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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

#231

Post by cbmuser »

burkaman wrote: post #119
PostThisTooFast wrote: post #37

We should be busily building nuclear plants. This isn't going to get better otherwise.

I'm all for more nuclear, but FYI, nuclear plants were affected like everything else in Texas this week: https://atomicinsights.com/south-texas-project-unit-1-trippe... Ideally new ones would be designed better to avoid this possibility, but new nuclear plants take a minimum of 5 years if you're really sprinting. It's probably the most difficult, expensive, and time-consuming option compared to weather-hardening exis…

That plant is already back online:

> https://twitter.com/Beazy_Rampezy/status/1362043827800977414

The average capacity of nuclear across the US is never below 90% which is far better than any other source of energy.

Wind is 25% capacity factor on average, solar 10% and natural gas around 50~60%.

So while the tripping of STP1 was unlucky, the plant was just offline for a short time providing how extreme reliable it is.

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

#232

Post by jillesvangurp »

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…

That "but" is demonstrably wrong. There are lots of places that are heading towards relying exclusively on renewables where nuclear, coal, and gas plants are basically shrinking in use as the grid expands to shift to being exclusively powered by renewables.

Most of those places are not affected by blackouts being a regular thing. I can't remember the last one in Germany, which has lots of wind. I can't remember a single power outage lasting more than a few minutes/seconds, ever. I'm 46 and I only experienced only a handful of those. Just not a thing in Northern Europe. We have interconnected grids and coal/nuclear are basically disappearing rapidly. I believe the UK had an interesting cascading failure on its grid last year and that was big news because it is so unusual. That only lasted for a few hours.

If you look at the economics, it's pretty straightforward. Texas was an early adopter of wind because it's a cheap option for generating power and it takes power to produce power. So a lot of that Texan wind power is actually used for oil and gas production and was installed primarily for that purpose and payed for by very much for profit oil companies. Probably with the help of a lot of tax money because big oil basically owns the local politicians.

Ironically, the thing that's currently driving up the prices of gas in the US, is basically oil and gas production being affected by the sudden demand for gas for heating. As demand spiked, gas production capacity started dropping because the electrical grid got disrupted (which is of course about 50% powered by gas plants in Texas). Probably Texas is more reliant on gas now than in the past, which is probably a big reason for the current issues.

Yes, some older wind turbines are not capable of dealing with cold weather. Texas of course has lots of those as it was an early adopter and is not commonly affected by cold weather like this.

But there are lots of regions with extreme weather that have large deployments of wind turbines that reliably produce power through very extreme conditions. E.g. Antarctica has wind power. So does Iceland, Norway, or Alaska. Ice proof wind turbines is a high tech business and a fairly recent development. So, wind is basically part of the solution here and not part of the problem.

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

#233

Post by sephamorr »

xx789 wrote: post #148
athollywood wrote: post #87

Texas electric prices have been capped at $9000/MWHr for the last few days. Average is about $35/MWhr. The Texas electric bill is about $10 billion per day right now.

Looks around 1k right now. http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html There must be lots of generators making bank.

Careful what you look at. The relevant number here is the RTT-SPP level from your link (not RTM-LMP), which then shows $9000/MWh everywhere in Texas.

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

#234

Post by hristov »

cbmuser wrote: post #208
hristov wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why we need this so called baseline. It is an outdated concept pushed by the nuclear industry. We need (i) to harness the cheap energy coming from the sun and the wind and (ii) another source of energy to make up shortages when solar and wind are unavailable. The source (ii) should be able to be ramped up and shut down quickly, which is a requirement where nuclear flat out fails. The baseline concept of a…

> I don't see why we need this so called baseline. It is an outdated concept pushed by the nuclear industry. That’s a lie spread by the renewables lobby. Of course, there is always a certain level of electricity generation that is needed as most people like to use their fridges, AC and computers 24/7. And then you have things like traffic infrastructure, hospitals, gas stations which operate 24/7. I don’t know about…

What you are saying is true but irrelevant. Yes there is a baseline of demand. But that does not mean that there is a requirement for a similar supply. The demand you described can be supplied by cheap renewables, complemented by gas or hydro as I discussed above.

