The Texas electric grid can barely keep the lights on
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The mention of quick approval of transmission lines is interesting, but I do have to wonder how those that live near these new lines feel about quick approvals.
I worked in the industry for several years so I'm not at all suggesting all regulations are good. And I realize how hard it can be to get approval to run a new transmission line or pipeline is most of the country. But that doesn't mean the answer to every energy shortage is just to loosen regulations and build more of everything.
Huh? That was only mentioned to point out that the classic "renewables are so risky" line hasn't borne out for Texas. Fossil fuel plants have repeatedly been an issue as well. But it was just an aside, more importantly was it saying those generation facilities all being online wouldn't actually make much difference. That power generation will sometimes need maintenance or have failures or under production at awkward times is just the nature of the beast, certain safety regulation might help but everyone on HN should have some sense that chasing 9s gets very expensive very fast. What's really needed is to just have enough overall capacity (both steady and peaker) ready that a reasonable amount of failure is always ok. In a large energy grid a few generators dropping should never register as an immediate possible emergency. Texas needs more generation/storage approved faster.
And other states are tied into vastly more massive grids, they aren't islands, and they haven't had the same obvious increasing demand due to demographic/business shifts that Texas has been very actively encouraging. Their connections lets them help cover each other, which is a perfectly valid strategy, and they will have a more gradual increase. That other states are slightly worse than Texas isn't presented as an OK thing, but rather something they should be working on too. But they have less immediate need. That's just how it is.
I'm not sure how you came to your conclusion there. I don't know if he's right, I'm not from there, but his message is self-consistent.
> ERCOT is largely independent of FERC and federal regulation because it does not engage in significant interstate trading — it operates under its own system islanded off from the eastern and western interconnections. Glick during last week’s open meeting questioned whether this structure was still appropriate, and called on Congress and the state’s legislature to potentially “rethink” that approach.
> “Does it really makes sense to isolate yourself and limit your ability to get power from neighboring regions, just to keep FERC at bay?” Glick said. “That strikes me as the proverbial cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ferc-electric-reliability-p...
There was/is a plan to create a large hub for sharing up to 30 GW of electricity between the East, West, and Texas grids, but unfortunately it was scaled back significantly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation
I can't blame Texas for coming to the decision that it's better to implement one's own isolated grid so that mist problems are self-contained to that, and there is a bit more freedom to experiment.
That freedom comes with tradeoffs, and Texas has only itself to blame. I find it amusing because for the most part it's always out of staters that get out of shape out about it.
I can say, I can count on my fingers and toes the number of brown /blackout out periods in the past couple years we've had in Texas, qnd trace those failures to somewher in State. My mom back in VA however gets to deal with several hour irregular blackouts with no explanation whatsoever. There were two or three just in the time I was back there visiting.
Oveeall, it seems to me like the peaks may be more troublesome to Texas, but the overall consumption does seem to have fewer hiccups involved, and for somewhere where AC is a must, I'm pretty okay with that.
As long as they effing winterize. Winter a year or do ago was a boondoggle of epic proportions, and ERCOT's and PUC's leadership was as damn close to beng transparebtly corrupt as I've ever seen.
May 2022 is on track to be the hottest May on record in Texas. It's already hitting over 100 degrees in most of Texas. It does not typically get this hot until July. Most of the country is facing a huge heat wave this last week, and while some of the country got a reprieve this weekend, Texas did not.
For comparison, this time last year the temperature was in the 70s/low 80s. The average high for May in Austin is 86. The temperature this week in Austin is forecast to be over 100.
It's ridiculous that the Texas grid can't handle this, but to say "it's not even hot yet" is disingenuous. It's fucking hot.
https://news.yahoo.com/texas-shatters-heat-record-temps-1805...
https://weather.com/forecast/regional/news/2022-05-06-heat-w...
https://www.kvue.com/article/weather/may-2022-track-to-be-wa...
As hot it it may seem now, Texas gets much hotter in June-August than it does in May, as an ironclad rule. A system that is barely working OK now will fail later in the summer. Having spent 20 years in Austin myself, I can tell you that a nuclear war will feel like a refreshing dip in the pool by comparison.
Your problem is Austin Power. The rest of the state does not necessarily have the the same issue of being served by that dumpster fire of a utility company that can't even partition their power delivery circuits such that when load shedding had to occur, they couldn't shut off power to massive empty skyscrapers to keep people trapped at home warm.
