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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

#531

Post by bob1029 »

kaibee wrote: post #352
xvilka wrote: post #171

A perfect case for the nuclear energy.

This is like, the worst possible case for nuclear energy, because this is a random fluctuation that won't be sustained for more than week. Whereas building a nuclear power plant costs billions of dollars and takes multiple decades to pay for itself.

Indeed - traditional nuclear power plants which cost billions of dollars per reactor unit and are wrapped up in mountains of politics are not the future. I think SpaceX has demonstrated the impact rapid iteration, modularization and standardization can have on billion-dollar+ capex projects.

There are SMR technologies that have already passed important phases of regulatory approval. Proposed nuclear technologies, such as from NuScale, will hypothetically be far more responsive to grid conditions than traditional nuclear power plants. Their current design can immediately reject 100% of thermal energy on demand. Power can be added or removed from the grid in increments as small as 77MW with their solution. This level of granularity is easily on-par with existing peaker plant capabilities.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#532

Post by tgtweak »

jhayward wrote: post #507
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…

> Texas had peak electrical production capacity of 37,600MW for it's population of 29M Texas delivered a peak of over 60GW last night , before an unprecedented falloff in generating capacity due to weather and grid conditions.

Majority of the difference between consumption and generation is imported. ERCOT is operating at 52,000MW right now, with 37,600 of it being generated on-grid.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#533

Post by jeffbee »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #529
jeffbee wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

How does this materially affect the discussion, though? If Texas at 67% fossil fuels is "shockingly green" then California, with at most 45% fossil fuels, must be jaw-droppingly green or some such nonsense.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#534

Post by meowster »

meowster wrote: post #452
ubermonkey wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem nice.

OP doesn't seem mean at all, just accurate that open floorplans these days are built poorly. When I was shopping for houses, I never saw a good open floorplan. They all had weird angles, flows that didn't make sense, and zero symmetry, and the asymmetry was terrible to. Open floorplans these days aren't built to be nice, they're built to sell.

Did I piss off an architect?

If anyone wants to see what I'm talking about, I think there are some examples here: https://McMansionHell.com Some of them aren't really that bad, but there are some definite atrocities.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#535

Post by ubermonkey »

mattmcknight wrote: post #522
ubermonkey wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: dampers, we generally close 2 of the 3 vents in the 3rd floor for the winter.

Re: the downstairs, unfortunately it warms up quickly on a hot day, and the structure of the house is such that the downstairs room's heat doesn't really have an easy path up.

The other factor is that, in a NORMAL, non-plague year, I'm alone in the house during the work day. If had perfect control of the house climate system, I'd let the upstairs drift to 80 or 82 while keeping my office at 76 or 78, and not start trying to cool the rest of the house until after hours when my wife gets home. Same with heating: just heat down here during the day, and warm the rest of the house in the evening.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#536

Post by jsmith45 »

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.

the Texas Interconnection (operated by ERCOT) is not fully isolated. They have 3 interconnections from Mexico (one of which has only ever been used once), and two with the eastern US.

It is not clear to me if these interconnections are normally used, or only used in Emergency scenarios. I think they are used both. However I have no idea what sort of capacity these have, and if that is enough in cases like this.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#537

Post by Animats »

As of Monday afternoon in Texas, it's getting worse, not better. The "rotating outages" have become longer. "Unfortunately, if you are a customer who is currently experiencing an outage, you should be prepared to be without power for at least the rest of the day."[1] Galveston is 95% dark.

Tonight's predicted low temp for Houston is 12F. Tuesday may be above freezing.

[1] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-weather/articl...

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#538

Post by pickle-wizard »

Scoundreller wrote: post #530
pickle-wizard wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No I never did. Griddy didn't have an API by the time I left. I had thought about setting up something to scrap the data from ERCOT's page, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#539

Post by s1artibartfast »

jeffbee wrote: post #533
s1artibartfast wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

How does this materially affect the discussion, though? If Texas at 67% fossil fuels is "shockingly green" then California, with at most 45% fossil fuels, must be jaw-droppingly green or some such nonsense.

I wanted to understand if the numbers you presented reflected a real snapshot of California's fossil fuel consumption or not.

I think the conclusion we came to is that the numbers you presented likely underestimate the fossil fuels, but there is still a big gap between Texas and California, and there is no material impact on the discussion. Thats OK.

I had an honest question about the data you presented, so I asked, and explained why I thought the data could be different.

You said my understanding was completely fictional, so I demonstrated that yes, in fact a significant portion of California imports come from fossil fuels.

Turns out that California's coal could be up to 3x the stated number, but is still less than Texas. My question is answered and hopefully we both understand the subject matter better now

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#540

Post by tzs »

manyes wrote: post #411
tzs wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone there get a battery system, like a Tesla Powerwall, to save up negative priced night electricity to use in the daytime?

Of course, during these cold snaps, the battery doesn't really work well, right?

Powerwalls have an operating temperature range of -4 F to 122 F (-20 C to 50 C), although they recommend 32-86 F (0-30 C).

They can also be mounted indoors.

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