Texas redistricting

 By Nick Anderson

Gerrymandering

 The wonders of American "democracy".

Why is the Texas grid is such bad shape?

Texas blacked out.  (Its grid is separated from the rest of the USA.)

From The Climate Brink

The Texas grid, run by ERCOT, has had a rough few years. In 2021, winter storm Uri blacked out much of the state for several days. About a week ago, Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to millions of Houstonians, and a week later, hundreds of thousands of Houstonians still hadn’t had their power restored.

It might seem that these two events are completely different — one was a winter storm that caused a blackout by knocking out the natural gas supply, while the other one is a hurricane that knocked out the power distribution system.

But the root cause of these two incidents is actually the same. To understand what’s going on, you need to realize that keeping the power on is incredibly valuable to society and, when the power goes out, the damages are enormous. The Uri blackout cost well north of $100 billion. I have yet to see an estimate of the cost of Hurricane Beryl, but I’m guessing it’s also going to be eye popping.

But here’s the key fact: these costs are not paid by energy companies. When the power went out during Uri and pipes froze and burst, the energy companies didn’t pay those costs. Homeowners and insurance companies did. When the power outage caused Texans to freeze to death, the energy company didn’t pay, society did. Energy companies aren’t paying the expenses from Beryl, either.

Thus, power outages actually cost energy corporations very little money — maybe a few days’ revenue. Hardening energy infrastructure, on the other hand, is very expensive and entirely paid for by the energy corporations. This cuts into their profits and stock price.

Put slightly differently: Energy corporations pay the full cost of hardening infrastructure but capture only a small fraction of the benefits. Most of the benefits flow to society in the form of avoided burst pipes, avoided loss of income, avoided health impacts.

So why in the world would a corporation spend money hardening the energy system? The answer is there’s no reason. The net result is that the rational thing for corporations is to underinvest in making the grid resilient to extreme weather.

This is a market failure just like the carbon dioxide problem: There’s no incentive for emitters to reduce emissions because they pay the full costs of the emissions reductions but capture only a small fraction of the benefits of avoiding the impacts of climate change. In such a case, the rational thing for a profit-seeker is to keep emitting carbon dioxide.

The only solution is for the Texas State government to come in and force companies to invest in hardening the grid. Texas politicians understand that people demand action, which is why we heard Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick say that the government will fix the grid after the Uri blackout:


"We’re going to get to the bottom of this and find out what the hell happened, and we’re going to fix it."

And Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas ordering an investigation into CenterPoint and deliver a report on its findings by Dec. 1.


“Maybe they have too large of an area for them to be able to manage adequately,” Abbott said. “It’s time to reevaluate whether or not CenterPoint should have such a large territory.”

But this will promise of action is entirely performative. When the cameras are rolling, they express outrage and promise action. Once the cameras are off, the outrage fades, and nothing changes.

History confirms this. After a big December 1989 blackout caused by lack of winterization of the energy system, fixes were promised. Those were never implemented and another blackout occurred in Winter 2011. A subsequent report laid out steps to make the grid more robust. Those were never implemented, so we had another blackout in 2021.

After the 2021 blackout, a natural gas billionaire made huge campaign contributions to prominent politicians and, lo and behold, nothing was done to make natural gas providers harden their infrastructure. If we had another Uri tomorrow1, we could once again see widespread blackouts.

The same will happen over the next few months with respect to the Beryl blackout: After the outrage theater dies down, nothing will be done.

This is one of the reasons, by the way, why Texas is so popular with corporations. They are never held accountable for pushing their costs onto society, as long as the people who pay the costs are the poor and middle class.

Ultimately, the problem is that Texas politicians legislate on behalf of corporations and not the citizens of Texas. Until that changes, episodes like Uri and Beryl are certain to continue.

Update: It has been pointed out that CenterPoint could have asked for a rate increase to pay for hardening the electrical distribution system. It’s not clear why that did not do it — did they not recognize the risk? Or was there political pressure to not raise electricity costs?

See also: 

The next Texas grid collapse

 

Big batteries smash records in ...... Texas

 From RenewEconomy

The big battery records continue to tumble around the world, the latest coming in Texas – the biggest producer of oil and gas in the US – where the output record from the growing number of big batteries in the local grid was smashed earlier this week.

According to Grid Status, the output of battery storage in the evening peak reached a new high of 3.2 GW, some 47 per cent more than the previous peak of 2.2 GW reached last year. Energy analysts noted that conditions were tight, with unusually hot weather and over 20GW of unforced thermal outages. Prices were also high.

The new benchmark for big battery output in Texas comes after a spring of new records in California, where battery storage has often become the biggest supplier of power in the evening peaks, and has accounted for up to 28 per cent of instantaneous demand. That, in turn, has led to a dramatic reduction in the use of gas in the evening peaks.

On Wednesday, local time, California set a new battery output record of 7.2 GW, up from the new 7.05 GW peak set a week earlier.

The same pattern is now occurring in Texas, although battery storage is still limited to a peak market share of around 5 per cent in what is a much bigger grid. But with the state expected to double its battery storage capacity in the coming year to more than 11 GW, it is likely to follow down the path of California quickly enough.

In Australia, battery storage is also making its mark, particularly in South Australia where the high share of wind and solar (75 per cent average in the past 12 months) has seen batteries regularly deliver more than 10 per cent of the supply in the evening peak.

