Michael Giberson Among the complications caused by the cold weather last week, short supply of natural gas throughout much of the southwest United States. Reports indicate some gas wells were freezing up and loss of electric power to gas production systems, but more of the problem was loss of power to natural gas pipelines. And, …
The Natural Gas That Didn’t Come in from the Cold Read More »
Michael Giberson In other commentary on ERCOT’s rolling blackouts: “Some Companies Made Millions Off the Texas Blackouts.” While Texans suffered rolling blackouts yesterday, some power generators were enjoying windfall profits. Starting around 5 a.m., prices in the wholesale market surged to the market cap, $3,000 per megawatt-hour, and stayed there, off and on, until around …
Texas Observer: Some Companies Made Millions Off the Texas Blackouts Read More »
Michael Giberson [Note: This item was originally posted at MasterResource as: “Texas Power Outages: A Preliminary Analysis (Cold snap brings failure–isolated ERCOT an issue)“] Wednesday morning, ERCOT, the power grid operator for much of Texas, called upon local distribution companies to cut power to blocks of consumers on a rotating basis. The rolling outages were a …
Cold Snap Brings Rolling Power Outages to Texas; is Ercot Policy of Isolation at Fault? Read More »
Michael Giberson Among the casualties of yesterday’s rolling blackouts in the ERCOT power system was a Texas A&M University conference dedicated to helping solve global energy challenges. Via the Texas A&M News and Information Service: Texas A&M System Gearing Up To Help Solve Global Energy Challenges COLLEGE STATION, Feb. 3, 2011—The Texas A&M University System …
Michael Giberson Below are charts showing data on ERCOT West zone power prices for the 2009 and for 2010 January-September with a focus on negative prices. The charts were derived from data provided through the ERCOT website, on their “Balancing Energy Services Market Clearing Prices for Energy Annual Report” page. These charts were prepared in the …
Negative Power Prices in Ercot West: 2009 and 2010 Through September Read More »
Michael Giberson ERCOT recently set a new record for consecutive pricing intervals below $0/MWh for balancing energy market prices in the ERCOT West region: 39.25 hours of negative prices. The episode started at 7:45 PM on Saturday, November 6 and the negative prices continued until 11:00 AM on Monday, November 8. The previous record …
Top 10 Longest Periods with Consecutive Negative Power Prices, Ercot West Read More »
Michael Giberson A story by Purva Patel in the Houston Chronicle does a reasonably good job explaining the upcoming shift from a zonal to a nodal market design for the ERCOT market in Texas. It is a complicated matter and hard to convey to non-specialist readers. (In fact, even some specialists appear confused about parts …
Nodal Pricing Coming to Texas Wholesale Power Market Read More »
Michael Giberson The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy article by Russel Gold on the behind-the-scenes struggle over cost allocation and performance obligations between wind power producers and conventional generators. Tension over how variable resources participate in markets have been simmering for years, but wind power and other intermittent resources have been too small to …
Wind Power and Natural Gas-fired Power and Power Market Design Read More »
Michael Giberson David Wagman, chief editor of Power Engineering magazine, toured the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ primary control center in Taylor, Texas as part of a group attending the Renewable Energy World Conference in Austin. If you wonder what ERCOT’s control center is like: Inside the control room, the most striking feature is the …
Michael Giberson I spent the middle of last week in Austin at the University of Texas-Law conference on wind, solar and geothermal energy law, and as a side bonus got to hear some informal, Austin-based commentary on the Tres Amigas proposal to interconnect the Eastern, Western, and Texas electric grids. It will give you some …
Tres Amigas Wants to Take Cheap Electric Power Away from Hard-Working Texas Families Read More »
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