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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Last week's "heat dome" broke dozens of records for high temperatures in the U.S. West and Texas, placing extreme demands on those areas' electric generators before summer even officially began. The electric system held up, sometimes barely.
The years-long drought in the West has lowered hydroelectric reservoirs, cutting into hydroelectric generation. Hot temperatures stilled winds, reducing wind generation. Soaring demand for electricity strained electric generators, causing thousands of megawatts to trip offline. In Texas and California, grid operators called power emergencies and asked customers to turn down their air conditioners and use less electricity. One utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (San Francisco, California), warned residents in one community to be ready for rolling blackouts, but the controlled outage never took place.
Last week's heatwave came about two months ahead of normal, and it broke or came close to breaking records in dozens of cities, including: Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; Billings, Montana; Needles, California; and Omaha, Nebraska. Some areas reported hitting temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit by 8 am. And there was little cooling during the night.
"It's not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms," Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, told National Public Radio. "It would be a pretty extreme event for August," Swain said, when new temperature records typically are set.
That so many temperature records were set before the official start of summer on June 20 led some to wonder how the nation's electric system would hold up during what is starting off as a particularly hot summer.
Thousands of megawatts (MW) of thermal power plants tripped offline. In Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) (Austin, Texas) called an energy emergency on June 14 after about 11,500 MW of electric generation experienced unplanned outages. Texans were asked to reduce their air conditioning. ERCOT's operating reserves that day fell as low as 2,000 MW. The grid manager, which serves an estimated 90% of Texas, has 116,925 MW of electric generation capacity, according to Britt Burt, IIR's vice president of research for the Global Power Industry.
"It was a difficult situation in Texas last week, and it could get worse as we go through the summer," Burt commented. "Generators in Texas have shut down a lot of dispatchable capacity, mostly coal, in recent years, and it has been replaced by non-dispatchable generation, mostly renewable energy like solar and wind."
"Without battery storage, when the wind doesn't blow, you don't have wind power, and when the sun doesn't shine, or cloud cover comes in, you don't have solar power," he continued. "Texas needs new gas-fired generation that can be reliably dispatched."
Unplanned outages are the "nature of the beast," Burt commented. "Generators perform scheduled maintenance during periods when demand is low. But tubes experience metal fatigue and leak. Transformers eventually wear out, and not always at a convenient time."
"Winterizing" a power plant is relatively straightforward and widespread in northern regions where winter temperatures often fall below 0 degrees, Burt said. But preparing a power plant to keep operating when temperatures soar above 100 degrees is different, mostly because it can be hard to predict when a piece of equipment will break down.
Operators could fully digitize their power plants by putting sensors on all failure-prone equipment and using advanced analytics and real-time equipment monitoring across the generators. Real-time monitoring of equipment vibration levels and other metrics could give operators an early warning sign about potential equipment failure, enabling them to perform predictive maintenance. Burt said it was unclear how many power plants in Texas are fully digitized.
Another way to keep the lights on in the summer would be to change Texas' electric market rules. Currently, Texas is one of a few states that only pays generators for electricity they produce. They are not paid for capacity, the ability to generate on a moment's notice if needed. Capacity payments would tend to incent more thorough maintenance at power plants because operators would receive some compensation for their capacity, even if the plant never generated electricity.
A week before the June 14-18 heatwave, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed two bills into law on the state's electric system. One bill, Senate Bill 3, would require the weatherization of power plants, natural gas facilities and transmission lines so they could continue operating in extreme weather. To ensure compliance, those facilities will be inspected by the Texas Railroad Commission and ERCOT. Failure to weatherize these facilities can result in a penalty of up to $1 million, the governor's office said in a statement.
Senate Bill 3 gives the Public Utilities Commission of Texas (PUCT) (Austin, Texas) six months to write the rules implementing the legislation. Asset owners would then have six months to bring their facilities into compliance with the new rules. So the new rules could be in effect for the winter of 2023, but not 2022.
While Senate Bill 3 makes repeated references to "weather emergencies," it is unclear if the bill applies to weatherization for summer as well as winter temperature extremes. That level of detail will emerge from the implementing rules to be written by the PUCT. But the bill did not address the structure of the Texas electric market, meaning it will remain an energy-only market for now.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, six offices in North America and 12 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn.
