[sbe-eas] How Texas plans to communicate with you if another winter storm leaves us in the dark

[Sean Donelan]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2022, FRANK W BELL wrote:
> The FERC reports are available from where? I would like to see what they
> have to say about the points I am making.


The February 2021 Cold Weather Outages in Texas and the South Central 
United States | FERC, NERC and Regional Entity Staff Report

https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/final-report-february-2021-freeze-underscores-winterization-recommendations

Today’s final report highlights the critical need for stronger mandatory 
electric reliability standards, particularly with respect to generator 
cold weather-critical components and systems. Notably, a combination of 
freezing issues (44.2 percent) and fuel issues (31.4 percent) caused 75.6 
percent of the unplanned generating unit outages, derates and failures to 
start. Of particular note, protecting just four types of power plant 
components from icing and freezing could have reduced outages by 67 
percent in the ERCOT region, 47 percent in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) 
and 55 percent in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator South 
(MISO) regions.  Natural gas-fired units represented 58 percent of all 
generating units experiencing unplanned outages, derates or failures to 
start. The remaining portion was comprised of wind (27 percent), coal (6 
percent), solar (2 percent) and other generation types (7 percent), with 
four nuclear units making up less than 1 percent.

Today’s final report provides more details:

81 percent of freeze-related generating unit outages occurred at 
temperatures above the units’ stated ambient design temperature.

87 percent of unplanned generation outages due to fuel issues were related 
to natural gas, predominantly related to production and processing issues, 
while 13 percent involved issues with other fuels such as coal or fuel 
oil.

Natural gas fuel supply issues were caused by natural gas production 
declines, with 43.3 percent of natural gas production declines caused by 
freezing temperatures and weather, and 21.5 percent caused by midstream, 
wellhead or gathering facility power losses, which could be attributed 
either to rolling blackouts or weather-related outages such as downed 
power lines.


The full report is available here.
https://www.ferc.gov/media/february-2021-cold-weather-outages-texas-and-south-central-united-states-ferc-nerc-and

The presentation of the preliminary findings released in September 2021 is 
available here.
https://www.ferc.gov/media/february-2021-cold-weather-grid-operations-preliminary-findings-and-recommendations-full