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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

#341

Post by bombcar »

chasd00 wrote: post #85

i'm in Dallas, power has been stable so far but i made sure i got ye'olde generator out, checked the oil, and got plenty of gas. My house is really old and the cold just slowly creeps in. By Tuesday i bet i can't get it over 60 inside. All of my furnaces run on gas at least but if the power goes they'll probably turn off. I have a little bit of firewood for the fireplace but not enough to heat the whole house that's…

If possible shed load on the furnace - close vents in rooms that don't have water pipes in them and close the doors to those rooms - focus the heat on a smaller area. Try to keep rooms that have less "outside wall" area as the main focal point for people and heat. Move computers into the main room, keep people together if possible.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#342

Post by bombcar »

nottorp wrote: post #333
bombcar wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've already done that - that is EEA 1 and 2 (1 being voluntary shutdown, 2 being involuntary shutdown). They've asked everyone who CAN go to backup generators (think: hospitals, datacenters) to do so. If short-term shedding of residential load doesn't work, the next step is to blackout commercial players - think Walmart, etc. Those usually occur for longer periods of time and have security risks involved. Natural…

> the next step is to blackout commercial players Yeah, my point is they have the order wrong. They're shutting down residential first with the associated health risks instead of shutting down commercial which will just send people home for a day or three.

I was wrong - there is no EEA 4. It's up to the local utilities to determine how to shed load; I suspect many office parks are already without power (but at 4 AM they're also probably not using much power).

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#343

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

That's on a per-day granularity. Not on a per second granularity.

Imagine yourself standing at the pump and observing the gasoline price ticker, manually PWMing the pump trigger to only feed the gas when its price is below some threshold.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#344

Post by [deleted] »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #250
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…

My parents live in Dallas and rarely use the heating because of cost; instead they wear scarves and mittens inside. They are running it now, because it is the coldest they've ever seen. When your alternative is to freeze to death, you pay. Finding fault with people because of that is insensitive and lacking in empathy. They know the cost, they also know what the temperature outside is. Resilience is an important prin…

[deleted]

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#345

Post by skinkestek »

NickNameNick wrote: post #306
airhead969 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Just in case anyone is about to miss this detail:

That heater probably doesn't run continously.

For a well designed shared system you can get away with less than n x what an individual unit needs.

(That said, I too guess 2.5kW is too small for what GP mentioned.)

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#346

Post by nindalf »

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"?

They might not need to now, when most energy is generated by systems that run around the clock. But as we generate more solar, it'd be great if people could run more of their high energy activities like say, car charging during the day. I don't know of any way to incentivise this behaviour other than pricing.

Of course it's unreasonable to expect people to monitor prices on a minute-by-minute basis. But the future probably looks like "oh, car is low right now. I'll plug it in this afternoon instead of right now".

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#347

Post by a9h74j »

eigenvector wrote: post #216
roenxi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be interesting, when the dust settles, to see how this event squares away with the regulator's risk modelling. My initial impression is there is a correlation between extreme power demand and renewable energy being unavailable that would not have been present for a nuclear or fossil fuel based system.

ERCOT is pretty good about releasing their event analysis after the fact. I think the main issue with renewables is not inherent unreliability but that grid operators do not understand the potential contingencies as well as with conventional generation sources. SPP has put out some good analyzes of recent max generation events there involving large amounts of wind being unavailable in cold snaps. It turns out no one…

Somewhat off topic, but are regulators also considering mandating Basalt rebar in wind tower foundations, prohibiting steel rebar?

I don't know what the re-use story is for foundation plus tower, but it seems to me a bad idea to start with the assumption of rusting out the foundations.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#348

Post by sneak »

namibj wrote: post #297
dmurray wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane can't realistically freeze in the pipes, but unrefined natural gas has plenty of impurities which can. Note they're talking about "pipelines and wells" freezing in a gas production context, not residential gas mains.

Understandable. As long as it remains available, the price hike seems to incentivize operators to expend energy on manually thawing them. I'm assuming they could rig up makeshift natural gas burners/heat lamps to keep critical sections above freezing.

I feel like this reads like the first 60 seconds of intro to one of those youtube disaster-recounting videos.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#349

Post by eitland »

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"?

> 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"?

Pricing here in Norway already changes through the day.

I changed my supplier yesterday to one that has an api.

I'll use the current prices as an excuse to fix a few things:

- turning down heat at night, heating fast before demand peaks, lower heating during peak etc. Boxes that can do this are available in the $150 - $350 price range

- scheduling washing and drying and - if necessary - showering to low demand times

- maybe install a fireplace (chimney was mandatory when tje house was built so I'll just pay for the actual fireplace and installation, not extensive modifications to the construction

- or a air-air heat pump (also works as AC)

- not relevant to me at tjr moment but EV owners (of which there are plenty around here) can save a lot by scheduling charging to avoid peaks. Further down the lane I think I've heard about someone (Tesla?) planning to allow their vehicles to be used as power banks.

It is probably the main selling point for Tibber here in Norway, prices were slightly lower than my previous supplier, but not enough to make me switch. The current price hike, API access and real time price information helped me to make the jump however.

Conclusion:

Providing pricing information and APIs to end users seems like a good idea for companies that are in a position to provide it.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#350

Post by djrobstep »

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"?

Here in Australia, I'm on a power plan that charges you the actual current wholesale price (plus an admin fee).

I have an app where I can check the price, and set up alerts for when there are price spikes and such.

I don't rabidly monitor it, but it does nudge you into changing your behavior gradually.

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