That share is expected to grow dramatically as more big batteries are added to the local network – there are currently only four operating batteries in South Australia – and as the storage capacity of the battery fleet grows from its current average of one to two hours to around four hours.

The fossil fuel moguls continue to prate about the need for gas as a "transition fuel".    For now, yes, we do need gas for peaking, i.e., to fill the gaps at the morning and evening peaks.  Yet, the rapid decline in batteries is now making battery storage cheaper than peaking gas.  This will lead to a progressive decline in demand for gas.  The "transition" is almost over.

Solar in Texas up six-fold in four years

 From a toot by KB Leecaster

 

You may have noticed a significant uptick on social media of people promoting nuclear energy. I know that I have on X.

This is the reason why. #Solar #batteries and other storage are on their way towards making every other energy generation industry uncompetitive.

ERCOT = electricity reliability council of Texas, which manages the Texas grid. Demand on the Texas grid is currently ~45 MW, so about 1/4 of daytime demand is being supplied by solar.

Somewhere in Uvalde, Texas

 A cartoon by Ted Littleford

Cheap and effective Covid vaccine from Texas

 From NPR

A vaccine authorized in December for use in India may help solve one of the most vexing problems in global public health: How to supply lower-income countries with a COVID-19 vaccine that is safe, effective and affordable.

The vaccine is called CORBEVAX. It uses old but proven vaccine technology and can be manufactured far more easily than most, if not all, of the COVID-19 vaccines in use today.

"CORBEVAX is a game changer," says Dr. Keith Martin, executive director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in Washington, D.C. "It's going to enable countries around the world, particularly low-income countries, to be able to produce these vaccines and distribute them in a way that's going to be affordable, effective and safe."

The story of CORBEVAX begins some two decades ago. Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi were medical researchers at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where they worked on vaccines and treatments for what are called neglected tropical diseases, such as schistosomiasis and hookworm.

When a strain of coronavirus known as SARS broke out in 2003, they decided to tackle that disease. After moving to Houston to affiliate with Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development, they created a vaccine candidate using protein subunit technology. This involves using proteins from a virus or bacterium that can induce an immune response but not cause disease.

"It's the same technology as the hepatitis B vaccine that's been around for decades," Hotez says.

Their SARS vaccine candidate looked promising, but then the SARS outbreak petered out. No evidence of disease, no need for a vaccine.

When a new strain of coronavirus triggered the COVID-19 pandemic, Hotez and Bottazzi figured they could dust off their old technology and modify it for use against COVID-19. After all, the virus causing COVID-19 and the virus causing SARS are quite similar.

Hotez says they tried to interest government officials in the vaccine, but they weren't impressed.

"People were so fixated on innovation that nobody thought, 'Hey, maybe we could use a low-cost, durable, easy-breezy vaccine that can vaccinate the whole world,' " Hotez says.

"We really honestly couldn't get any traction in the U.S., but our mission is always to enable technologies for low- and middle-income countries production and use," Bottazzi recalls.

So they turned to private philanthropies. A major donor early on was the JPB Foundation in New York.

"The rest were all Texas philanthropies: the Kleberg Foundation, the [John S.] Dunn Foundation, Tito's Vodka," Hotez says. The MD Anderson Foundation also chipped in.

"When people say, 'Why did we move [from Washington, D.C.] to Texas?' Well, we knew that this was a great philanthropic environment. So this is really very much a Texas vaccine," although there were other, smaller donors from all over the country.

Hotez says that unlike the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, and the viral vector vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, protein subunit vaccines like CORBEVAX have a track record. So he and Bottazzi were relatively certain CORBEVAX would be safe and effective.

"And it's cheap, a dollar, dollar fifty a dose," Hotez says. "You're not going to get less expensive than that."

Clinical trials showed they were right to be confident CORBEVAX would work. An unpublished study conducted in India involving 3,000 volunteers found the vaccine to be 90% effective in preventing disease cause by the original COVID-19 virus strain and 80% against the delta variant. It's still being tested against omicron.

But CORBEVAX is already entering the real world. Last month, the vaccine received emergency use authorization from regulators in India. An Indian vaccine manufacturer called Biological E Ltd is now making the vaccine. The company says it is producing 100 million doses per month and has already sold 300 million doses to the Indian government.

"The real beauty of the CORBEVAX vaccine that Drs. Hotez and Bottazzi created is that intellectual property of this vaccine will be available to everybody," Keith Martin says. "So you can get manufacturers in Senegal, and South Africa and Latin America to be able to produce this particular vaccine."

By contrast, the makers of Pfizer and Moderna, for example, are not sharing their recipe.

One drawback to the CORBEVAX technology is that it can't be modified as quickly as mRNA vaccines can to adjust to new variants.

That forces public health officials to make difficult choices.

"Something which can be adapted the fastest versus something that can be adapted relatively quickly, but then more importantly can be manufactured at a large global capacity and at a cost of production which is much lower," says Prashant Yadav, senior fellow at at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. The thought is some protection may better than no protection.

Of course, the ideal vaccine would have both qualities, and Hotez is at work trying to develop technologies that can do that.

"There's no issue with pushing innovation," he says. "I think that's one of the really positive features of the U.S. vaccination program for COVID. The problem was it wasn't balanced with a portfolio or oldies but goodies."

Hotez is hoping his oldie but goodie will usher in a brighter future for the world.

Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi of Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a COVID-19 vaccine that could prove beneficial to countries with fewer resources.

The next Texas grid collapse

 This article in The Texas Monthly is long but a most interesting read.  I'll only quote a few highlights.

Texas blacked out.  (Its grid is cut off from the rest of the USA.)

Nobody yet knew just how widespread the blackouts would become—that they would spread across almost the entire state, leave an unprecedented 11 million Texans freezing in the dark for as long as three days, and result in as many as seven hundred deaths. But neither could the governor, legislators, and regulators who are supposed to oversee the state’s electric grid claim to be surprised. They had been warned repeatedly, by experts and by previous calamities—including a major blackout in 2011—that the grid was uniquely vulnerable to cold weather.

[...] 

Unlike most other states that safely endured the February 2021 storm, Texas had stubbornly declined to require winterization of its power plants and, just as critically, its natural gas facilities. In large part, that’s because the state’s politicians and the regulators they appoint are often captive to the oil and gas industry, which lavishes them with millions of dollars a year in campaign contributions. During the February freeze, the gas industry failed to deliver critically needed fuel, and while Texans of all stripes suffered, the gas industry scored windfall profits of about $11 billion—creating debts that residents and businesses will pay for at least the next decade.

[...] 

But the situation was only growing more dire. At the precise time of the third call, the frequency reached a critical threshold: 59.4 hertz. The Texas grid, which has been around in some form since World War II, had only once in its history fallen this low. Automated turbines across the state began spinning even faster to produce more electricity, but when the frequency dips below 59.4 hertz, the turbines reach speeds and pressures that can cause catastrophic damage to them, requiring that they be repaired or replaced. This scenario was unlikely because, to prevent it, the grid automatically triggers a nine-minute countdown when it strikes 59.4 hertz. If the frequency did not rise in time, power plants would shut down and the grid would begin turning itself off completely. This would leave all 26 million Texans who relied on the ERCOT grid without power for weeks or months.

A few more minutes ticked by. The frequency kept falling, touching 59.302 hertz, yet another alarming precipice. At 59.3 hertz, human operators are taken out of the equation: they are too slow to make the urgent adjustments that are needed to stabilize the grid. The system is programmed to automatically start blacking out as many areas as are necessary to balance power supply and demand. But in this scenario, that fail-safe may not have worked because so many areas had already been manually cut off. “We were on the very edge,” said Easton.

In a last-ditch effort to prevent the grid’s collapse, ERCOT placed a fourth hotline call, at 1:55 a.m., and ordered another 3,500 megawatts. All across Texas, grid operators were moving as quickly as they could, blacking out more and more neighborhoods, but they were running out of options. As the countdown approached zero, the frequency suddenly shot back up. The immediate crisis was over—the last-second load shed had worked—but for most of the following day, the grid remained dangerously unstable.

[...] 

It is hard to fathom the devastation a total shutdown would have wreaked. Bill Magness, then the CEO of ERCOT, would explain as much to the Texas Senate ten days later. Magness is a lawyer with a buzz cut and ramrod-straight posture who spent time in the nineties and aughts as a practicing Buddhist. “What my team and the folks at the utilities in Texas would be doing is an exercise called ‘black start,’ ” he said. A black start would have required carefully rebooting a few power plants at a time and using them to jump-start others, thereby restoring the grid piece by piece. It’s not a matter of flipping switches. The steps required for a black start are numerous, complex, and delicate. No one knows how long that process would take, because no one has ever needed to do it. Magness said it would have been weeks at least.

Most of the state’s residents would have been without heat, potable water, or light, as would almost all of the businesses on which they depend. Traffic lights wouldn’t have worked. Caravans of trucks, likely escorted by the National Guard, would have delivered fuel to generators to keep hospitals (many of which were nearly at max capacity because of COVID-19), fire departments, and other emergency services operating. When the freeze lifted and the roads thawed, many would have attempted an exodus into neighboring states—all of which, with a few brief exceptions, kept power—but even that would have proved difficult because gas pumps run on electricity. Magness looked grimly around the Senate chamber as he described the doomsday scenario. “Imagine: the suffering that we saw [would have been] compounded.”

[...] 

Of the millions of Texans who lost electricity during the blackouts, which lasted from Monday through Thursday, most experienced it as a week of compounding problems. Millions either lost water or needed to boil water. When the water finally came back on, burst pipes began to flow, causing billions of dollars in damage. Plumbers were so overwhelmed with calls that some homeowners had to wait months for repairs. Economists at the Dallas Federal Reserve estimated that the blackouts cost the state’s economy somewhere in the $80 to $130 billion range, potentially making it the most expensive disaster in state history.

[...]

Of course, that didn’t stop politicians from pointing fingers. Rick Perry, former governor and former U.S. secretary of energy, tried to preempt calls to increase federal oversight of the state’s grid. In a striking display of insensitivity to the families who were grieving the loss of loved ones, he claimed that Texans were willing to forgo power “for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was one of many politicians to blame wind turbines. “Our renewables aren’t reliable,” he said on Good Morning America. Governor Greg Abbott appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and argued that the blackouts showed how the Green New Deal, which was then a subject of intense debate in Washington, D.C., would be a “deadly deal for the United States.”

