In the days and weeks ahead, investigations, yelling, chastising and the blame game will play a prominent role in the dissection of the ERCOT grid failure. It’s easy to want heads to roll, and maybe some should but I’ll recount a story from one of my favorite bosses when I started at Anadarko in 2000. He was a brand new engineer and had been asked to run the calculation for cement volume on a well they were drilling. He did the calculation wrong and they overflowed the cement so badly, the entire location as covered with cement. The boss yelled and screamed and said “Fire him, fire him!!!” The boss’s boss, a thoughtful man who recognized what’s done is done said “Why would I fire him? I just spent a lot of money to train him.”
Here are three things that need to be deeply considered and investigated, both in Texas and all the grids in the country.
1. I’m going to paraphrase the argument as to why wind in particular is not to blame: “the source of power that we have spent a huge amount of money on and is the focus and future of our investment - well- we didn’t expect it to work because it’s not windy in February, but we are phasing out the power source that does work because it’s bad for the environment.”
2. From an NBC article: “due to COVID-19, virtual tabletop exercises were conducted with just 16% of plants instead of in-person spot checks.” WFH is convenient, but is it as productive? Do we onboard as well? Do we manage emergencies as well? Do we collaborate and brainstorm as well? It’s nice not to commute to work, but I believe this was a strong contributor to the failure, both in planning but especially in management of the crisis.
3. From an operator, and of all the points this is the one that raised my eyebrows the most: “We had more than 250 mmcf/d taken offline. On Saturday, we got notices that the blackouts were hitting out SWDs and the Gas plants (we know this because ERCOT was prioritizing residential demand not commercial). With no where to go with the water and no one to take the gas, we had to start shutting in the wells which caused the system to freeze. By Tuesday, ERCOT figures this out and asks where can we provide power that you can make Gas. We give them 5 key power points and identify our SWDs that we needed and they turn the power on and keep it on. We start turning on our ESPs and we start making Gas on Wednesday.” Thermal didn’t fail. Thermal was shut in because how our power was produced wasn’t considered.
The good news? Failure brings learning and improvement. Key facilities will be heat traced. Processes to keep key wells and production on will be implemented. And wind - as an intermittent source - should be thoroughly evaluated in the light of day, instead of the halo of green hero worship. But most importantly, we must recognize that there are trade offs to having shut down society for a year to “save people from Covid” and we haven’t begun to see all the negative impacts that will create.
I'll let others worry about laying blame. The bottom line is that relying on intermittent renewable energy during extreme weather events is not the answer to maintain reliability. Unpopular though it may be, fuel-based energy sources are required in order to keep the lights on.
From a friend in Minnesota: when it gets really cold–Minnesota cold, not Texas cold–all wind turbines are shut off, and they draw power off the grid to heat their motors. So when it is really cold, wind turbines are consumers of electricity, not producers.
Totally agree. I love to see how long that plante has been out of service...: or on service