I don't know how we didn't get hit but we didn't lose power for a single minute. Starting to think we have an ERCOT board member in the hood. :-)
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Very close to a much worse disaster?
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Originally posted by Big C View PostLong story short if the grid collapses, bringing it back up is more than just closing things in. Generation ties have to be matched voltage and frequency wise. Stations are ran off of battery stacks so that in case of a station going dark you can still operate equipment and go in. The longer the outage the higher chance you lose your dc system and then you can’t close anything. The dc system is required so that you can protect the equipment and lines via relays. Lots of the smaller stations would take a while to get up and running with the batteries shelled. A lot more to it but yes it would take a while to get the grid going again if collapsed system wide. There would be loading issues just like we all experienced where you can’t just bring everything online at once. You have to do it slowly so load stabilizes. Bring too much on too fast it will collapse again.Originally posted by Big C View PostYes the only way is load shedding. The relays offer load protection but you are still cutting load off. The issue is as cold as it got. There was way more load demand than normal. They did not have generation to meet the load. Also the equipment (xfmrs, lines, etc..) are built to handle a set amount of load continuously. Over loading a xfmr can mean catastrophic failure. And cause cascading problems. Only way to fix a system that has too much demand is find more generation or cut load or move load around if possible.
Thanks for those explanations!
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Originally posted by JTeLarkin08 View PostI work for Tri County Electric.. It seems we got really lucky in the fact that we dont have tons of equipment damage after the freeze.. We had 0 outages in our district at 5pm yesterday and were able to go off of storm rotation..
I think we were very close to this being extremely bad with the Texas Grid. That said I guarantee that Ercot makes some positive changes after this.
This recent cold snap was no exception. During this whole time I only lost power for 25 minutes. I don’t know why we were so blessed when everyone else was having extreme issues but it allowed us to help others that were in need.
Again, thank you.
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Originally posted by LWC View PostSo we don't have some sort of fuse or breaker type system to protect our generation units or transmission systems? One plant goes down and the whole system blows? I could see a localized failure but surely there are stop gaps to prevent system wide failures. This ain't the 70's
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Originally posted by AntlerCollector View PostHow many of y’all are prepared to keep your family warm, safe, and nourished for a month if we lost the power grid and water tomorrow?
This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this type of situation. Survived the Alaskan earthquake and the aftermath. Talk about returning to the dark ages. We were without for almost two months.
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Originally posted by Dale Moser View PostHow long would it take a governor with some balls to tell the EPA to kick rocks, and build/rebuild the necessary power plants to avoid such a problem?
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Originally posted by Geezy Rider View PostI have been a customer of Tri County for 38 years and I have always gotten excellent service from y’all. Thank you for all the hard work you guys do.
This recent cold snap was no exception. During this whole time I only lost power for 25 minutes. I don’t know why we were so blessed when everyone else was having extreme issues but it allowed us to help others that were in need.
Again, thank you.
We are also on Tri County and did not even have our power blink through all of this.
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Originally posted by Big C View PostYes the only way is load shedding. The relays offer load protection but you are still cutting load off. The issue is as cold as it got. There was way more load demand than normal. They did not have generation to meet the load. Also the equipment (xfmrs, lines, etc..) are built to handle a set amount of load continuously. Over loading a xfmr can mean catastrophic failure. And cause cascading problems. Only way to fix a system that has too much demand is find more generation or cut load or move load around if possible.
If there are load relays then how would downstream items fail (catastrophic type failure) if the relays are properly set and function properly?
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Things fail. A lot more load than normal during this and was running things to the extreme. Protection settings have to be changed all the time to keep up with the system. Smaller transformers aren’t always protected with relays some are fused. But basically for a relay to see something for it to take something out there has to be a fault or overload condition (other things as well as under voltage, over voltage, frequency problems, etc..) An equipment failure, lightning strike, phases touching, animals, all kinds of things can cause these issues.
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Originally posted by Big C View PostThings fail. A lot more load than normal during this and was running things to the extreme. Protection settings have to be changed all the time to keep up with the system. Smaller transformers aren’t always protected with relays some are fused. But basically for a relay to see something for it to take something out there has to be a fault or overload condition (other things as well as under voltage, over voltage, frequency problems, etc..) An equipment failure, lightning strike, phases touching, animals, all kinds of things can cause these issues.
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While I wont argue about what source is used to produced the power, I can tell you that ERCOT does not decide who gets cut off. They tell the companys how much power is available for them to use. The companys decide how to divide it up. Some did very well with rolling blackouts continously around their system. Others simply just dropped load from one portion and never rotated it.
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