TexasCHLforum.com

Liberty wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:53 pm

philip964 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 21, 2021 5:37 pm

dhoobler wrote: ↑Sun Feb 21, 2021 2:47 pm

MaduroBU wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:00 am

My understanding is that the amount of water vapor in the natural gas going through the pipelines was high enough to be a problem at very low temperatures, thus the clogs were dependent upon the freezing temperature of water, not the gas itself.

Pipeline natural gas is dried to a maximum water content of seven pounds per million standard cubic feet. That works out to about 0.014 mole percent. It has a dew point of -40 F (-40 C). It is unlikely that water froze in the natural gas pipeline and contributed to the grid failure.

So I read somewhere froze at the wellhead.

It also froze at the condensate units themselves. Although I haven't heard anything specifically, but pressures tend to decrease with temperature. Refineries produce natural gas, Those plants had problems.

Most catastrophes aren't the result of a single point of failure but are the result of multiple smaller incidents that combine together to create a much larger failure.

MaduroBU wrote: ↑Sun Feb 21, 2021 12:53 am

puma guy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:34 pm

MaduroBU wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:00 am

puma guy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:15 pm

E10 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:57 pm

puma guy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:15 pm The areas Texas not covered by ERCOT were barely affected. Most outages were short: minute to a few hours. Very, very interesting.

El Paso was one o’ those areas, but it wasn’t as cold and it didn’t last as long as the cold in the middle of the state. There were public warnings and requests to conserve power from El Paso Electric Co. Also, I don’t think we’re as dependent on wind and solar.

ERCOT outages affected the entire area of coverage regardless of temperatures and conditions. The non ERCOT providers weren't relying on 42% wind generation that virtually disappeared ( down to 8%) putting the entire load on the remaining mostly natural gas and some coal generating plants which became overloaded. You can't loose 34% of your power generation all at once and survive. The crap about natural gas freezing is just that -crap. The freeze point of Methane (natural gas) is -295°F and the vapor point is -258°F. Frozen natural gas didn't happen. There could have been issues with the system controls, but that's not what is being stated as the problem. It's all spin to take the heat of green energy sources. AOC is too ignorant to realize her comment about Texas rejecting the Green New Deal is probably the stupidest utterance in her career. Texas leads the US in all Green Energy and we have 30% of all wind generation in the entire United States.

My understanding is that the amount of water vapor in the natural gas going through the pipelines was high enough to be a problem at very low temperatures, thus the clogs were dependent upon the freezing temperature of water, not the gas itself.

I haven't seen that information. Do you have a link to any info regarding that? The refinery I worked in imported billions of cubic feet of natural gas in weather ranging from 105° to 8-9° and never had problems. I worked in the utility department that monitored the entire fuel system of a 325M Bbl/Day refinery and we never have any occurrences such as the ones you describe. I'm trying to understand why water in methane would be vaporized. I don't know about power plants, but every refinery I've been in has knock out pots to catch any condensates in gas systems. Our system combined gas produced during the refining process with natural gas and there was a much greater possibility of having condensible constituents and no fuel control valves ever froze up/clogged up in sub freezing weather. But I am interested in learning if what occurred.

I'll look for the link and try to post it, though the source was not sufficiently technical to provide good details. My assumption is that the circumstances that you encoutered are exactly what happens in chemical plants and refineries, but that unscrupulous producers who knew that their product would go straight to a combined cycle plant that wouldn't know or care allowed them to take short cuts. I.e. "we got most of the water out, and it's going straight into a turbine regardless." If the walls of the pipeline are even in the 20sF that is probably fine, but if you get that pipe cold enough then the water vapor starts condensing and can lock valves and block pipes. The really odd parallel to that is the USS Thresher: The use of silver brazing vs welding caused a critical pipe failure near test depth, but the sub was unable to blow its tanks because the valves froze due to water vapor in the pressurized air tanks freezing on the control valves.

Chemist45 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 6:17 pm puma guy wrote:

The areas Texas not covered by ERCOT were barely affected. Most outages were short: minute to a few hours. Very, very interesting.

So I guess the three days I was without power was a fluke?
I call bull.

MaduroBU wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:00 am

puma guy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:15 pm

E10 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:57 pm

puma guy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:15 pm The areas Texas not covered by ERCOT were barely affected. Most outages were short: minute to a few hours. Very, very interesting.

El Paso was one o’ those areas, but it wasn’t as cold and it didn’t last as long as the cold in the middle of the state. There were public warnings and requests to conserve power from El Paso Electric Co. Also, I don’t think we’re as dependent on wind and solar.

ERCOT outages affected the entire area of coverage regardless of temperatures and conditions. The non ERCOT providers weren't relying on 42% wind generation that virtually disappeared ( down to 8%) putting the entire load on the remaining mostly natural gas and some coal generating plants which became overloaded. You can't loose 34% of your power generation all at once and survive. The crap about natural gas freezing is just that -crap. The freeze point of Methane (natural gas) is -295°F and the vapor point is -258°F. Frozen natural gas didn't happen. There could have been issues with the system controls, but that's not what is being stated as the problem. It's all spin to take the heat of green energy sources. AOC is too ignorant to realize her comment about Texas rejecting the Green New Deal is probably the stupidest utterance in her career. Texas leads the US in all Green Energy and we have 30% of all wind generation in the entire United States.

My understanding is that the amount of water vapor in the natural gas going through the pipelines was high enough to be a problem at very low temperatures, thus the clogs were dependent upon the freezing temperature of water, not the gas itself.

E10 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:57 pm

puma guy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:15 pm The areas Texas not covered by ERCOT were barely affected. Most outages were short: minute to a few hours. Very, very interesting.

El Paso was one o’ those areas, but it wasn’t as cold and it didn’t last as long as the cold in the middle of the state. There were public warnings and requests to conserve power from El Paso Electric Co. Also, I don’t think we’re as dependent on wind and solar.

tomneal wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:35 pm https://www.kwtx.com/2021/02/18/ercot-t ... blackouts/

I don't believe him. It sounds like fiction to me.
I need to find an article that explains in Texas English how not having enough power pushed into the system would damage it so that it will take months to fix it.

The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:38 pm
The stars at night,
Are big and bright,
'Cause there’s no lights in Texas

SigM4 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:48 am

03Lightningrocks wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:43 am

seph wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:49 am https://www.fox7austin.com/news/ercot-i ... nter-storm

Customers experiencing an ERCOT-directed outage will remain out until conditions improve to serve critical loads and protect the overall reliability of the grid.

"The situation continues to worsen across Texas and here in Austin," said Austin Energy General Manager Jackie Sargent in a news release. "Austin Energy implemented required outages early Monday morning, doing our part to help stabilize the ERCOT grid. The required outages are more extensive than anyone expected and do not allow us to bring affected customers back online at this time.

So, instead of rolling outages, let's just leave those freezing.

34% of Travis county is out if power all mainly due to the choosen ones deciding who to turn off the power too.

https://poweroutage.us/area/state/texas

My daughter lives maybe 5 minutes from me. Their power has been off since 1:30 am. This is nuts! They are still waiting for power.

Same here. No ETA at this point. Coldest part of the house just hit 50°. About to load up the kids and dogs and head to my parents house. I don’t look forward to being on the road right now.