Re: test poste

[esgrad]

reese texas





https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2021/02/17/el-paso-escapes-texas-power-grid-outage-blackouts-twitter-reacts/6779111002/

El Paso escaped the massive power outages seen in much of Texas this week
mostly
because El Paso Electric is not part of the Texas power grid. The Texas
grid had
massive power outages due to power plant problems caused by extremely cold
temperatures.


https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/texas-grid-failure-ignites-feud-over-gop-oversight-of-energy-industry-.html

Texas grid failure ignites feud over Republican
oversight of the energy industry
FEB 18 2021

Texas has avoided federal regulation by establishing its own power grid that’s
nearly cut off from the rest of the country — an isolated system that
conservatives in power have long praised.

But the system collapsed this week from a surge in energy demand coupled
with frozen utility plants during a brutal winter storm, which then increased
energy prices and triggered the state’s worst blackouts in decades.

The outages led to major public criticism of the legislators and state
agencies
over their apparent failure to heed warnings about the grid’s inability to
handle extreme weather conditions. Energy experts said the collapse was
due in part to the state’s decision to not require equipment upgrades for
a more resilient system.



https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/

Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians
to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy.
But in reality, the wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of
what the state had planned for during the winter.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected that 80% of the grid's
winter capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal
and some nuclear power.

An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday
afternoon
that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation,
were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal
sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.

By Wednesday, those numbers had changed as more operators struggled to
operate in the cold: 45 gigawatts total were offline, with 28 gigawats from
thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources, ERCOT officials
said.




https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-power-grid-failures/

Policy observers blamed the power system failure on the legislators and state
agencies who they say did not properly heed the warnings of previous storms or
account for more extreme weather events warned of by climate scientists.
Instead,
Texas prioritized the free market.

“Clearly we need to change our regulatory focus to protect the people, not
profits,”
said Tom “Smitty” Smith, a now-retired former director of Public Citizen, an
Austin-based consumer advocacy group who advocated for changes after in 2011
when Texas faced a similar energy crisis.

“Instead of taking any regulatory action, we ended up getting guidelines
that were
unenforceable and largely ignored in [power companies’] rush for profits,”
he said.

It is possible to “winterize” natural gas power plants, natural gas
production, wind
turbines and other energy infrastructure, experts said, through practices like
insulating pipelines. These upgrades help prevent major interruptions in
other states
with regularly cold weather.

In 2011, Texas faced a very similar storm that froze natural gas wells and
affected
coal plants and wind turbines, leading to power outages across the state.
A decade
later, Texas power generators have still not made all the investments
necessary to
prevent plants from tripping offline during extreme cold, experts said.

Woodfin, of ERCOT, acknowledged that there’s no requirement to prepare power
infrastructure for such extremely low temperatures. “Those are not
mandatory, it’s a
voluntary guideline to decide to do those things,” he said. “There are
financial
incentives to stay online, but there is no regulation at this point.”

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which has some
authority to
regulate power generators in the U.S., is currently developing mandatory
standards
for “winterizing” energy infrastructure, a spokesperson said.

Texas politicians and regulators were warned after the 2011 storm that more
“winterizing” of power infrastructure was necessary, a report by the
Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability
Corporation shows.
The large number of units that tripped offline or couldn’t start during
that storm
“demonstrates that the generators did not adequately anticipate the full
impact of the
extended cold weather and high winds,” regulators wrote at the time. More
thorough
preparation for cold weather could have prevented the outages, the report
said.

“This should have been addressed in 2011 by the Legislature after that market
meltdown, but there was no substantial follow up,” by state politicians or
regulators,
said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow and economics professor at the University
of Houston.
“They skipped on down the road with business as usual.”




https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/energy/539478-like-hitting-the-jackpot-dallas-cowboys-owner-makes

Comstock Resources Inc., a natural gas company headquartered in Texas,
experienced a boon in prices for its gas today amid a statewide shortage
as Winter
Storm Uri leaves Texas power companies in disarray.

Bloomberg reports that prices for natural gas have surpassed the $1,000
mark per
million British thermal units as demand rises.

Prior to the statewide outages, Comstock’s gas, some sourced from its
Haynesville
wells, sold between $15-$179 per thousand cubic feet, the company’s CFO Roland
Burns reportedly confirmed on a Wednesday earnings call. That amounts to
roughly $15.55 to $186 per million British thermal units.


https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-power-grid-failures/

Texas politicians and regulators were warned after the 2011 storm that more
“winterizing” of power infrastructure was necessary, a report by the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability
Corporation shows. The large number of units that tripped offline or couldn’t
start during that storm “demonstrates that the generators did not adequately
anticipate the full impact of the extended cold weather and high winds,”
regulators wrote at the time. More thorough preparation for cold weather
could have prevented the outages, the report said.

