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VOGLA POWER PLANT OFFLINE

“We are not adequately winterizing power plants today, even under the ERCOT standards,” said Alison Silverstein, an energy consultant and former FERC senior adviser who also worked at the Public Utility Commission of Texas and Pacific Gas and Electric.

VOGLA POWER PLANT OFFLINE

grid operator, overseeing an area that includes 65 million people and all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia, implored customers to conserve electricity as 46,000 megawatts of power generation, mostly natural gas and coal plants, went offline because of fuel supply problems and equipment failures.Īnd in Texas this winter, despite new weatherization standards for power plants approved last year, power plants still failed to perform because of both fuel shortages and other problems. In December, as Elliott sent temperatures rapidly plunging across much of the central and eastern United States, gas and coal plants tripped offline, forcing Duke Energy in North Carolina and the Tennessee Valley Authority to order rolling blackouts in their respective territories. In 2021, natural gas generation made up more than 50% of ERCOT’s capacity in 2021, with wind about 25%. Problems included frozen lines and valves, boiler issues, iced turbine blades and other problems. More than 52,000 megawatts of generation went offline during the event, about 40% of the total capacity in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs the electric grid for most of the state.

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“But the critical generator weatherization requirements as they were proposed, to be frank, are not up to the task.”Įxtreme cold weather, like the temperatures seen during Uri and Elliott, can knock out power plants that haven’t been adequately winterized.ĭuring Uri, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants, as well as wind turbines, failed to hit their expected output, per a report by the University of Texas at Austin. “There are a number of good measures in what we accept today to be sure,” FERC Commissioner Allison Clements said. The commission sent the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the nonprofit regulator that sets and enforces reliability standards for the bulk power system in the U.S., back to the drawing board in several respects.

However, the vote last week on the standards came with the acknowledgement by the commission that the new rules don’t go nearly far enough. Two years after Winter Storm Uri, which caused a massive power failure in Texas that caused more than 200 deaths, and just two months after another storm, Elliott, forced blackouts in parts of the South, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved new extreme cold reliability standards for power plants.

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