The Texas Outages Crisis - an Analysis

Texas outages-blackout crisis in February 2021 was one of the most catastrophic events of power losses in the U.S. and maybe also in the world (especially for the first world countries scale). Thanks to the situation, the economic losses cannot be neglectable and the casualties were not small. This writing shall analyze the disastrous accident by first explaining the background of the event, then analyzing the problem and solution, and the last is the conclusion and closing remarks.

A.???Introduction – the Background of the Event

1.????Texas Grid System

The US divides its interconnection electrical grid into two main grids and three minor grids. The two major grids are the Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection, the other three minor grids are the Quebec Interconnection, the Alaska Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection [1]. That’s it, the state of Texas has its grid system separated from other states, which makes this area unique to be analyzed. The history of this separated creation of the Texas power grid is back to World War II. Texas was a place for several factories vital to the war supplies, and it was seen that the electricity and power must be more reliable, in other words, the state must not be dependent on power generated and interconnection from other states. So, the project of building a private grid for Texas was implemented and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) was established and become the only one that has regulated the interconnection until now. ERCOT covers around 75% of the Texas land area and about 90% of its resident [1],[2]. In addition, the abundance of power sources in Texas (especially natural gas and coal) and also its high capacity for renewable energy, the wind, make the private Texas interconnection seem to be working, at least until some severe storms hit the state.

2.????The Winter Storm; the Accident and the Effects

February 2021 was recorded as one of the most extreme cold weather that hit Texas. The winter storms which hit Texas (and other places in America including Mexico) respectively are called then as winter storm Uri (storm on February 13-17 February 2021) and winter storm Viola (storm on 15-20 February 2021). On 15 February 2021, the temperature of Texas reached -16oC which was so dangerous because this temperature was even colder than in Alaska [3]. The results of the storm were following just in time; the rapid increase of electrical demand for heating houses because of the extremely cold temperature, then following the malfunction of the grid and power generator were occurring.?

On 8 February, ERCOT started issuing public communication about very high electrical demands across the state for the next weeks regarding facing the winter. Thus, the ERCOT canceled approval for a large number of scheduled outages to make sure that will be much electrical infrastructure as possible would be in service in anticipation of the storm. Also, ERCOT worked together with Texas Rail Commission to prioritize the transportation of natural gases and also teamed with the U.S. Department of Energy to get permission for some power producer to exceed their limit of emissions during peak needs for electricity. Nevertheless, the consumption and demand peak of electricity still increased highly and couldn’t be avoided. On Sunday, 14th February, the demand peak met the full demand, nearly 70,000 MW, the highest demand that ever appears, and it was clear that the power grids could not meet the demand [4]. Maintaining the balance of supply and demand in a stable frequency (especially since the majority of the power grid serves AC – Alternating Current) is the most critical role of power grids, and if its goal cannot be achieved, there will be awful consequences.

The disastrous disaster then happened in the middle of high electrical demand; the generation facilities were going down and offline in turn. Texas power sources consist of several non and renewable energies, and natural gas and the wind was the most impacted energy source, which was ironic because also those two types of energies have the highest capacity power plant in Texas [4]. With the high demand and power loss, catastrophic outages could not be avoided.

The outcome of the disaster came right after the accident. On February 13, more than 4.2 million customers had lost power. In total, about 34,000 MW of power generation in Texas went offline during the accident [5]. On February 19, almost 15 million people across Texas lost access to clean water. The reason behind it was the blackout on 15 February which forced water treatment plants offline. In addition, the cold temperature broke water mains and people start to turn on their faucets to prevent their pipes from freezing [6]. The more devastating news comes from the people of Houston, Texas, which struggled to warm their houses by running their cars in the attached garage as the result of no electricity and heat for 24 hours more. The fallout was clear, the poisonous carbon monoxide from the vehicle caused health trouble and even death to the Houston people [7].

B.???Analyzing the problem

a.????Renewable energy

An unusual thing sparked after the Texas outages; some people, and to be clearer, politicians, blame renewable energy as the source of outages [8]. For them, the reason was clear, renewable energy is intermitted and cannot withstand very bad weather. That statement was supported by the fact of the wind turbine, which wind is the highest capacity of renewable energy in Texas, was frozen during the storm, and cut off the power that Texas needs during the winter storm. Solar PV was also blamed because of being covered by snow and cannot produce energy as the sunlight didn’t get the solar PV module.