Blaming renewables was, of course, a politically convenient lie. Yes, some wind farms in West and South Texas had frozen up—their operators hadn’t invested in blades with internal warming coils that allow windmills to function perfectly fine in other states and regions, including north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. But many windmills kept working, helping to prevent a worse disaster. Even Abbott admitted, while the blackouts were ongoing, that the biggest culprit was power plants that ran on gas.

[...] 

A separate body, the Railroad Commission of Texas, regulates the state’s oil and gas industry—or at least it’s supposed to. In practice, it seldom does. Its three commissioners are elected, and their campaign coffers are filled by oil and gas industry executives. Following the 2021 blackout, the commissioners expressed little interest in learning why the February storm caused statewide outages only in Texas, not in neighboring states and states far to the north. They instead aggressively defended the industry they’re supposed to regulate, arguing publicly that the state’s failure to require winterization of natural gas providers played no role in the disaster. At the February committee hearing, Christi Craddick, then the Railroad Commission chair, tried to pin the blame on electric power producers, claiming that the gas industry was hamstrung by lack of electricity, not the other way around. “The oil field simply cannot run without power,” she testified.

That claim, however, doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Craddick was well aware of problems with the gas supply before the blackouts began, something I discovered while reviewing records of dozens of phone calls, emails, and texts among those responsible for keeping the lights on. Five days before the blackouts began, Walker, the PUC chair, received an unwelcome call from an executive at Vistra, an Irving-based company that is the largest power producer in ERCOT. The executive warned that the company would be unable to meet the rising demand for electricity because it would soon face natural gas shortfalls at several of its plants. Texas normally produces about 29 billion cubic feet of gas a day. By February 11, when temperatures hit 22 degrees in Midland, about 915 million cubic feet were already offline, according to a federal report on the blackout. (Six days later, around the peak of the blackouts, 3.7 billion cubic feet were offline. All but 591 million of that was caused by the failure of gas infrastructure.) On February 13, two days before the blackouts began, 22 gas processing plants had been disrupted by cold weather conditions. Not a single one was disrupted by loss of electric power.

[...] 

The week of the blackout produced staggering, hard-to-fathom energy bills Texans will be paying for years. That’s because the state’s electricity market broke sometime around midday on Monday, February 15. In the hours after the blackouts, ERCOT tried to shore up electricity reserves to stabilize the grid. The computer system that runs the market, though, interpreted this as an oversupply (in the middle of blackouts!) and dropped prices. When ERCOT and the PUC realized what was happening, officials decided to bypass the market and, on Monday evening, manually set prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour. (By comparison, the average hourly price in 2020 was $25.73.) For fear that restarting the market and letting prices fluctuate in the midst of blackouts would lead to instability, officials kept prices at that artificially inflated level until Friday.

As a result, Texans spent an exorbitant amount on electricity during a week in which most of them couldn’t get much electricity. For the entirety of 2020, Texans paid $9.8 billion to keep the juice flowing. On February 16 alone, they spent roughly $10.3 billion. Costs for the month of February totaled more than $50 billion.

You might think that the natural gas industry, having scored a multibillion-dollar windfall at the expense of other Texans, might show some magnanimity in victory and agree to take steps to ensure against future blackouts. But you would be wrong. The gas industry continues to fight ferociously to avoid the kinds of regulations that are commonplace in other states. It has boosted by millions of dollars its campaign contributions to friendly politicians, including the three officials leading the Railroad Commission.

So what would it cost to winterize all the wells in Texas, as most other states do, and ensure the electricity flows the next time an Arctic blast hits the Lone Star State? Dallas Federal Reserve economists cite a 2011 estimate that it would cost each gas power plant $50,000 to $500,000 to winterize. Statewide, it would cost between $85 and $200 million annually—the rough equivalent of one or two days of revenue from the Texas gas industry, and less than one-fiftieth the cost that the industry charged during the February disaster.

US battery storage triples

 From ClimateCrocks

The challenges of the Texas grid were on display in February when a winter storm led to the loss of almost half of ERCOT’s generation, leaving millions without power for days. In May, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) warned that Texas faces an “elevated risk” of energy emergencies this summer due to high heat or potential long periods of low wind production. Although ERCOT itself said that it expects to have sufficient generation to meet peak loads, it did outline three “extreme” scenarios that could lead to blackouts, including extended hot weather that spikes demand, thermal generator outages or a shortage in generation from wind and solar.

“One of the pretty clear lessons learned from Texas’ power challenges this year is that renewable power is outperforming other forms of generation when the grid is under stress,” said Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy. 

According to S&P, there are nearly a dozen storage projects ranging from 50 MW to larger than 200 MW scheduled to start up this summer, headlined by the 203 MW Crossett Power Battery Storage system in Crane County. ERCOT expects that battery storage on the system could rise from 225 MW at the end of 2020 to 1,771 MW at the end of 2021 and 3,008 MW in 2022. Developers have announced large-scale projects expected to come online in 2022, like a pair of 100 MW battery storage facilities announced by Wärtsilä Energy a month after the February cold snap. 

North Carolina-based FlexGen is one of the largest storage installers in the state, claiming to be responsible for more than three-quarters of the storage there by megawatts. Yann Brandt, FlexGen Chief Financial Officer, said ERCOT’s market is attractive for developers looking to engage in energy arbitrage, but value of storage as an ancillary resource has risen as Texas faces more extreme weather events. 

“It’s a unique situation where you’re able to maximize revenue when the market needs it because you’re providing a valuable service,” Brandt said. “I hope grid operators and planners start viewing energy storage as part of the planning process and not try to plug it into a generation-first power market.”

If the plans of developers and utilities pan out, total installed utility-scale energy storage capacity in the U.S., not including conventional pumped hydroelectric storage, could jump roughly 185%, to 5,582 MW, through August from a year prior, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

This summer’s storage surge, consisting mostly of four-hour lithium-ion battery systems designed to discharge during critical periods of peak demand, is centered in California and Texas, the country’s two largest states by population and economic output, respectively.

Along with market reforms, improved planning and energy conservation, these large storage systems could help both states, which have arguably the nation’s most fragile electric systems, ride through the summer turbulence with few of the sorts of widespread outages that have plagued them in the past 12 months. 

California, which in recent years has struggled with blackouts related to wildfires, in August 2020 experienced two rounds of rotating outages amid a regional heatwave. Now the California ISO, the state’s primary transmission grid operator, is battling with other southwestern states also thin on reserves over access to resources needed to keep the lights on this summer.

Texas, meanwhile, saw its primary power grid, managed by the Electric Reliability Council Of Texas Inc., severely buckle under the weight of a rare Arctic blast in February, leaving millions of residents without electricity for days. The state could be in for another rocky ride this summer, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said in its summer 2021 assessment.

California could have more than 2,800 MW of largely four-hour lithium-ion battery storage at its disposal before September, nearly five times as much as a year before, while Texas could have about 1,400 MW, roughly eight times more, S&P Global data show. Combined, the two states account for three-quarters of the total installed nonhydro energy storage resources slated to come online by the end of August.

That profit-seeking utilities are installing battery storage on this scale suggests that the price of large-scale batteries has fallen enough that they are now cost-effective, if one includes the arbitrage opportunities.   

Texas: As oil wanes, wind ascends

 From IEEFA.

The wind industry in West Texas continues to create jobs, increase local tax revenues and drive economic development in an area known historically for its boom-and-bust oil cycles, concludes a report published today by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). 

The report—As Oil and Gas Wane, Texas Wind Industry Ascends—details how rising corporate demand, strong investor interest, and bipartisan political support have turned the Lone Star State into a world-class center for profitable wind-powered electricity generation.

“Texas is the wind-savviest state in the nation, and its growing number of wind farms are widely and correctly perceived as good investments, job creators, tax-base solidifiers, and engines of economic growth,” said Karl Cates, an IEEFA analyst and lead author of the report.

The report includes a case study of Nolan County, a community of 15,000 at the edge of the troubled oil and gas-driven Permian Basin, and a prime example of how the renewable energy industry has buffered some local economies from the devastating effects of a declining fossil fuel industry.

The report details also how wind remains a high-growth segment of the Texas energy sector, estimating that Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s main distributor of electricity, will see at least a 45% increase in its wind-generation capacity over this year and next, to 34,648MW by the beginning of 2022. ERCOT controls most of the state’s electricity market.

The industry’s impact in Nolan County:

• Tax revenues have increased, driven significantly by the wind industry, which today makes up 6 of the top 10, and 11 of the top 20 property taxpayers.
• More jobs and higher wages have come to the county, where the unemployment rate has dropped with the rise of wind and where wind-energy workers are paid on par with oilfield employees.
• The county seat of Sweetwater has drawn a range of wind-energy service businesses and is home to Texas State Technical College, which graduates 50 to 75 wind technicians per year.
• Knock-on utility-scale solar is emerging as a companion industry to wind farms.
• Lease payments that typically range from $10,000 to $20,000 annually per tower are keeping longtime property owners on the land and creating significant community cash flow.

Full report here: As Oil and Gas Wane, Texas Wind Industry Ascends 

Covid: a tale of two states

From Open Mind (Tamino):

Disastrous.

Petro industry begs for protection from from climate impacts

From ClimateCrocks:

As the nation plans new defenses against the more powerful storms and higher tides expected from climate change, one project stands out: an ambitious proposal to build a nearly 60-mile “spine” of concrete seawalls, earthen barriers, floating gates and steel levees on the Texas Gulf Coast. 

Like other oceanfront projects, this one would protect homes, delicate ecosystems and vital infrastructure, but it also has another priority: to shield some of the crown jewels of the petroleum industry, which is blamed for contributing to global warming and now wants the federal government to build safeguards against the consequences of it. 

The plan is focused on a stretch of coastline that runs from the Louisiana border to industrial enclaves south of Houston that are home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of petrochemical facilities, including most of Texas’ 30 refineries, which represent 30 percent of the nation’s refining capacity. 

Texas is seeking at least $12 billion for the full coastal spine, with nearly all of it coming from public funds. Last month, the government fast-tracked an initial $3.9 billion for three separate, smaller storm barrier projects that would specifically protect oil facilities. 

That followed Hurricane Harvey, which roared ashore last Aug. 25 and swamped Houston and parts of the coast, temporarily knocking out a quarter of the area’s oil refining capacity and causing average gasoline prices to jump 28 cents a gallon nationwide. Many Republicans argue that the Texas oil projects belong at the top of Washington’s spending list.

“Our overall economy, not only in Texas but in the entire country, is so much at risk from a high storm surge,” said Matt Sebesta, a Republican who as Brazoria County judge oversees a swath of Gulf Coast. 
But the idea of taxpayers around the country paying to protect refineries worth billions, and in a state where top politicians still dispute climate change’s validity, doesn’t sit well with some. 

“The oil and gas industry is getting a free ride,” said Brandt Mannchen, a member of the Sierra Club’s executive committee in Houston. “You don’t hear the industry making a peep about paying for any of this and why should they? There’s all this push like, ‘Please Senator Cornyn, Please Senator Cruz, we need money for this and that.'” 

Normally outspoken critics of federal spending, Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both backed using taxpayer funds to fortify the oil facilities’ protections and the Texas coast. Cruz called it “a tremendous step forward.” 

Once work is complete on the three sections, they could eventually be integrated into a larger coastal spine system. In some places along Texas’ 370-mile Gulf Coast, 18 feet is lost annually to erosion, threatening to suck more wetlands, roads and buildings into rising seas. 

Protecting a wide expanse will be expensive. After Harvey, a special Texas commission prepared a report seeking $61 billion from Congress to “future proof” the state against such natural disasters, without mentioning climate change, which scientists say will cause heavier rains and stronger storms. 

Just three points:

• These were the same ppl who funded denialist thinktanks, websites and politicians.  And now they have the sheer effrontery to demand public money to fix the problem they themselves have caused.  Meanwhile, direct US subsidies to fossil fuels total $20 billion a year.
• Conservatives prate about the need to control spending, when it applies to poor people.  But are always up for billions of dollars of funding and subsidies for corporations.  Strange that.
• The cost of climate mitigation ($61 billion for Texas alone!  And that's before inevitable cost blow-outs) is way higher than what it would have cost to switch to renewables.  Pathetic.

Texas flooding in 2019.  Source: CNN

Texas: wind bigger than coal

From CNN:

Wind power has surpassed coal for the first time in Texas, according to a new report.

The numbers cap an enormous rise in wind power in the nation's top energy-producing state over the past decades.

Wind has generated 22% of the state's electrical needs this year. It just edged out coal, which provided 21% of the Lone Star State's power, according to the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, which manages electrical flow on about 90% of the Texan grid.

Sixteen years ago, in 2003, wind made up just 0.8% of the state's power, and coal satisfied 40% of electrical needs, the council documents show.

By 2010, wind accounted for 8% of the state's energy, and it steadily inched forward to 19% last year and now 22% in the first half of 2019.

At the same time, coal's portion of the energy mix has declined over the past several years, from 37% in 2013 to 24% last year and just 21% this year.

Yet while wind has soared and coal-generated power has cooled, natural gas still accounts for the largest share of the state's energy mix, generating 46% of its power in 2003 and staying strong at 44% last year.

Texas produces and consumes more electricity overall than any other state. Its power production doubled that of Florida, the next closest state, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

It follows that Texas also leads the nation in wind energy production and generated fully a quarter of all wind energy in the United States in 2017.  Nationally, wind is just 6.6% of American energy production

The trends are clear.   And now that Texas is also expanding utility-scale solar generation, the share of coal is going to rapidly decline to zero.  Gas is a far from perfect substitute for coal, because gas leaks can easily undo the benefit from lower carbon emissions compared to coal when gas is burnt.  But gas power stations can be more easily ramped up and down than coal can, so they fit in better into a predominantly green grid than coal does.  In time, they too will be replaced by a mix of renewables plus storage.  We continue to get proof that large industrial economies can reach high percentages of renewables in their grid without harm.

Starhopper completes 150 metres "hop"

Starhopper, the cutback version of SpaceX's Starship (BFS) lifted off at Boca Chica, Texas, slowly rose to 150 metres, then moved sideways to the landing pad.  If you watch the video closely, you can see the single Raptor engine gimballing and the cold-air thrusters at the top of the aircraft firing to keep the rocket vertical and to push it sideways over the landing pad.  Extraordinary.

This successful test means that Starship Mk1 and Mk2, one of which is being built at Boca Chica and another at Cocoa, Florida, will be able to do the next tests, which will take each prototype to much higher altitudes.  They will each be fitted with 3 Raptor engines.  If those tests are successful, SpaceX will then test suborbital launches and then orbit.  The next really big hurdle is re-entry, when the spacecraft will have to face temperatures in the thousands of degrees.  If that works, SpaceX plans to make its first commercial launches in 2021.   This rapid progress means an uncrewed mission to Mars in 2022, a circumlunar expedition in 2023 and a crewed mission to Mars in 2024 are all on track. 

Musk will be updating us all in a few weeks about the latest design for the Starship and Super Heavy, and perhaps the timetable too. 

An extraordinary and magnificent achievement.

Renewables = 80% of new generation capacity in Texas

From IEEFA:

More than 80% of the new power generation capacity expected to come into service in 2019 in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas region will be either wind- or solar-driven, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis.

Overall, the region, which encompasses most of the state of Texas including major load centers such as Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth, is expected to see 10,440 MW of new capacity go online in 2019, with 6,934 MW, or 66.4%, from wind and another 1,706 MW, or 16.3%, from solar. Gas-fired capacity using combined-cycle and gas-turbine technologies totals 1,770 MW and accounts for 17.0% of the scheduled additions.

Unlike in 2018, when more than 4,000 MW of coal-fired capacity was retired, no retirements are scheduled for the year. One coal-fired plant, however, is being mothballed indefinitely.

This is a pattern which is being repeated everywhere.  For example in Pakistan.  And Japan and Turkey.  And in Texas, solar is exploding:

United States: Texas’ solar market is about to catch fire

With more than 5 GW of approved solar projects in the ERCOT grid, Texas is getting ready for a major boom in its utility-scale solar market. 

In December, the volume of solar applications in ERCOT’s interconnection queue exceeded those of wind for the first time, at over 40 GWac. But it didn’t stop there, and the January report from ERCOT published earlier this month finds a stunning 43.5 GWac of solar projects, most of which are in West Texas with some in the Panhandle and South Texas, and even a few on the Gulf Coast.

But as any developer will tell you, not all of that is going to get built. In fact, most of it won’t. Which leaves a question that is hard to answer: How much will?

Perhaps even more important than the 43.5 GWac figure in the interconnection queue is that 5,081 MW of these projects have interconnection agreements. Furthermore, with the exception of a mammoth 495 MW project in Borden County, all of these projects are scheduled to come online in 2019 and 2020.

However, ERCOT lists only about half of these, or 2,657 MW, as having “financial security and notice to proceed”. But of these, 11 projects totaling 1,232 MW are expected to come online during 2019 and five totaling 717 MW have met the requirements for being included in planning models.

If even the 1,232 MWac of projects which have financing and notice to proceed come online, this will be the first year that Texas installs more than 1 GW of solar. But it is important to note that the interconnection queue is an evolving document, and that more projects are likely to be approved for interconnection, reach financial close and get built this year. As such, the 1,232 MW figure can be considered a starting number for what is likely to go online over the course of the year, and by any measure Texas’ solar market is about to see a major boom.

[Read more here]

Remember, a grid with mixed supply from wind and solar needs less storage than one exclusively dominated by one or the other.  And both wind and solar, now, are cheap as chips.

More renewables, less energy storage

There is no doubt that to get to 100% renewables we will need storage, either from hydro, or pumped hydro, or batteries (or all three).  But how much we'll need depends on other factors.  This study of the Texas grid suggest that having both wind and solar produces a more stable and less variable output, because the wind and the sun don't stop at the same time.  In addition, the output of wind turbines in one location (west Texas) is also complementary to the output of wind turbines in another (south Texas).  Or at least, so the statistical analysis says.   You can read the full study here, but I'll show you a couple of charts so you can see how well it works.

The first chart shows average capacity factors over the year in blue, capacity factors at the twenty hours of peak demand in summer in red (PACP=peak average capacity factor), and the 20 hours of peak demand in winter in green.  Solar farms on on the left, wind on the right.  Solar obviously helps a lot with peak demand in summer, because it tends to coincide with peak daily temperatures on hot days when a lot of air conditioners are being run.  The high PACP for wind in winter is interesting, suggesting that the peak demand for heating in the coldest hours corresponds with stronger winds. Note also that PACPs are much higher for those periods when demand is highest for both wind and solar, which is extremely interesting.  Moral of the story: wind and solar are seasonally complementary and actually well fitted to help satisfy peak demand in winter and summer.

The chart below shows average capacity factors for west Texas wind (orange), South Texas wind (green) and solar (blue) over 5 years on a daily basis for the 24 hours of the summer and winter solstices.  Note how conveniently wind complements solar, strong overnight when the sun isn't shining, and how in summer south Texas wind complements west Texas wind, conveniently peaking in the afternoon and evening when grid demand is at its highest.  Once again, the moral is clear: wind and solar are complementary, on a daily and on a seasonal basis.  And widely separated wind farms are also complementary, though to a lesser extent.

There is also a table (Table 3: which is too big to show here) which shows the correlation between different pairs of wind/solar farms. As you'd expect from what I've said, the correlation coefficients between wind and solar pairs are negative, while the correlation between different solar farms is strongly positive.  This means that a blend of wind and solar would provide a more stable output with lower variability than either on its own (that conclusion derives from the maths of averages and standard deviations, but I shan't explain it here) .  But the interesting correlations are between wind farms in east vs south Texas.  The correlations are positive, but lower than the correlations between different pairs of solar farms.  Combining two wind farms in these different locations would still reduce variability and increase stability but not as much as combining a wind farm and a solar farm.  Most interesting.

The last chart is fascinating.

This chart shows (on the bottom axis) the percentage of time that supply (in MW, not %) is guaranteed.  So at 20% of the time (2 on the lower axis) 50% of combined capacity is available (30 out of 60 MW; 50% because no solar at night).  For half the time (0.5 the bottom axis) it's still almost 50% of capacity is guaranteed.  However at 87.5% ( the theoretical capacity of a coal power stations after allowing for  maintenance and repair downtime) only 13.5% of total capacity is guaranteed.

The interesting point, though, is this: with aging coal power stations, guaranteed capacity drops, because the machinery has aged.  In Australia, it is the coal power stations which "trip" on hot days.  In other words, if we used a realistic figure for coal, we would move that black line to the left, to something like 60% guaranteed.  And at that point, nearly half the capacity of the combined output of a wind farm and a solar farm is guaranteed.  Given the nighttime zero output from solar, that is remarkable.  In places like the US, Europe and Australia, where coal power stations are old, the guaranteed capacity of wind+ solar is as good as the guaranteed capacity of coal.

