Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

ercot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 597 posts

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#521

Post by rawgabbit »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #390

What I don't understand is that it sounds like the utilities were unprepared for the cold because the windmills and gas lines froze up. But the same tech is used in Canada fine because it sounds like they plan for the cold and have equipment options designed to deal with ice, etc. So, you might immediately think - ah, climate change strikes again! But then I hear this is only a low temp in the last 30-40yrs. Who does…

Texas can prepare for Canadian type cold weather but we don’t. I have lived in TX all my life and fondly refer it to the “blast furnace”. Weeks of 100F is what I am used to.

Most folks here don’t own winter tires for their cars. We don’t have car battery kick start kits like Canadians do. Many apartment dwellers only have electric heat. We are optimized for a semi arid plains climate. Optimizing for hot and cold is beyond the reach of most.

One thing I wonder about is all the wind turbines in Texas. If they get iced over and continue to rotate, does the ice cause the blades unnecessary vibration and structural damage?

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#522

Post by mattmcknight »

ubermonkey wrote: post #492
mattmcknight wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in a similar structure for a while, a 3 story townhouse with single zone hvac, thermostat on the second floor. What was in that system that made it work was three dampers, one for each the floors. If you can locate the main duct going to each floor, you should be able to add a manually operated damper to reduce flow to the upper floor when heating and reduce flow to the lower floor when cooling. When I switch…

We have a sort of dumb zoning already, which is a thermostat on the first floor, but it only allows the first to opt out of whatever heating or cooling is happening in the rest of the house. This is never something we want to do. Before COVID were were shopping to upgrade, so we're not going to put any more upgrade money into this house, but if we were going to stay I'd absolutely make changes in this.

The manual dampers for the ducts can be as cheap as $20. Why wouldn't you turn off cooling on the ground floor in summer? Heat should rise.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#523

Post by tgtweak »

stdbrouw wrote: post #469
tgtweak wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be a combination of many things (a perfect storm...): • Dwellings are not insulated to the same level as their northern counterparts. Over 60% of houses in Texas have single pane glass. • Texas seems to rely substantially on heat pumps for residential heating, with fallback to resistive heating. At 10°f very few heat pumps can supply sufficient heat to keep even a decently insulated house properly heated - m…

As others have pointed out, heating requirements (watt/m^2) are in fact linear which is why it's possible to more or less accurately calculate a building's insulation performance in watt/m^2/K, it's just that there's a grace zone where if it's e.g. 65F outside and you want it to be 72F inside, you might not need to heat at all because the shortfall is covered by solar gains through your windows, internal gains (cooki…

Yes that is correct in theory, BTU requirements are linear based on delta temperature with everything else being static.

What doesn't follow is electricity consumption per BTU produced, ie. if your heating source efficiency is non-linear, such as a heat-pump + resistive fallback heating. You can easily consume 8x the amount of electricity with a delta T of 60 than you do at 15.

In reality, outdoor air temperature alone isn't indicative of the entire building heat loss/requirement - ground temperatures don't respond linearly to air temperatures. Likewise, there are some oddities that come into play with high temperature deltas such as phase-change of materials or outright failure in some cases. Precipitation and wind can also affect thermal efficiencies.

A bitter-sweet example for Texans: The snow can actually provide some insulation. It would be worse if you had no snow and similar air temperatures than getting that 12" of fluffy stuff later this week.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#524

Post by heyflyguy »

txlpo78 wrote: post #505
heyflyguy wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A giant graveyard outside Sweetwater, Texas. It's a blight in every way. You cannot recycle this stuff.

Are you talking about this? Global Fiberglass Solutions Of West Texas https://goo.gl/maps/od4YB3MubUqT5B6a9 It’s a field about 600x600 feet. I wouldn’t call that “giant”, it’s about the size of a typical warehouse and certainly smaller than most landfills. And according to some brief searches on the internet, they are indeed being recycled.

I didn't know they can be recycled, and that is not the only graveyard. I appreciate the fact that we have differing opinions on the size of giant!

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#525

Post by tgtweak »

lighttower wrote: post #491
tgtweak wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be a combination of many things (a perfect storm...): • Dwellings are not insulated to the same level as their northern counterparts. Over 60% of houses in Texas have single pane glass. • Texas seems to rely substantially on heat pumps for residential heating, with fallback to resistive heating. At 10°f very few heat pumps can supply sufficient heat to keep even a decently insulated house properly heated - m…

Why does Quebec use more electrical power in winter if most (nearly all) of their heating is natural gas/oil based?

