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What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

houstonchronicle.com

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Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#881

Post by Matumio »

putzdown wrote: post #855

Please help me understand this. Why is deregulation causing suppliers to be unable to charge enough to cover their costs? I should think that would be the opposite. “ Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, blamed the failures on the state’s deregulated power system, which doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving pow…

Not an expert, but if it was a purely deregulated market, wouldn't you expect the cheapest supplier to win? The power grid is a shared medium, and you get a "tragedy of the commons" situation. Everyone profits from a resilient grid, but no single supplier has an incentive pay the cost to stabilize it for everyone else.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#882

Post by tomjakubowski »

0xy wrote: post #740
pixl97 wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables had nothing to do with this and performed better than expected. A nuke plant tripped off and natural gas production and de-watering froze starving the plants. The vast majority of capacity loss was nat gas.

Natural gas follows all rollouts of renewables, though. In fact I'm not even sure you can separate the two. Grids with renewables would absolutely collapse without natural gas. The only thing capable of replacing natural gas is batteries, which are extremely expensive and aren't exactly renewable, either.

Renewables may create demand for more natural gas on the grid, but you seem to be saying also that if Texas hadn't expanded renewables, they wouldn't have built so many natural gas plants. What would they have built instead to supply their power?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#883

Post by bhupy »

unethical_ban wrote: post #760
bhupy wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, the fact that we're talking about a Texas-specific outage means that the system actually worked as designed, in a degraded state. We generally try to incorporate redundancy and decentralization in systems design for the purpose of antifragility and graceful degradation. If something bad happens, best to isolate it so that it doesn't afflict everyone globally. At the time of this writing, every State…

Your entire argument is only valid if the other two major grids don't have the excess generation capacity to support the gap in Texas. Otherwise, it's cutting off a limb because of a papercut.

Well, there's also a cost to connecting the other two major grids, and Texans have collectively decided that this cost is not worth it. Energy sovereignty is a concept we talk about in the context of nation-states, but it's also applicable in the context of States.

Most Texans have a different idea of what energy production should look like than Californians or New Yorkers. They get to enjoy the upside of that independence, but they should also suffer the consequences. The vast majority of people that might disagree with them likely don't live in Texas, and are most likely unaffected by that decision themselves.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#884

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

gregw2 wrote: post #213
gregw2 wrote: post #117

What went wrong is that the Texas legislature which owns Texas-specific grid process to avoid interference from the Feds didn't figure out how to also ensure Texas generator companies got compensated for weatherizing (and ensuring it was done). How many of the 24+6 recommendations from the NERC/FERC review of last time this happened in Texas (hint:2011) were taken up by the legislature or those at ERCOT they delegate…

Anecdote: All 7 developers in my Houston team (semi-geographically scattered in the city) lost power; half for >24 hrs (it's 10-25 degrees F here for the last 2-3 days). Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work t…

I can't speak to a fireplace by itself, but anyone who uses wood as a primary source for heat will have a wood stove or furnace.

Wood stoves and furnaces are pretty advanced these days, some of them have catalytic "converters" (I guess that's the term).

A fireplace looks nice, but doesn't do much else other than that.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#885

Post by dhagz »

fractionalhare wrote: post #840
theshrike79 wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much anything actually built to heat stuff is better than the all-looks-no-function "fireplaces" the Americans seem to be in love with. The ones they like to mount their TVs over, despite the neck pain.

I don't think you can generalize American fireplaces. Every fireplace I've personally encountered has been traditional wood burning and absolutely heats up the room well past the time the fire is actually lit (American Northeast). I haven't actually been in a home with a gas-burning fireplace. But more importantly - the gas fireplaces are intended to look nice with minimal effort. They are explicitly not intended to…

I can agree with that last statement. Every house I've seen has had a gas fireplace, but I live in the metro area of a city that (in)famously only owned a single snowplow.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#886

Post by seanalltogether »

putzdown wrote: post #855

Please help me understand this. Why is deregulation causing suppliers to be unable to charge enough to cover their costs? I should think that would be the opposite. “ Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, blamed the failures on the state’s deregulated power system, which doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving pow…

I don't know the specifics, but decreased regulation and increased competition can have the affect of a race to the bottom. Without regulation that imposes certain standards, you can't afford to protect your business against rare events because none of your competitors are doing it either.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#887

Post by cactus2093 »

dalbasal wrote: post #853
roenxi wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is annoying when this sort of event happens and everyone starts deciding what they believe to be truth within 48 hours of the outage. It makes more sense to be talking about the 2011 outages in terms of what went wrong than the 2021 ones - because we have actual information on 2011 instead of "things went wrong!" now. I want to thank you personally for injecting a PDF into the discussion, but also positively asser…

This is meta/tangent, but I've had similar conversations a few times recently. Seems to be in the zeitgeist. Re: everyone starts deciding what they believe to be truth within 48 hours of the outage. Maybe, hopefully... the epidemic is humbling us. It's been significant and long lasting enough to rub our noses in whatever opinions we so brashly got behind too early. Professors and peasants alike. We're more likely to…

Nah, it’s very easy to selectively forget what you ended up being wrong about and remember what you got right (or close enough to pretend it was right).

I was wearing an n95 mask in the grocery store starting March 1st last year, there was no reason at that point to think it wouldn’t help and I still can’t comprehend why someone like Fauci who said in no uncertain terms not to wear a mask, it won’t help never faced any repercussions. I probably got a lot of things wrong that I don’t really remember. I still am a bit ocd about hand washing and hand sanitizer even though covid seems not to spread via surfaces very much, except for when it does, and I’ll probably keep doing that until the pandemic is over just because I have been.

My takeaway from this past year is certainly not that humans are rational or good at accountability.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#888

Post by lghh »

listless wrote: post #621
lghh wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They died, you fucking ghoul. People rely on things now to live that people would have just died without 150 years ago. They had warmer clothes 150 years ago. They had houses with fireplaces and blankets and coats. We can't deal with this because we are not set up to function when this happens any more. People didn't have the same pets 150 years ago we have now. Reptiles or birds? Dead. I just can't imaging the callo…

More people need to watch “Naked and Afraid” to learn what the human body is capable of withstanding.

Nah bud, I'm not stoked on grandma on oxygen without power being naked or afraid.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#889

Post by ghaff »

sjg007 wrote: post #422
bdamm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tight wood stove in the hands of an experienced user is a remarkable thing. The amount of heat that can be extracted from a large oak log is nothing short of remarkable. Sadly, most wood stoves are not tight, nor are most users experienced.

It's almost impossible to get a permit for a wood or pellet stove these days.

Depends where you are. Certainly not true as a general rule.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#890

Post by bagacrap »

matsemann wrote: post #817
ourlordcaffeine wrote: post #815

At $9000 per MWh ($9 per KWh), you could connect your exercise bike to the grid and make nearly minimum wage if you're fit.

I'm reasonably fit with an FTP of about ~280W (4.0W/kg), so I could easily hold 200W for hours. So 5 hours to make $9 I guess?

but hey it will obviate the need for a space heater.
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