What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Wholesale-power-prices-spiking-across-Texas-15951684.php I haven't verified the information in the following tweet. But it's interesting. https://twitter.com/amberwbooker/status/1361495140519587844?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw > The next time you vote, just remember that ERCOT (Texas' electrical grid) refuses to become part of the national electrical grid to avoid federal regulatory oversight. There are only three electrical grids in the contiguous United States - the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and ERCOT. The interconnectedness of the former is why places iwth much harsher winters than Texas don't experience the same types of outages. S many pe9ple ar literally freezing to death tonight because we live in a state that resents a fundamental tenet of federalism and is still salty about he Confederacy losing the Civil War. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
Maybe TX will thaw out by Juneteenth
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth> . -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
I'm fallowing this just awful mess in a forum. As I understand it, the physical places are to cold to send out electricity. They're frozen, and can't get or send any. On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 2:29 PM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote: Maybe TX will thaw out by Juneteenth - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Yeah, and apparently, there's a mostly false meme that wind turbines are to blame. But most of the shortfall in power is due to failing natural gas and coal plants. Again, I have no knowledge of the details. Care is warranted when thinking about where to apply blame. And it doesn't really matter who's to blame while people are still suffering. Trouble is, by the time the emergency's over, nobody'll take the time do the post-mortem and apply blame appropriately. We'll all go back to ogling people on Instagram. [sigh]
On 2/16/21 1:31 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote: > I'm fallowing this just awful mess in a forum. As I understand it, the physical places are to cold to send out electricity. They're frozen, and can't get or send any. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
OMG yeah :( it's...just awful. And not just placing it where it should, or if it's just basic physics, but then not going back to invest in more robust redundancies. A future tech forum I also follow has said Elon Musk as him and not CEO, might be able to get homes batteries, possible the powerwalls. Or large insulated batteries so that homes freezing the worst can get heat and saftey while gaslines get defrosted. On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 2:39 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote: Yeah, and apparently, there's a mostly false meme that wind turbines are to blame. But most of the shortfall in power is due to failing natural gas and coal plants. Again, I have no knowledge of the details. Care is warranted when thinking about where to apply blame. And it doesn't really matter who's to blame while people are still suffering. Trouble is, by the time the emergency's over, nobody'll take the time do the post-mortem and apply blame appropriately. We'll all go back to ogling people on Instagram. [sigh] - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
In reply to this post by gepr
I got a good premonition of this event with a major DOE project
some 15 years ago to build coupled ODE (ordinary differential
equation) models of 20-something infrastructures... energy
infrastructures comprising about 1/6 of them... the funding/goal
was in response to terrorist threat but since we were also
modeling natural disasters and cascading failures... the variety
of intra-US geopolitical idiosyncrasies was very eye-opening. Another obvious not-obvious "cut" in *all* infrastructure
networks is the Mississippi river where *virtually all* networks
are connected at the few Interstate and rail bridges. Modern
communications does not depend as *much* on physical connections
(e.g. microwave links) but we don't have any meaningful analogs
for transportation, power lines, pipelines, raw and processed
materials/food, etc. As I learned it then, TX is very self-isolating for myriad
reasons ranging from being large enough and self-sufficient enough
to "get away with it" (until now?) to something more like a
collective "character flaw". I suppose AK is *more* prone to
these challenges and CA has the similar risks but different
character flaws(?). Private, for-profit concerns will naturally
optimize for shareholders over stakeholders (think PG&E and
the wildfire disasters of late), and short(er) over long(er) term
concerns. As a practical matter, it an emergent collective awareness of the
supply-demand oscillations by the consumers in TX might reduce if
not actually avert system collapses/failures. Understanding *when
and where* demand reduction (shared pain) can keep the systems
under-stressed. Rolling blackouts are a top-down imposition of
this. Human nature has *some* people upping their consumption in
a very "hoarding-like" style... as if running your house furnace
at 80F until the natural gas pressure or electric grid fails will
give you more than perhaps an extra half-hour of comfort while
increasing the chances of a failure significantly? I have been
known (in my youth) to drive faster when I was afraid I was going
to run out of gas before the next refueling opportunity. The
above figures, from left to right, represent the infrastructure
interdependencies "as-modeled", the same networks in a less
critically *ordered* manner, and the same allowed to
self-organize according to their weighted interdependencies.
