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Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

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Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#71
This is politics in a nutshell. People keep voting for the same politicians so they keep the same problems. Power infrastructure is poor? Keep voting for the same people that made it that way. Lots of violent crime in your city? Keep voting for the people that release criminals back into society immediately.

Politics is so binary and broken in this country that we are just making fixable issues into permanent hardships.

This is a Dem and Rep problem and more importantly the end result of a 2 party system.

That and corruption all the way down.

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#72

Don't worry, Texas is just helping the crypto miners rather than their citizens again. "The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) paid a bitcoin miner $31.7 million in energy credits in August to not mine bitcoin. During the August heat wave, ERCOT issued eight calls for voluntary energy conservation. People were asked to adjust home thermostats or delay doing laundry during the energy call."

I think I have to set up shop in Texas with some space heaters and claim my bitcoin energy credits!

Unfortunately not how it works. The reason that Texas is paying miners to load shed is because they are being paid to supply a constant load to the grid. They shut down in order to dump capacity into the grid because that is less expensive than attempting to bring new capacity online to meet demand and then later bring that capacity back down when it is no longer needed. Because of the way miners can ramp up and down their loads systems can be set up to smooth out extreme spikes in electrical demand.

These miners have no choice but to shut down because ERCOT can also remotely kill their ability to consume the load. Part of the payments they get are because of the service being provided to the grid and also to encourage miners to continue operating in good faith by volunteering to load shed and work with grid operators.

The story is even more complex when you throw in things like land being bought to the sum of 240 million for these miners to operate on and locals in areas like this seem excited for the job opportunity so I have to believe good portions of that 34 million are making its way right back into the local economy of central Texas.

The reason Bitcoin mining works and not your space heater is because of the incentive structures built into the proof of work system within Bitcoin.

I think this is worth digging into deeper and figuring out how we can objectively measure if this is successful or not. I think there is a legitimate counter argument to make that without mining actually, Texas would have had a full grid blackout this summer.

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#73

Don't worry, Texas is just helping the crypto miners rather than their citizens again. "The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) paid a bitcoin miner $31.7 million in energy credits in August to not mine bitcoin. During the August heat wave, ERCOT issued eight calls for voluntary energy conservation. People were asked to adjust home thermostats or delay doing laundry during the energy call."

> The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) paid a bitcoin miner $31.7 million in energy credits Politicians are utterly useless. They all herded to the crypto grift frenzy as if this was going to do anything for the local economy. Wonder how it's turning out? The 2021 fad has subsided, now they are paying customers to mine coins? Beyond stupid.

The payment was to not mine coins and thus conserve electricity to more important consumers during times of shortages

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they're dancing around what may be a social issue; ERCOT sent an email asking people to "conserve", within 30 minutes they saw a negative impact. Is it possible some recipients saw the email and took the complete opposite action?

Texans like their guns and demand freedom so probably.

[flagged]

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#75
post #9

The article states that the sharp drop in reserves was being “investigated,” and that it is “suspected” that a large power plant stopped working. Is observability of Texan infrastructure so poor that the _power company_ doesn’t have a comprehensive view of _which power plants are operational_?

It sounds like they're dancing around what may be a social issue; ERCOT sent an email asking people to "conserve", within 30 minutes they saw a negative impact. Is it possible some recipients saw the email and took the complete opposite action?

I'll admit that when I get the "turn your AC off from noon to 3 pm" email at 8 AM, I go turn it down so that I can turn it off at noon.

I don't know if this thermal battery helps much.

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#76

> Some of these tactics have proven controversial with consumers. One program that pays big power users like cryptocurrency operations millions to conserve, has come under particular scrutiny, as Texans have been asked to conserve voluntarily for months. This is... amazing. Not in a good way.

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Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#77
post #20

A map of power outages over the last few years with TX, CA, LA, WA and MI in the lead: https://www.fixr.com/articles/power-outage-solutions Maine is a headscratcher with HydroQuebec across the border.

That is a pretty misleading presentation, because of the cherry-picked dates and conflating (apparently) capacity-related outages with public safety shutoffs, and for not weighting by population impact.

California has not had any capacity-related problems in the past 2 years, mostly due to the fact that they now have 5.5GW of battery backup capacity that covers the critical period at dusk, when solar generation is headed for zero, during late summer where the days are getting shorter but it is still hot.

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they're dancing around what may be a social issue; ERCOT sent an email asking people to "conserve", within 30 minutes they saw a negative impact. Is it possible some recipients saw the email and took the complete opposite action?

Texans like their guns and demand freedom so probably.

Guns don't kill people, ERCOT kills people.

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#79
post #9

The article states that the sharp drop in reserves was being “investigated,” and that it is “suspected” that a large power plant stopped working. Is observability of Texan infrastructure so poor that the _power company_ doesn’t have a comprehensive view of _which power plants are operational_?

It sounds like they're dancing around what may be a social issue; ERCOT sent an email asking people to "conserve", within 30 minutes they saw a negative impact. Is it possible some recipients saw the email and took the complete opposite action?

They don't just send emails, they also send texts. Given that this is the 7th time they've done this in the past ~2 weeks, if anything I would expect people to be more likely to ignore the messages now, since (from the perspective of residents) nothing obviously bad happened the other 6 times.

The difference is that this was the first time that they followed up the first message with a second one when reserves became critically low and the frequency started dropping. But by the time I saw the second message, it was obvious from their dashboards that the situation was well on its way to being resolved, so I'm doubtful the second message had much affect either way.

Re: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened?

#80
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to buy up all of the old readily available GPUs. No need to fight over new latest gen GPUs to actually produce coins. You just need equipment that looks like you can do mining. Then, voluntarily not mine anything so the power company pays you. That is the actual business model to not ever mine anything.

I guess you also need to draw and pay for a lot of electricity most of the time to get that kind of deal.

I'm sure there's a simple circuit that can put a load on the mains in a way that doesn't cause fires or electrocute anyone
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