Updates ERCOT outages
Texas power and natural gas providers struggled to provide service today, with the electric grid operator in Texas instructing utilities to shut off power to even more households, as below-freezing temperatures stretched into their fourth day.
Grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) at 11am ET today instructed utilities to shed another 14,000 MW of load, representing about 2.8mn customers. ERCOT made the move after it lost its ability to import about 600 MW of power from the Midwest, which is experiencing a power emergency of its own amid frigid weather throughout the US.
ERCOT as of 7am ET this morning said 2.7mn customers were without power on its grid. There are about 3.3mn power outages across the state, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US. Prior to losing its power imports from the Midwest, the Texas grid operator had been able to restore about 3,500MW of load, or 700,000 households, overnight.
About 46 GW of generation has been forced off ERCOT's system at of 10am ET. Of that, 28 GW is thermal power generation — which includes natural gas, coal and nuclear plants — with about 18 GW of renewables. The generation outages include coal and natural gas-fired power plants that have frozen equipment, a lack of natural gas supply to gas-fired plants, or frozen wind turbines.
Natural gas well freeze-offs and pipeline compressor power losses continued to block gas from reaching gas-fired power plants today. Texas Eastern Transmission (Tetco) declared a force majeure as a result of a loss of power at its Thomaston compressor station. Tennessee Gas pipeline issued a systemwide operational flow order for over-takes out of the system and under-deliveries into it.
Natural gas pipeline linepack, which must be maintained for the gas to move through the line, can be at risk when the production that feeds the pipe declines or customers take too much gas off the line. The US Energy department yesterday said about 6.3 Bcf/d of gas production in the region was down because of freeze-offs and processing plant outages.
"Some producers, especially in the Permian basin and panhandle, have reported experiencing unprecedented freezing conditions, which caused concerns for employee safety and affected production," the Texas Railroad Commission said.
Extreme cold causes spikes in demand at the same time that it materially impacts hydrocarbon production, which limits the ability to secure gas to fuel the natural gas-fired power fleet, analysts at Tudor Pickering Holt said today. The US needs to maintain and add sufficient weatherized dispatchable generation to avoid this in the future, analysts said.
Natural Gas Pipeline (NGPL) has lifted a force majeure it declared yesterday for flows to the Sabine Pass LNG terminal. The force majeure stemmed from horsepower issues at its compressor stations in Cameron Parish, Louisiana.