The first two are hard to analyze without depth from stereo or
motion parallax and interrogation capability, but the last also
benefits significantly from interacting with the
attractive/repulsive force equations. None of them model
explicitly the geospatial aspects of the electric grid, for
example, but do capture the interdependency between pipeline,
rail-delivery, OTR delivery, comms, finance, etc. and
electricity production. We did not get around to visualizing
dynamic graph loading... it is still somewhat of a holy grail
in the biz.
On 2/16/21 2:21 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
What went wrong with the Texas power grid? https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Wholesale-power-prices-spiking-across-Texas-15951684.php I haven't verified the information in the following tweet. But it's interesting. https://twitter.com/amberwbooker/status/1361495140519587844?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe next time you vote, just remember that ERCOT (Texas' electrical grid) refuses to become part of the national electrical grid to avoid federal regulatory oversight. There are only three electrical grids in the contiguous United States - the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and ERCOT. The interconnectedness of the former is why places iwth much harsher winters than Texas don't experience the same types of outages. S many pe9ple ar literally freezing to death tonight because we live in a state that resents a fundamental tenet of federalism and is still salty about he Confederacy losing the Civil War. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Your graphs are interesting, even without interactivity or 3d. But more interesting still would be their (potential) evolution through time. If I understand the TX situation correctly, the "hoarding" behavior you mentioned was an accidental increase in load with which the traditional energy sources couldn't keep up ... less about bumping up the thermostat for a buffer and more about simple demand.
It would be interesting to see a dynamic graph of the load/demand. On 2/16/21 7:58 PM, Steve Smith wrote: > We did not get around to visualizing dynamic graph loading... it is still somewhat of a holy grail in the biz. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
Ted Koppel, NYT, wrote a book a few years back called "Lights Out." About the national power grid. When published in 2016, the quoted assessment of DoD, FEMA, DOE, Congressional Energy Committees, and others was a 100% chance of catastrophic failure within 20 years. Death toll in the millions within days and weeks of the failure. The grid is an amalgam of mismatched hardware and, perhaps more importantly, software that prevents inter-operability — including within grid, e.g. Texas. (local power companies control what bespoke hardware and software is used: there are no standards). The grid is already infected with malware installed by Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China. The key components, giant house size transformers, cost from 10-150 million each and take 2-4 years to manufacture, so there are no backups. And best part — all are made in China. Despite the consensus that this will happen in the near future, no one is planning for what to do about it. All kinds of other good news in the book. True story: in 1971 an intrepid band of revolutionaries set out, bombs in trunk, to blow up the railroad tracks between Salt Lake City, UT and Wendover, NV. Way out on the salt flats where no one would be hurt; trains given lots of advance warning. The rationale: nearly all of the ammunition used in Vietnam was transported by train from Baraboo, WI to San Diego, CA, via those tracks Six left Minneapolis and one by one they lost their zeal and commitment until 2 were left. Contacted by a co-revolutionary in Portland, plans were changed, bombs were transferred, and the colleague used them to take out a single power transmission line, a carefully selected nexus in the northwest power grid, and caused a two-day blackout that affected Portland up to Tacoma, WA. davew On Wed, Feb 17, 2021, at 7:58 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: > Your graphs are interesting, even without interactivity or 3d. But more > interesting still would be their (potential) evolution through time. If > I understand the TX situation correctly, the "hoarding" behavior you > mentioned was an accidental increase in load with which the traditional > energy sources couldn't keep up ... less about bumping up the > thermostat for a buffer and more about simple demand. > > It would be interesting to see a dynamic graph of the load/demand. > > > On 2/16/21 7:58 PM, Steve Smith wrote: > > We did not get around to visualizing dynamic graph loading... it is still somewhat of a holy grail in the biz. > > -- > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
A couple Powerwalls are $14k, plus solar panels. There’s always the option of stockpiling gas for a generator. When electricity is out gas stations can’t pump. It has been like this for days in Oregon due to the consequences of an ice storm.
On Feb 17, 2021, at 7:24 AM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Yeah. I'm no survivalist. But it takes almost trivial effort to plan just a little bit for redundancy. Maybe it's having lived off rice and beans for months or having gone camping as a kid. But living without electricity for a week or so doesn't seem that difficult if one's relatively healthy. Beyond a week, I think I'd start to have some trouble. I think CERT recommends 3 weeks of stockpiled resources. But it's difficult for me to imagine most renters achieving that, much less the [food|housing] insecure.