“This should have been addressed in 2011 by the Legislature after that
market meltdown, but there was no substantial follow up,” by state
politicians or regulators, said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow and economics
professor at the University of Houston. “They skipped on down the road
with business as usual.”



https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/wall-street-profited-off-texas-blackouts/

While many Texans last week were worried about sky-high electric bills
from February’s winter storms, the state’s sole utility commissioner was
privately reassuring out-of-state investors who profited from the crisis
that he was working to keep their windfall safe.

Texas Monthly has obtained a recording of a 48-minute call on March 9 in
which Texas Public Utility Commission chairman Arthur D’Andrea discussed
the fallout from the February power crisis with investors. During that
call, which was hosted by Bank of America Securities and closed to the
public and news media, D’Andrea took pains to ease investors’ concerns
that electricity trades, transacted at the highest prices the market
allows, might be reversed, potentially costing trading firms and publicly
traded generating companies millions of dollars.

“I apologize for the uncertainty,” D’Andrea said, promising to put “the
weight of the commission” behind efforts to keep billions of dollars from
being returned to utilities that were forced—thanks to decisions by the
PUC—to buy power at sky-high prices, even after the worst of the blackout
had passed.




https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/natural-gas-customers-in-texas-get-stuck-with-3-4-billion-cold-snap-surcharge/

Texans will be paying for the effects of last February’s cold snap for
decades to come,
as the state’s oil and gas regulator approved a plan for natural gas
utilities to recover
$3.4 billion in debt they incurred during the storm.





https://www.newsweek.com/texans-slam-gov-greg-abbott-power-grid-failures-after-earlier-boasts-1706703
5/14/22

Texans have criticized Governor Greg Abbott over power generation issues
after he repeatedly boasted about the state's power grid.

"Another promise made and another promise broken. @GregAbbott_TX,
perhaps you could put the additional $531 million you requested for your
failed Operation Lone Star to good use and actually #FixTheGrid,"
Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, tweeted Saturday,
referring to the governor's efforts to curb migrant crossings at the
U.S.-Mexico border.

Her remark came after the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) asked
Texans to conserve electricity after "six power generation facilities" went
offline Friday amid rising temperatures and high demand for power.

[darzen]

reese texas


https://www.newsweek.com/texas-power-shortage-electricity-ercot-reserve-capacity-1723288

Texas Faces Rolling Blackouts as ERCOT Warns Not to Use Major Appliances

Texans have been asked to conserve power amid a heatwave on Monday
as the state's power grid operator warned of potential rolling blackouts.

The state faces a "potential reserve capacity shortage with no market
solution available" on Monday, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas
(ERCOT) said in an operations message on its website Sunday night.

ERCOT appealed to Texans and state businesses to voluntarily cut back
on their energy use between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Monday when record
temperatures are expected across the state.

[sergio]

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/16/texas-power-grid-ercot-greg-abbott/

Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday afternoon that Texas’ main power grid
"is better today than it’s ever been" — even as residents were on their third
consecutive day of being asked to reduce electricity use.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the main power
grid,
is urging conservation through Friday, as a number of power plants were
inexplicably offline at the same time as the state was experiencing record
June
demand for electricity.

As of Wednesday, when Abbott made his first public comments about this
week’s grid conditions, ERCOT officials have still not said why so many power
plants were unexpectedly offline. Approximately 12,000 megawatts of power
generation were offline Monday afternoon — enough to power 2.4 million
homes on a hot summer day. That’s several times more than what ERCOT
would typically expect to go down during June.

Approximately 9,000 megawatts of electricity were still offline as of
Wednesday
afternoon, an ERCOT spokesperson said.

ERCOT officials are working to determine why so many units were down this
week.
Some experts theorized that the deadly winter storm in February may have
caused
damage to plants that is causing new complications, but ERCOT officials
did not
offer any details.

[enson]

reese texas

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-power-shortage-electricity-ercot-reserve-capacity-1723288

Texas Faces Rolling Blackouts as ERCOT Warns Not to Use Major Appliances

Texans have been asked to conserve power amid a heatwave on Monday
as the state's power grid operator warned of potential rolling blackouts.

The state faces a "potential reserve capacity shortage with no market
solution available" on Monday, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas
(ERCOT) said in an operations message on its website Sunday night.

ERCOT appealed to Texans and state businesses to voluntarily cut back
on their energy use between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Monday when record
temperatures are expected across the state.