I picked the wrong time to visit Austin

[Cruizer67]

I saw on the news that Austin may get a cold spell and a little snow or freezing rain, but had no idea that things would get so bad. I am stuck in a home with no heat, water, and worse - no Internet 😩. They should have heat on this morning, but I am hoping roads clear enough to allow me to move into hotel this evening. Anyone know how the main roads are? My community has snow on the roads, and they were sheets of ice when I arrived on Sunday, so have to believe they still are under the snow. But was wondering how the main roads are if anyone has been out and driving around.

PS: for anyone stuck in a hotel - are the restaurants open or serving food to go? When I arrived on Sunday it was already too dangerous to go out and buy food, so have been living off the food we already had in the house - and am dying for a real meal!

[Green Eyed Shy Guy]

Hopefully mathguy is working on hacking the electrical grid and will tell us how to do the same.

[Austin911]

Depending on where in town you are for food. South are having power issues, so a lot of places closed. Notified earlier of possible natural gas issues, not good. I was without power for 8 hrs yesterday, but had my gas fireplace going. Had to show some younger ones in my hood how to light a gas stove, lol.

[Cruizer67]

Yeah, it does not look like we are getting out of here today. Just talked to a neighbor and he said without a 4x4, you are not going to make it through our community roads, and the hotel I booked for tonight cancelled my reservation. I think my neighbors have heat, so may need to crash there tonight. I heard the gas folks are on-site trying to get us going again, but no guarantees. Just one more night to get through this and then we should have some warmer temps, and I am flying back on Thursday...

[mathguy]

Hopefully mathguy is working on hacking the electrical grid and will tell us how to do the same.

Haha Shy Guy I feel you. So many without power. I'm so sorry too. I do have power but not b/c of anything I could do hehe. Just got lucky I'm on a critical supply circuit.

I can tell you I would expect many customers and circuits possibly restored by tomorrow.

The weather is going to go above 32F by about 7am and all through the day will provide some deicing to much of critical infrastructure for electricity induction. The biggest issue is that the grid has extremely diminished capacity.

Summer is normally a FAR higher demand time. That's not it at all. The problem is heaters (even central gas heaters have a blower unit & the blower is electric which requires about 2500-3500 'starting/surge' watts of power for each unit). Given the icing it has frozen critical infrastructure for electricity generation. Primarily wind farms.

TX has about 78,000MW, in other words 78GW (gigawatts), of total power under peak conditions. Right now though with so much energy production offline it has dropped to under 48GW of total power. They are cutting circuits in order to preserve reliability of the grid so they can get down under that 48GW load. With the deicing that could occur tomorrow we should see total TX energy induction go up. However we won't be totally out of the woods until likely Fri or maybe even Sat.

TX is a really odd electrical market too. We are governed by the energy reliability council of texas and we are also not integrated to extensive power networks of neighboring states. The ridiculous deregulation and PUC dogma of the free market electric grid versus a "capacity" energy market is utterly asinine. This is exactly why we need people like governor Abbott out of office. Many in the Republican party have pushed for this over the last 2+ decades and that is why you don't have power right now.

ERCOT is not a capacity market and we also don't have integration with other neighbor states whom could supply power (another HUGE problem).

I appreciate the little joke about hacking the grid. Wish I could buddy. Problem is even if we could it won't fix the issue that we don't have enough electricity being produced. That is *REALLY* the issue folks. It's not even that we use more power now than typical summers, nope, ACs & hot summers make this power req look like nothing, but the frozen facilities and wind farms have meant electricity isn't being produced so it lowered our peak energy threshold to under 50GW.

---

Electricity is produced in a process called 'electrical induction'. I won't go into all the physics b/c it gets complicated but basically all electricity is produced in one major way and it's based in something known as "Faraday's Law".

Essentially you move a wire or conductive coil through a magnetic field & the magnetic field "induces" a current along the wire. As the coil (usually copper around iron ferrite or some such) turns in the magnetic dipole field the induced current changes direction. This is why we call it alternating current. It reverses the poles & the current in the wire and magnetic field during each 'sinusoidal wave'.

I explained this so you guys that are interested could understand wind farms as one small example. There is one core scientific basis to induce current but there are myriad of implementations to do it (hydroelectric, nuclear, coal, wind).

Imagine a wind mill turning right? Inside that huge wind mill is a large rod and tight copper coil in a large magnetic field. As the wind causes the blades on the mill to turn it rotates or moves the coil/rod in the magnetic field. This induces an AC electricity and it's deposited down the terminals connected the to wind mill and wind farm and becomes part of the electricity available on the power grid. Imagine if thousands upon thousands of these huge wind mills stop turning b/c of icing. They are frozen. No power induction. THIS is basically the entire problem across various systems and facilities in TX. We need to change the way ERCOT works though b/c this really is absurd. It was even foreseen and they didn't do anything. Smdh.