The blame must not be given only to the wind power, because the wind was not only the power source that went down. Natural gas, the highest capacity in Texas which provides about 50-56% of energy share, was the one which the most impacted power plant, with the loss, was about 15GW during the accident. The wind is indeed the second-largest power source, providing 20-24% of the energy share, but the energy loss was not high as the natural gas, which was 3GW of energy loss. Also, the solar energy source only produces 1 – 5% of the energy share in Texas, and solar energy source loss of energy was not significant [4],[9].

b.????Un-winterized system

The more real and serious consideration is put on how the power plant and interconnection grid were not ready to deal with the winter storm. Natural gas and pipelines were very vulnerable to the cold temperature. The gas stream is contained water vapor that can freeze by itself, and that water vapor can also combine with hydrocarbons to create hydrates that solidify. The wind turbine was stopped because of icing, the solar panel didn’t work because of snow-covered, and nuclear power plants tripped offline because cold weather stopped their water supply [4].

Ironically, Texas has been known as one of the warmest regions across the U.S. ERCOT seems most of the time to be worried about meeting the demand target in summer, which can reach the top 125,000 MW, because thousands of AC (Air Conditioner) is switched on to beat the heat, and never saw any plan for cold weather [5]. Therefore, it was understandable that ERCOT didn’t have any plan for facing winter disasters. Ironically, the accident of winter storms that hit Texas in February 2021 was not the first time happened. Although the magnitude of the disaster was not big as the winter storm in February 2021, in 1989 and 2011 Texas also had been experienced dangerous cold weather and blackout. Both times, federal commissions of the U.S. recommended that utilities ensure reliability in extreme weather conditions, and specifically, for the state government to create winterization standards for energy sources. Texas utility commission did make the standard, but because they have their interconnection grid and regulation separated from the federal, they made it voluntary. The result was most companies didn’t winterize, because the power producer saw the winter disaster as likely to happen in Texas, and they didn’t accommodate any cost to such an infrequent event. If the Texas government were willing to accommodate winterization, almost all the power plant and grid shall not have any problem with cold weather, just as functionally working as in the wind turbine in Alaska and natural gas plant in Alberta, Canada [10].

c.?????Climate change

A subject that also needs to be analyzed is the weather itself, during which the winter storm in February 2021 was one of the coldest and most devastating winters in Texas. Compare with other winter storms which had hit Texas in previous years, the accident in February 2021 was the difference in the bad term. In mid-February, cold arctic air usually contained up north in the Earth’s jet stream, which is called Polar Vortex, dipped down to the US. This weather event is pretty usual in the winter as Polar Vortex brings the coldest air to the US, except in February 2021 [10]. This time, the Polar Vortex dipped down to the south, some things that were supposedly not to have happened and hit Texas. In regards to that, Texas which is known for its warm temperature even during the winter experienced dangerous temperature drops that were recorded as the coldest time in Texas in history. Moreover, the situation got worse thanks to the Uri and Viola storm. This extreme and unusual weather raises several questions, including how this natural disaster could emerge.

Some scientists argued that warming in the Arctic will increase the chances of frigid polar air spilling further south, leading to more periods of extreme cold in the near term. The polar vortex was supposed to be just encircled around the Earth's Artic area, but as the artic got warmer, the polar vortex becomes less dense and more energetic, and the jet stream was more likely to break into the south area [11]. Besides, because of the geographical situation and difference in temperature of the air, Texas was hit exactly the dip of the Polar Vortex, instantly making it the coldest area in the U.S. This occurrence is the alarm for us to pay more attention to the climate change which changes the earth, especially artic temperature which eventually will lead to other catastrophic accident like unstable Polar Vortex.

C.???Proposed Solution

The situation that Texas experienced shall not be happened again and not just in Texas, but around the world. The solutions and preventions that have to be done so other potential outages in Texas may not happen are clear; the winterized of every part of the system power and grids, and awareness of environmental issues and climate change needs to be risen. Another that, there is one matter which also required attention, the interconnection grid itself.

