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Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

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

#91
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your computation is off: it's 0.014 EUR/kWh, ten time less and far below kWh market prices about everyhere in the world.

As for cycling the industry standard is give the number of cycles to 80% capacity remaining so the battery is far from dead at 5000 cycles. The simple division I used is conservative.

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Germany's energy policy is one huge cognitive dissonance at best, gross mismanagement in the base case and a three-decade-long foreign intelligence job at worst.

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

#93

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.

Correction, the fat cats who own ERCOT don’t like that.

Your regular run of the mill Texan may not care one way or the other, most times. But if they get into a crunch where their electric bills are much higher, I assure you that they will care.

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

#94
post #2

If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem to be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually end (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of usage) right around net load peak...which this is now reporting is when energy prices go through the roof. So basically the "rush hour" program has likely been costing me more money than if I just ignored them to begin with up to this p…

Austin Energy? There aren't many providers that I am aware of in Texas that have variable rates.

See powertochoose.org for examples.

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

#95
post #59
post #2

If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem to be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually end (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of usage) right around net load peak...which this is now reporting is when energy prices go through the roof. So basically the "rush hour" program has likely been costing me more money than if I just ignored them to begin with up to this p…

> If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem to be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually end (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of usage) right around net load peak Either you are not reading it right, or there is a problem with your thermostat's demand response schedule, because the only way demand response makes money (hence rewards for users) is by reducing de…

Demand response also targets gross load because (assuming the renewables are not entirely rooftop solar) that electricity still needs to be carried by wires to consumers.

Sizing transmission for the absolute yearly peak is not cost effective, so various schemes are used to reduce that peak, including efficiency improvements and demand response.

This is entirely separate from questions of renewable cost and carbon and pollution and makes economic sense even on 100% fossil grids.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

For all the criticism Germany's energy policies get on HN, they're still approximately as "green" as Texas, and better than several other US states.

Set https://app.electricitymaps.com/ to the yearly view and see the CO₂ figures.

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

#97
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.

This is a bit like the joke about economists seeing money on the ground and not picking it up because if it was there someone would have already taken it, but:

Note how ridiculously fast the battery rollout in Texas and California has been recently.

If you've not got some local regulation that stops early adoptors from being left high and dry when the market changes, then you're in head to head competition for that cheap nighttime energy with big corporations building out grid scale batteries.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know anything about durability of solar panels but it should be known that in Texas there is always expectation of annual hail damage to roofs.

Replacing solar panels is cheaper and easier than replacing roof tiles, so you can even use solar panels as hail protection for your roof :^) (I'm half-serious, ofc)
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