Oil & Gas Pro

ERCOT says turn up your thermostat.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-13/texas-power-pric...

This week’s price spikes also underscore how dependent the region’s power grid has become on wind farms, which now make up about a quarter of the generation capacity in Texas. Lackluster breezes contributed to the higher prices, said Flannan Hehir, a power analyst at energy data provider Genscape.

“We are seeing the coal fleet retirement hasn’t been replaced with a lot of large gas plants,” said Campbell Faulkner, chief data analyst for commodities broker OTC Global Holdings. “We are changing the generation mix and that is what this is caused by.”

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Oil & Gas ProPermalink Reply by dbob on August 20, 2019 at 14:32

Not unheard of - when the load is high, the metal gets warm, and when it gets warm it expands.  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.677.7493&a...

For example, for a line with a 500 foot tower spacing (a typical span for overhead transmission lines) and an aluminium conductor steel reinforced (ACSR) conductor, a temperature increase of about 120.degree .F will causes about 6.4 inches increase in line length, which will increase the sag by about 4.7 feet...

I have no idea what the actual sag was, but as a SWEPCO customer, I have not been impressed with their vegetation management.  


Oil & Gas ProPermalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on August 20, 2019 at 14:42

Interesting, thanks.  I'm not impressed with their tree trimming either.  The work directions are too rigid to deal with a lot of fast growing vegetation and trees like the Sassafras across my back fence. 

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