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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

#431

Post by brianwawok »

stdbrouw wrote: post #322
whatever1 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm, heating is either switched off/on depending on a thermostat ("bang-bang") or in more sophisticated systems is regulated according to need (modulating control). It might be on 24/7 regardless of whether it's hot or cold, but it's not going to use the same amount of power.

My furnace, which is common in mid level units, is two phase. It’s off, low, high. Basically it starts by modulating off and low. Once low is on 24/7 and it needs more heat, it modules low/high. At peak heat it’s just high all the time.

Upside to being in Indiana is our furnaces are made for this. I think I can keep my house at 70 down to like -30F outside. It’s a pretty expensive furnace though, wouldn’t make sense in Texas.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#432

Post by brianwawok »

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"?

If you have a Tesla power wall, I believe you can set it up to do this. Basically go power wall (house battery) to house during expensive times of electricity. And then charge the battery back up during cheap electric times. I think even 10% of the grid with such a system would do a lot to take the edge off peak demand, as all of those goes guys go to 0% usage.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#433

Post by fluidcruft »

Reason077 wrote: post #426

Browsing from the UK, I got: "Access Denied Error 16 www.ercot.com 2021-02-15 14:23:49 UTC If you believe you have a valid business reason for accessing ERCOT resources, please contact the ERCOT HelpDesk at 512-248-6800 or 1-866-870-8124 (USA) or HelpDesk@ercot.com. Your IP: 148.252.xxx.xxx Error code: 16 > This request was blocked by the security rules" Using a VPN with a US IP address, I was able to view the ercot…

I'm in the US and was blocked because I have firefox set to request https.

SSL Not Supported Error 29 www.ercot.com 2021-02-15 14:37:28 UTC

If you believe you have a valid business reason for accessing ERCOT resources, please contact the ERCOT HelpDesk at 512-248-6800 or 1-866-870-8124 (USA) or HelpDesk@ercot.com.

Please provide the HelpDesk with the information supplied below.

Your IP: x.x.x.x

Error code: 29 > SSL is not supported

Usually you just get an error so that Firefox can let you click through to the http site, but this error thing inhibits that.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#434

Post by brianwawok »

eitland wrote: post #349
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"?

> 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: -…

Sadly Tesla doesn’t have the tech in their car to pump power out fast. You need their home battery product power wall.

It’s actually very sad, I have a great 75 kWh battery in my garage. Would be happy to power my home with it during peak demand.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#435

Post by lotsofpulp »

ubermonkey wrote: post #428
lotsofpulp wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first problem is just distribution. Our house has a modern 'open' style floorplan, with soaring ceilings in the middle (living) floor. Heat, of course, rises. This style of house made so that people can feel rich and high status while wasting enormous amounts of energy to heat and cool is an affront to our future generations. And it’s almost inescapable unless you’re interested in custom building or buying an o…

You seem nice.

It wasn’t a personal comment. I’ve seen it in all the houses built in the past 3 decades, coast to coast. Makes no sense thermodynamically. Obviously it sells better than a house that wastes less energy.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#436

Post by the8472 »

rini17 wrote: post #422
ubermonkey wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greetings from Texas. Yeah, all that is true. You build based on how things usually are, or at least usually WERE when the dwelling was built. I live in Houston -- very close to downtown, so I'm only about 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. This makes it VERY FUCKING WEIRD INDEED that my entire yard is covered in snow, and it is 16F outside. This is NOT Houston weather. It's almost unprecedented -- it's certainly neve…

For open spaces an IR radiative heater - the kind with glowing elements - is better. It won't save much energy, but for comfort - you can actually point it toward your body and warmup it that way without having to heat everything around you first. The fireplace does this too.

> the kind with glowing elements

There are far-infrared ceramic heaters that don't glow. Less smell and more energy converted into radiation instead of warm air.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#437

Post by jillesvangurp »

bloaf wrote: post #31

Natural gas prices have been absolutely wild the past few days. https://www.naturalgasintel.com/weekly-natural-gas-prices-so... If you're not used to their bizarre units of volume the key takaway is this: Quantities of gas that usually sell for ~ $3 were selling for over $300 on Friday/Saturday.

That price volatility is an interesting thing. It could actually accelerate the transition to renewables in places like Texas. Gas for peaker plants becomes a lot less attractive when the price can jump by 100x when it is most needed. If that becomes a regular thing, people will want other options. And of course such options are readily available in the market now in the form of e.g. solar + battery that you can install in your home.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#438

Post by tamaharbor »

TheGrim-999 wrote: post #190
evan_ wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an incandescent bulb phase out over several years that was supposed to end in 2020, but Trump blocked it because he claimed that LED bulbs were too expensive and made him look orange.[0] You pretty much can’t buy them anymore at stores except for specialty bulbs like oven lamps, but that might vary state-to-state. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/climate/trump-light-bulb-...

So, someone at the Department of Energy that was hired in 2012, under Obama, made a ruling, and that's translated by the NYTimes as the "Trump Administration" doing it, which then gets referenced as "Trump blocked it because they make him look orange". Fake news in action, folks.

Few appreciate Trump’s humor. Particularly democrats.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#439

Post by cwhiz »

baq wrote: post #368
bombcar wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

that's the scary part: daytime demand is much higher.

http://www.ercot.com/

You can see the forecasted gap on the home page. It’s going to her worse.

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