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What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

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Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#671

Post by danans »

oivey wrote: post #295
danans wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates. The technologies can work, but only if measures are taken to make them work that way, and those measures are expensive. Texas' grid, like most of the nation's grid, is optimized to keep prices low for consumers and profits steady for generators and distributors, and it's worked amazingly well at that. But "running lean" is great and everyone wins…

They aren’t that expensive, seeing as probably most states can operate their power grid at reasonable cost at these temperatures. They definitely aren’t expensive compared to the economic damage of an event like this every 15 years.

"Expensive" is all relative. If it costs say ... 2% of the utility shareholder dividend, would shareholders be ok with that?

Before this happened, what exactly were the incentives that led them not to prepare? Was it really an unforeseeable event? Was the risk understood but downplayed (like the oil industry with climate change)? The answers to these will hopefully come out in time.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#672

Post by worker767424 »

bstar77 wrote: post #409
worker767424 wrote: post #94

The Texas-only grid was definitely part of it, and should be a lesson to people who thought the lesson from Covid is "do more locally." No, having stronger, longer distance connections is what makes you more resilient, at least when there are local problems.

No, having a distributed grid is what makes you more resilient. If every house had solar panels this would likely be a non-issue.

> If every house had solar panels this would likely be a non-issue.

I doubt this. That would mean a lot of power plants were taken offline as solar ramped up, and I doubt that enough solar to cool a house from 105 to 75 can heat it from 15 to 70.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#673

Post by 8note »

benlivengood wrote: post #393
redisman wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not good for heating? I'm sure resistance based electric heating is very efficient. I've lived in very cold places and the heat has almost always been electric or water heated by electric. You just need radiators. Northern European countries for example use that a lot and the temperatures are often as low as -22F. Of course they build to optimize for low temperatures unlike TX.

Boilers/furnaces are ~90% efficient now. Combined electrical/heat generation can only hit 50-80% efficiency. In theory heat pumps powered by electricity would be the most efficient option.

Theory would require some magical fluid to do the heat transfer, and we're limited to real coolants that don't have horrid environment impacts

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#674

Post by beerandt »

bluGill wrote: post #466
beerandt wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being close to the gulf a lot of people have generators that are likely big enough to power at least their fridge and one or more window/portable AC units. (For hurricanes.) That size is usually big enough to run a blower and control board (and maybe a few other circuits), but it wouldn't come close to powering an electric heating element. But having a gas heater makes it all doable. That's what we do, anyway.

Though with a generator that big and some ingenuity you can plumb the radiator into the house and get heat from the engine. The more load on the genererator the more heat.

Schemes like that are generally how CO poisoning stories start. Or fires. A door gets cracked to run a hose through... etc.

Besides, at some point, you're just reinvinting an overly complicated combustion heater.

Which I already have, is already hardwired for fuel, and only needs to be plugged in.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#675

Post by 8note »

ebilgenius wrote: post #298
tw04 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyway seems like this storm is so bad Texas would be in trouble no matter what, but letting utilities under-invest in winterizing and not joining either of the major grid corridors just made a bad situation 100x worse. The weather in Texas is in the single digits. The weather in Minnesota is in the double digit negatives. Texas would not be in trouble "no matter what" if they had bothered to spend the money on wint…

From what I understand the average low temperature in Texas around this time usually doesn't go below 30-35 degrees. Meanwhile the average high temperature around this time doesn't get above 20-35 degrees in Minnesota. To demand every state spend the same resources that Minnesota does to winterize their infrastructure is completely unrealistic. >This type of weather isn't some 1,000 year storm. Not according to this…

Is Texas as a state poorer than Minnesota or something? What makes it unrealistic, other than laziness?

It's not more taxing on Minnesota to implement the infrastructure than anyone else

It's as unrealistic as it is to expect a credit agency to encrypt their data, because credit agencies don't get hacked

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#676

Post by gkop »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #649
gkop wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people have natural gas heat. It doesn't work when the power is out That doesn’t have to be the case. I have gas heat [0], that works fine when our power is out. (Not intending to detract from the rest of your point) [0] a basic Williams wall furnace on a 50 year old thermostat.

How does the thermostat work? I've had the old mercury switch style thermostats before, but those work by completing a circuit, so I assumed they were dependent on power being on.

Googling tells me it’s “a pilot millivolt system”. I guess the downside of this design is that the pilot* is always lit, consuming a certain amount of fuel. Neat old quick start guide for a similar thermostat: http://nebula.wsimg.com/b2bc334b6de3591406ddd01974f01830?Acc...

* pilot is manual piezoelectric; doesn’t require electric power

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#678

Post by [deleted] »

doggodaddo78 wrote: post #624

In an apartment in Austin 78702. 47 F / 8 C inside, 22 / -6 outside. Power out for 2 days now, while west across I-35 has always had power. There's some baloney they're feeding us about "complicated critical loads" while huge swats of hotels and office buildings have power (I can see from north to south since my unit overhangs the frontage and has windows all over, and elevated enough to see over I-35). My fridge foo…

[deleted]

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#679

Post by alacombe »

8note wrote: post #661
synergy20 wrote: post #582

Plan B: 1. generators, generators with plenty oil. 2. satellite internet 3. water tank or large container 4. food for two weeks.

Hopefully your water tank doesn't freeze

Burry it below the frost line, even here, with yearly cold / freezing season, frost line is only 16".

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#680

Post by naebother »

pault wrote: post #534
naebother wrote: post #174

Anyone have break down of which areas had their power cut for how long?

About half of Austin has been out for 42 hours now. Source: I’m one of them.

That's ridiculous. I always thought the point of rolling blackouts was to make sure no one area was without power for too long.
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