What went wrong with the Texas power grid? • Hacker News Board

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#21

Post by goat_whisperer » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

vondur wrote: post #4

Maybe having more nuclear power plants instead of wind would have helped? It sounds unrealistic for the energy generators to sell electricity at a loss over a 10 year period. It would be nice to see some of the data that the professor is referring to.

The article clearly states that many natural gas plants were knocked out due to the cold.

So why aren't you asking "maybe having more nuclear instead of natural gas would have helped?"

Since nuclear uses water, which freezes, the reason why the gas plants were knocked out, maybe the problem isn't the power source itself but the lack of weatherization?!

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#22

Post by jimbob45 » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #14

This whole episode also reminds us how far we are from going 100% renewable. In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious. I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we…

Isn’t that sort of the million dollar question here though? Would winterization of the turbines and solar panels have mitigated or even solved this?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#23

Post by ashtonkem » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #14

This whole episode also reminds us how far we are from going 100% renewable. In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious. I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we…

I find it really weird that everyone is jumping to blame wind here, but totally ignoring all the natural gas plants that are turned off.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#24

Post by dekhn » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

daenney wrote: post #2

Choice quote from the article: “The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. “It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.”

similar situation in california, too.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#25

Post by wongarsu » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

vondur wrote: post #4

Maybe having more nuclear power plants instead of wind would have helped? It sounds unrealistic for the energy generators to sell electricity at a loss over a 10 year period. It would be nice to see some of the data that the professor is referring to.

Cutting costs on the cold-proofing of wind turbines in Texas is somewhat understandable. But as far as under-investment due to lack of profit goes, nuclear isn't much better off.

The economics of building a traditional nuclear plant right now don't work out: they are incredibly expensive to build and tear down, take a decade to plan and another decade to build. In the time until a new nuclear plant is built and has paid back the investment you could have built a wind park, made back the investment, made a profit, decommissioned it, built a new one and made back the investment for that one.

Maybe small-scale nuclear will help somewhat, but properly weather proofed wind and gas would work just fine too.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#26

Post by ianai » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #19

the_duke wrote: post #14

This whole episode also reminds us how far we are from going 100% renewable. In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious. I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we…

How exactly does it show that? From my understanding Texas has an awful(below 20%) percentage of renewable sources.

TFA says it’s grid is mostly natural gas and wind. There seems to be lots of misconceptions in this thread and not a lot of information.

Nuclear would have been fine throughout this.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#27

Post by abhisuri97 » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

brohoolio wrote: post #15

Did the utility companies ask for voluntary reduction in power consumption ahead of time? We had a situation here where extreme weather and a natural gas pumping station that exploded caused real problems in our natural gas supply. The utility asked everyone to lower their consumption by turning their heat down to 65. Luckily, that was the extent of the rationing.

There have been calls from our utility company asking people to conserve energy and a lot of messaging on the local news.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#28

Post by maxerickson » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

vondur wrote: post #4

Maybe having more nuclear power plants instead of wind would have helped? It sounds unrealistic for the energy generators to sell electricity at a loss over a 10 year period. It would be nice to see some of the data that the professor is referring to.

This article puts wind at 13% of shut down production:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/frozen-wi...

I imagine the person in the article is griping about the downward pressure wind and solar can put on energy prices (so maybe you lose money operating a traditional plant, but less money than you'd lose by walking away; operating at net that doesn't cover the up front investment).

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#29

Post by 0xB31B1B » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #14

This whole episode also reminds us how far we are from going 100% renewable. In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious. I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we…

if you actually look at the data, this has nothing to do with renewables. Wind is actually producing more than expected at this time of year, while traditional sources (nuclear, natural gas, coal) are underproducing what they are expected by 40%. This is due partly to these plants operating outside of their designed temp tolerances, and partly due to a natural gas supply crises in texas.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#30

Post by nickysielicki » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

kbar13 wrote: post #10

is this the wakeup call that texans need to acknowledge that climate change isn't a coastal elite type thing, and that it affects us all and requires investment from all of us? imo texas is in a great spot to capitalize on the shift to green tech. they have strong engineering talent, large investments from the energy sector. car manufacturers are already clamoring to be the next to go fully electric. get your leaders…

Give me a break. Actually, the whole reason for this series of outages is because Texas took the bait and installed a bunch of solar and wind instead of taking the safe route and doubling down on coal. Peak energy consumption in Texas is almost always in summer when there's a lot of AC units running -- which just happens to be when solar and wind work best. They gambled on green, paid the price in the past few days, and you're sitting here on the internet saying that they're a bunch of rednecks who don't understand science or climate change. Pretty rich.

This is a black swan event -- this is the coldest it's been in over 100 years.

edit: to be clear about what I'm claiming, I'm saying that if Texas invested in coal instead of making the large investments they made in solar and wind, this never would have happened. I don't see how anyone can dispute that. This is not the time to be gloating about green energy.