Electricity cost in Quebec is around USD $0.05/kWh. Combine that with the fact that most alternative heating sources are at a premium (natural gas, propane and oil all cost substantially more in Quebec than they do in, for example, Texas) and the fact that 98% of Electricity is renewable source, that leads to a very heavy proportion of electric heat. It's not uncommon to have residential units exclusively heated by baseboard heaters - the least efficient means as far as energy required per unit of heat - however it's still cheaper to operate on a yearly basis than a natural gas furnace, while costing 20% of that to install/maintain.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#526

Post by usefulcat »

ubermonkey wrote: post #412
tgtweak wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be a combination of many things (a perfect storm...): • Dwellings are not insulated to the same level as their northern counterparts. Over 60% of houses in Texas have single pane glass. • Texas seems to rely substantially on heat pumps for residential heating, with fallback to resistive heating. At 10°f very few heat pumps can supply sufficient heat to keep even a decently insulated house properly heated - m…

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…

Do you close off the vents in the upstairs rooms? Seems like that would help a lot in the winter.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#527

Post by tgtweak »

eatmyshorts wrote: post #518
tgtweak wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be a combination of many things (a perfect storm...): • Dwellings are not insulated to the same level as their northern counterparts. Over 60% of houses in Texas have single pane glass. • Texas seems to rely substantially on heat pumps for residential heating, with fallback to resistive heating. At 10°f very few heat pumps can supply sufficient heat to keep even a decently insulated house properly heated - m…

I was agreeing with your points....until I got to the bit, "Texas typically imports from neighboring states". Not with power. ERCOT is an isolated grid.

It imports from Mexico and neighboring grids.

From ERCOT's own Q&A:

-----------

EEA1

When the reserves drop below 2,300 megawatts, Emergency Energy Alert 1 is activated. That’s when ERCOT communicates to the public and to power generators that the situation is deteriorating.

At this time, ERCOT will import power from other states and from Mexico. This regularly happens during peak summer months and is not new. But right now, because prices are so cheap, and unrelated to the weather, ERCOT was already importing power from Mexico and other power grids.

Rotating outages do not happen during this stage.

EEA2

When the electric reserves drop to 1750 megawatts, other steps are taken to bring on additional capacity, but rotating outages are still not yet activated.

EEA3

When the reserves get to 1,000 megawatts and they are not expected to recover within 30 minutes, ERCOT will then ask electric suppliers like Oncor and Reliant to begin rotating outages to reduce load on the system.

ERCOT said the location of outages would be determined by each provider like Oncor and Reliant.

https://www.wfaa.com/article/weather/texas-power-outages-fre...

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#528

Post by throwaway9870 »

sct202 wrote: post #501
throwaway9870 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw something that said these are the lowest temps in the last 30 yrs. That isn't once in a century!

There were 3 'once in 500 year' floods in Houston from 2015-2017. It makes no sense.

I have a friend that lives in an area that drains into the Chesapeake bay. He is doing some changes to his property and is not allowed to do anything that would increase water run-off. OK, I said, that seems quite reasonable. Then he tells me it is for 12in of rain in 24hr. Wow, ok, that is a lot but I guess it could happen. Yes, it is a once in a 100yr storm. Then he tells me the rule is you have to handle that, and be prepared for another one within 48hrs. What?? Any water retention has to be drained within 24hrs so that if another storm hits it can be handled. So two, once in a century storms in a total of 72hrs. Kind of changes the definition of once in a century?

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#529

Post by s1artibartfast »

jeffbee wrote: post #479
s1artibartfast wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share your source? I wonder if you are looking at production or consumption numbers. California is the largest energy importer in the USA (25%) and my understanding is that the number 1 source for this power is coal and natural gas in Arizona and Utah.

I'm looking at this source for California which includes imports. The main source of error is "unspecified" open market imports, but even if 100% of that is from fossil fuels, which seems unlikely, the worst-case error is another 7% of the total. https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... Your understanding sounds completely fictional to me. Where did you come to believe that the primary source o…

I didn't say Utah coal specifically. I said the leading sources were coal and natural gas from Arizona and Utah. I based this on theEIA. [1]

>In 2019, California’s net electricity imports were the largest in the country at 70.8 million megawatthours (MWh), or 25% of the state’s total electricity supply ... California utilities partly own and import power from several power plants in Arizona and Utah.

Arizona is ~75% coal and natural gas [2] Utah is ~80% and natural gas [3]

Looking at your link [4], 70% of California imports are "non-renewable and unspecified" and 75% of "non-renewable and unspecified" comes from the southwest (e.g. Arizona and Utah)

I think this brings us to the same conclusion that the number 1 source for imported electricity is coal and natural gas in Arizona and Utah. You are saying that a worst case for CA power is being 3-10% coal. I am talking about the worst case for CA imported power (which happens to be up to 37% coal)

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46156#:~:tex....

[2] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=AZ#tabs-4

[3] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=UT#tabs-4

[4] https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#530

Post by Scoundreller »

pickle-wizard wrote: post #508
mimikatz wrote: post #6

Texas is shockingly green when it comes to power. The windmills have frozen and it is the winter when there isn't as much sun. Most people are on a contract with fixed pricing, but some startups like Griddy are hurting people's wallets. We will likely see some retail electric company bankrupcies. Some of the electric providers are paying customers to move to someone else on Monday. The Joke is all the Californians wh…

I was on Griddy for about 9 months a couple of years ago. Until one very hot August, when the wholesale price hit $10/kWh in the afternoon. My power bill for one day was $130. I didn't even wait till the end of the month. I switched back to my old power company that afternoon. Thankfully they were able to switch me back the next morning.

Trick is to set up a couple transfer switches and make a deal with your neighbour on a fixed rate plan. Could do it just for the air conditioner and gain most of the savings.

We’re you able to set up anything interesting to take advantage of ebbs and flows in rates?

Post reply on HN