19 Mar Texas Energy Crisis: Reasons and what to do

In the state of Texas, due to low weather temperatures, an energy collapse occurred. Bill Gates called the reason for the collapse savings on frost resistance systems.

Editor – in – chief of the analytical journal “Геоэнергетика.ги ” Boris Martsinkevich told Journalistic Pravda what really happened in Texas.

“In the state of Texas, there was a set of problems that gave this result. There is not one unified power system operating in the United States, but three: eastern, western and a separate one in the state of Texas. The Texas power grid is not synchronized with either the east or the west. All flows between them are possible only through DC couplings. This is the number one problem. Since it got colder not only in Texas, they could not transfer the necessary amount of electricity to him, since there is a limit on the capacity of DC supplies, it does not allow transmitting a certain amount of electricity, and there was a slight shortage of electricity in all states.

Since 2016, a large number of wind farms have been built in Texas. They supplied electricity at prices that were economically impractical for companies owning coal-fired power plants. In total, since 2017, about a dozen large coal-fired power plants have been closed in Texas due to their unprofitability. You can see the statistics, how it looked by year. Accordingly, the reserve of generating capacity that Texas had in case of such cataclysms simply dissolved. So the market decided.

At the time of the onset of frost, the demand for electricity in Texas has grown to 79 gigawatt-hours. Due to the fact that wind farms and wind turbines were not equipped with a blade heating system, 12.5 gigawatts of wind farms stopped working. Everyone has already seen a lot of pictures of how it looks. In addition, one of the power units of the nuclear power plant failed: the water sensor could not withstand the frost, was in the wrong room where it was needed. It took another 3.1 gigawatts. It turned out that the gas pipes leading to gas power plants are not insulated: there were problems with gas transmission. The fittings on the well also could not withstand the frost. Natural gas simply froze at the wellhead. As a result, if we proceed from the usual 100% of generation, another 23 gigawatts of generating capacity were lost due to the NPP. In total, the total deficit was 35 gigawatts with a demand of 79.

A non-fan shutdown has begun, when consumers know that there will be a power outage and can prepare for it. The shutdown in Texas was chaotic. Attempts by the state authorities to come up with something led to the fact that the largest oil refinery in Texas was left without electricity. This caused problems with petroleum products and automobile fuel.

Taking into account the fact that there are no centralized heating systems in the state, and the houses are heated individually, these houses began to fail one after another. The state is southern, so all they know about heating is underfloor heating or air conditioning with a plus sign.

In normal cases, heating in a multi-storey building starts from the top down, hot water tanks or pipes for it are located in the attic. Attics in Texas were not insulated, hence the freezing. If thawing occurs, the ice breaks all the pipes, floods occur in the houses that were also shown to us. Most likely, there are the same problems with the water supply system. The pipes are unlikely to be at a sufficient depth. The freezing depth at such temperatures is about 70 centimeters. I think there is a similar problem with the sewage system. After the end of the frosts, it will be necessary to put in order the water and sewer systems. Many people know how it smells in the warm season. Burst sewer pipes in large settlements are quite a big problem.

How to solve these problems is up to the voters and the state authorities to think. In such a situation, what does the mayor of the city have in store? In the USA, the market decides everything. They don’t have mobile diesel generators in stock. The analogue of our Ministry of Emergency Situations works in a strange way. The state authorities are not involved in this. And in Texas, the situation is such that the last hotbed is to de–energize hospitals and fire departments. For what reason the United States does not raise funds to Texas for a power plant all over the world, I do not understand. They see that the whole state is freezing, and there is no movement.