On 2/17/21 8:07 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > A couple Powerwalls are $14k, plus solar panels. There’s always the option of stockpiling gas for a generator. When electricity is out gas stations can’t pump. It has been like this for days in Oregon due to the consequences of an ice storm. > >> On Feb 17, 2021, at 7:24 AM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >> >> Ted Koppel, NYT, wrote a book a few years back called "Lights Out." About the national power grid. >> >> When published in 2016, the quoted assessment of DoD, FEMA, DOE, Congressional Energy Committees, and others was a *100% chance of catastrophic failure within 20 years*. >> >> Death toll in the millions within days and weeks of the failure. >> >> The grid is an amalgam of mismatched hardware and, perhaps more importantly, software that prevents inter-operability — including within grid, e.g. Texas. (local power companies control what bespoke hardware and software is used: there are no standards). >> >> The grid is already infected with malware installed by Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China. >> >> The key components, giant house size transformers, cost from 10-150 million each and take 2-4 years to manufacture, so there are no backups. And best part — all are made in China. >> >> Despite the consensus that this _will_ happen in the near future, no one is planning for what to do about it. >> >> All kinds of other good news in the book. >> >> True story: in 1971 an intrepid band of revolutionaries set out, bombs in trunk, to blow up the railroad tracks between Salt Lake City, UT and Wendover, NV. Way out on the salt flats where no one would be hurt; trains given lots of advance warning. The rationale: nearly all of the ammunition used in Vietnam was transported by train from Baraboo, WI to San Diego, CA, via those tracks >> >> Six left Minneapolis and one by one they lost their zeal and commitment until 2 were left. Contacted by a co-revolutionary in Portland, plans were changed, bombs were transferred, and the colleague used them to take out a single power transmission line, a carefully selected nexus in the northwest power grid, and caused a two-day blackout that affected Portland up to Tacoma, WA. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
|
In reply to this post by gepr
Glen -
Thanks... that entire body of code is long lost to bit-rot and sequestration behind a high security fence. The bit of java/processing I shared with you a year or more ago was a (lame) attempt to get back to that, but with the dynamic aspect implicit... interesting/useful dynamic test data is hard to come by. Weeks of work to resurrect a fraction of years of work! Sometimes that is a good ratio for refactoring. I think the *coupling* of systems at different scales and in different domains (power grid generation vs home consumption for example) is a challenge for society... most of us don't really understand the heat-flux dynamics of our own homes under normal conditions, so when we go into extreme weather (or resource limitation/interruption) we are not particularly prepared to make good decisions. And all this while operators/regulators/politicians are trying to set and execute policy for the larger infrastructure. From what little (and archaic) knowledge I have of energy-distribution systems (electric and NG in particular), I think they have very limited (but reflecting normal operating ranges, including "normal" extrema) heuristics for control... 20 years ago it seems that expert operators with decades of experience and intuition were very critical for proper/safe/efficient operation of these grids. It seems like a great domain for machine learning, at the very least for smoothing out transition regions between different operating regimes. I believe that shutting down any of these (sub)systems has huge implications for the infrastructure. The development of microgrid technology would seem to have good potential for stabilizing regional grids. TX, after this incident, would seem to be a good place to accelerate adoption. CA with the PG&E wind/wildfire problems would seem to be another good place to focus on introduction of hybrid grids that have more local generation and finer grain islanding capabilities. I'm chatting later with my NREL client and may get some insight... At the very least the implications of having Rick Perry's (and successor Broulliete) lame hand/brain off the tiller of the ship of DOE... Perry's recent public statements on the TX weather/power/energy crisis are an extra level of absurd on top of the other myriad TX GOP voices trying to play both sides of the politics. I doubt that Perry learned much of anything about DOE during his tenure. - Steve > Your graphs are interesting, even without interactivity or 3d. But more interesting still would be their (potential) evolution through time. If I understand the TX situation correctly, the "hoarding" behavior you mentioned was an accidental increase in load with which the traditional energy sources couldn't keep up ... less about bumping up the thermostat for a buffer and more about simple demand. > > It would be interesting to see a dynamic graph of the load/demand. > > > On 2/16/21 7:58 PM, Steve Smith wrote: >> We did not get around to visualizing dynamic graph loading... it is still somewhat of a holy grail in the biz. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
"I doubt that Perry learned much of anything about DOE during his tenure."
Much less anything about ODEs, mesh refinement methods for finite element computations, or anything else that might actually be useful for addressing such a problem. When I was living in Texas he seemed mostly concerned with popularizing the hunting of wolves. -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |