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Last week, Texas was hit by an abnormal winter storm, which left millions of people without power. Although much of the power grid has been restored, problems persist with Texas infrastructure, from plumbing issues to people struggling to find basic necessities like food and water. Yet the most immediate crisis was that Texas, a state unaccustomed to winter conditions, left millions of people without heat in freezing temperatures. At one point, Texas utilities were within five minutes of a blackout that could have lasted for weeks or months. Experts estimate that it will take months to fully calculate the death toll, although nearly 80 storm-related deaths have been confirmed so far.
Republicans like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have argued, unsurprisingly, that the massive blackout somehow discredits left-wing politics. “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Abbott told Fox News on Tuesday, adding later that the problem was “[o]ur wind and our solar ”and claiming that it“ just shows that fossil fuels are needed ”.
Yet the reality of what went wrong and what can be done to prevent this type of crisis, experts agree, is far more complicated. And that starts with understanding how our power grid works.
The US power grid, which the Wall Street Journal described in 2016 as “one of the engineering marvels of modern history,” can be traced back to the modern concept of power grid designs. These, in turn, were born in the late 1800s, according to Dr. Alexis Kwasinksi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. The aim was to provide electricity to as many people as possible at the lowest possible cost.
“The solution to such a design problem has led to the concept of a power grid in which a few large power plants provide electricity at many more, but much smaller, loads, sometimes located hundreds of kilometers from the plants,” said Kwasinski declared to Salon via email. “One of the solutions to maintain the stability of the system was to interconnect the power plants and the loads so that they operate at an aggregate level.” As a result of this interconnected approach, the United States developed long transmission lines across the various states so that electricity could be transmitted over great distances with low losses.
One problem with this approach, Kwasinski explained, is that because everything is interconnected, all of the different loads receive the same quality of power. As a result, it is costly to modify power grids so that electricity can be allocated according to the needs of each location so as to avoid power outages or prioritize areas with more urgent needs.
Kwasinski says resilience was not a goal in power grid design – at least, not until now. “It is only recently that the company [has] started to demand greater resilience of the power grid, ”he said.
The problem is that power grids were designed to meet the needs of the early 1900s. Even more modern power systems are planned decades in advance, which means that Texas’ existing power grid is the result of planning processes carried out decades ago, says Kwasinski.
“At that time (say in 2011), no planner knew that in February 2021 the state power grid would be subjected to such cold conditions, even if there were power cuts during the winter of 2011 due to insufficient electricity production, ”he added. Texan engineers understandably thought they had to design with heat waves in mind, not the types of winter storms you would be more likely to encounter in the Northeast.
Dr Masoud Barati, who is also an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Pittsburgh, broke down for Salon exactly how things went wrong in Texas. He explained it in the context of the HVDC line, or high voltage direct current, and what the main operation of the existing HVDC was at the Texas’ Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT) was. He explained that during the power outage in Texas, there were five HVDC interconnects which ultimately amounted to 1.1 GW of “patch line capacity as an interconnect with other neighboring states and countries.” This turned out to be insufficient for two reasons: First, “the winter peak load recorded by ERCOT was 69,150 MW and 34 GW of loss of thermal and renewable production resources”, which means that “the 1.1 GW HVDC cannot bear the large production loss and load ”.
Also, because neighbors in Texas were hit by the same storm and either almost maximized their capacity to generate power, or found the amount of electricity produced to be less than the amount demanded, as most Texas homes used this electricity for heat.
Ironically, while Gov. Abbott tried to argue that the winter storm and blackout somehow discredited a Green New Deal, it actually illustrated precisely why we need it.
“From a Green New Deal perspective, we would like to have public services that prioritize public safety, resilience and disaster preparedness over the optimal price in a perfectly balanced market situation and a really nice weather, so I think that’s an important distinction, ”Daniel Aldana Cohen, associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of“ A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green Deal, ”said declared to Salon. After noting that the Texas electricity grid is deregulated and therefore undemocratic – “you don’t have a clear line of accountability like you should with a public system” – Cohen argued that the solution to energy inefficiency problems , as presented in his book, is a national electricity grid.
“You would have a single, very tightly interconnected national grid,” Cohen explained. “That would mean a grid dominated by renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Under this full national interconnection, when there is less or no power in a region of the country, you can draw energy there from other regions. “
For example, in the case of events like the winter storm in Texas, a national energy grid would have allowed public authorities to divert energy stored elsewhere in the national system so that it could be diverted to where it was needed most. . When it comes to resilience to disasters like extreme weather events, a national electricity grid “would essentially mean that there is like a national energy solidarity that covers the whole country instead of having a large region that has to fend for itself. only”.
Cohen also warned that if a Green New Deal is not implemented, we could end up with “a kind of eco-apartheid situation where largely white and largely well-off people can essentially hoard solar panels and batteries and resilience to the detriment of a completely egalitarian situation, a system where the safety and reliability of each household and community are practically guaranteed.
Barati offered a somewhat different set of suggestions to Salon.
“If only Texas had stronger connections with the rest of the United States with HVDC and HVAC [High Voltage Alternating Current] Barati wrote. He also pointed out that “if only proper reliability planning had been carried out, taking into account the coordinated expansion of the transmission line and production planning subject to rare and common mode events, the Texas would have had adequate production reserves. Further, he observed that “Texas has an exclusively energy market, which means it is vulnerable to rare events. If only Texas had a properly functioning capacity market for both generation and transmission, it would have had sufficient spare transmission and generation capacity to meet the shortages. “
Whichever solution you prefer, one thing is likely: Due to climate change, we should expect to see more extreme weather conditions in areas that are not used to it, wildfires on the west coast. to the Texas winter storm.
“The path goes through the changes in the environment that have occurred due to climate change,” Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a leading researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote in Salon when asked about the role. potential for climate change during the Texas winter storm. “These include generally warmer conditions, including much warmer oceans, higher sea surface temperatures, reduced sea ice and glaciers, and higher water vapor in the sea. ‘atmosphere.” Trenberth noted that the extra energy available accelerates the water cycle, leading to more evaporation and more rainfall.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the acronym HVAC to stand for Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning. The story has been updated.
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