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Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

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Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#171

Post by hnburnsy »

geerlingguy wrote: post #46
cperciva wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas isn't the only place with cold weather right now. Even if other grids haven't collapsed, they're surely under higher strain than normal.

Ameren (electric company serving parts of MO and IL) has requested customers cut back on power consumption if at all possible. When there's a sustained negative-degree-weather event for over a week, many people start plugging in extra space heaters or run their electric central heater longer, which places a huge amount of strain on the grid. Luckily there are many in the midwest who use gas for heating, since it's wa…

Southwest Gas asked their Arizona natural gas customers to cut back as the pipeline through Arizona feeds Texas.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#172

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Note there are three tabs in this graphic: Day-ahead, 15 minute, and real-time.

Day-ahead contracts are high because uncertainty is also high.

15 minute and real-time prices are an order of magnitude lower, despite the sun being down and electric heaters presumably consuming a lot of electricity.

Energy companies need to decide how much of their capacity they want to lock in at the high $900 rate for tomorrow, and how much they want to risk on the shorter interval contracts.

This does not mean that every MWh of electricity costs $900. It does mean power companies are doing a lot of risk management calculations right now, though.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#173

Post by acidburnNSA »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #151
acidburnNSA wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some did, but at least in Texas the ERCOT planners basically assume ~0 wind for some week-long periods in winter and just expected to rely on their natural gas generators. But then when 30 GW of thermal plants went offline for weather reasons (pipeline freezes, priority to heating customers, a faulty sensor on a nuclear plant, etc.), that's what really brought things offline.

I only have electric heating, this Texas disaster made me realize that I need to have gas as a backup. 10k to install a gas furnace. Lower bills, but also the damage done by burt pipes during a power failure in winter, could easily exceed that. Also thinking about all the Tesla owners, stuck in their cold houses not even be able to drive to buy groceries right now in Texas.

I'm now a little upset that my family's house converted from propane heat to natural gas years ago. That big propane tank that got filled up a few times a year was such a resilient decentralized system. Now being reliant on the regional just-in-time nature of gas and increasing amounts of just-in-time-as-long-as-windy/sunny wind & solar feels really sketchy. And batteries wouldn't really help in Texas since the wind/sun lull is like 6 days long. At least there's also a wood stove!

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#174

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jedberg wrote: post #2

I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?

You have to look at the three tabs to get the full picture.

The day-ahead contracts are high ($900) but the 15 minute and real-time prices are only $900 in a smaller region.

Still not great.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#175

Post by [deleted] »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #33
kasey_junk wrote: post #24

I track my electricity in Chicago pretty regularly and we’ve been seeing between 5x and 100x ‘normal’ pricing all week. For scale, at this time of night I’d expect my power to be priced at ~ 0.8 c/Kwh. Right now we are sitting at 15 c/Kwh.

Here in CA we pay 24c / Kwh on a regular basis. Why is it your power can be 0.8c/Kwh?, that seems really really low.

[deleted]

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#176

Post by cbozeman »

lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

I feel like what we need to do is dump $50 to $100 billion per year into nuclear fusion reactor research, then get them online around the world as soon as possible.

If the patents are to be believed, then Lockheed-Martin's Skunkworks has developed a portable fusion reactor the size of an intermodal shipping container. I'd like to see those scaled up significantly for usage around the world, for a variety of reasons... extraordinarily cheap power for one, but far more manageable nuclear waste storage for another, and more important, reason.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#177

Post by cecilpl2 »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #33
kasey_junk wrote: post #24

I track my electricity in Chicago pretty regularly and we’ve been seeing between 5x and 100x ‘normal’ pricing all week. For scale, at this time of night I’d expect my power to be priced at ~ 0.8 c/Kwh. Right now we are sitting at 15 c/Kwh.

Here in CA we pay 24c / Kwh on a regular basis. Why is it your power can be 0.8c/Kwh?, that seems really really low.

Here in BC, Canada, our power is 95% hydroelectric and our tier 1 rate is 9.3c/kWh (CAD), which is about 7.2 USD cents per kWh.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#179

Post by gshubert17 »

bmurray7jhu wrote: post #15

Likely corresponds to the nationwide spike in natural gas prices. Even in California, natural gas prices are an order of magnitude higher than usual. Prices appear to have hit ~$90 per quadrillion BTU, versus a typical price of ~$2 per 10^15 BTU https://www.naturalgasintel.com/data-snapshot/daily-gpi/CALR...

> ~$90 per quadrillion BTU

I think this misreads the abbreviation MM BTU (where M in this case is the Roman numeral thousand or "mille" rather than the metric million or "mega"). 1 MM BTU = 10^6 BTU, not 10^15.

A therm is 10^5 BTU. Last month I paid $77 for 117 therms, or about 66 cents/therm. This would be $6.6 per MM BTU.

By the way that was 126 ccf (ccf = 100 cubic feet) or 12600 cubic feet (357 cubic meters).

As you say, $90 wholesale for something I'm used to paying less than $10 for, is a big increase.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#180

Post by Scoundreller »

cperciva wrote: post #16
pkaye wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are not connected, what is driving up the cost?

Texas isn't the only place with cold weather right now. Even if other grids haven't collapsed, they're surely under higher strain than normal.

Ontario Canada reporting. CAD$85/mwh (or ~US$65). We have several gw available on standby, and pretty much even on exports/imports. And we do export to USA as needed to/through Michigan/NY.

Parents got ~10" of snow yesterday night. But it's just business as usual.

https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data

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