I remember there was a huge lignite strip mine right off I45 near Buffalo. The power plant was right next to the mine. Someone joked that it was a dirt fired plant. Then there was the Alcoa Aluminum plant in Milam County that generated electricity for its own use from the local lignite. It was the major tax payer in the county. Now that it is all closed down, our taxes on the property have gone through the roof. I need to run some goats on the property to get an agricultural exemption. I could try to claim the armadillos as live stock but I doubt that would fly.

When that plant burned lignite we called it a "dirt burner".

Deer qualify as live stock for ag exemption, why not dillos? Did some pig hunting in Rockdale on the plant grounds. The water would shock you.

You are missing a key piece of information. This is outage season. February is usually the lowest demand on the system. So this is the month that operators take units offline for major periodic maintenance. This is not greasing pumps. It can including removing turbine rotors and cleaning/inspecting/replacing items.

Ones that are down for "inspections" or minor overhaul activities might be able to be sorted out quickly and returned to service. It is in the interest of the power producers because the cost of power was WAY up during this episode.

Finally, many of the peaking units that are around and only fired up during summer peak, are on interruptible gas sources. In the summer, this is not a problem. But in winter, if gas is curtailed, you shutdown. And they were shutdown to allow gas for heating.

The meaning is that the system capacity is not the same year round.

And GT in a Combined Cycle system, if designed properly, can get the GT up to full load in about 15 minutes. Less under emergency conditions. Then the steam plant can be brought up.

The single shaft combined cycles and many of the non-bypass HRSGs can't be cycled as well as easily the stack/bypass HRSG systems.

The units I worked on in Pakistan had stack bypasses and they has serious control and sealing issues. Poor damper design required lots of torque to close against the exhaust flow. Every time the manufacturer fixed a break in the system, the next weakest link would fail!

Oh and most of the REALLY new Gas Turbines are pre-mix Dry low NOx systems and they are nowhere near as capable as they used to be.

I've been out of that game for 15 years, but I don't think the tech has moved on that much.

So you haven't heard about...?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cc/f8...e8fbf73d63.jpg

Looking at those power consumption charts...

Seems that Texans (and everyone) should be thinking more about insulation.

I understand that, based on the charts that means that those units were taken down for maintenance the day before the **** hit the fan.

I am comparing capacity as reported in the immediate preceding days and that indicates a significant drop in capacity overnight.

That has me wondering what do northerners do different than us?

Most of the houses around here are wood frame on concrete slab. All walls and attics are insulated with newer houses using spray foam insulation in walls and attic rafters.

Most exterior walls are 2x4 on 1 and 2 story houses.

A lot more insulation, even slabs, and attention to air leaks. Further North add double double-pane windows. (windows lose a lot of heat compared to a wall)

No units were taken offline on purpose a day before the cold hit. Meetings started over a week before the storm hit to prepare and review freeze protection preparedness. Like James noted, when a unit goes into a major outage this time of year turbines, valves, pumps, and huge sections of boiler walls are removed. So there's no putting it back together real quick. Actually a plant would stop all maintenance work not directly related to freeze protection to prevent doing something that could accidentally cause a running unit next to the outage unit to trip. They used to be called "screw driver alerts" meaning don't touch anything!

I think one of the big problems is we always prepare to fight our last war. And none of our last freeze wars were anything like this. You can be assured plants will have a big list of lessons learned after this.

My wife talks about shrink wrapping the windows in the winter in Wisconsin to add an extra seal.

I did that as a student living in a crappy old house. The plastic is primarily to confound natural convection off the glass. (just as a double-pane does) Effective but ugly.

My wife was a student living in a crappy old house back then :)

It's still done in houses w old windows in extremely cold places like MN or WI...doesn't even have to be a crappy house. :)

yep. https://youtu.be/F9Ne50TfPn4?t=8 (for those who are asking WTF are they talking about?)

Building an air tight house will allow mold to grow. I'm at 50F and 45% humidity in my garage. It'll be back into the 70% range pretty quick.

There are heat recovery ventilation systems. Which move stale air out and fresh air in thru a cross or counter-flow heat exchanger.

Depends on how far north.

Almost all homes here have masonry basement under wood framed structure and asphalt shingled roofs. 6” pink insulation, possibly 1” blue board insul. Completely wrapped (Tyvex), with vinyl siding and trim. All seams caulked. Sometimes heated water is piped through the concrete basement floor. Min. 12” pink in roof.

If the plumbing is inside the envelope, not much of it will ever freeze.

And the Water lines come in below the frost line.