I hear it's from the Galleria to Hiway 6.

Wif'e office out, client's out as well.

My power is on....I live near the Med Center

I am in Copperfield - a/c is running here.  

Quoted: My power is on....I live near the Med Center

+1

Lost it for about 20 minutes in Cypress around 2 hours ago...UPS kept my PC and modem running.

rolling brownouts...  100 home sections of the city, dispersed significantly, to reduce the load on the grid.  

They said they are running about 15 minutes per...  

According to CNN, rolling blackouts in Dallas too.....

Austin as well!

Addison (DFW) was just hit with a 15 minute rolling blackout....

The entire campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas lost power today, around 4:30pm. Of course, I just happened to have just stepped off the elevator on the 4th floor of the library. Navigating the stacks of books in the dark is a fun task.

Jeremy

We were down for about 15 mins. in Tyler today around 5:00.


D

Things break.  If people get pissy about this.. try one of the many 'worse case' scenarios and then see if you mind no power for a few hours.

Things break. If people get pissy about this.. try one of the many 'worse case' scenarios and then see if you mind no power for a few hours

Agreed, but it's a pisser when energy companies deliberately create "rolling blackout" situations as an excuse to hike prices.  Not a freakin' thing you can do about it.  Not that I have any evidence that that is the root cause of what's going on, but based on the past ... indescretions... of the power industry in this regard I have to be a little suspicious.

Quoted: Things break. If people get pissy about this.. try one of the many 'worse case' scenarios and then see if you mind no power for a few hours Agreed, but it's a pisser when energy companies deliberately create "rolling blackout" situations as an excuse to hike prices.  Not a freakin' thing you can do about it.  Not that I have any evidence that that is the root cause of what's going on, but based on the past ... indescretions... of the power industry in this regard I have to be a little suspicious.

Trust me, there was nothing deliberate about yesterday.
Initially, on thursday, we were planning mondays usage, because Friday was a holiday, there was no trading.  
Temp forecasts for monday were 90 in Dallas.

It hit 101.

It's near the end of spring maint season on units, so they are ready and reliable for the summer.

Some plants are still out, and a few plants had unexpected problems from runnning balls out over the weekend because of high temps.

Ercot had EVERY available unit turned on.  The lowered the voltage to get about 5% more use of the gens.  Then, later, they shut down about 1150 MW's of Load acting as a resource.  Basically, shutting down folks who are paid to shut down.

Then, when frequency continued to drop, the implemeted the last step of the load curtailment plan, which will shed another 1000 MW's of load across the whole state, with each transmission operator cutting their required amount.  For TXU, this was about 238 MW's.

NOBODY in the industry wants this to happen.  If a company is running everything they have, and lose a unit, THEY are on hook for buying the replacement power, and that can cost millions.

Also, when something like this happens, there is a SHITLOAD of analysis and reporting required to be done at NERC.

If the PUC investigates, and finds that someone was withholding power, they can lose their license.

This was just a perfect storm in the annals of ERCOT.

If you have any other questions, let me know.

TXL


ETA,  I sit on the Technical Advisory Comittee to the Board of Directors for ERCOT.

rolling blackouts are suppose to effect College Station today, but so far none yet

One would think that if President Bush can cause hurricanes, that the utility companies could learn to control the daily weather.  

... reached all the way up into Carrollton - north of Dallas.....

And yes, it WAS deliberate.... in the sense that someone had to make the decision to pull the plug in various areas... but they had to.  Problem is, I wish there were some way (in this very interconnected world we live in) for them to have told us what was happening, when it was happening.... or even warned us "you will lose power for 15 minutes starting in 5".  I have a cellphone that takes text msgs... maybe there's something I could sign up for emergency notifications like that.... without it, one is left to speculate (Iran testing a nuke smuggled in across the Rio Grande?)

My wife was home and called me... and I started walking her thru looking in the switch panels.... and then when she went outside, the neighbors were all outside shrugging and saying their power was out too.
Wasn't until the 10pm news we got the info.

Parts of Wichita Falls were shut down as part of the blackouts,too.
Clint

Quoted: Bill - I've been trying to make sense of the Ercot status page but it's all Geek to me.  Is there a way to look at it and know if more rolling blackouts are possible?

It won't happen again.  Of course, I can't gaurantee that, but trust me, it won't.  The last time it happened was 1989.  This is such a nightmare for ERCOT, that unless something extremely freaky happens, I would not worry about it again for a long time.  

WE have about 14000 MW's more than the highest load ever recorded in Texas.

It was just a confluence of events with units down for maintence, unexxpected high temps, and a few unit trips that were the cause.

But, to answer your question, the number you need to look at on that page is the system frequency.

If it drops below 59.9, you can bet steps are being taken to correct the problem.

if it is below 59.85, then they will start trimming interuptable load, lower than that, you'll see rolling blackouts.


TXL

Well, if there are any BLACK OUTS

Than we can get the LEFT OVER REFUGEES

To show us how to LOOT "Chocolate City Style"