Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Rolling blackout’

With a little help from the wind, ERCOT is holding power emergencies at bay

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , on August 9, 2011 | 5 Comments »

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is expecting to keep rolling blackouts at bay this week.  While we came perilously close to having statewide rolling blackouts last week, it turns out, coastal wind power proved helpful in averting an electric crisis then, according to ERCOT’s president. Unlike wind farms in West Texas, which tend [...]

Read Full Post »

Deregulation has put Texas energy security at risk.

Posted in Air Quality, Coal, Energy, Global Warming, Renewables, Texas Legislature, tagged , , , , , , on August 5, 2011 | 2 Comments »

The PUC wants to have a meeting at the end of August to try to figure out how to fix Texas’s experiment of a deregulated generation market, as we look like we are going to run out of energy during what could be ever increasing hot summers. It seems the current market based behavior doesn’t [...]

Read Full Post »

Temperatures in Texas soar — and so do energy prices

Posted in Energy, tagged , , , on August 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

This is a reprint of a post by Jake Dyer from the RechargeTexas.com blog The rolling blackouts that swept through Texas last February have been blamed on the unexpected failure of generation plants. The temperature dropped during a cold snap, the plants froze up, and then — before anybody really knew what hit them — [...]

Read Full Post »

Rolling Blackouts – are we close?

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , on August 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »

ERCOT announced a yellow alert at 3:15 today when they smashed through the state electric use record by over 2,000 MW.  With only 1800 MW of reserve available around 4:30, we are periously close to triggering rolling blackouts.  With no end in sight for this excessive heat wave, it is imperative that Texans severely curtail [...]

Read Full Post »

Rolling Blackouts – NEVER AGAIN! – well at least not for another 21 years

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , on April 12, 2011 | 1 Comment »

An unusual weather event and rolling blackouts – what lessons were learned?  Apparently none. A report from the Public Utility Commission of Texas is clear in its analysis of what went wrong and what needed to be done to prevent another such event: The winter freeze greatly strained the ability of the Texas electric utilities [...]

Read Full Post »

Senate joint committee chairs differ in response to hearing on rolling blackouts

Posted in Consumers, Energy, tagged , , , on February 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

John Carona, republican senator from Dallas and chair of the Senate Business and Commerce committee (one of the two Senate committees that jointly heard testimony on the rolling blackouts earlier this week) told the Dallas Morning news that he doesn’t think the Legislature needs to inact any new laws to prevent another day of rolling outages. [...]

Read Full Post »

Which power plants caused the rolling blackouts?

Posted in Energy, tagged , , , , , on February 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

ERCOT just released an updated list of all of the power plants that were not operating Feb 2, contributing to the power shortages that caused the rolling blackouts.  That document is here, but we present the data below for your convenience. Notice a trend? Natural gas and Lignite coal were the main power sources that [...]

Read Full Post »

PUC seeks authority to unilaterally fire an ERCOT CEO

Posted in Energy, tagged , , , on February 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

In a Public Utility Commission (PUC) hearing on Thursday, to address what happened to cause the rolling blackouts of Feb. 2, members of the commission accused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) of ignoring dire energy forecasts, failing to communicate with other important decision makers, and understating the risk of rolling blackouts. As part of [...]

Read Full Post »

Will my rates go up because of last week’s electricity mess?

Posted in Energy, tagged , , , on February 10, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Will my rates go up because of last week’s electricity mess?  That’s a question that the Texas Tribune, a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that promotes civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern, asked and their answer starts out: Lots of Texans are asking that question in the [...]

Read Full Post »

Was there a gas shortage during the rolling blackouts? Not if you had the right contract.

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , on February 8, 2011 | 1 Comment »

The Texas Railroad Commission added an emergency item to their agenda today so it could hear from the Texas Energy Reliability Council about natural gas service’s impact on the rolling blackouts that swept the state.  They told the Commission that Texas was never in danger of a natural gas shortage during last week’s statewide deep freeze and no [...]

Read Full Post »

PUC Executive Director gets the ball rolling on a blackout inquiry

Posted in Energy, tagged , , , , on February 7, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Brian Lloyd, the executive director of the Public Utility Commission has directed the electric reliability monitor (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas) and the electric market monitor (Potomic Economics)  to investigate all of the events surrounding last week’s rolling blackouts and electric generation failures.  This includes “all preparations” made by ERCOT and all actions taken [...]

Read Full Post »

Rolling blackouts – who profits?

Posted in Energy, tagged , , , , on February 4, 2011 | 6 Comments »

Wednesday, State Rep. Lon Burnam and his staff got little in the way of a satisfactory answer from ERCOT as to why as many as 50 power plants were off line, and predicted that the issue will remain a hot topic especially in light of the fact that ERCOT is up for a sunset review [...]

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 28 other followers