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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

#311

Post by bombcar »

xxpor wrote: post #144
bombcar wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wind turbine spins because of an analog of lift - without “lift” it won’t spin. There’s also the issue of balance.

>The wind turbine spins because of an analog of lift - without “lift” it won’t spin. Thinking about it, that does make perfect sense, but just intuitively, I would think say, making a blade that had a flat side perpendicular to the wind direction would work, because the force can still be imparted to the blade. I can also intuitively surmise why that wouldn't work for a plane though. When dealing with a plane, you wa…

You're not - a flat board works as a wing with enough force behind it. There's a description on how a wing works involving Bernoulli's law - but it's more accurate to think of it how your hand feels when you hold it out the window of a car at speed.

And of course old windmills were just boards - and I suspect they only stop working in the cold if the bearings freeze.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#312

Post by nottorp »

jabl wrote: post #279
p_l wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like the "GDPR doesn't allow to spy on users, let's block anyone who could be covered by it" kind of block.

I've been able to view the ERCOT site before, so probably not. At this point it makes sense for them to prioritize getting information out to residents rather than us foreigners with an idle interest. :)

Yup, guess they turned on some crisis plan. Which is targeted more at those evil hackers outside the US than at an actual capacity problem :)

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#313

Post by tolien »

nyokodo wrote: post #236
Daho0n wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas is the state with the most wind energy in the US? 42,933km2 Denmark has 6GW wind energy capacity and 695,662km2 Texas has 31GW. That doesn't sound very impressive.

Texas has 5X the population of Denmark and 5X the wind energy generation. That doesn’t sound like a great justification for your smug comment. Also, that is current generation as the rate of increase of wind and solar appears to far outstrip Denmark on a per capita basis. If the WSJ is reliable, Texas is supposed to add an additional ~17GW of solar by 2023, reaching 21GW![1] If they reach that it’d beat Denmark’s 203…

Per capita doesn't seem like the most useful measure here unless you're expecting people to spin the turbines by hand. Texas has (by GP's numbers) 16 times the land area and 2.5x the annual sunshine hours [1,2] (given Texas's proximity to the equator relative to Denmark, I'd be shocked if those hours didn't confer significantly more power too) but "only" 5x the generation?

Edit: Of course, it's 5x the wind power. For solar power in Texas and Denmark the difference is about 4x - 4,324.3 versus 1,079 MW [3, 4] so the point stands that Texas still has a way to go relative to the resources available to them.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_sunshine_dur...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark#Climate

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Denmark

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Texas

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#314

Post by joosters »

jodrellblank wrote: post #307
joosters wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why are you assuming that the poor are demanding t-shirt and shorts temperatures? Please stop making up strawmen.

And when did dishwashers come into this? Are you really expecting that poor people should be buying brand new 'smart' dishwashers that will pick the right time to run to save some cents? I'm sure they've got the cash for that purchase just sitting around in the bank.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#315

Post by nottorp »

Scoundreller wrote: post #228

Now at level 3: Situation Critical: "has declared an EEA 3. Energy conservation is critical. Rotating outages are underway to reduce demand on the electric system. We urge Texans to put safety first during this time. Traffic lights and other infrastructure may be temporarily without power. 01:25:40 150221" https://twitter.com/ERCOT_ISO "Rotating outages primarily affect residential neighborhoods and small businesses…

> "Rotating outages primarily affect residential neighborhoods and small businesses and are typically limited to 10 to 45 minutes before being rotated to another location."

I don't understand. Here they shut down a couple large factories (that have agreed beforehand to emergency shutdowns) when there are capacity problems. Those eat so much power that it usually solves the problem.

They don't shut down power to residential just for capacity, if you're without power at home it means something blew up on the path that delivers to you.

Also, how can a gas pipeline freeze? Almost everyone is heating with natural gas here, we have a cold wave, and the only question is if they can deliver enough volume. Which is again fixed by shutting down some large industrial consumers, not by freezing homes.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#316

Post by whatever1 »

jcranmer wrote: post #185
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…

The problem here is the high tomorrow in Dallas is supposed to be about 10°F. The typical winter high for Dallas is a bit below 60°F. This means that the demand for heating is about 4-6× what it normally would be for winter.

But on the other hand there are only so many hours in a day to run your HVAC/space heater. So from 8 hours per day, it can go worst case to 3x.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#317

Post by NickNameNick »

walrus01 wrote: post #8

It is kind of weird and worrisome that such a large entity doesn't use https Look at the weird error message... https://www.ercot.com/ The rest of the site appears to be http only What's funny is that they do have a valid certificate for their error message page.

I can't even access it.

"Error code: 16 > This request was blocked by the security rules"

No idea why. Maybe they don't feel the need to serve thier website to foreigners?

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#318

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

rossdavidh wrote: post #4

Texan here. I tried, on Thursday, to buy a space heater; not only was the hardware store out, they told me a list of other places around town that were also out. Most homes use natural gas for heat, but I think a lot of space heaters are probably turned on right now. I also have to wonder how an everyone-videoconference-from-home society changes electricity usage? Not saying it has a significant impact, just wonderin…

If you have anything else that can use a significant amount of power (e.g. electric stove/hotplate, kettle, gaming rig, bitcoin miner), it's just as efficient as a space heater.

This also means that if your alternative is running a resistive heater, there's no meaningful extra cost to e.g. mining cryptocurrencies with your GPU (assuming you have decent cooling so your components don't get damaged from overheating).

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#319

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

black_puppydog wrote: post #310

> This request was blocked by the security rules I'd guess they have a geoblock for some fucked-up-BS reason or another?

Imperva seems to be offering a "solve GDPR compliance with this checkbox" solution that blocks the EU from accessing your web site.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#320

Post by LeoPanthera »

Animats wrote: post #253
JimNasby wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grid has basically zero capability to change the voltage; frequency is all that matters. Frequency is so low that in the past hour any power line time base has fallen over 5.5 seconds behind. That’s a massive drop in frequency.

No, voltage can be dropped a bit. "Brownouts" are a thing. But they're less effective than they used to be, because everything with a switching power supply will draw more current if the input voltage drops. That's now a big fraction of the load.

Surely it’s not a big fraction of the load tonight. This whole problem is being caused by heaters.
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