Whereas Bluebonnet had quickly implemented time-sliced multiplexing you could set your clock by within the first hours of things going nuts ensuring at least 15 minutes per hour of reliable power delivery per household per hour throughout the usage zone which increased in duration as things resolved until eventually converging on 100% uptime again.
Orderly, predictable, and as fair as circumstances allowed. Exactly what I'd expect from a Public utility in crisis mode. With a bit of layering, more than survivable, and actually a somewhat pleasant divergence from the norm.
Austin Power, on the other hand, demonstrated a woeful lack of due diligence, and network layout related incompetence from what I was given to understand. Basically setting things up such that people would have been better off moving their families into buildings downtown that couldn't be load shed because they shared priority generation branches, while residential areas went completely dark to absorb that mandated reduction.
That mismanagement was just absolutely absolutely jaw dropping.
Get out of here with this head in the sand nonsense, thousands of people will die this summer if the grid has extended blackouts.
Thousands of people have been dying every week for 2 years, but masks are still taboo and vaccination rates are laughable
Murica’s gonna Murica baby
Supply is barely outstripping demand and we July and August are going to be hotter. That's not "doing just fine."
"If you believe you have a valid business reason for accessing ERCOT resources, please contact the ERCOT ServiceDesk at ServiceDesk@ercot.com"The article is saying that's because tomorrow demand is going to exceed supply again, and just like Feb 2021 in the Texas system that means prices float to match.
The expectation is that businesses will shut down and consumers will turn off their AC to shed load from the system, because everyone is a highly-informed rational actor and the $5k electrical bill will not be a surprise. Which it shouldn't be, you live in Texas, clean water and reliable power are not a reasonable expectation in the same way they are elsewhere. This is a cost you have to bear if you want everything to be so completely and totally market-driven - especially if you signed up for one of those "wholesale" electrical billing plans, this is the whole point. The market raises prices, you react accordingly and turn off your power, the intent is that only “highly informed” consumers who understand the risks will take them - just like playing with options, this can get you in trouble real fast if things go really bad.
(that said, non-wholesale plans will probably just cut your power entirely, because I doubt that is regulated either, it’s Texas! Sue, whoops, I mean, request binding company-sponsored arbitration if you don’t like it. But that could be preferable to getting a $5k bill for a single weekend of AC!)
Orrrrr, we could just regulate the power grid and ensure appropriate generation capacity, with appropriate building codes and grid/power plant building standards so they don't light on fire or freeze solid during peak load, and we can live in a modern society with electrical lighting...
Are there still people on "wholesale" billing plans since Griddy blew up last year?
Sure 78 isn't as cold as 72 or 68 that many of y'all like keeping your houses in the summer, but it sure as hell beats the indoor temps of 95+ when you don't have power.
How often it’s actually blowing cool dry air out of all the vents depends on the unit/weather/setting/insulation etc.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200930194912.h...
Oftentimes it's enough to open window at night, so that the rooms kinda "accumulate" night cold that would rest for the whole day. Of course it won't be enough at 100+ degrees, but you'd need very little AC then.
I believe winter states like Montana already must build better insulated houses.
The catch? It's more expensive to build.
We do have good insulation for our new houses, but building those kind of houses are at odds with living without A/C. Some older homes, built before A/C, could make the heat much more bearable by having better air flow, more windows, and taller ceilings.
Only the arid/dryer climates cool down at night. It is not uncommon for the temps to still be in the upper 80's to 90's (30-34C) in the overnight hours. I remember one particularly brutal 4th of July, sitting outside at Midnight with temps over 100F (38C).
In my area this week, it's gonna be a scorcher, Temps are gonna be at or over 100F ever afternoon this week.
When I lived with AC I kept it around 27-28°C to be comfortable, that's 81-82°F. Or maybe Texas has high humidity?
It is not uncommon to see people keep their houses 62-72F (17-22C) in the warm months and 80+F (26+C) in the cold months. Often these people don't have ceiling fans and refuse to wear appropriate clothing for the temps in their house.
But we’re an electrical island. We’re not connected to other grids. This independence allows us to do things like build CREZ (transmission lines for wind energy) quickly and without FERC bureaucracy. But it comes with a risk: we always have to supply all of our own energy.
This is a large part of why Texas is having electrical issues making national headlines and I'm not sure it's really getting the emphasis it merits to understand the issue.
