How can the Southern power grid handle months of blistering heat with everyone blasting air conditioners, but can’t handle two days below freezing?
In: 1150
AC goes from 100ish degrees to 70ish…. cold snap heating goes from 0 to 65+. Maintaining a 65 degree change is a lot harder than 30.
Governor Abbott has done nothing about our power grid here in Texas although he’ll claim to have. He he has personal interests because he’s on the board of some of these energy companies. Texas ranks first place in weather related deaths in all of the United States for the last 8 years.
My friend who works for a power company says it’s because the power lines go down. Ice, snow, wind.
It depends what you mean by the South. The bulk electric system in the US has certain standards that they have to meet to be connected. Texas specifically didn’t want to have to follow these regulations because it would cost them money. So instead they have mostly a few DC lines connecting to the rest of the grid. So they are largely on their own. Like 10-20 years ago Texas got wrecked by an ice/snow storm and West Texas decided to make some improvements which is why with the recent winter storm they mostly had power back within a couple days to a week. Eastern Texas decided that “what are the odds it happens again soon” and did not. Which resulted in the situation we saw. Their generators are built to not melt down in high temps but they didn’t spend the money to insure against cold because they figured the cost of upgrading equipment to be fine in cold was worth more than potential profit loss of those generators going offline due to cold weather. So basically, it came down to money and good luck to the people who lose power. I can’t speak for the other southern states that are in a main BES region but I imagine it is similar in that their equipment just isn’t rated for deep cold for a long period.
Worker for grid company – scheduled maintenance is the main problem. Companies have to ensure that the generators are available in the most pressing times… in the South that spring through fall. Depending on the age and the maintenance required for the generator the time out of service can be lengthy.
While the grid allows areas of the country to share power, when there is a widespread weather event it is more difficult to share power due to the needs of the local area or in cases of ice, transmission lines going down.
Assuming you’re frugal with your temperature settings, getting the house down to 78° when the outside temperature is 98° is only a 20° differential. However, maintaining 68° when the outside temperature is 18° involves a 50° differential.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIE0mcOGnms&list=PLTZM4MrZKfW9MypfZKND911Jh8bsX4oAS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIE0mcOGnms&list=PLTZM4MrZKfW9MypfZKND911Jh8bsX4oAS)
This playlist for Practical Engineering has several good videos on the subject of grid craziness towards the end. TLDR the grid is super duper fragile, and little failures cascade quickly to big failures if not mitigated quickly.
Winter storms don’t just come with increased loads – they come with massive scale grid faults like ice forming on insulators shorting the wires out, weighing down the lines causing damage, or weighing down trees to rest on the lines causing shorts. All in all more things go worse than summer.
Easy, it’s not the load that kills it.
Winds, broken branches, snow accumulating on said branches weighing them down, freezing rain doing the same thing, that’s what brings the grid down.
Temperature of my thermostat: 70
Hot Summer temp: 95 (+ 25 degrees)
Current winter temp: 10 (-60 degrees)
Even on the most brutally scorching summer days, you are still fairly close to the temperature outside when you start comparing that to even average winter days.
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