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Texas power grid.

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don256us

Uber Folding Senior
Joined
Jul 17, 2003
Had a great conversation with our friend WhitehawkEQ yesterday. He is doing well but he explained a bit more about the power grid in Texas. Apparently, the State of Texas didn't want to deal with federal regulations when it came to the power grid. As a result, the State of Texas has an independent grid that is not linked to the rest of the nation's grid. So now Texas has a cold snap that exdends to the very southern tip and has blanketed the entire state with snow. This is not a normal thing for them.

So now it's cold, and everyone is home, and heaters are turned up. The power grid can't handle it. WH states that they are on a 20 minute rolling blackout. 20 minutes with power and 20 minutes without. He has shut down his rigs and is otherwise laying low.

To all of our friends in Texas, be safe, stay warm and think about connecting your grid to the rest of us. Heck, I live almost next door to two nuclear plants in Michigan who seel thiier power to Indiana. You never know how much you need and want power until it's out.
 
They should import more power from Mexico (no seriously, they have attachments there and used them before).
 
This might **** off China! Not sure we are allowed to import from any other Countries
 
This will cause a reevaluation of the grid in Texas, I'm pretty certain of this. Austin, the state capital, is flush with people that think unicorns and rainbows are the way to go. But the rest of the state, not so much.

We haven't had water since Sunday night. Must be a burst pipe up the road as I checked and see no signs of leakage under my house. We still have power but got a text message that there may be rolling outages to come.
 
My wife was telling me that y'all get a pretty big % of your power (something like 15%) from wind, but all the windmills have frozen up thanks to the weather.
I hope everyone gets thawed out soon! Not having basic utilities is always such a giant pita.
 
Best of repairs to our folding friend White Hawk:grouphug:...My problem seems much smaller now...I went to put a new RTX 3070 in the 2nd PC and it is obscenely long...so I thought I'll put it in the second slot....It hits the PWR/RESET/Etc. module. Crap....

Not sure if I need a new case or a new Mobo....:shrug:

Started cutting the Hard drive cages out. I would hate to ditch the whole 2600K platform as that would mean new Ram. CPU, Mobo....:cry:
 
I am in Tyler just S of the loop. We are almost neighbors
 
For those who have their PCs connected to backup batteries and want to stop Folding when grid power is out (and restart it when it returns), I quickly wrote a Python script to do it:
Code:
from time import sleep
import os
import datetime
import serial
ser = serial.Serial(port="/dev/ttyS1", timeout=1)
ser.dtr = True
while True:
	while ser.dsr:
		sleep(0.5)
	print("Power is off " + str(datetime.datetime.now()))
	os.system("/etc/init.d/foldingathome stop")
	while not ser.dsr:
		sleep(5)
	print("Power is on " + str(datetime.datetime.now()))
	os.system("/etc/init.d/foldingathome start")
That requires a relay to connect DTR to DSR on the serial port (/dev/ttyS1 in my case, USB serial adapters should also work but have not tested) when the relay is powered by a wall wart. (In case it's not obvious, the wall wart should *not* be plugged into a backup supply!) The script is run as root so it can start and stop the Folding process. (My machine uses OpenRC, systemd will need small changes.)

For those who know about the Lainey Schmidt chip in my PC, I couldn't just query it since I temporarily connected another layer of backup on the AC side, so just because the AC is live doesn't mean it's running from grid power.
 
As far as I can tell, power is stable now so I'M BACK!! :)

I live in Manor, us taxens should meet up sometime for lunch or something :)
 
As far as I can tell, power is stable now so I'M BACK!! :)

I live in Manor, us taxens should meet up sometime for lunch or something :)
Power good, cold bad!

A meet up? Sounds doable. Maybe Dejo and I could truck-pool & meet halfway?

@dejo, south of the north side of the loop or the south side of the loop?
 
My power came back just after midnight last night and been steady so far. Started a few computers last night and brought the rest up this afternoon. Our house is all electric and no fireplace, so has been a bit chilly past few days. My computers provide all the heat for the house and have not needed to run the central heat in years. Even with extra computers running, likely using same or less power in cold weather due to not needing A/C.
 
south of the south side of the loop. Basically Shiloh and Paluxy
 
My wife was telling me that y'all get a pretty big % of your power (something like 15%) from wind, but all the windmills have frozen up thanks to the weather.
I hope everyone gets thawed out soon! Not having basic utilities is always such a giant pita.

