The rolling blackout leaves millions in the dark

Experts say intense energy demand and frozen utility plants overburdened amid an unprecedented deep freeze in Texas were among the factors that led to a blackout of 4.5 million customers in Lone Star on Tuesday, and roads across Texas left millions in the dark. And myrrh. Cold amid temperatures of one degree and a winter storm that has buried the state in snow and ice in recent days. Power outages across Texas “no matter which way you cut it, this is a major grid failure and power blocking situation,” said Varun Ray, director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, during a press conference Tuesday, representatives of the Texas Electricity Reliability Council (ERCOT) said There are 45,000 megawatts of offline power. Among them are 15,000 megawatts of wind and 30,000 gas and coal. Between two and three million customers were without electricity as of early Tuesday evening, 45,000 megawatts of offline power in TexasERCOT said, Which manages about 90% of the state’s capacity for 26 million customers, it is placing blackouts across the system to prevent further blackouts as it has worked to restore power to Texas.Greg Abbott described the situation as “unacceptable” and said he would add an emergency clause to the session The state legislature on ERCOT reform. The nonprofit is overseen by the Texas Public Utilities Commission and the Texas legislature. “Many Texas residents have no electricity and heating for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather,” Abbott said. “. At a basic level, the outage was caused by a power outage in Texas, caused by the bitter cold that exceeded the supply, said Daniel Cohan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. Of the energy used to heat and power homes, why is it so cold? How does the polar vortex bring record low temperatures and winter storms, Cohan said, a mixture of mostly natural gas, some coal and a nuclear power plant failed to meet the demand that customers had. 34,000 megawatts of power. For comparison, ERCOT said when it brought back 2,500 megawatts on Monday, that was enough power to serve 500,000 households, and Cohan said three different factors likely played out, although it is too early to say the degree to which each played a role in causing the outages. Electrophoresis. First, some power plants may not operate due to routine maintenance, Cohan said. Typically, peak demand occurs in the summer, so it’s not unexpected that a coal or natural gas plant will be disconnected in an effort to adjust for the warmer months, and second, some power plants may have failed to operate in the cold, Cohan said. “The plants have been optimized to function under our normal summer conditions and our harsh summer conditions, but they are not well prepared and engineered to handle the bitter cold,” he said. And according to Ray, if the plants have been working for too long in very harsh conditions this can happen. They are very expensive to operate as well as cause equipment damage, which can exacerbate outages for longer periods of time. Third, some natural gas plants may not be able to get enough supplies of gas to convert into electricity, Cohan said. Unlike a coal plant that has ready stock, natural gas plants do not store much on-site, which means any disruption to the supply source will disable the lights. Cary King, assistant director and research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute, said it is possible that power outages at natural gas production sites could cause malfunctions in the electric compressors that drive the gas. “This is far beyond what the power system operators expected, and it is a much deeper freeze and to help offset potential outages, ERCOT asked customers on Sunday to conserve energy by turning off thermostats, switching off and disconnecting appliances and lights and avoiding large appliances.” Which is not operating at full capacity this week probably helped the situation as well by reducing overall demand .. It was necessary to reduce the problem, but the issue was not on the sidelines. ”“ The reality is very large, ”he said. 30-50% of capacity in parts of Texas has decreased. “You’re not putting out 5 to 10% of the power.” ERCOT also said it is implementing blackouts on Monday in order to “protect the electrical grid from uncontrolled successive outages.” So, instead of spreading outages across neighborhoods in shorter periods of time, some areas lost energy for days while others kept it all the time, so is frozen wind turbines to blame? Some pointed to freezing wind turbines as a possible cause of large-scale outages, Cohan said. Citing renewable energy the source was not reliable, but Cohan said these arguments were “misleading.” According to Ray, there are times of the year when wind is a very important source of energy for Texas, supplying half of the state’s electricity supply. Cohan said operators know and have planned capacity Much less winds, in the range of 1,000 to 3,000 megawatts. So-called “fixed resources” such as gas, coal, and nuclear, they failed to provide about 30,000 megawatts, which contributed to the power surge. Cohan said that despite the problem, millions in Texas are losing energy During the storm More than 4 million people winter across Texas without electricity. Two people are likely to die from freezing temperatures. (Feb.16) Cohan said, Why was Texas not prepared for this, in 2011, a similar deep freeze event caused widespread blackouts in Texas, but the extent of outages was not great, and network operators have learned some lessons from that. Cohan said the experiment and made adjustments, but he clearly underestimated the importance that demand could go higher, however, Cohan said the problems with the supply side better explain what happened. “I think there was insufficient planning of how interconnected our natural gas and electricity systems would be,” Ray said. Every summer during peak demand, the reliability of the network comes into question, so it shouldn’t be a shock that there might have been a weather event that caused a lot of disruption. However, although it occurs in the winter, there needs to be better planning, he said. While climate change is commonly thought to lead to warmer temperatures, it is also causing more extreme and unpredictable weather. He said blaming failures in this cold for being a one-in-thirty-year climate event is no excuse, knowing that these events could become more common. Ray added, “Why do we only think of 30 years as a society?” “One solution is to have the capability designed for conditions like this.” King said stimulating power plants to improve weather performance should also be a priority, as he said that while owning this energy power is expensive, there have been two blackout events in 10 years due to the cold indicating that it is necessary and should be stimulated. USA TODAY’s Ryan Miller on Twitter contributed to this report, Janet Loehrke, Barry Harrell, Javier Zarracina and Shawn Sullivan contributed to this report.