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Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

ercot.com

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Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#61
post #8

It is kind of weird and worrisome that such a large entity doesn't use https Look at the weird error message... https://www.ercot.com/ The rest of the site appears to be http only What's funny is that they do have a valid certificate for their error message page.

Encryption uses too much power

So that’s why Kirk always had to bother poor Scotty

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#62
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I was on track for a $5000 electric bill at the end of the week. I got switched over yesterday. Still going to be painful but not horrible.

$5k?!?!? How?!

My house normally uses 70kwh/day. We have an electric heater and with this cold weather we were on track to use 150-200kwh day. At $5/kwh for 5 days of 200kwh due to the cold puts me at $5,000.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#63
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, it's not that there is no wind. 50% of the Turbines have been shut down do to icing. The also have some NatGas suppliers that suffered freezing damage. So it's a combination of things that are adding up. I'm in North Texas and I can't remember temps this low in the last 30 years. It's about 13 degrees (- 10 C) at the moment and it looks like it is going to get a lot colder in the coming days.

Correct. The summer of 2019 was no wind. Today’s problem is ice.

I'm guessing ice is such a rare problem the turbines in Texas aren't equipped to handle it. Not that turbines can't de-ice themselves, right? Surely if they can operate in the North Sea, they can operate in West and South Texas, yeah?

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#64

Texan here. I tried, on Thursday, to buy a space heater; not only was the hardware store out, they told me a list of other places around town that were also out. Most homes use natural gas for heat, but I think a lot of space heaters are probably turned on right now. I also have to wonder how an everyone-videoconference-from-home society changes electricity usage? Not saying it has a significant impact, just wonderin…

I'm thinking it must take quite a bit more energy to heat all those big sprawling Texas homes to a comfortable temp during the day than the relative efficiency you can get for heating a building full of tightly packed offices. But this would be more of an issue with cooling since it is hotter mid-day. Whereas with cold, it gets colder at night, and most people are at home at night anyway.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#65
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…

Griddy literally emailed every customer yesterday and told them to switch providers asap.

They emailed, sent a phone notification and called their customers to tell them to switch

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#66
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…

> windmills

Wind turbines! :)

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#67
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Texas' weather is colder now than in the past 40 years. Yes. Thus "Extreme" weather. I was going to suggest it is likely due to climate change, but that is largely conjecture.

There likely is a climate change effect. Polar vortexes have been making deeper incursions into North America because of increased turbulence in the atmosphere, driven by the overall energy level. This about a pot, slowly boiling. As it gets hotter, it swirls more.

Yeah, we've had a couple of major ice storms/ extreme snow here in the past 3 years too. It's a little disturbing when you realize they are hitting us at the expense of the North Pole.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#68
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…

"The Joke is all the Californians who immigrated brought the blackouts with them. "

Ouch, yet wow.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#69
post #13

Seems like this is where a generator and appropriate hookup for powering (primarily?) a gas furnace might not be a terrible thing. Unfortunately almost all homes regardless of source will lose heat if the power goes out because of fans and furnace control.

I was just looking at natural gas powered generators because of this. I've had an accumulative 24 hours of outages in the past month. They don't seem bad, the units themselves are around $6k. Definitely worth considering!

If you’re just looking for emergence power you can get honda e2200i generator with a gas adapter for around 1500 USD.

Re: Ercot nearly at capacity for Texas power grid

#70
post #55

Weird.. you'd think with the AC demand in the summer they'd have enough capacity for winter..

I think the problem is that homes are also designed to cool, efficiently, which is why many a/c and heater units are in the attic with vents in the ceiling.

This means that they tend to heat homes more inefficiently than in places that are used to very cold weather.

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