Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Not much discussion here of the fundamental problem: why is Texas so energy intensive? In the last decade ERCOT energy generation has expanded 20%, which is much faster than the population of Texas has grown. Why? Just gigantic, detached houses for everybody? I think this is why people say the California housing crisis is such a calamity for the environment. A person in Texas consumes 150% more energy.

View on HN

I don't know why power demand is up in TX generally, but I do know that right now a big reason for the demand is because a lot of residences have electric resistance heat only-- which is great for electric blankets, but not so much for heating all the air in your home when it's extremely cold.

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.

Resistance heating is 100% efficient and therefore basically the least-efficient method. Heat pumps have coefficients of performance well over 1.0, even when the outside air is below zero degrees.

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.

Heat pumps don’t work particularly well below 25F. Our heat pump switched to auxiliary heat (electric resistance heating) with how cold it’s been in Texas.

Those are just the standard compressor/r410 systems with reversing valves. There are number of systems designed to work well below 0F.

https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/benefits/hyper-heating https://www.fujitsugeneral.com/us/residential/technology/xlt...

Though, heat pumps lose efficiency in very cold weather, and right now it's very cold in Texas.

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

Or geothermal heat pumps for very cold and hot environments.

It’s more efficient to burn natural gas directly for heat than to use it to generate electricity which is then used for heating. Typical gas turbines are around 40% efficient, plus a few percent for transmission loses. Though apparently there are some cutting edge turbines that are 60% efficient.

It's more efficient, but not more environmentally friendly, given how much of Texas's grid is wind power (and increasingly solar).

It takes enough natual gas to heat three homes in order to generate the electricity to heat one home.

Lived in TX all my life. Every residence I’ve seen has had a heat pump for decades. The the thing is though it switches to resistive heat at something like 20F when they are no longer efficient. Rarely a concern in TX, most of the time we’re complaining it’s over 100F!

Increased A/C adoption? I mean, presumably the same thing is happening in other areas of the Southwest (nobody's ripping out their air conditioners and throwing them away, and some are installing new ones). The reductions in per-capita electricity consumption in CA must be made up by great efficiency increases, since no doubt A/C usage is going up at the same time. OTOH, if power was as cheap at is in Texas, perhaps investing in efficiency wouldn't be worth it.

Also, it sounds like Texas' population has increased by 3.8 million to 29 million from 2010 to 2020. That sounds like pretty darn close to 20%.

https://thetexan.news/texas-population-increases-in-the-last...

I think you hit on the real truth: this is an electric grid optimized for cost, not for resilience. Electricity in Texas is much cheaper than in California. California grew 7% from 2010 to 2020, but electricity consumption fell from a peak of 302 TWh per year to 277 TWh.

Wow, that surprised me. Current demand is 45GW in Texas vs. 24GW in California. Over double per capita.

Well, yeah, the populated areas of Texas happen to be insanely cold right now at this moment we've cherry-picked, and the populated areas of California happen to be.. checks thermometer between 55-65f right now. (Bay Area, Sacramento, LA, San Diego).

Also, Texas heating is HEAVILY reliant on electricity (heat pumps), since they're used as air conditioners in the summer. Presumably this means CA has a lot more forced air natural gas, like my house. Of course, I keep hearing ads encouraging me to replace my polluting "methane gas" furnace with a clean, efficient electric heat pump....

I didn't think about heat pumps that makes sense. I had electric heat pump for heat when I lived in WA state. Worked well with cheap hydro power.

Yas, there are heat pump systems designed to work at fairly low temps. Those aren't the ones they install in TX, where its just a cheap reversing valve on a stock R410 system. AFAIK they don't even necessarily have aux heat (my mother's in FL didn't) and even if they do, after a decade or two it might not even work and no one would know.

Sunday night before the capacity dropped, TX was at 65 GW consumption.

Wondering if the large number of semiconductor fabs has anything to do with this? These fabs like to be in flat areas with stable temps and access to water. Places like Arizona and Texas are the best places for these types of facilities and they use boat loads of electricity.

Haven't look up the numbers but it's possible that this and other industrial facilities consume a large amount.

Large energy intensive businesses have been moving to TX too because our governor(s) runs around telling people TX is open to lax regulation. Heavy industry is frequently also very energy intensive.

So its not just a statement of per capita consumption. Toyota, Tesla, Samsung, etc moving their factories are not insignificant.

Because "muh hyper efficient heat pump system" that a huge fraction of Texas uses for heat during their typically mild winters has an electric heating system cobbled on to provide heat when the temperature is lower than what the heat pump likes running at.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com