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

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#771

Post by Johnny555 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

lightgreen wrote: post #652

turtlebits wrote: post #625

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…

Electricity is unlimited and cheap when people do not fear to build nuclear power plants. > Maybe electricity should be sold in blocks that have to be refilled, set daily/monthly quotas or limit current draw Or maybe there should be realtime electricity price and fines for outages, so both providers and consumers would be incentivised to optimize consumption, and market will make the electricity available.

Nuclear power is nearly the most expensive source of power if you include the cost of decommissioning and liability insurance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#772

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:02 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…

[deleted]

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#773

Post by theshrike79 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:05 AM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #116

teraflop wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas does have connections to other grids. But the problem is that since the grid frequencies aren't synchronized, you can't just plug one into the other. Transferring energy between grids requires either converting it from AC to high-voltage DC and back using solid-state electronics, or converting it via mechanical energy using a variable-frequency transformer. With either approach, you need bulky and expensive equ…

Thank you! I didn't think about the AC synchronization.

Electricity networks are a really fascinating hole to dive in. I did software and firmware for Smart Metering solutions for a half decade and know more about that stuff than I'll ever need.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#774

Post by theshrike79 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:07 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #402

brundolf wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are non-critical loads all over that were never interrupted (my neighborhood, north edge of ATX). It's pretty arbitrary. Even worse: for about the first 24h there were (largely uninhabited!) commercial buildings all over the place that were fully lit up. We're talking skyscrapers. Even some unfinished skyscrapers. I think they've finally begun to address those. The charitable interpretation is that it was simpl…

Do grid operators really have controls at that level? In California they can shut off a substation or not, and that's as low as they can go except in the special case of industrial customers with demand-responsive equipment installed. If those empty skyscrapers were on the same local circuits as a hospital, perhaps it simply wasn't possible for the electric company to turn them off.

If the grid operator has deployed modern Smart Meters to their customers, they can control and measure electricity to the house level remotely.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#775

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

tjr225 wrote: post #633

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…

I dug through this dudes post history out of pure morbid curiosity and 9 months ago he claimed that COVID-19 was blown out of proportion because, and I quote, “there haven’t been millions of deaths.” 9 months later and there have been millions of deaths. So, take that how you will.

[deleted]

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#776

Post by sbierwagen » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:17 AM UTC

worker767424 wrote: post #672

bstar77 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, having a distributed grid is what makes you more resilient. If every house had solar panels this would likely be a non-issue.

> If every house had solar panels this would likely be a non-issue. I doubt this. That would mean a lot of power plants were taken offline as solar ramped up, and I doubt that enough solar to cool a house from 105 to 75 can heat it from 15 to 70.

The latest thinking is that with the seasonality of solar insolation and the current demand curve, a complete move to solar will require massive overprovisioning. (5x, 10x capacity at solar noon?) The price curve in 2050 or so would look funny to modern eyes: power would be free around noon, but expensive at night. Charge your car for nothing during the day, and enjoy endless hot water, but the minute the sun sets you'd cut your own throat rather than run anything power hungry.

Amusingly, Texas in this current crisis is halfway there: the handful of people who haven't had their power cut off are going to see gigantic power bills next month https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/texas-utility-company-urge...

I wonder what a similar cold snap would look like in the future. Long distance HVDC lines ramping up to full capacity. Strident alerts on your phone as KWh spot prices triple, then trigintuple. Water heaters and EV charges passing stop loss triggers and shutting off. A wood stove in every home. I see Texans in this thread talking about using space heaters, and boy will they regret that when they see the bill. Electric blankets and heat pads are dozens of times more efficient: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/home-heating-for-the-hard...

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#777

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

You'd probably be more comfortable if you left your house and went winter camping. Surprisingly, it's not that difficult to stay warm while winter camping, you just have to be doing something: cooking, eating, exploring, talking.

Learn neat skills like: keep your water in a cooler so it doesn't freeze; pee in a nalgene rather than go outside to pee, then keep the nalgene in your sleeping bag to retain heat; eating to stay warm; changing clothes to stay warm; covering your neck to stay warm; which clothes will actually keep you warm and which just look neat; what fabrics are best in winter; layering; what stoves work below freezing; how to stay positive ("hey, my toes still work!"); how to remove ice from your socks in the morning; how to keep icicles from forming in your tent; how to anchor a tent in a blizzard; how to find a tent in a blizzard; how to help your friend find his tent that blew away in a blizzard; how to pick snacks (two things that don't freeze hard: fat and alcohol); how to pick snacks so you don't need to poop often; staying hydrated and warm.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#778

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #499

cavisne wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heavy reliance on natural gas is not traditional. Its a side effect of 1)

No, it's because natural gas got cheaper, and they switched to the cheaper source. "The report also addresses the interdependency of the electric and natural gas industries. “Utilities are becoming increasingly reliant on gas-fired generation, in large part because shale production has dramatically reduced the cost of gas,” In 2011 when this happened before, Texas had even less renewables. I realize you're trying to…

Which fossil source is cheaper also largely depends on individual markets. The way carbon offset and carbon pricing is implemented in Germany for example, means coal got cheaper than natural gas for electricity. Despite being bad at ramping up quick and being really worse for the climate and environment. Gas would also be a good companion to renewables, simply because a gas turbine is very reactive, something a coal plant is not.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#779

Post by ashtonkem » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:29 AM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #419

jcranmer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If I remember the statistics correctly, there is more coal power offline right now than wind power offline. If that is true, that rather debunks your theory, doesn't it?

What I'm interested in, and what I'm talking about, is judging each method of power production from its total current output relative to nameplate capacity. All I'm really arguing is that non-renewables are able to accommodate bursty and unpredictable demand much better than renewables. For every dollar spent on solar and wind, if that built X amount of coal or NG plants, they would have such an excess of capacity th…

> All I'm really arguing is that non-renewables are able to accommodate bursty and unpredictable demand much better than renewables.

You do realize that all of this is happening because a bunch of non-renewable power plants failed, right? You're making an argument that's literally countermanded by the exact situation we're discussing.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#780

Post by paraselene_ » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 7:32 AM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #766

gregw2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 that well. American fireplaces in general are a joke. You are just spending way too much energy and not really storing it anywhere except the air around it. They are built to look good, not to actually heat anything properly. Check any Nord…

Or you know, instead of having a whole fireplace, just get a kerosene heater? Enough to heat a whole room in case of power&gas outages, last long enough through the night on one fill, and kerosene can be had at a gas station.