Why Power Plants Lose Gas First in a Freeze

US natural gas production fell 28% in 13 days in February 2021 - and power plants lost their pipeline capacity without anyone breaking a contract. Interstate pipeline capacity is sold in two grades. Firm transportation cannot be curtailed below the contracted quantity; interruptible transportation, in FERC's own words, may be stopped "if firm contract holders use the available capacity." And FERC states plainly that gas-fired generation is often not backed by firm contracts - because firm means paying a reservation charge twelve months a year for a plant that may need the pipe hard for forty hours. On top of that sits a clock: the Gas Day starts at 9 a.m. Central while the electric day starts at midnight, so one electric operating day straddles two Gas Days. Order No. 809 moved the Timely nomination deadline 90 minutes to help - but a better chance to buy capacity is worth little on a day when there is none left at the lower grade. Then load shed cut power to the compressors and processing plants feeding the very plants doing the shedding. Sources: the FERC/NERC joint inquiry into the February 2021 cold weather event, the FERC 2024 Energy Primer, the Winter Storm Elliott inquiry, and NERC's winter reliability assessments. Watch next: "1,500 MW of Data Centers Left the Grid in One Second" #naturalgas #powergrid #infrastructure Chapters: 0:00 28% in Thirteen Days 0:43 What We'll Cover 1:30 The Freeze, Fairly Stated 2:11 Water Becomes a Plug 2:53 The Allocation Question 3:21 Two Grades of Pipe 4:06 The Line It Hangs On 4:46 Forty Hours a Year 5:36 Molecules Versus Pipe 6:07 The Gas Day Clock 6:44 Order 809's 90 Minutes 7:32 What the Straddle Costs 8:06 Load Shed Hits the Wells 8:57 Winter Storm Elliott 9:35 Five Events in Eleven Years 10:13 It Did Get Better 11:09 No Pile in the Yard 12:06 The Seam