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

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#621

Post by listless » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

lghh wrote: post #585

lurquer wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you people for real? What did people with children, elderly, and pets do 150 years ago? If your house is 25f, put on a couple sweaters and a coat and have a beer. It’s not the end of the world. As far as the kids go, they’re outside building snowforts. In short, you make do. It astounds me that the typical HN poster can whip up a C++ compiler, pontificate about solutions to every social-ill, purport to speak inte…

They died, you fucking ghoul. People rely on things now to live that people would have just died without 150 years ago. They had warmer clothes 150 years ago. They had houses with fireplaces and blankets and coats. We can't deal with this because we are not set up to function when this happens any more. People didn't have the same pets 150 years ago we have now. Reptiles or birds? Dead. I just can't imaging the callo…

More people need to watch “Naked and Afraid” to learn what the human body is capable of withstanding.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#622

Post by 8note » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #315

lurquer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly haven't been in many 150 year old West Texas houses. Good lord... The spread of AC in the 1930s resulted in everything in Texas being insulated out the wazoo. Your typical suburban home in Texas -- with no electricity -- is perfectly habitable without power. Its an inconvenience, to be sure. But, all this handwringing over a freak -- and fun -- event is laughable. Want to fret? Fret about floods, tornadoe…

You obviously don’t live anywhere near texas. No houses have insulation for this kind of weather. It’s like if I went to Canada and started shitting on people unable to deal with 110f weather without electricity .

Insulation works in both directions. If you use AC a lot in summer, the same insulation is doing you good

Without adding heat, you're still not going to stay warm for long though. my window may have been bent so it couldn't close in winter throughout child hood, but we still had a heater on.

Watch out for your windows. Hanging stuff to act like curtains will help

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#623

Post by yurishimo » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:56 AM UTC

samfisher83 wrote: post #470

justinzollars wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dude, go to the office. Its too cold to sleep in those conditions.

Roads have ice so you might get hurt getting there

The major highways are pretty good but it’s snowing more tonight so it’s gonna take another day to clear up. By that time, it’ll be over 40 so power will likely be restored in short order.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#624

Post by doggodaddo78 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

In an apartment in Austin 78702. 47 F / 8 C inside, 22 / -6 outside.

Power out for 2 days now, while west across I-35 has always had power. There's some baloney they're feeding us about "complicated critical loads" while huge swats of hotels and office buildings have power (I can see from north to south since my unit overhangs the frontage and has windows all over, and elevated enough to see over I-35). My fridge food is in a cardboard box outside with a shower curtain liner around it.

Water still working, and there are no plans according to the water company to interrupt service. There's no hot water (which IIRC, condemns a building) because the apartment's water heater needs electricity.

I'm out of battery bank capacity and might have to leave the area. Appears it will go on until Friday or Saturday, so 5-6 days total.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#625

Post by turtlebits » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

Maybe its time for people to stop treating electricity like essentially an unlimited cheap resource and instead something they consciously try not to waste.

I've been working in an off-grid office where I am limited by solar and battery capacity and it really puts into perspective what really needs to be plugged in all the time and how much running a large appliance affects capacity.

Maybe electricity should be sold in blocks that have to be refilled, set daily/monthly quotas or limit current draw. Or even just significantly raise "2nd block/high usage" kWh prices.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#626

Post by hotsauceror » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

Ecto5 wrote: post #509

naebother wrote: post #174

Anyone have break down of which areas had their power cut for how long?

It will be interesting to see which communities had their power cut and which were barely affected

There was a rather morbid photograph on one of the local news sites the other night of Austin looking south along I-35 during the rolling blackouts. The East Side was more or less pitch black. The west side - downtown, the capitol, the stadium, the Frost Bank building etc - was lit up like a Christmas tree.

The east side was created by redlining policies put in place 100 years ago, and is where much of Austin’s lower income population lives.

It wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive statistical analysis but it was a pretty stark photo.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#627

Post by snowwindwaves » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

korethr wrote: post #95

falcolas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which confuses me, as it follows a statement about how energy has been deregulated. Of course, deregulation would also reduce some of the incentives for maintaining preparation for "100 year winter" storms. Much like how hospitals reduced the number of beds based on their average case loads, not the uncommon-but-not-unheard-of peaks.

This confused me as well. In the article, there's the criticism that by not being allowed to charge for electricity what it cost to generate, producers have fallen behind on maintenance of their plants. But I don't see how that follows from deregulation. When I think deregulation, I think something more akin to, "Alright boys, you're on your own. Ya'll will live and die by your ability to profitably generate the powe…

Or somebody cheaper can generate since they didn't bother building their plants to withstand low temperatures so the more expensive plants to run go out of business or lose that expensive to maintain ability and then here we are

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#628

Post by ewams » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:59 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…

Re fireplace - check out a ventless system. They can change existing burner and logs with ventless which gives you lots of heat that a vented system won't. Can get a decent one for 600-1200 bucks.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#629

Post by HNfriend234 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #541

Because of what happened in Texas, the higher demand of gas affected electricity generation in Northern Mexico which has been without electricity too. As as I understand it, not only the price of Gas wet up 5,000% but also there were shortages. The federal government has started doing electricity cuts in most Mexico to control the gas reserves and distribute energy to the Northern states. Edit: Here is an article abo…

Mexico is smart though because they have LNG import terminals. There is an incoming LNG carrier coming in less than 24 hours which will restore their power.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#630

Post by snowwindwaves » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #412

dodobirdlord wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GW is a unit of power, it’s not a unit that energy storage capacity can be measured in.

Yes of course, that's trivial. Grid connections are measured in power, not in energy units.

Not for batteries since a battery that can deliver 17 GW for an hour is much smaller than one that can deliver 17 GW for a week. Usually grid connections are measured in power since you could use it at 100% indefinitely - not so with a battery , so hours matter.