On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills • Hacker News Board

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#51

Post by bluGill » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #39

Can anyone tell me: Why is there no automatic stop-limit the customers can opt into? Once the $/KWh passes some threshold, power either gets turned off, or they get some short grace period to figure out whether they want to continue or stop. Price runs like these are things consumers will experience probably a handful of times in their lifetimes. If they run wild, they can financially ruin someone. In the grand schem…

Because nobody thought they would need it until it was too late.

Note that everyone at risk of this even was told beforehand to switch providers now, so there was an "easy out" if you were paying attention (In theory easy, in practice, while it isn't never easy). Or you could have turned your own power off - When you get a time of use contract the point is you want to adjust your demand to fit the price, so anyone who got a large bill failed to do their end of the bargain.

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#52

Post by masklinn » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #31

techsupporter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Time-of-use plans have an app or web portal into which a customer can log into. (Actually, most providers in Texas these days have a real-time portal customers can use simply because smart metering enables it.) 2. Yep, my parents were, and they will never use a time-of-use plan ever again. 3. No. I made a spreadsheet and, based on my math their being bit by this in mid-2019 would have not paid off prior to this ev…

Yeah, that's kind of ridiculous. Like picking pennies up in front of a steamroller. Granted, if the cost savings were enough, a homeowner could install a battery/genset backup with the savings and have that automatically switch over when prices got nuts, but that's not within the abilities or even mindset of most people.

> Granted, if the cost savings were enough

They probably are enough over long periods, or retailers wouldn't be profitable.

However that assumes you hedge properly. If you treat your savings from "good times" as extra cash to spend you're going to get burned to the ground by the bad times.

It also means you have to be extremely reactive, now you need a setup to quickly cutoff electricity if wholesale prices skyrocket, and you need to be on the ball checking wholesale prices like a whale checks their gasha.

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#53

Post by ArkanExplorer » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #11

mortenjorck wrote: post #4

Is there a reason why time-of-use systems can’t have a customer-defined price limit, beyond which they opt into a blackout? The sense I got from the stories of people suddenly facing five-figure power bills is that most would have gladly spent a night or two with propane and candles rather than cleaning out their savings.

There's no fundamental technical reason. It costs money to install the smart meters. It would cost more money to install control systems and automatic transfer switches, but even the smallest generator-backed (or multi-feed) datacenter has all the equipment technically needed to implement what you describe. Many large UPS units have everything as well. It's probably an additional $3-6K on top of the smart meter to bu…

Every second appliance has Wifi nowadays - but we need an industry standard that allows consumers to control usage based on price, perhaps by assigning specific appliances in your house to your energy retailer web account, and then allowing the retailer/grid operator to control when they are turned off and on (or to adjust their energy intensity) in return for a monthly discount.

For example just by heating and cooling houses a few hours before people get home, we can shift a lot of demand towards the middle of the day when solar power is abundant, and away from evening peaks.

We're definitely going to need something like this for widespread EV usage, where cars can potentially upload power to the grid.

Government has a role here in setting standards. They are the ones who get blamed for high energy prices or outages, anyway.

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#54

Post by woeirua » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

The big takeaway from all of this should be the critical cyclic dependency of natural gas power plants. That is, if your primary source of power is natural gas, then you must have reliable power to the natural gas wells to produce natural gas. If the power becomes unreliable, then natural gas pressures in the pipelines drop to unsuitable levels to run large generators. As the generators trip due to adverse safety conditions, then your power generation decreases even further, thereby making the natural gas pipeline pressure even worse. It's entirely possible to foresee a cycle wherein a grid powered mostly or entirely by natural gas could end up unable to maintain any power generation under the right circumstances.

This is a very strong and compelling argument for maintaining some core baseload generation capacity that is completely independent of existing power generation. Batteries could be one solution. Nuclear is another. Geothermal could be a good solution to this problem.

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#55

Post by _jal » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #39

Can anyone tell me: Why is there no automatic stop-limit the customers can opt into? Once the $/KWh passes some threshold, power either gets turned off, or they get some short grace period to figure out whether they want to continue or stop. Price runs like these are things consumers will experience probably a handful of times in their lifetimes. If they run wild, they can financially ruin someone. In the grand schem…

Creating complicated pricing automation for home consumers for rare situations when they're exposed to brutal pricing in a life-or-death crisis is not the solution. If anything, you'll be causing more chaos, as people grapple with rules they don't remember setting up.

