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Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

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Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#281

Post by Scoundreller »

joosters wrote: post #272
londons_explore wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real fix here is to have more residential customers either knowing the minute by minute pricing, or paying extra for the privilege of an "unlimited plan" or something. That could be achieved for example by instead of setting your space heater to "low heat", "Mid heat" or "high heat", you could just hit the "$1/hour of heat", "$2/hour of heat", or "$3/hour of heat" settings. The heater itself can look at the minut…

The real fix here is to have more residential customers either knowing the minute by minute pricing This is insane. Do you really believe that individuals are going to be monitoring the energy prices like a rabid day-trader, making 'rational' decisions between "oh good, power is cheap now" and "power is expensive, I guess I'll just freeze"?

At some level, consumers do pay that minute-by-minute rate, it just gets averaged out.

No doubt, today, while some people heeded the advice to turn their thermostats down to 68 to avoid a grid crash, another group of people jacked up theirs up.

Now that rolling blackouts have started, I'm sure some of those 68s are going to get changed to 80.

If consumers were paying the $1-$2/kwh+, I'm sure a lot more will be set 68.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#282

Post by joosters »

londons_explore wrote: post #280
joosters wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real fix here is to have more residential customers either knowing the minute by minute pricing This is insane. Do you really believe that individuals are going to be monitoring the energy prices like a rabid day-trader, making 'rational' decisions between "oh good, power is cheap now" and "power is expensive, I guess I'll just freeze"?

People make similar choices all the time... Eg. "Oh, there's a queue at the gas station today. I'll drive on and get gas tomorrow instead." Thats them observing that the cost (to their time) of getting gas is high today, and that they can purchase later for a lower time cost.

You're comparing filling up the car to literally freezing. Find some humanity!

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#283

Post by joosters »

Scoundreller wrote: post #281
joosters wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real fix here is to have more residential customers either knowing the minute by minute pricing This is insane. Do you really believe that individuals are going to be monitoring the energy prices like a rabid day-trader, making 'rational' decisions between "oh good, power is cheap now" and "power is expensive, I guess I'll just freeze"?

At some level, consumers do pay that minute-by-minute rate, it just gets averaged out. No doubt, today, while some people heeded the advice to turn their thermostats down to 68 to avoid a grid crash, another group of people jacked up theirs up. Now that rolling blackouts have started, I'm sure some of those 68s are going to get changed to 80. If consumers were paying the $1-$2/kwh+, I'm sure a lot more will be set 68…

If anything, the poorer people will be the ones going to 68. So your grand plan is to let the poor freeze while the rich stay warm?

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#284

Post by atian »

enraged_camel wrote: post #275
atian wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in North Texas (Oncor) and my place just got hit by the rolling blackout 3 minutes ago (1:44am). See http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/main/currentDayForecastSyst... for dramatic shedding of load. Edit 1:54am - First blackout lasted exactly 10 minutes. They got this down to a tee. Edit 2:37am CT - Second blackout started. Edit 3:00am - Second blackout ended. Edit 3:17am - Third blackout started.

I lost power at 2 am. It’s 2:48 am and still no power...

I’m charging my portable batteries with the power left on my Macbook.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#285

Post by londons_explore »

joosters wrote: post #272
londons_explore wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real fix here is to have more residential customers either knowing the minute by minute pricing, or paying extra for the privilege of an "unlimited plan" or something. That could be achieved for example by instead of setting your space heater to "low heat", "Mid heat" or "high heat", you could just hit the "$1/hour of heat", "$2/hour of heat", or "$3/hour of heat" settings. The heater itself can look at the minut…

The real fix here is to have more residential customers either knowing the minute by minute pricing This is insane. Do you really believe that individuals are going to be monitoring the energy prices like a rabid day-trader, making 'rational' decisions between "oh good, power is cheap now" and "power is expensive, I guess I'll just freeze"?

Devices can offer functionality to take the decisionmaking burden from the user.

For example a dishwasher could have a setting where you tell it what time the washing must be done by, and it schedules the wash cycle to be when it thinks electricity will be cheapest.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#286

Post by protoman3000 »

londons_explore wrote: post #263
Scoundreller wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Basically this. Few individuals pay the actual price of electricity. At best, they'll pay time-of-day rates that might change schedules 2x/year. Otherwise, everyone pays the average cost, and couldn't care less if noon-time electricity costs 10x on Monday vs. last…

The real fix here is to have more residential customers either knowing the minute by minute pricing, or paying extra for the privilege of an "unlimited plan" or something. That could be achieved for example by instead of setting your space heater to "low heat", "Mid heat" or "high heat", you could just hit the "$1/hour of heat", "$2/hour of heat", or "$3/hour of heat" settings. The heater itself can look at the minut…

Ahh, yes, the center of Neoliberal logic. Widespread rip-off is acceptable if the individual has technically a choice to not get ripped-off and if the fineprint of the contract had a size of at least 0.000001pt.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#287

Post by fy20 »

Gravityloss wrote: post #267
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…

So the people decide to act in a way that there will be power cuts - if it was only them, it wouldn't matter much - they would deserve it. But since the system is shared, it affects everyone. Insulation and heat pump equipped spot price aware water heaters etc could probably help a lot.

Insulation is the main issue. I live in a cold country where it often gets to -20c (-5F) during winter, but we can have peaks well below that. We usually don't even turn our heating on until it drops below freezing as our home is well enough insulated (we have much stricter building standards regarding this than the US), so that it's comfortable inside (21C/70F) until then.

Insulation helps in the summer too though - it's not just something you need in cold climates. If it's hot outside and you are running AC there's a temperature differential. Insulation will reduce the equalisation of that, and reduce the amount of energy you are using to cool your home. It's epecially important if you are in a stick framed home where there's basically no thermal mass (as opposed to masonry).

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#288

Post by adrianN »

ChrisIsTaken wrote: post #231
adrianN wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy loss is strongly supralinear in the temperature gradient, so it's probably a lot more than that.

Energy loss through an insulator is exactly linear to temperature. The problem is that people who would have otherwise tolerated 50F temperatures without heating by putting on a sweater are pulling their old oil column heater out of the storage.

Oh you're right.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#289

Post by jodrellblank »

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…

What’s the problem with incandescents here? They’re inefficient, which means they turn lots of energy into heat instead of light, which means your thermostat will turn down your heating to compensate because it needs to produce less of the desired amount of heat.

In the abstract, they’re bad when you’re cooling a Texas house and they’re putting more heat into it; on a cold night a 100W resistance heater is a 100W resistance heater and if you’d banned them, the people with them would need 100W heat from another source for every bulb replaced. That wouldn’t save power or money or reduce demand now as you seem to be suggesting.

Or it’s day time and the bulbs are off, or nighttime and the bulbs are off for sleep. They seem the least relevant thing to gripe about in this specific context?

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#290

Post by austincheney »

joosters wrote: post #283
Scoundreller wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some level, consumers do pay that minute-by-minute rate, it just gets averaged out. No doubt, today, while some people heeded the advice to turn their thermostats down to 68 to avoid a grid crash, another group of people jacked up theirs up. Now that rolling blackouts have started, I'm sure some of those 68s are going to get changed to 80. If consumers were paying the $1-$2/kwh+, I'm sure a lot more will be set 68…

If anything, the poorer people will be the ones going to 68. So your grand plan is to let the poor freeze while the rich stay warm?

We normally operate our thermostat at 67 during the winter but have put it down to 60 given the power crisis. If people are crying about going way down to 68 I have no sympathy.
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