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This whole thing has hopefully shined a light on the need to continue to have strong diversity in our energy sources.
Also, I like hearing the input from @Donnyboy
Also, I like hearing the input from @Donnyboy
So I work for a major EPC that was looking at solutions. One of them was to basically to install a giant cistern system with hundreds of 'missile silo' like containments peppered throughout city with many millions of cu ft of volume. It sounded tailor made for an Engineering Marvels TV show.
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Solar actually OVER performed their expectations. One of the reasons was due to the bright sun glare off the snow and ice that allowed the panels to capture even more light than normal.
And if you think of it. Solar IS nuclear power. Capturing the energy of Nuclear Fusion in the sun. It is the biggest nuclear reactor in our solar system.
And if you think of it. Solar IS nuclear power. Capturing the energy of Nuclear Fusion in the sun. It is the biggest nuclear reactor in our solar system.
Right another horribly written story. First and foremost all plants submit a winter and summer readiness program. ERCOT has a group dedicated to monitoring these plans. This is the single biggest piece of misinformation. The second is that Texas doesn’t answer to the feds. All as all power generation in the country must meet NERC and FERC standards.....Texas has the TRE which acts as the regulatory body over the reliability coordinator ERCOT all TRE standards meet or exceed FERC so technically FERC doesn’t call the utility commission but the stories of lack of oversight are short sighted and the standards are identical or more rigorous where they apply.
Capacity factor is the NERC/FERC defined performance metric for the percentage of an assets possible output over time. For example if an asset of any technology has a max output of 100 MW and it averages 80 over a day/week/year it has an 80% capacity factor over that time. The technology with the highest the capacity factor was natural gas. Yes it had the most outages but it was far and away the most available options. They are also posting installed gas numbers when some gas facilities were planned outages that were planned months in advance and physically couldn’t be returned to service and calling them “failures”. Solar this time of year will never have over a 50% capacity because of well night. It also produced zero when winter precip was falling. What it did do was at the end of the event exceed forecast. Forecast and installed capacity are two different things. Years ago it was the responsibility of the renewable asset to submit its own capacity based on its own forecast. Well the weather is crazy in Texas so this created chaos so now ERCOT uses a single forecast to predict all renewable assets. Solar didn’t perform to installed capacity it exceeded the very small forecast.....ercot may only forecast as little as 10% of installed solar capacity based on weather and again the forecast is zero at night so exceeding forecast can still be a dismal amount of production...... for the days at the end as mentioned above the reflection helped. When load was cut on both occasions solar was zero cause it was in the middle of the night. The statement that 5 times as much gas failed as wind is also a dubious statement. There is over 20K Mw of installed wind it was 600 when load was cut Monday morning so unless 100MW of gas failed (hint there isn’t that much) the guy is wrong. The difference is when wind poops the bed due to weather they don’t have to take an outage they simply change their capacity so they can make zero or 10% without taking an outage but they aren’t there as a resource. So this is an either outright false statement or at minimum very misleading. Gas carried the grid....plants operating outside of their design criteria carried this thing. . And it’s not close. The other thing the stories never reference is you can’t just make all the power you can. FERC rules require you carry ancillary products and maintain reserves so gas was always backed down some by rule. For example in ERCOT at a minimum you must have as much reserve as your single largest failure contingency (or a percent of total which ever is the larger) which the biggest single point is the nuke plant of 2200MW so you have to have up products in the form of reponsive reserves or plants not at their max at all times so when the grid was intact in anyway gas generation was capable of producing more than wind and solar combined produced during the event on average during the worst days. And people like this writer just grab screenshots in a vacuum and apply them to most complex grid conditions because they don’t know what they are talking about. If the nuke plant in south Texas hadn’t tripped it would have been nuke but gas performed the best based on available assets and megawatt production vs capacity rating.
