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Energy Technology Musings

What Texas Power Is Learning That Businesses Already Know

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INSIGHTS & TRENDS

The Great Texas Freeze-off taught residents of the state that extreme weather events occur with the potential to create a humanitarian crisis.  The cold front that swept into the state on February 10th and brought with it a devastating polar vortex accompanied by snow and ice over several days resulted in the loss of a significant amount of electricity generating capacity on the state’s power grid, throwing millions of Texans into the dark, lacking heat, light and often water.  Texas Governor Gregg Abbott called the operator of the grid, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), “less than reliable.” 

As investigations progress to understand exactly what happened to create such a crisis, Texans are learning more about the intricacies of operating an electricity grid that is usually taken for granted.  People only become concerned when they flip their light-switch, and nothing happens.  Often, this is the result of an equipment failure, or possibly a storm-related issue, such as tree limbs taking down overhead power lines.  While the operator of the grid worries about storms, there is little it can do to prevent such outages.  With equipment failures, the question immediately becomes: Could this have been avoided with better management? 

Companies ask that very question to their plant operators every day.  Are we making sure that our reliability is maintained at the highest level possible?  That can be the difference between profits and losses.  But how do you ensure that reliability can be sustained at high levels? 

What it really takes is collecting and understanding operating and maintenance data about the equipment in the plant. How has the plant’s equipment been maintained? What are the scenarios for such units to experience outages? Can we anticipate and plan preventative maintenance to avoid catastrophic failures? How do we work around equipment failures to keep the enterprise operating while the outage is being fixed?

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COMPANY SPOTLIGHT

For this Company Spotlight, we interviewed Pinnacle’s Vice President of Business Development, Nathanael Ince, about how the company is rethinking the measurement, reporting, and optimization of industrial reliability. Pinnacle is exclusively focused on helping industrial facilities in the oil and gas, chemical, mining, and water and wastewater industries better leverage their data to improve performance, resulting in increased production, optimized reliability and maintenance spend, and improvement in process safety and environmental impact. For more information on Pinnacle, please visit www.pinnaclereliability.com.

Background: Founded in 2006, Pinnacle helps complex industrial facilities, such as refineries and water treatment plants, manage their maintenance and repair initiatives to maximize reliability (i.e., the ability to operate when desired) and minimize costs. While the efforts to optimize maintenance and repair.…..READ MORE

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NOTABLE NEWS

Baseload Capital, a Swedish company specialized in funding the deployment of heat power worldwide, announced the successful close of a $25 million funding round with Chevron Technology Ventures as a new strategic investor. 

Related Press Release: Chevron Invests in Geothermal Development Company


Through its new venture, NeoLith Energy, Schlumberger plans to develop a lithium extraction pilot plant in Clayton Valley, Nevada. The approach uses a differentiated direct lithium extraction (DLE) process to enable the production of high-purity, battery-grade lithium material while reducing the production time from over a year to weeks.

Related Press Release: Schlumberger New Energy Venture to Launch a Lithium Extraction Pilot Plant in Nevada


Valero and BlackRock are partnering with Navigator Energy Services to develop an industrial scale carbon capture pipeline system (“CCS”). The initial phase is expected to span more than 1,200 miles of new carbon dioxide gathering and transportation pipelines across five Midwest states with the capability of permanently storing up to 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Related Press Release: Valero and BlackRock Partner with Navigator to Announce Large-Scale Carbon Capture and Storage Project