Stay safe everyone. It's almost over. With any luck the 8hrs of >32F tomorrow will deice enough to increase power induction. Regardless the end is in sight. Friday to Saturday at the *very* latest. Good luck all.

[Texson]

Good post about ERCOT. ERCOT is stupidly unique in that it is an energy only market and not integrated with neighboring states. Texas has dodged some bullets in the past due to being an energy rather than capacity market but it seems that the perfect storm has finally hit. All of our Grids weak spots are being exposed in a big way.

[AustinTxDude]

Wow, thank you breaking this all down. Now I can sound like I know what I'm talking about to friends. Hope your right about the power coming back soon. Thanks again for the great info.

[fast_20t]

Quote: "Summer is normally a FAR higher demand time. That's not it at all. The problem is heaters (even central gas heaters have a blower unit & the blower is electric which requires about 2500-3500 'starting/surge' watts of power for each unit). Given the icing it has frozen critical infrastructure for electricity generation. Primarily wind farms."

I call some BS on the statement above - 1. nowhere closer to 2500-3000 startup for a gas furnace. I would say 600 Watts running - maybe 1000 startup. While the AC may use upward of 15Amps - the gas furnace may use 5-7Amps. How do I know - well - I have two furnaces running on a 15AMP circuit breaker right now connected to a generator - praying the gas generator keeps working to keep my kids warm.
2. while having non-winterized windmills is/was a problem - by far the most loss was due to traditional energy production capacity drop due to lack of winterization . How the heck do you lose part of the nuclear power plant?

Lack of regulation and any kind of standards - leave it to the producers to regulate themselves.

[mathguy]

Quote: "Summer is normally a FAR higher demand time. That's not it at all. The problem is heaters (even central gas heaters have a blower unit & the blower is electric which requires about 2500-3500 'starting/surge' watts of power for each unit). Given the icing it has frozen critical infrastructure for electricity generation. Primarily wind farms."

I call some BS on the statement above - 1. nowhere closer to 2500-3000 startup for a gas furnace. I would say 600 Watts running - maybe 1000 startup. While the AC may use upward of 15Amps - the gas furnace may use 5-7Amps. How do I know - well - I have two furnaces running on a 15AMP circuit breaker right now connected to a generator - praying the gas generator keeps working to keep my kids warm.

Hey fast20 I agree with some other parts of your quote(that I cutoff) and you are right about running watts (600 is conservative though - usually 700-800 depending on if it's a 1/3 or 1/2 hp blower unit). Starting watts though? Over 2000 easily. For a 10,000+ BTU heat removal capacity AC system? 1500 watts running and 6000 starting watts. Move up to a large 20000-25000 BTU capacity AC? 3500 running watts and over 10,000 (!) starting watts. Quick Lowes generator reference chart.

And think about it. Two 15AMP circuits even at 110-120 volts is P (or watts) = I (Amps/current) * V. So in such case (2)*15AMP current * 120V = 3600W of power. At 240V? Over 7000W. Just something to keep in mind.

A whole home generator, such as a standby system, needs on the order of 12-15k Watt output just to run "essentials". A better whole home standby unit would have 18K to 25K+ W to run everything smoothly. You can get by on a portable system but even at 10K plus watts you are only going to be running essential use items. It takes a shit ton of power. Realize that a toaster oven uses like 800-1000W. A microwave too. It starts adding up fast :/

But yea the entire ERCOT system is BS and needs complete overhaul. Heads will roll over this people. You can be assured of that no doubt.

[RustyBalls]

Good post about ERCOT. ERCOT is stupidly unique in that it is an energy only market and not integrated with neighboring states. Texas has dodged some bullets in the past due to being an energy rather than capacity market but it seems that the perfect storm has finally hit. All of our Grids weak spots are being exposed in a big way.

This is a generation failure issue, not time for debate between "energy-only" vs "capacity" markets. When almost 200 generators, with 40k+ MWs of power, trip off line because of 100-year record cold and 6 days below freezing, the only thing available is to conserve what power is left and rotate outages. Texas has limited connections to East and Mexico, but they are also having similar generation problems and have no power to share.

With respect to ERCOT, don't blame the messenger, look to the Governor, Legislature and Public Utility commission who make and enforce energy policy on Texas Generators. EROCT established cold weather standards, but does not have enforcement authority. Meanwhile when the problem is Gas and Fossil fuel generators tripping off line, the Governor trots out a political agenda, blaming Green Energy policy, Wind and Solar, not the reckless deregulation of the Texas Utilities under Gov Perry which was done in such a manner that allowed leveraged buyouts and the bankruptcy of key generation plants.

Just saying...

[mathguy]

^ I mostly agree with Rusty here as well. I mean on the larger point for sure. I do think the capacity markets are an issue but also the deregulation under Perry that Rusty pointed out.

[ck1942]

Those who speak "politics" can also expect "mail!"