Why is it that natural gas plants, solar, and wind energy works just fine in other nearby states where we get much colder weather every winter than Texas?
Not true. The freeze in 2022 severely affected natural gas supplies in OK and other states. If you follow the natural gas industry closely you will find production volumes decline in many areas in the US during severe weather events, be it cold or things like hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Generally the production shortages are made up from storage fields but in extremes there may be localized issues just due to local logistics.
Some examples: In the 1990's total natural gas production in the US ran about 50-55 BCFD; about 12-14 of that came from the GOM. By the mid aughts that offshore production had declined to about 8-10 BCFD. When things like Katrina hit the offshore production dropped precipitously with this affecting primarlily Lousiana and the southeast US. Power demand was also way off due to the hurricane, it was still summer and gas storage made up the difference. Nowdays we are producing abut 100 BCFD in the US, power generation demand for natural gas has gone way up (summertime US demand hits 45 BCFD or higher peaks) but again storage (also expanded greatly over the last 20-30 years) makes up any shortfalls.
Winter time is a different animal. Curtailments do occur during severe weather events or other issues. Back in the day, 1970's for example, Jimmy Carter told us to turn down our thermostats to conserve natural gas. Problem was that the Feds had price controls on natural gas and new supplies were not being drilled fast enough to keep up with demand. Enter the 1980's when prices were deregulated and supplies took off. Prices plummeted for natural gas and hundreds of small to medium oil and gas companies went bankrupt due to too much production.
Again there were issues in a 10 day cold snap in 1983 and severe but colder cold snaps in 1989 and 1990. There was much written about the 1983 issue, look for 'Ten Days on the Brink'.
Current day we have issues like in 2022. What causes the severe dislocation in supply and demand? In a severe cold snap in the US these days natural gas demand can spike to 140-160 BCFD (remember above that production is runnig about 100 BCFD). The difference again is made up from storage. However if cold is bad enough and long enough, US production can drop to 80-90 BCFD or lower. The lower production thus exacerbates the demand for storage gas. One fine point on natural gas storage: deliverability from natural gas storage is driven by the high pressure in the storage fields. As storage withdrawals occur the pressure in the fields drops and as a result the rate of maximum withdrawals that are available falls (interestingly enough the issue in Texas was in February when storage was already partially depleted). At the beginning of the winter, total storage withdrawal capacity across the US runs in the 80-90 BCFD; late in the winter the maximum withdrawal rates can be half of that. This also assumes you are using storage across the US simultaneously. Just because it is very cold in the northeast, storage withdrawals in California won't help the needs in the northeast immediately. So its a logistics issue as well.
What has also developed in the US is more and more load shedding occurs in the industrial and export markets to reduce natural gas demand during weather extremes. For example we deliver about 12 BCFD currently to US LNG export plants. The natural gas is chilled, liquefied and shipped via tanker to Europe, Asia, South America, etc. When demand is extreme in the US spot prices for natural gas rise immensly for that brief moment in time and producing LNG for export becomes uneconomical. The LNG terminals shut down and wahla, the natural gas that was going to the LNG market is now availble (for a price) for the domestic market. The same things occur with chemical plants, steel mills, etc. when the economics justify it. Plus it also reduces the demand for electricity which also can go to other needs in the domestic market. In Feb., 2022 most of the US gulf coast LNG plants shut down temporarily.
Anyway back to the underlying comment. Why doesn't this problem show up in other states? It does. Again I point out in 2022 it occured in neighboring states like OK, but it wasn't popular to discuss in the media as Texas was the main story. As I mentioned in a previous post, part of the issue in Texas was the screwed up prioritization of critical demand for power serving the oil fields, plants, etc. Shut off the power and it shuts in the gas supply leaving less available for utilities to convert to power. Kind of like a circular firing squad.
Additionally Texas's electrical grid is more or less isolated from the other US grids by design. Texas has limited capability to export or import power from neighboring states and Mexico. Last I looked, the connectivity from the main Texas grid operated by ERCOT had about 1000 MW (more or less) cross border capability. FYI, Texas is the largest power consuming state in the country and peak demand can run in excess of 90,000 MW (summer), Somewhat lower peaks in the winter. So if Texas has a big issue in supply/demand balance like Feb, 2022 they are on their own. Alternatively, the US has two other main grids, Western and Eastern (and subsets within). If things go wonky in places like say Ohio, power can theoretically be wheeled up from North Carolina (assuming the transmission lines can handle it) and life goes on. That is not to say problems cannot occur. Look at the issues in the northeast awhile back in the northeast, i.e. the NY blackout a couple of decades or more back or more recently when HydroQuebec had a failure due to supposedly a solar flare that cascaded into the northeast some years back.
So to answer your question, other areas do suffer from outages all of the time, epic disasters are mostly avoided due to interconnectivity allowing balancing across large geographic areas that hopefully have sufficient excess transmission capability (of both natural gas and power) to bridge those long distances from areas that are not under stress to areas that are having issues.
Back to some more subtle nuances of natural gas. When oil and gas are produced from wells the production also contains water. If it is coming from a high pressure gas well, the pressure is reduced to pipeline pressure and just like your air conditioner, when the gas expands and drops pressure it gets colder. The cold temperatures can be sufficient to cause the water vapor in the natural gas to freeze and plug the well up. One way this is mitigated is to inject methanol into the gas stream BEFORE the pressure is reduced. The methanol binds with the water vapor and no ice forms. What happens in practice (more so in the warmer production areas rather than say North Dakota or Canada) is that these methonol injection systems are not used all of the time or may not even be installed. Also insulation on pipes and heat tracing may not be installed in the southern areas. That is not to say the colder climates don't suffer from these issues but it typically is not as pronounced as the warmer areas. These practices are being revised as a result of the fallout of the Feb, 2022 issue. And keep in mind, Texas produce about 20-25% of the total natural gas in the US. But even in areas like the Bakken in North Dakota severe winter weather can see well head production drop 20-30% during an extreme winter cold snap.
Long story short, the problems that occured in Texas also occur elsewhere. Part of that is mitigated by broader logistical reach covering areas that allow for better load balancing. But the issues regarding the competing power generation technologies are only to get worse across the US as well as other advanced economies in the world as a larger percentage of generation is switched to nonsteady state production. The term is an 'unstable' grid. If you do some research you will see developing issues in Germany for eample (and they are interconnected with the rest of Europe) or even some isolated islands in Hawaii due to the higher ratios of renewable, weather dependent generation vs. on-demand power generation. The issue in Texas was a combination of failed communications regarding critical infrastructure; poor planning on the part of many players in the food chain including gas producers, power generators, pipelines, wind and solar generators (yes there were freezoffs of windmills, etc.), cloudy weather (who would have guessed). Are these issues avoidable? Absolutely (almost). It takes money, planning, redudancy and cooperation. No surprise there. Are areas outside of Texas also vulnurable? Absolutely. I gave a couple of examples already. And lets not even begin to discuss the screwed up mess on the west coast.
I hope this gives some food for thought. Be mindful of media agendas as well as competing political narratives. In concept this is not real complicated but the execution of a coordinated management of these various pieces is complex. And different participants have many competing agendas. Texas historically enjoys the isolation from as many federal regulations as possible including the power grid. However it needs to do it better than the federal oversight does by being smarter to both be market responsive and efficient. As power prices remain very competitve in Texas more and more people and industry are affected by it and attracted to it. Just as an aside, check out the power prices that are going to be paid by NY folks from the two large offshore windfarms that are under construction; rather eye opening. Happy Trails!
