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ERCOT forced dozens of natural gas installations offline during winter storm
ERCOT has confirmed that it forced dozens of natural gas installations to go offline during the winter storm in February as part of a program that pays large industrial users to shut down when electricity supply runs out. .
Hundreds of large electricity users, such as data centers, manufacturing plants, and oil and gas facilities, have entered into “demand response” contracts with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, requiring them to Install an automatic circuit switch or manually stop operations when powering on. demand threatens to exceed supply on the network. Under these contracts, the state grid operator has the power to cut off power to large industrial customers when there is less than 1,750 megawatts of reserve electricity on the grid.
“We have confirmed that some of (these industrial customers) are related to oil and gas,” said ERCOT spokesperson Leslie Sopko.
ERCOT said it was not clear what effect contractual shutdowns of natural gas facilities had on natural gas supplies and gas-fired power plants, which accounted for about half of power plant outages during the freeze. .. Other natural gas wells, pipelines and compressor stations suffered freezes and blackouts during DC outages imposed by ERCOT.
There are thousands of oil and gas facilities in Texas. These contractual breakdowns affected a small part of it.
Power plant operators blamed the inadequate natural gas supply for the catastrophic blackout during the storm, which resulted in nearly 200 deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. Natural gas production in Texas fell by nearly half during the storm, and most of the production outages occurred at natural gas plants, according to the Department of Energy.
“It’s just incredibly incompetent,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston. “It is remarkable that ERCOT is doing exactly what was necessary to drive up gasoline prices and hurt consumers.”
According to ERCOT, 447 industrial customers voluntarily installed the automatic circuit devices to shut off power to their operations at the end of 2019. These industrial customers have the capacity to dispose of more than 5,550 megawatts of electricity from the grid, sufficiently to power some 1.1 million homes in Texas on a hot summer day.
ERCOT has not published a list of industrial users participating in the demand response program, but a Wall Street Journal analysis of ERCOT data and electrical substation maps revealed dozens of instances where electricity has been cut to facilities in the Permian Basin, the country’s most prolific petroleum. and gas field. The Journal, which first reported the contract shutdowns on Friday, found that ERCOT had cut power to five facilities in Loving County, West Texas, where almost all industrial activity is linked. to oil and gas production.
The Texas Oil and Gas Association, the state’s largest oil and gas trading group, said it was unsure whether members had signed voluntary contracts with ERCOT to shut off power or shut down operations in the event emergency network. The association said Texas had sufficient natural gas supply and fuel limitations were a small percentage of problems at power plants during the storm.
ERCOT started the demand response program as a kind of insurance that helps the grid operator to balance the demand and supply of electricity on the grid. When demand exceeds supply, ERCOT can call on large industrial users who have signed contracts to reduce electricity consumption. If this fails to stabilize the grid, ERCOT may impose power outages, such as those during the storm.
Industrial users can potentially save millions of dollars by entering into a demand response contract with ERCOT and other utilities operating similar programs. There is a cottage industry of on-demand service providers who help industrial users to contract with ERCOT and utilities.
Companies that fail to terminate their operations in a timely manner by contract can be sanctioned by ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission.
Rarely does ERCOT call on its industrial volunteers to shut down electricity or shut down operations, so the financial incentive usually outweighs the risk. However, during a grid collapse such as during a winter storm, these contractual shutdowns can have the potential to exacerbate power plant outages.
“Maintaining electricity on infrastructure related to power generation units will dramatically improve the reliability of natural gas power generation facilities,” said Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, in a statement. E-mail.
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