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Texas electricity maximum renewables record

gridstatus.io

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Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#21

Post by amanaplanacanal »

drob518 wrote: post #11
AndrewDucker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or build more renewables. If that's the cheapest thing to do, of course.

Well, then you need some diversity strategy such that you aren’t just building more stuff that also goes offline. And you would need it to be able to flex up in a controlled fashion to make up for losses in other geographies. That’s hard with wind and solar. They don’t flex very well. When things are going well, you get what you get. There’s no way to make the wind blow harder or make the sun shine more brightly when…

I'm sure utilities will build whatever they think is cheapest, whether that be nuclear, excess wind and solar, batteries, or whatever.

Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#22

Post by magicalist »

drob518 wrote: post #5
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116690/documents/... https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-winter-storms-2021... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/climate/texas-blackouts-d... | https://archive.today/FOUK8 https://www.ucs.org/resources/gas-malfunction Edit: On base load generation: https://www.google.com/search?q=base+load+myth

Even if you ignore grid failures, the fact is that power output from renewables drops during the winter. That’s just a fact. That drop must be made up by other things (natural gas, nuclear, or coal, in Texas, very little hydro). I’m all for more renewables, but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions.

> but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline

The problem wasn't the renewables going offline, they dipped in production due to not being winterized, but that was well modelled and they actually outperformed their expected output.

The problem, as mentioned in toomuchtodo's links, was the nuclear and gas plants going offline because they weren't winterized and trying to take the grid down with them. The mix was fine, but the market rewarded the cheapest preparations and the state government didn't step in to intervene.

Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

magicalist wrote: post #22
drob518 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you ignore grid failures, the fact is that power output from renewables drops during the winter. That’s just a fact. That drop must be made up by other things (natural gas, nuclear, or coal, in Texas, very little hydro). I’m all for more renewables, but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions.

> but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline The problem wasn't the renewables going offline, they dipped in production due to not being winterized, but that was well modelled and they actually outperformed their expected output. The problem, as mentioned in toomuchtodo's links, was the nuclear and gas plants going offline because they weren't winterized and trying…

ERCOT was also load shedding major circuits that fed fossil gas compressor stations (which fed downstream fossil gas generation), leading to a generation death spiral.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41787696 (previous comment I wrote with citations)

Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#24

Post by magicalist »

hk1337 wrote: post #12
drob518 wrote: post #3

Now, if only it was reliable in the winter…

It was one major occurrence with freak weather conditions and unpreparedness for something that _rarely_, if ever, occurs in Texas every 100 years.

> It was one major occurrence with freak weather conditions and unpreparedness for something that _rarely_, if ever, occurs in Texas every 100 years.

it happened in 2011, too, and all the warnings and published recommendations as a result of that storm weren't acted upon.

Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#25

Post by meandthewallaby »

hk1337 wrote: post #9
kbaker wrote: post #6

Today is definitely sunny and windy. With power prices negative, I guess those big Bitcoin mines out in West TX are quite profitable burning off our excess power...

> West TX FYI, there actually is a city called West, so it would usually appear as "West, TX" or West TX". It's actually between Dallas and Austin though and not in the west.

I assume you're just correcting capitalization, but for clarity's sake, the aforementioned Bitcoin mines are in west TX, the region with oil derricks, wind turbines, and tumbleweeds, and not West, TX, the town with the Little Czech Stop and delicious kolaches.

Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#27

Post by robocat »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #17
drob518 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you ignore grid failures, the fact is that power output from renewables drops during the winter. That’s just a fact. That drop must be made up by other things (natural gas, nuclear, or coal, in Texas, very little hydro). I’m all for more renewables, but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions.

The Texas grid is deliberately cut off from other states to avoid federal regulation. If we would just interconnect, then you diversify your locations and are much less susceptible to the wild swings in price driven by weather, which in the case of 2021 also impacted natural gas plants.

> just interconnect

Or instead, the federal regulations should obviously be fixed.

Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#28

Post by drob518 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
AndrewDucker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or build more renewables. If that's the cheapest thing to do, of course.

And batteries: China launches world’s first grid-forming sodium-ion battery storage plant - https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/03/china-launches-worlds-fi... - June 3rd, 2025 ("With a total investment of over CNY 460 million [$63.8 million] and occupying 34k square metres, the Baochi plant is designed for an installed capacity of 200MW/400MWh. Based on a dual daily charge-discharge cycle, it can regulate up to 580 GWh…

Also, that article about China making as many batteries as the world needs is deceiving if we’re talking about grid scale capacity as opposed to house scale or vehicle batteries. If the world went 100% into renewable energy with grid-scale battery deployment to provide extra capacity to make up for renewable generation variation, there’s no way China could keep up. That’s a LOT of batteries and ongoing replacement as they age and fail.

Re: Texas electricity maximum renewables record

#29

Post by drob518 »

verall wrote: post #20
drob518 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you ignore grid failures, the fact is that power output from renewables drops during the winter. That’s just a fact. That drop must be made up by other things (natural gas, nuclear, or coal, in Texas, very little hydro). I’m all for more renewables, but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions.

In Texas doesn't electricity use also drop during the winter? Almost everyone I know in Texas has gas heat and the winters are mild while summers are scorching. I use about 3X the electricity in summer months vs winter. I would guess nearly all residential energy use in Texas follows this pattern.

Yes, it definitely drops, but we’ve had issues where wind was basically offline in west Texas. So, you still need to balance it out.
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