December’s freeze highlighted ongoing weaknesses of Texas’ power grid, even without widespread blackouts – Houston Public Media

David J. Phillip/AP

Texas managed to keep away from widespread power outages in the course of the arduous freeze earlier than Christmas weekend. But there’s quite a bit that must be achieved to guard the electrical grid in opposition to one other nightmare state of affairs like the nice freeze of February 2021.

December’s arduous freeze got here with no precipitation. Ice might have simply pressured shutdowns of each coal-fired power crops and wind generators.

“In which case, we would have been short maybe 20,000 megawatts, and we would have had to go into rolling blackouts across the grid,” stated University of Houston vitality fellow Ed Hirs. “As it turned out, we went to brownouts, in other words, voltage reductions across the grid. Where typically a homeowner gets 120 volts, it was reduced to 115, 110, maybe – a way to ration electricity across the ERCOT grid.”

ERCOT additionally ordered these pure gas-fired crops that would change to gas oil or diesel to function to take action, as a result of of points getting pure fuel to those power crops.

Hirs stated the important thing lesson is that Texas is brief on power. He famous that ERCOT issued a seasonal forecast on November 29, 2022, which contemplated demand maxing out at roughly 67 gigawatts. During the December freeze, demand peaked at roughly 76 gigawatts.

“There’s not enough investment in the grid, and here we are now. When the Legislature meets, it’ll be two years following the freeze in February 2021, and we don’t have a plan going forward for making the grid more resilient,” he stated.

Texas’ coal-fired power crops common 50 years in age, and the state’s pure gas-fired power crops common 30 years in age. That places each fleets of crops on the finish of their working lives. Hirs stated the non-public sector is unwilling to spend money on new plant building in Texas with electrical energy charges on the present ranges.

“Apart from the one week in February 2021 with price gouging (during the hard freeze), the average price per kilowatt hour did not rise to the level that would enable a power plant company to build a new gas-fired generator, “Hirs stated. “Wall Street is not going to advance capital for five to ten years on the basis of one or two weeks of high prices. There has to be some sort of contractual relationship between the state and power companies to provide the backup generation, and Texas hasn’t come up with an approach that works yet.”

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is asking for monetary incentives for brand spanking new era capability to be added to the grid. That places him at odds with Governor Greg Abbott, who has stated the grid has already been fastened.

“At some point they will probably work their way to a compromise,” Hirs stated. “Over the next five to ten years, the Texas grid is going to struggle unless the Legislature can come up with some clear direction for the management of the grid.”