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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

#301

Post by baq »

londons_explore wrote: post #285
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"?

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.

don't know about you but my dishwasher's shortest program is ~30 minutes - if price of electricity changed every minute, i just wouldn't care because it'd be pointless.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#302

Post by jodrellblank »

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?

While I agree with your outrage, 68F is 20C, that’s a hot summer day in the UK; check this historic weather data for Heathrow Airport[1] for example, 5 months recorded a temp over 20C in 2020 and usually 4 or 3 in earlier years.

That isn’t a temperature you can reasonably describe as “freezing”. I’m not used to having a thermostat that high even in winter, it’s getting hot and stuffy that warm.

[1] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/sta...

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#303

Post by namibj »

joosters wrote: post #282
londons_explore wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The alternative to heating that much is wearing outside clothes inside, while heating only enough to prevent frost damage (and ideally not requiring gloves).

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#304

Post by jacquesm »

airhead969 wrote: post #218
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.

Time-dependent solutions to temperature change across a gradient are exponential decay functions that solve diff eqs based on Newton's law of cooling. It depends mostly on the insulation and the temperature difference. While it is 10 F outside, the central heating system for my apartment in a 6-story building cannot maintain temperature. It is 66 F and gradually falling. I would guess it would be 2.5kW running 24/7.

25KW more likely

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#305

Post by londons_explore »

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?

Making people pay directly for what they use puts them at an advantage when the alternative is for them to pay a share of what everyone uses.

Would you prefer to be poor and have a large electricity bill because bob up the street uses power at the worst time of day, or would you prefer to at least have the option to save money by heating your house when power is cheaper and let bob pay extra for not being considerate about his power use times?

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#306

Post by NickNameNick »

airhead969 wrote: post #218
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.

Time-dependent solutions to temperature change across a gradient are exponential decay functions that solve diff eqs based on Newton's law of cooling. It depends mostly on the insulation and the temperature difference. While it is 10 F outside, the central heating system for my apartment in a 6-story building cannot maintain temperature. It is 66 F and gradually falling. I would guess it would be 2.5kW running 24/7.

I have a 2.4kW heater in my bedroom...

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#307

Post by jodrellblank »

joosters wrote: post #298
austincheney wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

68 = they deserve the pain, 67 = all ok? It's not about the absolute numbers, they were presumably just picked out of a hat. It's the general concept. Why is there so little empathy on here?

Because there’s a difference between

- the poor are freezing to death while the rich have plenty

- we have you over a barrel, how much is it worth not to die?

- the poor might have to run their dishwasher at a different time if they want t-shirt and shorts temperature indoors in the coldest winter in 40 years

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#308

Post by jonatron »

ev1 wrote: post #299
jonatron wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half-hourly electricity pricing exists in the UK: https://octopus.energy/agile/ I'm considering switching to it actually.

Texas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138767

Oh, cool, interesting to see a similar thing exists elsewhere. It looks like Griddy is missing a reasonable price cap though.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#309

Post by bombcar »

milofeynman wrote: post #169
bombcar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They blackout on a home to home level? In CA it was whole towns

They blackout neighborhoods here I believe. My guess is that neighborhoods that largely heat with natural gas are spared, as they don't use a ton of electricity.

That makes sense - if you're going to blackout you want to start with the "highest loads" (perhaps per capita? per household?) so as to reduce the number of blackouts you have to cause. Better 10k people lose power than 50k.

Though if 60% of Texas homes are electric heat then you have to consider that, too, and how long it takes a 60º house to get to 40 (any lower and you begin to risk health and water damage). I assume they'd roll the blackouts and no neighborhood would be without power for more than a few hours.

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