Michigan Gas Shortage

Alacrates's picture

A friend of mine sent out an e-mail that mentioned his sister's situation in Michigan: the govenor had reached out to citizens to stop using hot water and to lower the thermostats in their house, in order to reduce their gas usage, in the cold snap that took place in January, the coldest days of the year (I can attest to this system - in Winnipeg, I woke up to -40C one morning, no windchill factored into that!)

Apparently it was a fire at a compressor station that caused this situation: over 60% of the gas supplies to the state where inaccessible due to the fire, and since the state (I think) generates at lot of it's electricity by natural gas as well, there was major concern about supplies.

(Apparently this incident will likely be cited in support of Trump's efforts to keep coal-powered electrical power plants operational, along with nuclear production efforts.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-31/michigan-gas-outage-s...

Thought it was an interesting story related to energy, heating, and the extreme cold temperature that a lot of North America experienced over the last month.

Blueberry's picture

Without a backup to gas just one point of failure and well Murphy's law

Alacrates's picture

Yes, it was remarkable that over 60% of their gas supply (used for generating electricity, industrial purposes, and residential heating) could be knocked out at a single point of failure...

I found it interesting that this might lend support to the idea of keeping coal-powered electric plants, that the stability drawn from their reliability, might at the same time increase the greenhouse gases that are causing the climate to be less stable....

Interesting times....