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

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#321

Post by voicedYoda » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #253

ip26 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas furnaces need power for the circuitry & blower. My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder, but you can warm yourself with radiant heat while it burns. Freestanding wood stoves on the other hand are very capable of warming a large space.

A tight wood stove in the hands of an experienced user is a remarkable thing. The amount of heat that can be extracted from a large oak log is nothing short of remarkable. Sadly, most wood stoves are not tight, nor are most users experienced.

On reddit i follow /r/woodstoving. My inspiration for getting it right

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#322

Post by ericbarrett » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #263

bdamm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tight wood stove in the hands of an experienced user is a remarkable thing. The amount of heat that can be extracted from a large oak log is nothing short of remarkable. Sadly, most wood stoves are not tight, nor are most users experienced.

This is 50% of the reason why pellet stoves were created, with the other 50% being you can burn scraps instead of large oak logs that could be used for furniture etc.

Pellet stoves sound nice in concept but my experience with them (n=2) has not been good. The hoppers break and jam, the fans die, and they’re generally just a pain in the rear. Usually happens right when you need them most, too.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#323

Post by s0rce » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #180

rtx wrote: post #47

America stop heating your houses, buy thik blankets and sweaters. Earth can't take it anymore.

I get the sentiment but it’s just not useful to tell people not to heat their homes. Fly less. Go veg. Downsize. But asking people to freeze? You sound like a lunatic.

You could have a better insulated and much smaller home, but clearly this person has never lived in <30F weather, you obviously need to heat your home to have any modicum of comfort. Its unconformable if you are well prepared and healthy, life threatening otherwise to young, old and infirm.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#324

Post by morsma » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

MSM wrote: post #119

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…

There are a number of countries with very high renewable usage that are in cold climates. Denmark comes to mind, where, on average, it's right around freezing for months at a time. Hell, they have turbines in the extremely corrosive oceans, getting blasted by freezing rain and they make it work. Last I saw they got something like 50% of their power from wind. Anyone who is using this event to say that renewables are…

We also have some of the most expensive power in the world. Kinda goes hand in hand it seems.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#325

Post by tpmx » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

s0rce wrote: post #313

tpmx wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik, the way abnormal situations like these are handled in northern Europe is that the grid suppliers have agreements with the very large industrial consumers (think aluminium smelters) who agree to shut down immediately when the grid frequency goes below a certain trigger level. The way I understand it, this is useful both in time-critical emergencies (like keeping the grid at 50 Hz when a nuclear plant suddenly g…

Isn't it immensely difficult to restart an aluminum smelter? Also, my vague memory of these is that in North America most of them are in areas with abundant hydro power.

Probably. I just picked something at random that I know uses a lot of power - I think in the order of one nuclear reactor for a typical installation. Should have known better than to do that here.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#326

Post by killjoywashere » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

gregw2 wrote: post #213

gregw2 wrote: post #117

What went wrong is that the Texas legislature which owns Texas-specific grid process to avoid interference from the Feds didn't figure out how to also ensure Texas generator companies got compensated for weatherizing (and ensuring it was done). How many of the 24+6 recommendations from the NERC/FERC review of last time this happened in Texas (hint:2011) were taken up by the legislature or those at ERCOT they delegate…

Anecdote: All 7 developers in my Houston team (semi-geographically scattered in the city) lost power; half for >24 hrs (it's 10-25 degrees F here for the last 2-3 days). Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work t…

My brother's house is currently 38°. Inside. Also, gas is not useful for a central, forced air system because it depends on the electric motor driving the blower.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#327

Post by gowld » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #285

dwohnitmok wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder Why is that? EDIT: Oh are you saying that the rate of heating provided by the fire is less than the overall rate of heat leaving the entire house?

Right, if you think about it almost all of the heat from the fire goes right up the chimney. The brick of the firebox & chimney are generally built outside the building envelope for safety reasons, so any heat in the brick doesn't warm the house. The only heat that actually makes its way into the house is the radiant heat cast from the fire itself, which is small. The smoke is poison, and unlike a furnace, gas firepl…

Why don't we run radiator water pipes across the chimney, to bring that heat back to the house?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#328

Post by ulisesrmzroche » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

I just got power back a couple hours ago. What happened is that they finally started to cut power away from business and industrial users. Empty ass Downtown was lit up like an Xmas tree yesterday, and so was dell, ibm, and so on.

It’s a scandal

San Antonio was able to do rolling blackouts, Austin really messed them up

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#329

Post by rconti » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

s0rce wrote: post #316

jeffbee wrote: post #156

Not much discussion here of the fundamental problem: why is Texas so energy intensive? In the last decade ERCOT energy generation has expanded 20%, which is much faster than the population of Texas has grown. Why? Just gigantic, detached houses for everybody? I think this is why people say the California housing crisis is such a calamity for the environment. A person in Texas consumes 150% more energy.

Wow, that surprised me. Current demand is 45GW in Texas vs. 24GW in California. Over double per capita.

Well, yeah, the populated areas of Texas happen to be insanely cold right now at this moment we've cherry-picked, and the populated areas of California happen to be.. checks thermometer between 55-65f right now. (Bay Area, Sacramento, LA, San Diego).

Also, Texas heating is HEAVILY reliant on electricity (heat pumps), since they're used as air conditioners in the summer. Presumably this means CA has a lot more forced air natural gas, like my house. Of course, I keep hearing ads encouraging me to replace my polluting "methane gas" furnace with a clean, efficient electric heat pump....

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#330

Post by ghaff » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #287

ghaff wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue is frozen pipes which can be pretty expensive/catastrophic. As someone in New England, if it weren't for that, I wouldn't find a power outage all that big a deal--at least for a couple days. But frozen pipes can lead to $10K's of damage.

There's a .gif on Imgur - https://imgur.com/gallery/yvIAcvB Its... yea. That's going to be rather expensive. Also, part of the power problem is frozen pipes - and not just water pipes: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/texas-pow... > Operations in Texas have stumbled because temperatures are low enough to freeze oil and gas liquids at the well head and in pipelines that are laid on the ground, as opp…

I have a colleague where an upstairs neighbor had a pipe freeze and leak because of a crack in the outside brickwork. Had to move out for a year. And, for many people, insurance won't really fully cover this sort of thing.

I often debate if I should get a generator for outlier events in a house.