Capacity factor is the NERC/FERC defined performance metric for the percentage of an assets possible output over time. For example if an asset of any technology has a max output of 100 MW and it averages 80 over a day/week/year it has an 80% capacity factor over that time. The technology with the highest the capacity factor was natural gas. Yes it had the most outages but it was far and away the most available options. They are also posting installed gas numbers when some gas facilities were planned outages that were planned months in advance and physically couldn’t be returned to service and calling them “failures”. Solar this time of year will never have over a 50% capacity because of well night. It also produced zero when winter precip was falling. What it did do was at the end of the event exceed forecast. Forecast and installed capacity are two different things. Years ago it was the responsibility of the renewable asset to submit its own capacity based on its own forecast. Well the weather is crazy in Texas so this created chaos so now ERCOT uses a single forecast to predict all renewable assets. Solar didn’t perform to installed capacity it exceeded the very small forecast.....ercot may only forecast as little as 10% of installed solar capacity based on weather and again the forecast is zero at night so exceeding forecast can still be a dismal amount of production...... for the days at the end as mentioned above the reflection helped. When load was cut on both occasions solar was zero cause it was in the middle of the night. The statement that 5 times as much gas failed as wind is also a dubious statement. There is over 20K Mw of installed wind it was 600 when load was cut Monday morning so unless 100MW of gas failed (hint there isn’t that much) the guy is wrong. The difference is when wind poops the bed due to weather they don’t have to take an outage they simply change their capacity so they can make zero or 10% without taking an outage but they aren’t there as a resource. So this is an either outright false statement or at minimum very misleading. Gas carried the grid....plants operating outside of their design criteria carried this thing. . And it’s not close. The other thing the stories never reference is you can’t just make all the power you can. FERC rules require you carry ancillary products and maintain reserves so gas was always backed down some by rule. For example in ERCOT at a minimum you must have as much reserve as your single largest failure contingency (or a percent of total which ever is the larger) which the biggest single point is the nuke plant of 2200MW so you have to have up products in the form of reponsive reserves or plants not at their max at all times so when the grid was intact in anyway gas generation was capable of producing more than wind and solar combined produced during the event on average during the worst days. And people like this writer just grab screenshots in a vacuum and apply them to most complex grid conditions because they don’t know what they are talking about. If the nuke plant in south Texas hadn’t tripped it would have been nuke but gas performed the best based on available assets and megawatt production vs capacity rating.
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So when I said performed best through the storm I meant experienced the smallest drop, from those charts, solar did not experience a drop off, everything else did, I didn't say it had the best capacity factor, or availability, just the drop off. I am not trying to say any one generation type is at fault, but that they all took a hit. Except apparently solar.
But you’re still wrong solar did take a massive hit due to cloud cover most of the event. They forecasted it to be a small fraction of what it’s capable of and it did slightly better than that. To say it didn’t take a hit isn’t accurate. If it had been a blue bird sky solar would have produced much more. If a significant portion of installed solar wasn’t covered in snow the first couple of days your post would be true. But solar did not perform well in this event no matter how you slice it. What you are saying is like if one had a test at school and I think one is so dumb they will only make a 15 then throwing a party when one makes a 20. One still fails horribly.
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Interesting stuff Donny.
Regarding NatGas fired generation, I wonder how much of the down capacity was due to (1) wellhead freeze offs, (2) pipeline delivery limitations, (3) gas storage withdraw limitations, (4) actual generation plant mechanical/operational failures.
Regardless, I guess the moral of the story is: Take any story touting or criticizing a particular source of power with a huge dose of salt - especially those extolling the virtues of renewable energy.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Regarding NatGas fired generation, I wonder how much of the down capacity was due to (1) wellhead freeze offs, (2) pipeline delivery limitations, (3) gas storage withdraw limitations, (4) actual generation plant mechanical/operational failures.
Regardless, I guess the moral of the story is: Take any story touting or criticizing a particular source of power with a huge dose of salt - especially those extolling the virtues of renewable energy.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk