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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?

#161

Post by lukev »

Retric wrote: post #95
lukev wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original idea behind this is sound. Because production and consumption must net to ~0, from the grid's perspective cutting load is just as valuable as providing generative capacity. Imagine you own a factory that typically runs 24/7 and is part of the system's base load. There is a material cost for you to shut down production. These structures were set up to make it economically viable to have these types of ins…

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.

If prices were perfectly liquid and symmetrical, sure. Unfortunately they're not and the system is pretty complex. There's a bunch of different ways to purchase energy and not all of them are sensitive to realtime price.

Establishing a separate mechanism to compensate "virtual" generation (via load reduction) works no matter what pricing structure I use for my typical energy purchases.

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

#162

Post by actionfromafar »

outside1234 wrote: post #39
actionfromafar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think it’s the only somewhat good thing about Texas’ grid. What better way to ensure Island configuration works than running that mode all the time?

I mean I guess - but there is no getting around that it concentrates risk...

A US wide grid failure can’t cascade into Texas if Texas is not connected. Most national grids have plans to run areaa in island mode in case of catastrophic failure, but who knows how well that would work.

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

#163

Post by mcdonje »

wc- wrote: post #26

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).…

Saying they're "providing a service" by turning off in peak times is kind of a ridiculous phrasing. Normal consumers in normal markets don't buy at peak because peak pricing is quite expensive. Flipping the equation to paying people to not buy something and calling it a service is outrageous. It exposes the grid as something that literally cannot work on free market principles. People are right to be outraged.

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

#164

Post by pengaru »

tiffanyh wrote: post #83

EV's This will become a bigger issue for all as more EV's gain adoption. And with the reluctance to use nuclear, there's not many reliable options for clean energy.

EVs might become a large part of the grid's energy storage, smoothing out these conditions of solar/wind shortages.

If ERCOT is paying bitcoin miners to not mine, I don't see why they wouldn't be willing to pay EV owners for some storage capacity and cooperative charge scheduling.

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

#165

Post by probablyexists »

bombcar wrote: post #75
scientifik wrote: post #17

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?

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.

For Austin Energy’s opt in thermostat management program they will precool the houses ahead of the “savings event”

It is a peak issue not a sustained issue during off hours so that can assist.

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

#166

Post by pengaru »

jeffbee wrote: post #77
mc32 wrote: 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 he…

> 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

Am I supposed to interpret "covers critical period at dusk..." as the "hours" part of 5.5GW? Because I'm having trouble grokking what is the actual battery backup capacity described here... Does CA have battery capacity that can last a single evening @ 5.5GW of load?

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

#167

Post by vel0city »

tr3ntg wrote: post #160
gcr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the incentives, having blackouts is more financially desirable than overbuilding. This situation isn’t surprising. It sucks if you’re like, you know, a person living there, but in terms of finance incentives, it’s close to the best possible outcome, right?

replying to my sibling commentor, vel0city: My neighborhood has had dozens of outages over the past few years, the worst of which was nearly a week-long outage during the now-infamous freeze. So yeah, energy is cheap, but same areas are hit harder than others in terms of reliability. The energy company’s reasoning for these dozens of small blackouts is “grid upgrades” - that’d be great if true, but who really knows.

That's not a capacity issue though, that's your local delivery company having issues. Delivery companies pretty much are still the older style highly regulated utilities. Its an entirely different problem with different incentives than what the above posters were talking about.

Building even 100GW of additional capacity in the state or additional transmission capacity for solar out in the middle of nowhere won't solve the problems your neighbors are facing. Complaining about ERCOT isn't solving the problem, its not ERCOT's role to handle that section. Hold your local delivery provider responsible.

I'd be interested in knowing who that delivery company is if you wouldn't mind sharing.

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

#168

Post by amluto »

gray_-_wolf wrote: post #4

> 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.

Is it? There’s not nearly enough information to tell.

Austin Energy appears to charge about 10 cents/kWh (interestingly, it’s comparable across all service classes if I read the tariff sheet right). They pay up to $80/kW saved on average (across all events, I think) [0], I think annually. The webpage is vague. So Austin Energy is effectively paying $80/kW/year of capacity available on 10 minutes notice.

1 kW for a whole year is 8766 kWh, which would cost about $876. And you need to actually be using that kW to resell it as average demand response, so this program is about a 10% discount for being willing to shut down on 10 minutes notice. Or alternatively, you get 10% off in exchange for reducing your SLA a bit :)

Hate bitcoin miners all you like, but the actual payment seems quite reasonable.

[0] https://savings.austinenergy.com/commercial/offerings/load-m...

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

#169

Post by jfengel »

nonethewiser wrote: post #63
vel0city wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're already running at full tilt, how are you going to ramp up energy production? You then need to build more. Building and connecting takes time. Texas has added several state's worth of energy to the grid in the past few years. The peak hit at the 2021 winter storm was 76GW, far higher than any normal time historically. This summer, just two years later, Texas is going >85GW of power demand every day . For…

So essentially its high growth in energy demand? And probably it not making sense financially to overbuild.

High growth in demand due to increasing temperatures. This summer is likely exceptional, due to El Nino, but it won't be the last one, and the base temperature will continue to rise due to climate change.

So this was foreseeable, but unforeseen because they didn't wish to. And it will continue to happen, and worse.

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

#170

Post by wc- »

mcdonje wrote: post #163
wc- wrote: post #26

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).…

Saying they're "providing a service" by turning off in peak times is kind of a ridiculous phrasing. Normal consumers in normal markets don't buy at peak because peak pricing is quite expensive. Flipping the equation to paying people to not buy something and calling it a service is outrageous. It exposes the grid as something that literally cannot work on free market principles. People are right to be outraged.

This just isn't how the grid works. Texas has added more than double the amount of renewable energy than any other state grid in the last two years. These investments introduce variable production and require on-demand response to keep the demand/consumption balance steady. Normal / residential consumers do not have a steady demand, don't prepay power usage, and don't guarantee future power usage. All of these factors are what make industrial demand response valuable and necessary for the modernizing, increasingly-renewable based, power grid. ERCOT isn't perfect, I think there are areas for vast improvement, but I think your comment is a little uninformed as to how the grid currently works and will be working in the future as we increase renewable production.
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