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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

#121

Post by LUmBULtERA »

bboygravity wrote: post #114
LUmBULtERA wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The mandatory minimums? Got a source of the mandatory minimum for cars (US and/or EU) as well as power walls? The fact that other car makers aren't competing on warranty length seems to me to prove my point, but you seem to think it doesn't? What I mean is: if battery degradation for cars isn't that bad after 8 years, then why are other brands not offering significantly longer warranties to compete with the Tesla one…

Interesting, it seems to be a statement that's spread around, but the sources do seem to be lacking, e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/vp2e7p/us...

RE: MacBook Pro dying close to a year right after it's warranty it over --> well now you're just trolling. My iPhone 15 pro battery still maintains 100% battery health a year after its manufacturing date. It obviously won't need replacing in 1-2 more years even if I "really really push it and are OK with constantly charging". I used an iPhone XS until last year after it was about 5 years old, 5x longer than your supposed device-dead date. I don't think this is unusual.

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

#122

Post by felbane »

boringg wrote: post #111
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…

Connecting your grid to other markets for the premise of cheaper energy also puts you in a situation where you no longer control your own destiny. My expectation is that the presumed gains of some cheaper power don't balance the risk on reliability and control. I don't necessarily buy the argument but I am fairly certain that a big chunk of it.

As someone who very nearly lost a family member due to the state's complete inability to implement and enforce preparedness regulations, and due to ERCOT's herculean effort to do just barely not enough to keep the grid online... respectfully, fuck that argument.

We live in a time where functional electric service is a necessity for life. We also live in a time where extreme weather patterns are getting more frequent and more intense.

The very least Texas could do is implement the equipment and procedures necessary to enable importing power from the national grid in an emergency. The cost to implement interconnects at key locations is infinitesimal compared to the costs incurred when there are systemic outages.

The "we can do it better ourselves" argument only works when you don't repeatedly catastrophically fail at "doing it better."

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

#123

Post by jillesvangurp »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #117
infecto wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resource…

> There is a massive cost to starting and stopping gas plants that you are also not accounting for It's my understanding that basically the entire point of gas power plants is that they are very cheap to stop and start (as opposed to e.g. coal or nuclear), at least, that's the case in the UK - are these plants different in the US?

It's still expensive relative to batteries. If you think about it, a steam turbine has a lot of water that needs to be heated before you actually get any steam and a lot of heavy, moving parts that need to start spinning. Once all that is up and running it's fine and you just expend fuel to maintain the steam pressure.

But this takes a while. And to heat things up faster, you simply burn a massive amount of fuel; which is costly. And until you generate steam, it's not actually generating any power whatsoever.

Any thermal plant has this overhead that makes starting them expensive and stopping them undesirable because the shorter you run them, the more inefficient they get. You amortize the startup cost over the runtime. The longer it runs, the better it gets.

A battery provides power within milliseconds and it can switch from charging to discharging on a moment's notice as well. That's why batteries are displacing gas plants as peaker plants in a lot of places.

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

#124

Post by infecto »

herewego wrote: post #118
infecto wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ;-)

He’s saying Texas is hot for humans, which is objectively true. One’s willingness to tolerate it is subjective, but that’s not the point here. Don’t take it so personally.

Why are you taking it so personally, I was simply responding to snark with snark.

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

#125

Post by guerby »

bboygravity wrote: post #115
guerby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your computation is off: it's 0.014 EUR/kWh, ten time less and far below kWh market prices about everyhere in the world. As for cycling the industry standard is give the number of cycles to 80% capacity remaining so the battery is far from dead at 5000 cycles. The simple division I used is conservative.

No, it's not. From the link I posted (in Dutch unfortunately, I'll translate the relevant bit): Small integrated battery: 3.5 kWh Starting at about € 2.100,- You yourself indicated in your post that integrated batteries (as in: the ones with battery management, that you can actually use to store energy in as opposed to a bunch of lose cells) are more expensive. They are more expensive indeed. I did the calculation. T…

Well I bought cells a few years ago and use them with the necessary components, and those don't multiply the system price by ten.

BTW because I'm lazy to expand my system I just ordered 14 kWh of fully packaged LFP battery (box, BMS, cells, breaker) for $1800, $130/kWh, $0.026/kWh cycled.

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

#126

Post by infecto »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #117
infecto wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resource…

> There is a massive cost to starting and stopping gas plants that you are also not accounting for It's my understanding that basically the entire point of gas power plants is that they are very cheap to stop and start (as opposed to e.g. coal or nuclear), at least, that's the case in the UK - are these plants different in the US?

Your understanding is mostly wrong then. Modern combined-cycle turbines are more efficient but I would not call them cheap to stop and start. You are still looking at a 20-30min startup time and a similar cool-down period. So yes designed to be able to shutdown I think the general range is an on-time of 30-70% but I believe with those ranges you get different efficiency curves. You get increased wear, higher fuel cost and also need to predict that demand will not spike. When prices dip below zero it may be more cost effective to keep the plants online.

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

#127

Post by baking »

thesis wrote: post #65

Texas has these free electricity nights. Anyone know of a battery system that can fill the batteries at night (from the grid) and use them during the day? And then recharge at night again. Due to location solar isn’t an option but still interested in batteries due to free nights.

You would have to be able to store a significant portion of your daily usage to make it worthwhile and that's before you even consider the price of the batteries.

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

#128

Post by Rastonbury »

boringg wrote: post #111
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…

Connecting your grid to other markets for the premise of cheaper energy also puts you in a situation where you no longer control your own destiny. My expectation is that the presumed gains of some cheaper power don't balance the risk on reliability and control. I don't necessarily buy the argument but I am fairly certain that a big chunk of it.

Forgive my ignorance but doesn't connecting to other grid allow them to buy energy when prices are low and still allow them to generate their own when the national grid prices are high? It would also allow them to sell excess no?

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

#129

Post by danans »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #95
danans wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Either you are not reading it right, or there is a problem with your thermostat's demand response schedule, because the only way demand response makes money (hence rewards for users) is by reducing de…

Demand response also targets gross load because (assuming the renewables are not entirely rooftop solar) that electricity still needs to be carried by wires to consumers. Sizing transmission for the absolute yearly peak is not cost effective, so various schemes are used to reduce that peak, including efficiency improvements and demand response. This is entirely separate from questions of renewable cost and carbon and…

> Sizing transmission for the absolute yearly peak is not cost effective, so various schemes are used to reduce that peak, including efficiency improvements and demand response.

Nonetheless, voluntary curtailment of demand by consumers (for any objective) must be compensated, right? And generally speaking, demand response curtailment (especially on shorter notice) is compensated at a higher rate than peak energy rates (4x in my area). It shouldn't be the case that one spends more money by participating in a demand response program that not participating, which is what the OP implied.

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

#130

Post by jncfhnb »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #117
infecto wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resource…

> There is a massive cost to starting and stopping gas plants that you are also not accounting for It's my understanding that basically the entire point of gas power plants is that they are very cheap to stop and start (as opposed to e.g. coal or nuclear), at least, that's the case in the UK - are these plants different in the US?

A gas power plant (specifically a peaker plant designed for this) is still more expensive to start or stop than a battery or hydro.

However, it is much more expensive to build the capacity for batteries and you need to charge the batteries with excess power that’s available cheaply during surplus times.

The advantage of a peaker gas plant is you can build it big and shovel fuel into it that you just brought over from wherever. Many of them were built with the expectation that they would not face competition from batteries, so the economics of running them is getting bad. However they’re still important as a backup because you cannot depend reliably on the batteries being charged.

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