On 15 February, as the demand for electricity in Texas was increasing indiscriminately, ERCOT needs to balance its demand and supply frequency in the grid. The normal frequency of AC in the grid is 60 Hz, and if the frequency is variated either too high or too low, the system shall start malfunctioning and some drastic options occur. To balance the frequency, ERCOT did load shed, in other words, cut off their electricity supply to the customers for decreasing the demand forcefully. The load shed orders were given for the sake of stopping the AC frequency which was dropping because of the enormous demand. The frequency was dropped even to reach the threshold, 59.4 Hz but fortunately, the frequency was raised again after several loads shed orders [4]. The point that is important to be concerned about is how dangerous the situation is that AC frequency hit the threshold because the power plants were set to automatically disconnect if frequency stays below 59.4 for more than 9 minutes and only 4 minutes 37 seconds that separate Texas from total collapse. The reason is that if the total disconnection happened, the system of power and grid will have a long time to be repaired and prepared again because such an enormous interconnection system of a state has many engineering challenges, and it will be a month or more for Texas to get their power again [4]. Then, it is clear that the interconnection grid system in Texas needs to be repaired and upgraded.

The solution for the interconnection grid can be several, one of them is changing the materials and components of the grid which was built around 60-70 years ago but intended only last for 50 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers [10]. Another solution is to connect the Texas grid with another grid such as Eastern or Western Interconnection hopefully, if there is any power deficiency, Texas can be helped by other state's power plants, which that help was not likely to happen during the winter storm crisis because the grid was not connected.

Another idea that can be implemented is microgrids and distributed generation [12]. The microgrids have meant that ideally, every house, for example, the houses of Texans, are supposed to have its own power generator. Those power generators, or distributed generators, are equipped with an inverter for converting the original DC from the energy source to AC, and batteries to store the not-yet-useable power. Those distributed generations are connected to a small grid-microgrids-which cover a small area. However, the microgrid also is linked to the major interconnection grid. The purpose of this design can be suggested as two points:

1)????Strengthen the electricity grid system so that all areas can be covered by power generation, where if there is an accident that causes a blackout/outage, not all areas will be impacted. There shall not be needed for an enormous load shed. Moreover, the outage area can be helped by its neighbor power producer.

2)????Hopefully, there shall be transactions of power export-import from the houses to the major grid which is connected by the microgrid. For example, if the total demand is increasing, the grid operator does not need to increase the power plant works, which eventually will raise the emission, but easily can buy power from houses that people have already stored in their batteries.

?As a matter of fact that has to be known that the power generations have to be green-renewable energy, such as wind turbine or solar panel. If non-renewable or unfriendly environmental energies are used, the negative impact follows right away, which is the increase of carbon emission because of the increase in power generation, which adds to climate change problems. The power source can be started from the wind turbine or photovoltaic module, and if the technology is improved, the fuel cell may be feasible. Texas already has a good start as the wind turbine is the second-largest power source in the state. If Texas is designed to increase its renewable energy, but only make one renewable energy per one area, there is no need to make it in every home, it would have formed a distributed generation system that provides many benefits.

The basic issue for distributed generation, however, is the control of many micro-energy sources which becomes a technical challenge. The failure of a control component or a software error will bring the system down. Distributed generation needs to be able to act to accident spontaneously, using only local information. Events like voltage drops, blackouts, and outages are required an immediate change in the output power control of the microgenerators as they change from a dispatched power mode to one controlling frequency of the isolated section of the network along with load following (Lasseter, 2010). Some emerging control technologies start to be available, such as the model of demand forecasting, electricity price forecasting, wind and PV production forecasting, control of generation units and storage units, and data transmission and monitoring. The models can be based either on the statistical-based method or an artificial-intelligence-based method, which optimistically is a sign of the birth of the smart grid (Yolda?, ?nen, Muyeen, Vasilakos, & Alan, 2017).

