Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

Post by dzhiurgis » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #108

pilom wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow! How in the world do you use that much? My old house in Colorado would use ~350kwh/month. Swap out that electric heater for a heat pump asap!

Big house (3700sqft or so), tall ceilings, four people working/schooling from home and an electric car as the primary family car. In 2019 I literally did not turn the heater on a single time, I don't think the investment in a heat pump would be worth it.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #173

supernova87a wrote: post #83

Problem is that: 1) People's use of energy is relatively insensitive to price, or they don't know the price, or few people care about the price when it comes time to need it 2) When you need the energy, it's too late to make the equipment/house more efficient, and when you don't need it, people don't think it's important to make it more efficient 3) Mandating that people upgrade their equipment is unpopular, they vot…

Do you still have incandescent bulbs in the US? Its really hard to find them here in Australia. I thought they were banned but I just read that they are not, but have been phased out.

Post by jcranmer » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #83

Problem is that: 1) People's use of energy is relatively insensitive to price, or they don't know the price, or few people care about the price when it comes time to need it 2) When you need the energy, it's too late to make the equipment/house more efficient, and when you don't need it, people don't think it's important to make it more efficient 3) Mandating that people upgrade their equipment is unpopular, they vot…

Post by khuey » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

bfrog wrote: post #146

maxerickson wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My power comes from, I believe, a nuclear plant in Wisconsin. $0.098 per kW-h, with $15 a month connection fee.

Wi has a lot of coal by the lake, where is there a nuke? Chicago was almost all nukes at one point

Post by rstupek » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #168

dehrmann wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they get some sort of a surcharge for this. Part of what you pay for with a big utility is for them to eat weird price fluctuations. Getting grid pricing just when it's convenient is cheating the system.

Probably not a surcharge, but maybe a minimum contract length? I don’t know if that’s possible (legally). But, I imagine that a utility would want to make sure that a customer who switched providers to avoid these wholesale prices would want to ensure that the customer would stick around long enough to make sense financially.