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Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

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Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#101

Post by LUmBULtERA »

bboygravity wrote: post #88
ziga wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about home batteries being too expensive, hopefully prices will come down with scale. But the part about battery degradation is not true. Tesla Powerwall has a 10 year warranty[1] with 70% capacity retention. This means that Tesla has data showing that the battery will have higher capacity than 70% after those years. That's a lot of cycles and a lot of renewable energy that the battery will provide in its lif…

There's a reason why Tesla picks 10 years (8 years for car batteries) as a warranty period. Ask yourself: why 8 years and not 10 for cars? Why 10 years and not 15 or 20 years for home batteries? It's not arbitrary. Battery degradation is not linear. It's not like: 10 years = 70%, 20 years = 40%. It's probably closer to 20 years = 20 % capacity left. The decay becomes exponential-like after a relatively linear period…

Tesla and other car makers set their warranties at the mandatory minimums. Why would they offer more when they don't have to and consumers find them long enough and/or other car makers aren't competing on warranty length? That doesn't tell you anything about battery longevity.

Edit: Does my MacBook Pro die after 1 year when it's applecare warranty is over?

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#102

Post by pjc50 »

geysersam wrote: post #76
bboygravity wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla power wall? No batteries I know of will make economical sense though. Batteries are expensive, wear down and/or require maintenance. After x years / cycles your batteries will be dead and will need to be replaced. Storing your "free" energy in a battery will end up costing more than just buying the energy when you need it. Expensive energy storage is a big part of the reason why "green" energy countries like Ge…

> "green" energy countries like Germany Not sure why you consider them to be "green" given the facts you brought up. Germany has never been particularly green energy wise. It's a big population and lots of heavy industry with relatively little energy resources like hydro. The are building solar and wind quickly now. Maybe that's why you got the impression that they are "green".

Germany is still very much captured by its coal lobby. The extent to which they are green is that they have a fairly vocal green party .. with 14% of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_90/The_Greens

(This is incomprehensible to Anglosphere FPTP two-party systems)

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#104

Post by gruez »

bradknowles wrote: post #93
actionfromafar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like that.

Correction, the fat cats who own ERCOT don’t like that. Your regular run of the mill Texan may not care one way or the other, most times. But if they get into a crunch where their electric bills are much higher, I assure you that they will care.

>the fat cats who own ERCOT don’t like that.

And who are those? Wikipedia says:

>ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation,[11][12] and its members include consumers, electric cooperatives, generators, power marketers, retail electric providers, investor-owned electric utilities (transmission and distribution providers), and municipally owned electric utilities.[13]

It's not "owned" by anyone.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#106

Post by infecto »

dylan604 wrote: post #46
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this summer is objectively one of the best we've had in a long time, at least in Austin. The fact that we've only had a few days above 105 is a blessing. I mean, it's Texas - it's always blazing hot at the end of August, and that's to be expected. What's really changed over the past 25-50 years is that the plus 100 days have been starting earlier and earlier, and we've been having more of them. Thankfully, that w…

Again, that is far from the definition of "great". I would say fortunate to not have those string of triple digits, but man, it's not great at all. 100°+ is still miserable, but it's amazing how different 98° feels from 105°. I get Texas hyperbole, but even my feet are firmly planted in reality to not accept "great" in this meaning. Bless your heart! ;-)

Bless your heart for trying to be so witty but in fact coming off foolish.

Texas is simply hot and has been for our timelines. You could make the same silly comments about locations that have long and cold winters. Texas is hot we get it, you don't like it but it does not change that this summer has been great, it is a lot cooler than usual.

;-)

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#107

Post by infecto »

Salgat wrote: post #60
strivingtobe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas has a lot of incentives for residential solar. I'm not sure where you live, but in my DFW suburb, my neighborhood _is_ peppered in rooftop solar. https://www.gosolartexas.org/available-incentives A lot of the incentives are from local power companies like Oncor, but one notable state-wide incentive is that solar installations are exempt from property tax by state law. I dunno why people act like Texas is staunc…

Here just north of Austin, PEC implemented one of the most regressive solar programs in the country. Their argument in their study was that they make less money off solar since they can't sell as much power.

Regressive in what manner? Historically a lot of solar buy-back programs were incredibly inflated. Residential solar can be great for the resident but is usually not great for the grid. Paying resi. solar producers greater than market rates always felt foolish to me.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#108

Post by infecto »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #23
MBCook wrote: post #11

So the day peaked at 85 GW of load, and they got down to only 130 MW of spare capacity. Just 0.15% from running out. And they never asked for conservation? Is it normal to go that close to the edge without trying to cut load?

This is a state that should basically be peppered with residential rooftop solar. Of course, there's zero chance of any sort of state governmental policy to help incentivize it in deep red state land. But if recent history has shown anything, I would consider it a primary feature of any home in Texas to be relatively grid independent with its own generating capacity and storage.

Please don't bring red or blue into the argument. Texas is indeed peppered with residential solar, it can make real economic sense for the homeowner. Of course you probably won't see the inflated solar programs that California created back in the day but they also have largely pulled back on those as they don't help the grid and can become quite costly to buy back at inflated rates. In my experience the best you will get in Texas is close to ercot market rates, so not much. On the other hand that can make on-site storage more economically attractive.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#109

Post by infecto »

hmcdona1 wrote: post #2

If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem to be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually end (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of usage) right around net load peak...which this is now reporting is when energy prices go through the roof. So basically the "rush hour" program has likely been costing me more money than if I just ignored them to begin with up to this p…

In my experience these programs are terrible in Texas, which is surprising given how advanced the data and services around the grid are there.

I briefly tried out the thermostat program and it was honestly trash. It was near impossible to unsubscribe too.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#110

Post by infecto »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

Pretty interesting to see how this stuff is holding up. The market is evolving rapidly currently with absolutely massive amounts of wind, solar, and battery being deployed everywhere. What's odd in Texas is that they are resisting the notion of connecting to the rest of the US grid. This would allow them to import power cheaply when they need to and export power when they have too much of it. My guess is that they ac…

I don't believe grid connections are the obvious and easy answer. That would assume those other grids do not have base loads plants themself. There is a massive cost to starting and stopping gas plants that you are also not accounting for. So while yes, there are periods of negative prices, the cost to run that plant 24/7 may be cheaper than turning it on and off and not just cheaper in $ but cheaper in less resources being used.

Negative pricing and "burning a lot of gas" are maybe not as bad as you think. As more wind/solar get added to the generation mix, there will be more peak times where prices may become negative. The lens I have is this means there is incentive for more storage to come on the grid to soak up those events and then offload at peak demand times.

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