With electricity prices soaring 300 times and half-monthly bills reaching $100,000, the President of the United States has declared a "state of major disaster" in Texas! Photovoltaic energy storage systems and electric vehicles have played an important role in supporting some customers through this crisis.
The U.S. White House approved Texas to enter a "major disaster state"
According to CCTV financial reports, on February 20, local time, the U.S. White House issued a statement, the U.S. President Joe Biden has approved the state of Texas into a "major disaster state".
The statement from the U.S. White House office mentions that the current assistance includes building temporary housing and providing money for home repairs, low-cost loans to make up for uninsured building losses and other elements to help individuals and business owners resume productive lives.
The winter storm has been raging in Texas for many days, according to local media reports, local time 20 and the next few days, the temperature in Texas will gradually rebound. However, there are still more than 15.1 million people without water in the Texas area, and many have frozen pipes in their homes. Frozen water pipes not only affect the daily lives of residents, but also affect the firefighting work.
According to ABC 20, a hotel in Killeen, Texas, caught fire on the night of 19 local time. The local fire department said the hotel sprinkler system failed due to frozen water pipes, and firefighters were hampered in their firefighting efforts upon arrival.
CNN reported that as of the morning of 20 local time, Texas still has about 85,000 households without power. And some other residents are facing "sky-high electricity bills", although the normal power supply. According to reports, Texas resident Ty Williams said his house, guest room and office electricity costs are generally $660 per month, but this time was asked to pay $17,000 (about 109,000 yuan), and that's just the first half of February. In the snowstorm extreme weather impact, energy use soaring pushed up the wholesale electricity prices, some of the power company's electricity market price than the usual price of about 300 times higher, many families were told by the power company electricity bill has been "about to burst".
Tesla photovoltaic energy storage electric vehicles become support
Sometimes, it takes a crisis to open your eyes. Polaris energy storage network has learned that Tesla users in Texas have used various social media platforms to share how they are using PV storage and electric vehicles at home to save their families, and their energy products are helping people cope with power outages and support survival.
Reports show that Tesla energy holders have been sharing information about their photovoltaic systems and home energy storage systems. Despite the cold winter weather, PV and storage systems are still able to capture energy and store it for hours at a time during the day.
Tesla user Michelle4Texla said on social media platforms that the power in her area had been cut off six times in two days. However, her own house has never lost power thanks to the installation of a Powerwall battery storage system. She also highlighted that the Tesla solar roof was still able to generate electricity despite being covered in snow and ice.
@dayyanl posted a short video showing the power outage, saying that Tesla's energy storage system, Powerwalls, is "saving the world". Other people commented that they were considering buying a home battery storage system. Snowstorm weather has spurred demand for home battery packs, but sales of the most popular Tesla and LG energy storage systems have been limited for now, and Tesla is now working to increase production of Powerwall.
People in Texas are in danger of power outages and water contamination due to the extreme cold weather. Local authorities are reminding people that tap water needs to be boiled and consumed, but their houses are very cold and do not have the ability to boil water, and in some cases, no water at all.
In 2019, Tesla released a "Camping Mode" setting that allows drivers to use the car's climate control system during parking. Camping mode is said to last more than 24 hours without completely draining the battery. Many people in Texas don't have a warm place to sleep this time, but some Tesla owners are choosing to stay warm in their electric cars overnight.
In response, Tesla Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Elon Musk, who moved to Texas, slammed the state's grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), for being unreliable, saying the state's grid operator, ERCOT, doesn't deserve the "R," which stands for " responsible," which stands for "reliability.
U.S., China analyze causes of 'disaster'
The state of Texas, known as the "energy heart" of the United States, has been hit by an "energy crisis" in the face of a winter storm that has been raging for days. Under the crisis, the Texas government has been criticized for its slow and inefficient response. The US public opinion pointed out that Texas' poor performance was caused by the unpreparedness of the US government at all levels in the face of the disaster.
An article in the Washington Post said that the "energy crisis" in Texas had actually been suggested to the state government years ago as a way to upgrade the power grid to cope with the cold weather, but the Texas government did not listen and act on the suggestion.
The article said that Texas' poor performance is the latest example of the U.S. government's inability to respond to disasters, a problem that has been exposed many times before and has become a persistent problem for the U.S. government. 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit, the U.S. government was ill-prepared and poorly responded, causing huge losses of life and property.
According to Polaris Energy Storage, foreign media have pointed out that although Texas is a major oil and gas producing region, wind power will still account for 23% of its total power generation by 2020. However, after record snowfall and severe freezing weather affected wind turbines in West Texas this winter, about half of the generating facilities stopped supplying power on Monday (Feb. 15). The severe freeze also disrupted the flow of natural gas, which supplies nearly half of the state's electricity, causing Texas to turn to burning charcoal for heat.
Some in the U.S. believe that if coal-fired power plants had been retained, they might not be in such a bad position now. There are also arguments that too much reliance on intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind has reduced the reliability of the U.S. grid and led to more power outages.
Polaris Energy Storage has learned that Texas has added more than 20 GW of intermittent resources since 2015 through the implementation of solar and wind subsidies. Over the past decade, more than $80 billion in federal subsidies alone has been spent on wind and solar subsidies. Texas also collects an average of $1.5 billion in renewable energy subsidies from the state each year. Solar companies receive more than 75 times more subsidies per unit of electricity generated than fossil fuels, and 17 times more for wind.