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

#235

Post by rblatz »

hnburnsy wrote: post #171
geerlingguy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did they? I have two properties serviced by them and didn’t get any notification.

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

#236

Post by epistasis »

cbmuser wrote: post #221
epistasis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear plants are the worst possible way to reduce energy costs. They are also incredibly massive single points of failure, so they tend to reduce reliability compared to more distributed smaller generation units. Germany, for example, has seen reliability increase massively as they shift towards more distributed renewables, even though it's not a super high penetration level. As we shift to more renewables and star…

> Germany, for example, has seen reliability increase massively as they shift towards more distributed renewables, even though it's not a super high penetration level. That’s a blatant lie. According to the Bundesnetzagentur which is the local regulator for the electricity grid, the number of times where they have to intervene on the electricity grid to stabilize it has dramatically increased due to the higher share…

> That’s a blatant lie.

I can't read your link, so I don't know what you mean by "intervene to stabilize," but that actually sounds like a good thing, since the German grid has the least amount of downtime of any of its neighbors and is far better than the US. Here's an IEEE article:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid...

> Germany’s energy sector causes 350 million tons of CO2 annually, 50 France’s just 50 million tons CO2 annually.

What is the relevance here? Germany has always burned lots of coal. Adding renewables, just like adding nuclear, reduces that.

> The kWh in France costs 17 Euro Cents, while it costs over 31 Euro Cents in Germany.

Again, what is the relevance here? Germany bought a ton of solar when it was super expensive, driving the industry forward and permanently lowering costs for everyone. It also charges residential consumers a lot more in order to subsidize industry.

>I have no idea why some people on HN keep spreading such lies about nuclear and the so-called Energiewende in Germany.

>You should get your facts straight!

I would insist that you do the same. Misrepresentations and cherry picked bad numbers are not helpful or informative.

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

#237

Post by Rebelgecko »

wahern wrote: post #132
Lammy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't have to be this way :( https://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/CALIF.HTM "Northern California is the home of the first successful opposition to the promotion and development of commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S. In the 1950's northern and central California's privately owned utility company, PG&E, was planning to be one of the giants in the new field of nuclear energy."

Nevada or even Mexico could play regulatory arbitrage, build nuclear plants in their jurisdictions, and export the electricity to California. I suppose Mexico might be cheaper as Nevada lacks water, particularly in remote regions where there'd be the least local resistance. Baja California has the Pacific and the Gulf of California; Sonora has the Gulf of California. California's unique history of opposition to nucle…

The vast majority of nuclear power plants are built next to oceans and large lakes. The one that my sibling commenters mentioned in Arizona is the only exception to that rule in the US.

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

#238

Post by reducesuffering »

sremani wrote: post #20
bob1029 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 90c/KWh. Arguably very expensive rate for electricity. Not sure if related to the Texas/ERCOT grid situation, as the DC tie-ins are not that substantial.

Texas banned out of state sale of NG, that will have consequence but not sure that is the reason.

For such a historically red state, that doesn't appear very laissez-faire.

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

#239

Post by Bedon292 »

bestnameever wrote: post #186
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #172

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 ho…

> 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. Not everywhere. I'm seeing prices exceeding $900 when I select real-time. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong but take a look at so cal.

That is what I am seeing in San Diego right now on the real time price.

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

#240

Post by FuckButtons »

TylerE wrote: post #206
cbozeman wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..…

Uh, last time I checked we weren't able to do above-unity sustained fusion even at the mega-project level. Source?

There are companies and research groups in a number of countries currently experimenting with next generation fusion devices which have a new class of superconductor in them as compared to ITER (in essence, they run at a higher cryogenic temperature so need less exotic refrigeration to operate). None have as yet proved their work to be commercially viable (to my knowledge) but there is real work being done.
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