Moving power between grids

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A lot of people don’t understand that the Eastern, Western and Texas grids all operate at slightly different frequencies, they are non synchronized.

This is the same reason you can’t plug a gasoline generator into your wall outlet and not blow a fuse when you are connected to the power grid. The phases will conflict.

Residential solar connected to the grid uses a specialized grid – tie inverter which ensures that the output of panel matches the sine wave exactly.

So it’s impossible to move alternating current between the different grids. So it’s not like they can just build ordinary power lines to connect the seperate grids. They do move some power between the grids using converted high voltage direct current but that’s expensive and complicated to do, so it’s only done occasionally.

Extreme winter weather is disrupting energy supply and demand, particularly in Texas – Today in Energy – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

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Extreme winter weather is disrupting energy supply and demand, particularly in Texas – Today in Energy – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Last weekend, a major winter weather system characterized by extreme cold spread across much of the central United States, disrupting energy systems and causing serious health and safety issues, particularly in Texas. At the same time that the cold weather increased energy demand, it also affected energy supply, causing intense and widespread energy market disruptions. Notably, electricity deliveries have been disrupted in the parts of Texas served by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) as a result of various issues related to plant operations.

What Went Wrong With Texas’s Main Electric Grid and Could It Have Been Prevented? – Texas Monthly

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What Went Wrong With Texas’s Main Electric Grid and Could It Have Been Prevented? – Texas Monthly

After winter storms continued to barrage the state Tuesday night, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the body overseeing the grid that serves 90 percent of the state’s homes, couldn’t offer a timeline for when power for every Texan would be restored. Over the long weekend, the council had advised local utilities to shed energy use with rolling outages in order to maintain the reliability of the electric system after a surge in demand, or otherwise risk uncontrolled blackouts that will take longer to reverse. Some four million homes in the state had been left in the lurch without energy in the bitter cold—many for over fifty hours—and as of Wednesday morning, 2.7 million homes still lacked power.

Why wind turbines in New York keep working in bitter cold weather unlike the ones in Texas

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Why wind turbines in New York keep working in bitter cold weather unlike the ones in Texas

I had no idea that they had de-icing equipment on wind turbines in New York. I just thought they shut them down when they iced up like they do when wind conditions are too fast or slow. But instead what they do in colder climates were icing is common, is they stop the blades, de-ice them then restart them. Makes sense as it would otherwise lead to a lot of a loss of a lot of operating hours in the winter.