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Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

blog.gridstatus.io

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Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#81

Post by actionfromafar »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

Pretty interesting to see how this stuff is holding up. The market is evolving rapidly currently with absolutely massive amounts of wind, solar, and battery being deployed everywhere. What's odd in Texas is that they are resisting the notion of connecting to the rest of the US grid. This would allow them to import power cheaply when they need to and export power when they have too much of it. My guess is that they ac…

Connecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like that.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#82

Post by guerby »

actionfromafar wrote: post #81
jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

Pretty interesting to see how this stuff is holding up. The market is evolving rapidly currently with absolutely massive amounts of wind, solar, and battery being deployed everywhere. What's odd in Texas is that they are resisting the notion of connecting to the rest of the US grid. This would allow them to import power cheaply when they need to and export power when they have too much of it. My guess is that they ac…

Connecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like that.

They could do it with HVDC to "isolate" the two grids.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#83

Post by guerby »

bboygravity wrote: post #66
thesis wrote: post #65

Texas has these free electricity nights. Anyone know of a battery system that can fill the batteries at night (from the grid) and use them during the day? And then recharge at night again. Due to location solar isn’t an option but still interested in batteries due to free nights.

Tesla power wall? No batteries I know of will make economical sense though. Batteries are expensive, wear down and/or require maintenance. After x years / cycles your batteries will be dead and will need to be replaced. Storing your "free" energy in a battery will end up costing more than just buying the energy when you need it. Expensive energy storage is a big part of the reason why "green" energy countries like Ge…

LFP cells prices for direct sale to consumer are about 70 EUR/kWh right now. With 5000 cycles that's 1.4 EUR cent per kWh cycled out of the battery, so it fully makes economical sense in all electricity markets.

Fully integrated consumer battery prices haven't (yet) followed the decline in cell price, probably because there's lot of demand for this kind of product.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#84

Post by actionfromafar »

guerby wrote: post #82
actionfromafar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like that.

They could do it with HVDC to "isolate" the two grids.

Apparently they have some for "import" of electricity.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#85

Post by bboygravity »

guerby wrote: post #83
bboygravity wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla power wall? No batteries I know of will make economical sense though. Batteries are expensive, wear down and/or require maintenance. After x years / cycles your batteries will be dead and will need to be replaced. Storing your "free" energy in a battery will end up costing more than just buying the energy when you need it. Expensive energy storage is a big part of the reason why "green" energy countries like Ge…

LFP cells prices for direct sale to consumer are about 70 EUR/kWh right now. With 5000 cycles that's 1.4 EUR cent per kWh cycled out of the battery, so it fully makes economical sense in all electricity markets. Fully integrated consumer battery prices haven't (yet) followed the decline in cell price, probably because there's lot of demand for this kind of product.

Yes, that's correct and confirms what I just wrote.

Dutch example: 0,12 EUR / kWh assuming 5000 cycles with 0 degradation. Example source: https://www.otovo.nl/blog/kennisbank/lfp-batterijen/

The real number is likely still significantly higher than 0,12 EUR / kWh due to battery capacity (and charge discharge efficiency) going down due to wear over time.

It does look like when the price of integrated storage products goes down more, it could become interesting for countries who have had very expensive energy policies (Denmark, Germany, Netherlands etc).

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#86

Post by oldpersonintx »

actionfromafar wrote: post #81
jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

Pretty interesting to see how this stuff is holding up. The market is evolving rapidly currently with absolutely massive amounts of wind, solar, and battery being deployed everywhere. What's odd in Texas is that they are resisting the notion of connecting to the rest of the US grid. This would allow them to import power cheaply when they need to and export power when they have too much of it. My guess is that they ac…

Connecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like that.

[dead]

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#87

Post by oldpersonintx »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #23
MBCook wrote: post #11

So the day peaked at 85 GW of load, and they got down to only 130 MW of spare capacity. Just 0.15% from running out. And they never asked for conservation? Is it normal to go that close to the edge without trying to cut load?

This is a state that should basically be peppered with residential rooftop solar. Of course, there's zero chance of any sort of state governmental policy to help incentivize it in deep red state land. But if recent history has shown anything, I would consider it a primary feature of any home in Texas to be relatively grid independent with its own generating capacity and storage.

[dead]

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#88

Post by bboygravity »

ziga wrote: post #72
bboygravity wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla power wall? No batteries I know of will make economical sense though. Batteries are expensive, wear down and/or require maintenance. After x years / cycles your batteries will be dead and will need to be replaced. Storing your "free" energy in a battery will end up costing more than just buying the energy when you need it. Expensive energy storage is a big part of the reason why "green" energy countries like Ge…

I agree about home batteries being too expensive, hopefully prices will come down with scale. But the part about battery degradation is not true. Tesla Powerwall has a 10 year warranty[1] with 70% capacity retention. This means that Tesla has data showing that the battery will have higher capacity than 70% after those years. That's a lot of cycles and a lot of renewable energy that the battery will provide in its lif…

There's a reason why Tesla picks 10 years (8 years for car batteries) as a warranty period. Ask yourself: why 8 years and not 10 for cars? Why 10 years and not 15 or 20 years for home batteries? It's not arbitrary.

Battery degradation is not linear. It's not like: 10 years = 70%, 20 years = 40%. It's probably closer to 20 years = 20 % capacity left. The decay becomes exponential-like after a relatively linear period of roughly 10 years.

If you want to get an idea, this is what the decay of battery capacity roughly looks like: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Montoya-Bedoya-2/...

The Tesla warranty will fall under "first life" in the image in the link above.

So batteries (even Tesla Powerwalls) do degrade and do degrade to the point where you need to replace them a bunch of times during lifetime of a house.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#89

Post by chgs »

Salgat wrote: post #62
Quindecillion wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They provide a legitimate demand response service i.e. when the grid is generating excess energy that there's no other demand for, Bitcoin miners buy what no one else wants/needs. Buyers of first and last resort.

Texas has a lot of gas plants (51%) that we want to idle when possible. Just because it's cheaper power doesn't mean we should be generating it when the only customer is cryptocoins.

If the cost of gas isn’t covering the actual impact then the cost should be higher, doesn’t matter if the kWh is used by a bitcoin miner or someone with their AC at 70, it’s still the same externality.

Re: Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

#90

Post by bboygravity »

geysersam wrote: post #76
bboygravity wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla power wall? No batteries I know of will make economical sense though. Batteries are expensive, wear down and/or require maintenance. After x years / cycles your batteries will be dead and will need to be replaced. Storing your "free" energy in a battery will end up costing more than just buying the energy when you need it. Expensive energy storage is a big part of the reason why "green" energy countries like Ge…

> "green" energy countries like Germany Not sure why you consider them to be "green" given the facts you brought up. Germany has never been particularly green energy wise. It's a big population and lots of heavy industry with relatively little energy resources like hydro. The are building solar and wind quickly now. Maybe that's why you got the impression that they are "green".

The reason I wrote "green" is because, Germany actively hypes itself up as being very green and many people believe them because they have such a vast amount of solar and wind installed.
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