are going just fine:
> El Paso Electric said they always try to prepare for the future and after a winter storm in 2011, the utility company worked towards replacing and upgrading their equipment. Many generators now have antifreeze protection.
* https://kvia.com/news/el-paso/2021/02/15/el-pasos-not-seeing...
The first step is making sure you have regulators who are somewhat clued in.
Of course being hooked up to the national grid could be useful as well, so as to allow for energy inputs when your own infrastructure is having problems. Though that would mean dealing with the Feds, which seems to be undesirable:
> Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry says that Texans find massive power outages preferable to having more federal government interference in the state's energy grid.
* https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/rick-perry-says-texans-woul...
El Paso Energy is interesting bc it represents the old school community monopoly. I wonder if the JPM buyout will help or hinder its mission.
I bet they don’t. If they did they don’t now.
Playing devil's advocate here: It might not have been malicious or lazy, but actually just good judgement in avoiding unnecessary waste and getting those services deployed sooner for less cost to the customer.
Of course it looks bad now that the situation they didn't expect to happen has happened, but in the long term, were the losses worse than what they saved by not implementing extreme cold weather mitigations?
But they did. And were warned. And they ignored it.
Differences in incentives are why hospitals for example have backup generators. They might be paying 100x as much to get power from a generator for a few hours a year, but losing power would cost them vastly more.
That said, individual consumers are going to have their own personal preferences. For some people saving 10c a month on their monthly electric bill might be worth a once in a decade power outage. Some might even agree to save 1c/month.
Power companies making that choice for their customers isn't fair. As a utility it should be expected that it is well run and stable. It isn't an easy market to have competition in due to the infrastructure meaning we can't have "cheap and unstable" options next to "expensive and stable". Where the state decides the utilities fall on that axis is the question here, I personally think they should be on the more conservative side and provide stability.
The other thing to consider are the huge knock on effects from losing power. I may be ok with getting extra cash in exchange for power outages but when the stop lights are out and restaurant freezers start thawing things get a lot worse.
A lot of people (and businesses too) have been without any power for several days. In the case of Austin, “a lot” appears to be around 40%. Many more have had power only intermittently. That’s got to be a pretty sizable hit to economic output. Not to mention all the busted pipes.
[edit: formatting]
The there are the things we do know, like the Samsung IC shutdown that will cost millions in itself.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-02-20/texas-bla...
As someone in Texas who just got their power back and no longer has running water, I'm having a real hard time not posting a really vicious retort here.
Pure capitalism without any humanism is really quite gross and frustrating.
The cost of electricity is not a constraint on the size of hospitals. And there are plenty of states who are part of the national grid, with cheaper electricity than Texas.
More than 300 people have ended up in ERs in Houston alone for carbon monoxide inhalation as a result of misguided efforts to avoid freezing to death, I'm not entire sure how to allocate that cost, either.
1989, 2011, 2021. At some point, having been told twice now, and soon to be a third time, you spend the money to avoid the pitchforks.
I'm sure "we saved a few bucks" will be comforting to the families of people who froze to death or died of carbon monoxide poisoning from this entirely avoidable disaster.
Texas runs its own power grid specifically to avoid doing that
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/orleans/rotating-po...
at the direction of MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.
The company describes itself as similar to an air-traffic controller, monitoring the flow of electricity across 15 states and one Canadian province.
This stuff isn’t rocket science.
Because people have died, and the energy industry is heavily to blame, you're extremely unlikely to get any information to confirm or even satisfy your curiosity until a federal investigation has completed.
> A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known—that’s sin. That’s failure to hit the mark. And the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God’s goodness—the goodness of reality—was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure. That’s insanely responsible. But the alternative is to judge reality as insufficient, to criticize Being itself, and to sink into resentment and the desire for revenge. - 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/town-squar...
Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st...
Wind shutdowns accounted for 3.6 to 4.5 gigawatts
“We are seeing wind generation down 60% week-over-week”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/02/16/nation/why-is-power-o...
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-power-outage-a...
It appears that wind and solar power produced more electricity this week than they were expected to produce, but at this time of year, that’s a relatively small part of the expected statewide generation. Generation from gas and coal plants was far below expectations, causing supply to fall as demand rose. How much of that is bad design — a case where the system should be reworked — and how much was operator error is still to be sorted out.
As someone in the Houston blackout and hearing a bit of the initial blame-game: I’d like to find out what failure modes were gamed out, what likelihood’s were assigned to each and how and what mitigation was chosen with the knowledge that between time, money and people not all failure scenarios can be covered.
For example: water vapor in methane (natural gas) freezes and causes sensor and valve problems which have shut plants down. That seems predictable to a point, something that operators with experience in other climates would know about. On the other hand, the mitigation strategy for that failure may run counter to fixes for hot weather problems.