Every single adjacent grid to Texas was also suffering from rolling or consistent blackouts during last year's February winter storm. Oklahoma had blackouts, Arkansas had blackouts, Missouri had blackouts, Louisiana had blackouts.
https://kansasreflector.com/2021/07/26/fuel-shortages-drove-...
The blackouts were not as bad as Texas and had they been on the same grid, it may have been able to spread (and lessen) the pain a little bit, but the point stands that Texas' neighbors did not have much electricity to spare.
This month is a little different because other states do have spare electricity AFAIK, but the links Texas has to those grids have relatively low capacity to share it.
At first, you'd think maybe not. If the neighboring states don't even have enough power for their own needs, how could it help?
The thing is, the outage in Texas was severe enough that it went beyond rolling blackouts. My city's utility completely lost the ability to rotate at all, so while some sections of town never lost power (those with essentials like hospitals), others had no power for ~48 hours straight.
Neighboring states did have problems, but they didn't have widespread outages. What could have been done is to have rotating outages in a much greater geographic area in order to prevent Texas from having continuous outages.
Not that the other states would have liked that, but on a technical level, I think it could have done something.
Think about it. Power Delivery is the OG wired network. You will have a wire. Unlike with signaling, power delivery is default on (cycling to deliver AC power) instead of default off (line clear for signaling).
If you really want to discriminate priority branches and be able to fine-grained load shed, that means, no building off of high priority trunks, and you'll have to string some extra wire to accomodate being able to centrally isolate the high priority loads from the low priority loads short of doing something like inline smart meters connected to mains coming into a home (i.e, teleconnected at-the-pole termination).
The Texas fiasco, as I understand it, came from a combo of poor isolation of high-priority trunks from low priority loads. It's common for cities to just wire nearby businesses off the hospital's high priority trunk, so the lights stay on in empty buisnesses instead of being in the "potentially sheddable" pool.
But no. Nobody wants more wiring. Too expensive. This is what you buy when you do that.
It sounds like there's some low-hanging fruit like adding switches at key points without running more wire. They may be planning to do more than that too. I'm not sure.
But it gets more interesting than that! There are actually two things that can make it so that the utility can't shut off a particular circuit. We've already covered critical loads like hospitals. The other is circuits that are configured for what that report calls UFLS.
This bit from their report (p. 22) explains it:
> Austin Energy’s portfolio for Manual Load Shed is limited, as many circuits are typically protected from Manual Load Shed due to the existence of Critical Load Customers or the UFLS status of the circuit.
> ...
> ERCOT also requires each electric distribution operator, including Austin Energy, to designate circuits for UFLS. Austin Energy must designate 25 percent of its load in three blocks of circuits (5 percent, 10 percent and 10 percent) that will automatically drop offline if the ERCOT system frequency drops to certain thresholds. Insufficient power supply, high demand or a combination of both can cause drops in system frequency. If frequency deviates too far from the tight system requirements, the physical reality of electricity can cause system instability and grid collapse. UFLS is designed to prevent these frequency changes from causing an uncontrolled cascading blackout of the ERCOT grid. Due to the quick actions that are needed, UFLS is automated without operator involvement. The UFLS settings are programmed into under–frequency relays (a method by which electrical devices known as relays sense frequency drops in the power system and cause the circuit breakers to trip). In accordance with ERCOT requirements, UFLS–designated circuits are generally not available for Manual Load Shed, as UFLS acts as circuits of last resort for Load Shed to avoid this system collapse.
In other words, if load gets too high, normally they respond by manually turning off circuits. But, as a last resort fail-safe, some circuits are set up to automatically shut off. They're not allowed to include those circuits in rolling blackouts either because they'd lose their fail-safe.
So if critical load is X% and UFLS is 25%, then you can only do rotating outages among 100% - (25% + X%) of circuits. And sectionalization can make sure X% isn't higher than necessary, but it can't do anything about 25%.
So sectionalization helps, but it's limited.
In theory, I think they could break that limit if they did something tricky. I assume they just chose 25% of circuits and installed UFLS relays only on those. Instead, they could have UFLS relays on all circuits and have a way to disable (bypass) or enable those relays. Then they could dynamically rearrange which circuits are UFLS or not as they do rotating outages. Power up a non-UFLS circuit, enable UFLS on it, disable an equal amount of UFLS on another circuit, shut that circuit off. Then repeat.
