There's a lot of misunderstanding in the comments so far regarding bitcoin mining incentives. I urge you to read this thread describing the split-second load-shedding response time from the POV of one of these miners: https://twitter.com/ogbtc/status/1699588007664275873 It also goes into the other mechanism by which they make money (being natural sellers of future energy demand contracts during times of high demand).…
Alternatively, a better option: as a human need, maybe energy production shouldn’t _strictly_ follow market incentives and shouldn’t be _solely_ governed by supply/demand dynamics
The power marketplace company should actually have better information on questions like “did a powerplant selling into the market go offline” than anyone except the plant operator, and should have more information about the impact than anyone.
It depends on how they're joined to the "grid" - if a company running multiple plants is providing 10 GW and later is providing 9900 MW did a plant go offline? Did clouds obscure solar? Did the wind die down?
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.
> Politicians are utterly useless.
Step 1: get in power.
Step 2: make government smaller by dismantling systems made to protect the public.
Step 3: grift.
Step 4: "See, governments are all grifters! Never vote for people who ask for bigger governments."
Step 5: goto step 1
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 hardshi…
I understand your point, but if I let the $OTHER party get control, they will work against my beliefs on Abortion and Guns, which are the only 2 beliefs that the parties have together taught me matters...
You are 100% correct. Thats what we are missing.
Additional parties that perhaps hold party A's thoughts on Abortion and Guns but maybe share party B's thoughts on immigration or health care or whatever. The country really needs choice.
I'm a swing voter, I vote both R and D. To the best of my knowledge I have never met another one in real life. I know they do exist though. I find myself voting one party at the state level and another at the federal level. Both parties have stances I agree and disagree with. I would love a party that does the same.
I live in Texas and we’ve been dancing on the edge of energy availability for weeks now. If you glance at ERCOT’s public graphs that estimate energy supply and demand, every evening we’re barely eeking by. From what I’ve heard, this should be improving daily as temperatures ease, but I guess not. Surprising that we had an emergency episode in September rather than two weeks ago. If Texas can’t supply enough energy in…
I feel like TX is doing more to push for energy independence than any other single organization in the country. the grid incompetence, and governments unwillingness to resolve, is the best driver for household battery and solar I can this of. I don't live in TX, but if I didn't have 1day battery storage, coupled with solar capability to charge that battery to full in a single day, with a generator as backup, every ou…
While that would work well in summer, and this current issue, the outlook isn’t so good for Texas winters. I recently spoke with another Texan who has had solar + batteries for a couple years.
Apparently, in our area, winters are so cloudy that their solar panels (which cover 100% of energy usage in summer) don’t cover but 20% of their usage in the winter.
No reasonable amount of batteries can ward off grid concerns with those inefficiencies.
So... start a "cryptocurrency" business and get paid to not use electricity. I mean, if that's not a good way to funnel money from the lower classes to the rich, I don't know what is.
Clearly I need to start Big Resistor Inc. It's just a big connection across the grid that wastes megawatts of energy, but I can get paid for turning it off.
Only if your threat to turn it on is realistic. That is you have to be willing to buy at market rates metawatts of energy when they don't feel like paying you. If they think you are doing this - that is not producing value with those metawatts you buy when you buy they will call your bluff: not pay you and thus force you to lose $$$ proving you are serious. I think their pockets are bigger than yours and so it won't work out.
You achieve similar results by simply charging such customers current market rates. Nobody is going to be mining Bitcoin while paying 2.50$/kWh. That’s the objection, it’s simply a waste of money.
It's so weird because I thought the whole point of ERCOT was to be a market and use market forces to solve everything. So why are they paying bitcoin miners to turn off, rather than just charging them market rates at all times and letting them decide for themselves? I feel like I'm missing something here.
The gap between actual unfettered market forces and what gets implemented in American capitalism is where the grift happens. IE, ostensibly set up a free market to satisfy the ideologues but make sure there are carveout deals so cronyism has room to hand out favors.
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 do make my house a few degrees colder and charge batteries every time I get an emergency message from ERCOT this summer. Part of it is simply tragedy of the commons - I'm 10^-6% of the regional grid usage and have little individual effect on the grid, but will suffer more if I don't get mine while I can. Think about whether you want to discourage honesty before you downvote. I've made my house extra well insulated with efficient zoned AC units otherwise, so I'm not an energy abuser in general.
I have an rational distrust of ERCOT's grid management given my experience of freezing for a week in 2021. What's more the current situation is entirely preventable(who could predict summer in TX would be hot?!) so I rebel at suffering to compensate for ERCOT's negligence and corruption.
You achieve similar results by simply charging such customers current market rates. Nobody is going to be mining Bitcoin while paying 2.50$/kWh. That’s the objection, it’s simply a waste of money.
It's so weird because I thought the whole point of ERCOT was to be a market and use market forces to solve everything. So why are they paying bitcoin miners to turn off, rather than just charging them market rates at all times and letting them decide for themselves? I feel like I'm missing something here.
The last couple years of evidence suggests that keeping the grid up requires a certain amount of central planning. On one hand, the frequency must remain relatively stable, globally. On the other, consumers don't want to deal with every fluctuation of the price (as they found out when they were exposed to the spike prices during spring '21). On principle, Texas is going to make sure that the energy sector is taken care of financially, so we end up in the situation we're in: Advertise the grid as market-purely as you can, engage in just enough planning to keep it up and the money flowing.