This is not true.

Renewable energy generation (such as solar and wind) are considered "Weak" generation sources as they do not put out power at a constant rate (compared to fossil fuel plants). In the Utility Industry, these power sources are known as DG (Distributed Generation) and are not factored into any major demand calculations...and are primarily used to offset peaks until standby generation can be spun up and added to existing generation capacity.

For what happened in Texas...there will be people going to jail after the investigations are complete.

I have many friends and colleagues within the Utility Industry, and here is what they said happened that caused power to go out in Texas:

0. A power grid is one massively interconnected AC electrical circuit
1. Unusual cold weather caused a demand spike for natural gas
2. Natural gas prices skyrocketed due to supply/demand
3. A major power plant run off natural gas let their purchase options expire due to cost (they were looking for cheaper gas)
4. Once the options expired, the major power plant lost its fuel and tripped offline
5. Once this plant tripped offline, approximately half of the power generation capacity was longer available
6. This caused the other power plants to trip offline as they could not handle the load
--- This is a safety precaution due to the enormous amount of circulating energy in the power grid

Further investigations have revealed that Winterizing operations where not completed on the power plants (to save money). This caused gas lines to freeze, and has made it difficult to restart power plants.

If Texas wasn't so stupid and had completed their interties to the national grid, this would not have happened...other portions of the power grid would have been able to supply power. Of course, that would have cost the utility company even more $$...so that's why they didn't do it.

Interties between power grids are DC to DC. This allows for each grid to be treated as a separate AC circuit. When power has to be diverted to another grid, the DC to DC acts like a constant load and prevents transients in both the supplying and receiving grids.

The goal that President Biden laid out (the US being 100% off fossil fuel by 2035) is equivalent in magnitude to putting a man on the moon. Renewable energy generation will have to be at least 5 times peak demand loads, so that excess energy can be stored...the footprint for this will be very large. Additionally, major breakthroughs will have to be completed to allow for massive and efficient energy storage that does not currently exist.

With renewable energy, you have to store what you are not using so that you have power when the wind doesn't blow and the sun don't shine.
 
My wife works at AEP (Procurement, Ohio) who is in Texas. I heard the same things. To add to that, the wind farms would work, however, as I understand it, the cold weather package for these to work in such weather wasn't purchased. Clearly this isn't as egregious, but another bullet in an already smoking gun.

IIRC, the news said they get around 10% of their power from wind. :shrug:
 
ERCOT is an acronym for Electric Reliability Council of Texas. 1/3 of the members don't live in Texas. So far the Reliability part of the equation hasn't been stressed enough in their Corporate meetings. Many of the known issues with wind and solar generation, supply and demand peeks have been ignored because there aren't any Subsidies, i.e., "free money" to make sure that the whole package of generation, maintenance, storage, and distribution were all up to recommended standards. The wind generators make money whether they make electricity or not.

Turns out that a good way to store energy is called coal and uranium. No batteries required.
 
My wife works at AEP (Procurement, Ohio) who is in Texas. I heard the same things. To add to that, the wind farms would work, however, as I understand it, the cold weather package for these to work in such weather wasn't purchased. Clearly this isn't as egregious, but another bullet in an already smoking gun.

IIRC, the news said they get around 10% of their power from wind. :shrug:

Know AEP very well...as well as Duke, Exelon, and Amren in your area.
 
My son and many of my friends, neighbors and other relatives work for AEP. AEP has the Cook Nuclear plant just a few miles up the road from us so we have a lot of nuclear workers over here. Oddly enough, because we are on the national grid, the nuclear plant in my back yard does not supply our area. Most of it goes to Indiana.

There is no doubt that we need to move towards renewable energies going forward. It is also true that it will take a lot of inovation to do so. If we don't embrace this "race" for renewables, other nations will take the lead and we will have to purchase from them. If we, as a nation, invest in this like we did with the man on the moon, we will employ a lot of very smart people to figure out some very complex issues that regular skilled workers can install and impliment. Win-win in my mind.
 
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