The safety guards tend to be laws saying, "you can't sell those". Consumer utilities should be boring and predictable, and need to be legally controlled to stay that way.

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#56

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #35

pxeboot wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, a lot of people would have been happy to have a 5 figure electric bill instead of having their pipes freeze from an involuntary blackout.

Which is why the parent comment says "can have a limit", not "must require a limit". That way, those who would rather get through a blackout without paying insane bills can have an option to do so, while those who care about their pipes freezing can pay to keep the electricity.

I still think this is totally unfeasible. Then all the news stories would just be "Fine print in electric contract shut off power for many, now facing thousands in water damage bills."

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#57

Post by aqme28 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #26

It strikes me that Texas is suffering the same sort of problems that companies that switch to just-in-time delivery do. When everything is working they're more efficient and can out-compete their neighbors, but since they're running with little to no safety margin it only takes one incident to cause immediate disruption to the line. Of course when the consequence of a disruption is you miss your production targets fo…

See also: hospitals running at close full capacity in a normal year[1], and then a pandemic comes along.

[1]: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-03-26/...

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#58

Post by jonas21 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #29

jonas21 wrote: post #23

I didn't see this mentioned in the article, but there are many time-of-use plans that offer variable rates without exposing the consumer to additional risk. For example, my electric plan has different rates for "peak" (4pm - 9pm), "super off-peak" (12am - 6am), and "off-peak" (everything else). But these rates are fixed, so I know in advance how much I'll need to pay. This still incentivizes me to shift my usage to l…

That means you're not on the market. You just have a more complicated fixed rate plan.

I understand that -- but it seems like the main point of the article is:

> I believe we ultimately need some degree of real time price exposure for consumers if we are to induce these kinds of widespread energy efficiency investments, because it can and does encourage significant reductions in individual electricity consumption during times of peak grid demand, which is good for the grid and good for the planet.

And I'm just pointing out that you can get most of the benefit without exposing consumers to additional risk, and that such plans are already widely available, at least where I live.

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#59

Post by xoa » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #4

Is there a reason why time-of-use systems can’t have a customer-defined price limit, beyond which they opt into a blackout? The sense I got from the stories of people suddenly facing five-figure power bills is that most would have gladly spent a night or two with propane and candles rather than cleaning out their savings.

It's an avenue that should be pursued if a state truly wants to have market-based pricing. For that to work there definitely needs to be transparency and ways for customers to easily automatically adjust in response to pricing signals. Though it could be pricy, there is plenty of promising tech approaches and it could definitely be part of an overall more efficient grid.

For example, Tesla Powerwalls (disclaimer: I've got a few) already allow custom time-based controls precisely for the purpose of saving money when on a utility plan that is split into peak/shoulder/off-peak pricing. That's one of the ways they can offer some direct financial return (benefits from generator replacement and on-site production aside). That's not granular enough or automated enough to react to a situation like this one, but on the face of it doesn't seem like any reason it couldn't be. If Tesla had an API that someone like Griddy could talk to, an interface in the app for something like "price-based control" seems like it'd be doable and an interesting value-add and a relatively low lift. Powerwalls already have remote control functionality for grid-operator/customer deals. And it'd give a lot more buffer.

However those of course are $6.5k a pop right now. Long term it might be more fruitful for many people to lean on future electric vehicles for this. Those have humongous batteries and alternate ROI so a lot of people may ultimately have them anyway, vs being a dedicated expense. Hopefully the next decade, along with more fundamental grid investment period, will also see the natural spread of more and smarter buffering options.

Re: On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

#60

Post by thinkcontext » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #18

There are some interesting details here but let's be suuuper clear, nobody in the residential sector consented to a 12,000% increase in power costs or a $5,000 - $16,000 power bill this month. I think the article tries extremely hard to forgive everyone involved aside from the residents who have now been completely devastated by this. The only real acknowledgement that residents have truly suffered something they did…

They chose to risk the possibility of unlimited prices. They chose to abandon agents that would hedge against price spikes. They pocketed the money they "saved" and chose not to insure themselves against this possibility.

We have been subjected to sneering lectures from Texans and libertarians about the nanny state, socialist bureaucrats, freedom killing regulation, Venezuela, the Great Leap Forward and on and on. I'd suggest Texans kick such politicians out of government and replace them with ones that have advocated for sane policies PRIOR to this event.