Some commentators have noted that all this cash has not substantially changed the energy landscape. Wind and solar still account for only 4 percent of the nation's energy. The promise that subsidies would kick-start renewable energy technologies remains unfulfilled after more than 40 years.
While many wind turbines did freeze and total wind generation was 2 percent of installed capacity Monday night, overall wind generation at the start of the outage was in line with local power department forecasts. So the real cause may not have been just the frozen turbines.
Unlike other states, Texas operates its own power grid, called the Texas Interconnection. There are three grids in the 48 states across the continental United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii: the Eastern Grid, the Western Grid and the Texas Grid. The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection serve the rest of the 48 states, but major storms have increased demand in the region.
Industry analysts say that while the immediate trigger was extreme weather, old U.S. power facilities and the overall inadequate mechanisms for operating the power system are also to blame.
According to the national grid newspaper, the global energy Internet development cooperation organization of North America office related experts Wang Qiankun: the United States in recent years the frequent blackouts, although the direct cause is extreme weather, but its power facilities are old and the overall power system operation mechanism is not enough to blame.
First, the power grid facilities are old.
"The United States industrialization process than China decades earlier, so many of the United States power facilities are built decades ago, some service even more than a century. With the development of cities, the residential electricity load continues to rise, coupled with the frequent occurrence of extreme weather, these are the challenges of the old power equipment."
According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) statistics show that 70% of the current U.S. transmission lines and transformers operate for more than 25 years, 60% of the circuit breakers operate for more than 30 years, and obsolete power grid facilities face a huge challenge to ensure the reliability of power supply.
Second, the power system is not flexible enough to regulate.
From the changing trend of the U.S. power structure in recent years, the power generation of coal power has shown an obvious downward trend, and new energy generation such as natural gas, wind power and solar power has gradually become the main force of power sources in the U.S. In 2018, the net power generation of natural gas in the U.S. was 1.47 trillion kWh, an increase of 13.1% year-on-year, accounting for 35.1% of the net power generation in the U.S. in the same period, surpassing coal power in the first place.
Over the past decade, wind power in Texas has emerged as the state's second largest source of electricity generation, with 23 percent of the energy supplied to the state's grid coming from wind power in 2020.
With the gradual "political correctness" of a low-carbon environment and the squeeze on profit margins from cheap natural gas and renewable energy, local coal-fired power plants have been shut down in Texas.
However, the extreme cold weather has caused about half of Texas' wind turbine capacity (25,000 megawatts) to be "frozen". There is clearly a problem with wind power generation.
In fact, the lack of power reserves, the lack of flexible power supply resulting in power shortages, is not the first time in the United States.
The root cause of last year's blackout in California was the state's plan to achieve 100% renewable energy supply on an overly aggressive development path, leaving the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) without sufficient flexible installed capacity to deal with small probability events.
The Texas blackout has once again sparked controversy over the rapid abandonment of traditional energy facilities and the radical transition to green energy. It is known that wind energy brings about 25 GW of electricity to Texas, and can even solve 60% of the state's power seeking when the weather cooperates. However, into the winter, as the climate changes, wind power generation capacity is only 19% to 43% of the strongest season.
Third, the power industry structure is complex, and the power market lacks holistic and forward-looking considerations.
The U.S. power industry structure is very complex, especially the property rights structure can be described as "fragmented".
The United States has more than 3,000 electric power enterprises, divided by ownership, including private enterprises, federal public, municipal companies, electric cooperatives and other forms. Among them, more than 300 private enterprises, service customers accounted for 72.6%, 72% of electricity sales, 73.5% of revenue; federal public power companies, including the Tennessee Valley Authority and other six enterprises, service customers about 40,000, 1.2% of electricity sales, 0.5% of revenue. Municipal public power companies and agricultural power cooperatives are small and numerous, about 1,900 and 1,000 respectively, with 27% of customers, 26.3% of electricity sales and 26% of revenue.
In terms of business division, power companies include power generators, transmission companies, distribution companies and retailers. Private companies are involved in all business segments of generation, transmission, distribution and sales, federal and state companies are generally in the generation and transmission business, and municipal public and agricultural cooperatives are generally in the distribution and retail business, with some also involved in a small amount of generation.
"This pattern of relatively fragmented subjects in each segment of the grid system has led to great difficulty in dispatching between power companies, and their ability to support each other in the event of an emergency is very limited." Wang Qiankun said, "In addition, transmission grid projects are characterized by low returns and long construction cycles compared to other investment projects, and thus lack investment attractiveness. These privatized power companies often do not make long-term plans when considering investment in grid facilities, maintenance, economic rate of return is their primary consideration. In other words, they would rather accept these power incidents than invest too much in grid construction because of such small probability of extreme weather events."
In the future, the probability of a generator set facing extreme weather being "frozen" may become more and more frequent, Wang Qiankun said, the cause of power outages "dump" to any kind of power generation technology is meaningless, after all, extreme conditions who can not carry.
In the context of global climate change, extreme weather is "staged" in various countries in turn, and how the energy and power system should respond to this problem is a problem that countries need to face directly in the future.
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