The years-long drought in the West has lowered hydroelectric reservoirs, cutting into hydroelectric generation. Hot temperatures stilled winds, reducing wind generation. Soaring demand for electricity strained electric generators, causing thousands of megawatts to trip offline. In Texas and California, grid operators called power emergencies and asked customers to turn down their air conditioners and use less electricity. One utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (San Francisco, California), warned residents in one community to be ready for rolling blackouts, but the controlled outage never took place.
Last week's heatwave came about two months ahead of normal, and it broke or came close to breaking records in dozens of cities, including: Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; Billings, Montana; Needles, California; and Omaha, Nebraska. Some areas reported hitting temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit by 8 am. And there was little cooling during the night.
"It's not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms," Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, told National Public Radio. "It would be a pretty extreme event for August," Swain said, when new temperature records typically are set.
That so many temperature records were set before the official start of summer on June 20 led some to wonder how the nation's electric system would hold up during what is starting off as a particularly hot summer.
Thousands of megawatts (MW) of thermal power plants tripped offline. In Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) (Austin, Texas) called an energy emergency on June 14 after about 11,500 MW of electric generation experienced unplanned outages. Texans were asked to reduce their air conditioning. ERCOT's operating reserves that day fell as low as 2,000 MW. The grid manager, which serves an estimated 90% of Texas, has 116,925 MW of electric generation capacity, according to Britt Burt, IIR's vice president of research for the Global Power Industry.
"It was a difficult situation in Texas last week, and it could get worse as we go through the summer," Burt commented. "Generators in Texas have shut down a lot of dispatchable capacity, mostly coal, in recent years, and it has been replaced by non-dispatchable generation, mostly renewable energy like solar and wind."
"Without battery storage, when the wind doesn't blow, you don't have wind power, and when the sun doesn't shine, or cloud cover comes in, you don't have solar power," he continued. "Texas needs new gas-fired generation that can be reliably dispatched."
Unplanned outages are the "nature of the beast," Burt commented. "Generators perform scheduled maintenance during periods when demand is low. But tubes experience metal fatigue and leak. Transformers eventually wear out, and not always at a convenient time."
"Winterizing" a power plant is relatively straightforward and widespread in northern regions where winter temperatures often fall below 0 degrees, Burt said. But preparing a power plant to keep operating when temperatures soar above 100 degrees is different, mostly because it can be hard to predict when a piece of equipment will break down.
Operators could fully digitize their power plants by putting sensors on all failure-prone equipment and using advanced analytics and real-time equipment monitoring across the generators. Real-time monitoring of equipment vibration levels and other metrics could give operators an early warning sign about potential equipment failure, enabling them to perform predictive maintenance. Burt said it was unclear how many power plants in Texas are fully digitized.
Another way to keep the lights on in the summer would be to change Texas' electric market rules. Currently, Texas is one of a few states that only pays generators for electricity they produce. They are not paid for capacity, the ability to generate on a moment's notice if needed. Capacity payments would tend to incent more thorough maintenance at power plants because operators would receive some compensation for their capacity, even if the plant never generated electricity.
A week before the June 14-18 heatwave, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed two bills into law on the state's electric system. One bill, Senate Bill 3, would require the weatherization of power plants, natural gas facilities and transmission lines so they could continue operating in extreme weather. To ensure compliance, those facilities will be inspected by the Texas Railroad Commission and ERCOT. Failure to weatherize these facilities can result in a penalty of up to $1 million, the governor's office said in a statement.
Senate Bill 3 gives the Public Utilities Commission of Texas (PUCT) (Austin, Texas) six months to write the rules implementing the legislation. Asset owners would then have six months to bring their facilities into compliance with the new rules. So the new rules could be in effect for the winter of 2023, but not 2022.
While Senate Bill 3 makes repeated references to "weather emergencies," it is unclear if the bill applies to weatherization for summer as well as winter temperature extremes. That level of detail will emerge from the implementing rules to be written by the PUCT. But the bill did not address the structure of the Texas electric market, meaning it will remain an energy-only market for now.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, six offices in North America and 12 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn.