Moreover, for 70% of the time, guaranteed capacity of wind+solar is 1/3rd of potential capacity.  In other words, if we tripled the initial capacity, i.e., had significant overcapacity, wind+solar would be able to provide for 100%--guaranteed-- of total demand.  That would be wasteful; batteries or other storage will surely be cheaper.  In fact the 30%, or 7.2 hours, of storage would also bring the guaranteed capacity up to 100% for 78.5% of the time, matching new coal.

To sum up:

1. Wind and solar are complementary, with a negative correlation
2. Wind in widely separated locations is complementary, though less so than wind and solar
3. Solar is particularly useful on the days of highest demand in summer; wind in winter
4. Where coal power stations are old, wind plus solar are as reliable as coal
5. Overcapacity would guarantee 100% supply
6. So would 7 hours of storage.

The grids of the future will surely use all 5 means of guaranteeing supply: some overcapacity, mixed solar plus wind, wind farms separated by 500 or 1000 kms or more, and several hours of storage.

Amazing stories

I talked here about the new stainless steel Starship (BFS as was) that SpaceX is building at its new launchpad/base in Boca Chica Texas, and why SpaceX has pivoted away from carbon composites to steel alloys.

What they're building is not the full-on Starship (BFR/BFS) that will take us to the Moon and Mars.  It is a test vehicle for use in "hopper" tests, similar to what SpaceX used to test and refine the landing capability of its Falcon 9 boosters.  These hopper tests didn't take the prototype into orbit.  They tested its ability to take off, hover, and land without falling over or crashing.  (One blew up after take-off.)  This "Spacehopper" as I shall call it will be the same width (9 metres diameter) as the final Starship but only about 3/4trs of the height, and of course has no windows.  It does have three of the new methane Raptor engines, which haven't been tested in flight before.  These appear to have been fitted with dual bell exhaust bells to allow for low-altitude as well as high-altitude/space use, which is an interesting innovation.

SpaceX has been working exceptionally hard over the holidays to get this prototype of the BFS ready and some have wondered what the hurry is.  I think it's because of this late stage pivot from composites to steel alloy.  The timetable for Mars is very tight.  Cargo mission to Mars in 2022, circumlunar mission with humans on board in 2023, manned mission to Mars in 2025.  If SpaceX misses the 2022 Mars-Earth opposition, the whole timetable slips 26 months, as, given current technology it is only when Mars and Earth are closest (i.e. in opposition) that we can reach it in a reasonable time.  This is a "hard" timetable--things can't be postponed by a couple of months, as they can on Earth.  So speed is of the essence.  Test hops of the Spacehopper are scheduled in March/April.  If all goes to plan, orbital flights will be able to start by end 2019.  Musk has said that the Starship will be able to get to orbit without a booster provided it has only a very small payload, so they don't even have to wait until the Super Heavy (BFR as was) is built before they can test its ability to re-enter the atmosphere.

Here are some pics of what the "Spacehopper" looks like.

The nose cone and mid-section

The mid-section

Nose cone and mid-section welded together

Base with "wings" (=landing legs) and 3 Raptor engines

(Source of above pics Austin Barnard)

 The finished Spacehopper  will look like this. 
The Starship will be taller and will have 7 raptor engines plus windows, etc.
Source: Elon Musk

Hat-tip to Roger Holt
(I didn't realise the Spacehopper was so big.  Is this right?
I dunno.  The "wing" proportions look right.
We know the Spacehopper's width is 9 metres and its height from the ground. is 5 times that,
so 45 metres vs the BFS's 55, so yes, it looks right.)

And in the images below you can see how the newest Starship design recalls concepts of spaceships 70 years ago.  Musk has said that the steel alloys will be much improved.  And of course, we have computerised control, indispensable for a remote landing on Mars.  All the same, it's been a long wait!  Once again, I urge you not to underestimate Elon Musk's ability to achieve the apparently impossible.  I think there's a good chance the deadline of 2025 for a manned expedition to Mars will be met.  And if it isn't, it'll be 2027. But I'm counting on 2025.

From the 1950 film Destination Moon

Don't mess with Texas

From Quartz:

Don’t mess with Texas. Although the White House is leading a campaign to burn more coal, states and utilities are largely ignoring the call. In April, West Virginia rebuffed efforts by Democratic governor Jim Justice to revive its moribund coal industry. On Oct. 13, Texas announced it, too, was turning to renewables.

The retirement of three coal-powered plants owned by Texas utility Luminant early next year means wind capacity in Texas will surge ahead of coal by the end of 2018. The Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin reports that the lost coal power capacity will be more than replaced by about 4,000 MW of wind power coming online.

[Read more here]

Source: Quartz

Note that that's capacity, not output.  Assuming reasonable capacity factors (60% for coal, 40% for wind) output should be around 8,800 MW from the coal and 9,800 from the wind, on average.  So over the course of 2019, wind will exceed coal in ERCOT.

The key point is this: renewables are cheap and getting cheaper.  So cheap that even in Republican, conservative Texas wind is replacing fossil fuels.  Coal doesn't stand a chance.  And in the USA, the transition is easy because gas is cheap, so "firming" supply (i.e., filling in the gaps caused by variability of renewables output) by using gas power stations is relatively cheap.  Outside the US, because gas is more costly, the transition requires storage, which is still a bit expensive.  But inside or outside the US, storage costs are plunging--gas is just an interim fuel until storage becomes cheap enough to replace it.