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Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

reuters.com

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Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#121

Post by Schiendelman »

negative_zero wrote: post #77

It always seems wild to me how, in the US, something like the grid is just a wild west. "ERCOT said it is reviewing the test failures and drawing up plans to protect the grid from disruptions." Why are they even allowed to connect? / Why are they not kicked off? / Why aren't they being forced to add their own grid inertia?

This isn't the US - it's just the state of Texas. The rest of the contiguous United States is on two large grids. Texas has its own.

It's up to ERCOT to figure their own mess out. They will. Nobody else really has to care about it.

Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#122

Post by nutjob2 »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #110
jillesvangurp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Newton's First Law didn't change much in the time that has passed. No, but technology has moved on quite a bit. Heavy fly wheels are no longer the state of the art here. A few tens of GW of battery capacity (i.e. a few dozen nuclear plants worth of capacity) that can switch on/off in milliseconds can do a lot for grid stability. That's part of the reason why grid operators are rolling out so much batteries. It's no…

Respectfully, I believe you have confused "new" with "state of the art". China is likely using batteries because their battery production is subsidized, Australia's trading partner is China so basically equivalent. Perhaps a bad analogy, but it seems these battery systems attempt to stabilize by "pushing", whereas spinning mass can also work through "dragging" the phase. So eventually, you will have just a few rotati…

> Respectfully, I believe you have confused "new" with "state of the art". China is likely using batteries because their battery production is subsidized, Australia's trading partner is China so basically equivalent.

This is comically wrong. You're just making things up. Australia is at the forefront of this new tech due to necessity and some good luck. Scroll to the bottom of this article and have a look at the graph. It shows Australia has 5 times the grid forming battery infrastructure deployed or under construction than China or the US, or pretty much any other country. It is very much SOTA, needed for a grid that is a rapidly changing mix of rooftop solar, hydro, coal, gas and wind spread over a country the size of the continental US. Rotating masses are not going to cut it.

https://arena.gov.au/blog/australias-grid-forming-battery-re...

Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#123

Post by jillesvangurp »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #110
jillesvangurp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Newton's First Law didn't change much in the time that has passed. No, but technology has moved on quite a bit. Heavy fly wheels are no longer the state of the art here. A few tens of GW of battery capacity (i.e. a few dozen nuclear plants worth of capacity) that can switch on/off in milliseconds can do a lot for grid stability. That's part of the reason why grid operators are rolling out so much batteries. It's no…

Respectfully, I believe you have confused "new" with "state of the art". China is likely using batteries because their battery production is subsidized, Australia's trading partner is China so basically equivalent. Perhaps a bad analogy, but it seems these battery systems attempt to stabilize by "pushing", whereas spinning mass can also work through "dragging" the phase. So eventually, you will have just a few rotati…

No, they are doing that because they have a ten year head start on the rest of the world. The US & EU not having done their homework is entirely on them. The US is choosing to pump a lot of funding into fossil fuels instead. You could say that China is simply spending smarter.

The rest is just economics. We might suck at making batteries. But we suck even more at making new gas/coal plants or fueling those cost effectively.

Anyway, this stuff is being deployed by the hundreds of gwh per year now. Much of it in China but some non trivial amounts in places like Texas and California as well. As a result, the grid is actually getting more stable, not less stable.

Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#124

Post by jillesvangurp »

expedition32 wrote: post #86
jillesvangurp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid forming batteries and inverters are a thing. They can control the frequency on the grid. Just a matter of getting the right equipment. The nice thing with data centers is that they are somewhat flexible. It's not a constant load. Data center operators can choose to reduce load. And if properly engineered, they could do so automatically based on signals from the grid. The issue with outdated grids is that it reli…

Yes we know the solution is infrastructure. The question is who gets to pay for it. In America that seems to be the dying small town whose only economic value is cheap land.

Infrastructure is an investment with an ROI. Fuel is an expense that delivers energy once and that is never recovered. The only relevant debate here is on how to finance the relative attractive investment for renewables and over how long it delivers that ROI.

That varies per region but this is a sector that is now about 2x the level of investment for fossil fuel related infrastructure. A lot of which is increasingly looking like the ROI might never happen.

Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#125

Post by nutjob2 »

namibj wrote: post #40
threwrfaway wrote: post #26

For those who dont know why this is important: The loads are slowing down the generators that are burning a well metered amount of fuel to stay at 60Hz. This is a delicate balance since the phase angle must also be spot on. If a generator and the local line disagree on f, phase or V, you have a short circuit. If you lose a large amount of load, your generator will spin up with the excess fuel until the control system…

10+ MW voltage-source converters that can't do up to around 80% of their nominal capacity as mostly-reactive apparent power with stabilizing synthetic inertia scaled as desired/specified are a mostly software issue, stemming from lack of regulatory pressure incentivizing the engineering complexity of that. Though if you want to do a smoothing action on real power flux you'll have to colocate battery capacity with the…

The software is being written along with the regulations and compensations and it's being rolled out in the real world, just as you described.

Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#126

Post by baldeagle »

jeffbee wrote: post #120
baldeagle wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume we're talking about core inflation (since headline inflation included changes in energy costs and that would hide the signal). Core inflation was us 23% from '19-24, but the energy costs in Texas were up 37%. Actually, headline inflation was up 25%, which is still below that set of price increases. Please support your assertion that Texas energy costs decreased in that time period.

According to EIA State Energy Data System, "Average end-use energy price estimates by energy source, annual", electricity in Texas rose from $25.51 per million BTU (yes, I know) in 2019 to $28.95 in 2024, the most recent year available in the database. That's only 13.5%.

Ahh, I was focusing on residential energy (the cost borne by most of the people in Texas), which is up 25% per that source. The bulk and stability of industrial power is keeping prices down in aggregate.

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Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#127

Post by joquarky »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #76
alexey-salmin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue with outdated grids is that it relies on technology (spinning mass) that's at this point a century old. Which makes it brittle against outages like you describe. The solution is not more spinning mass but batteries and renewables to take the place of that spinning mass. A battery can respond to oscillations in milliseconds. If you then add flexible load that can spin up/down based on the amount of availab…

> Newton's First Law didn't change much in the time that has passed. No, but technology has moved on quite a bit. Heavy fly wheels are no longer the state of the art here. A few tens of GW of battery capacity (i.e. a few dozen nuclear plants worth of capacity) that can switch on/off in milliseconds can do a lot for grid stability. That's part of the reason why grid operators are rolling out so much batteries. It's no…

> nuclear plants worth of capacity) that can switch on/off in milliseconds

Nuclear has this little problem getting in the way of switching on/off quickly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon-135

Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#128

Post by joquarky »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #124
expedition32 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we know the solution is infrastructure. The question is who gets to pay for it. In America that seems to be the dying small town whose only economic value is cheap land.

Infrastructure is an investment with an ROI. Fuel is an expense that delivers energy once and that is never recovered. The only relevant debate here is on how to finance the relative attractive investment for renewables and over how long it delivers that ROI. That varies per region but this is a sector that is now about 2x the level of investment for fossil fuel related infrastructure. A lot of which is increasingly…

> over how long it delivers that ROI

In the US, this is moot if that time period is more than 3 months.

Re: Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

#129

Post by manarth »

trogdor wrote: post #112
manarth wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data centres aren't inherently spikey, in general use their consumption is reasonably predictable. However, if a DC detects that the _grid_ is wobbly (voltage or frequency deviations) the DC will disconnect without warning, and switch to its batteries and generators. The grid complains because it's suddenly lost hundreds of MW of load. For the DC to have isolation capability, it would need a load-sink which can c…

Minor note: when discussing electricity, abbreviating datacenter as “DC” is confusing

Haha good spot. And when the data centre is running on batteries, the DC uses DC. And if it's in the USA capital, it could be a DC using DC in DC.
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