D.???Conclusion and Closing Remarks

The Texas outage accident in February 2021 is no doubt a devastating calamity that took a lot of loss. The first source of the problem is clear, it is the unconventional winter storm that hit Texas as a warm place. However, the unusually cold air and winter storms itself were originated from the break of the jet stream from the polar vortex, and the increase of artic temperature made the polar vortex less dense. In fact, it is human activities that increase the earth's temperature that have to take the blame. The unready and unwinterized power and grid system of interconnection grid in Texas become the next problem. Thousands of megawatts of power loose in the accident. Ironically, ERCOT had been told to upgrade their system back in 1989 and 2011, but they did not take it seriously.

The solution and prevention of this event are various. The most obvious activity that people must have done is how to solve the climate change problems which become more dangerous each decade. Next, the improvement of reliability and robustness of the power and grid system for facing other potential natural disasters in the future. Another idea is to design a new concept of power and electrical grid-the microgrids- along with distributed power generation. The design is intended to have two advantages: strengthen the power and grid system and create a power transaction environment by the microgrid and major grid.

The proposed concepts are with hope can be a suitable solution for the Texas outages problem. Not only that, but the ideas may be also suited in another place, for example in Indonesia. Indonesia, in term of electrical government, is similar to Texas which have ERCOT. Moreover, the national electricity companies (PLN) are the only electricity controller that serves the Indonesia electrical grid, similar to ERCOT but on a much bigger scale of the area to provide, an archipelago nation. Also, Indonesia still has to increase its renewable energy to create a sustainable power supply system, besides creating a better environment. Status Indonesia which is the structure of the electricity market is a monopoly and there is still little renewable energy in Indonesia, which is a sign that the structure of the power and grid system in Indonesia is vulnerable just as same as the Texas Interconnection grid. It is right that Indonesia has a very little probability to get hit by a winter storm, but other accidents can be occurred in the future, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, or even invasions if there is any war happening in the world.

References:

Egwebe, A., Fazeli, M., Igic, P., & Holland, P. (2017). Load sharing methods for inverter-based systems in islanded microgrids: A review. Facta Universitatis - Series: Electronics and Energetics, 30(2), 145–160. https://doi.org/10.2298/fuee1702145e

Lasseter, R. H. (2010). Microgrids and distributed generation. Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing, 16(2), 225–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/10798587.2010.10643078

Yolda?, Y., ?nen, A., Muyeen, S. M., Vasilakos, A. V., & Alan, ?. (2017). Enhancing smart grid with microgrids: Challenges and opportunities. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 72(January), 205–214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.01.064

Website citation:

[1] Settling the Debate: What Really Caused the Texas Electricity Blackout? – Interesting Engineering; https://interestingengineering.com/what-caused-the-texas-electricity-blackout

[2] Why Texas Has Its Own Power Grid – SLATE; https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-its-own-power-grid.html

[3] Extreme Winter Weather Causes U.S. Blackouts – NASA; https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147941/extreme-winter-weather-causes-us-blackouts

[4] What Really Happened During the Texas Power Grid Outage? – Practical Engineering; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08mwXICY4JM

[5] Why the Texas power grid is struggling to cope with the extreme cold – Vox; https://www.vox.com/2021/2/16/22284140/texas-blackout-outage-winter-storm-uri-ercot-power-grid-cold-snow-austin-houston-dallas

[6] “It’s after the storm that’s the hardest part”: 390,000 Texans still don’t have clean water – Vox; https://www.vox.com/2021/3/1/22305616/water-texas-winter-storm-outage-california-fire-climate-change-infrastructure

[7] Desperate to stay warm amid snowstorm, Texans invite a silent killer inside: Carbon monoxide – The Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/16/texas-winter-storm-carbon-monoxide/

[8] US conservatives falsely blame renewables for Texas storm outages – The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/17/conservatives-falsely-blame-renewables-for-texas-storm-outages

[9] Fact check: Renewable energy is not to blame for the Texas energy crisis – NBC news; https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fact-check-renewable-energy-not-blame-texas-energy-crisis-n1258185

[10] Texas’s power disaster is a warning sign for the US – Vox; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcrsgdl_hP0

[11] Scientists are divided over whether climate change is fueling extreme cold events – Vox; https://www.vox.com/22287295/texas-uri-climate-change-cold-polar-vortex-arctic

[12] How to fix our unreliable power grid – Vox; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5igJv_otlKE