But in practice, I think that may just be too error-prone and risky. Too much intricate juggling things around during the chaos of an emergency. It goes against the idea of having a fail-safe.
Anyway, at the bigger picture level, you can really do any/all of these things. Add more generation capacity and you are less likely to hit the "we can't even rotate anymore" limit. Tie larger grids together and you can make more people less miserable. Make local grids more granular and you can rotate better. It just depends on how many layers of defense you want to have.
If you got this far, thanks for reading my long, rambling comment!
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[1] https://austinenergy.com/wcm/connect/482f26ba-7c94-465a-8a00...
[2] https://austinenergy.com/wcm/connect/440e5f7f-6806-47ed-b5e8...
It is not "political" as the context of your reply clearly indicates as much as it is deeply tied to not only the history of Texas as it relates to joining the USA and also the fundamental manner in which the USA was supposed to function, wich has been and continues to be under constant and direct assault.
It may ruffle your feathers, but not knowing these things clearly indicates that you are not American, however the real questions should be "why is not every other sovereign state of the United States acting more like Texas and why is the system so broken today that essentially only Texas acts the way the system intended states to act?". The only other state that comes close to Texas, may be Florida, which is emerging and moving in that direction, at least among the states of consequence.
So... not technical, but political
Back a few decades ago when Clean Air regulations came into play (Texas was not on the national grid at the time) Texas used their control of the Texas grid to allow grandfathering in of most of the dirty coal generation plants with no requirements that they meet federal standards. Texas mined lignite for many of their plants and bought coal from Wyoming's Powder River Basin for others. New plants under construction had to meet the new standards but old plants could keep on rocking along spewing their ash and pollutants all over the state and everyone downwind. Supposedly it was allowed because utilities argued that it was too expensive to bring them into compliance.
What a joke. This is the same state where a chicken billionaire walked the floor of the legislature passing envelopes of cash to representatives and at the time said that this was just the way to do business here.
And after last year's winter break-down they crafted a handy way to pass all the costs of electricity related to their failures to do simple maintenance and upgrades on to Texas taxpayers while at the same time lobbying and winning property tax reductions which conveniently enough, finances a large part of the state's operations. People keep voting for the same old losers and then griping when it bites them in the ass.
So many parts of Texas are broken and dysfunctional that it is sad but funny to hear someone say they want to move here for any reason. We used to be great but the clowns are driving the short bus here now and everyone wants to ride since it's cheaper than the last place they lived, maybe.
That seems to be a bit of an oxymoron to me.
They want a libertarian-style business environment where businesses are free to operate with few restrictions and the businesses get to define those restrictions and control the processes that could limit or monitor their operations. For private citizens they also prefer individuals be free to make their own choices about how they conduct themselves up to a point.
Past that point, they become authoritarian, using religion as a basis for state-enforced mandates to control individual's rights to make what should be private decisions between an individual and qualified professionals.
They want the state to control every aspect of an individual's life that they feel doesn't fit their own morals while at the same time allowing businesses free reign to operate within the state even if their operations harm the citizens of the state, the state's natural resources, or the state's economic interests.
Hopefully it is more clear now. It still doesn't make much sense since their philosophy is riddled with contradictions or outright hypocrisy. They would impose restrictions on people they wish to control while ignoring the same behavior of people who otherwise publicly support them.
Anyway, I'm probably wrong since I am not a political science expert. I'm just a native Texan.
Political discussion is fraught with danger when it is partisan based, however, we should encourage more of it here on the nature and impact policies promoted and enforced.
Businesses should not be burdened by bureaucratic harassments, but the answer is not to remove the rules but to make those rules easier to follow.
Side note: my take on libertarians is that every single one I've encountered has been white, male, and financially secure. It's a lot easier to want government out of the way when the world is your oyster.
What you may not have considered is how closely aligned their philosophies are with libertarian values as they would apply to businesses and entities operating within the state. It is difficult to apply Christian morals to business operations and they default to libertarian values of minimal government oversight and minimal accountability to the state or to individual citizens.
Businesses are free to do as they please and should a business need some government assistance, cash doesn't even need to be under the table. Legislators also are not in session year-round so it is perfectly acceptable for businesses to author the legislation that they would like to see passed in the next session and as long as they can minimize the public's opportunity to shoot it down, it will likely pass.
About those libertarians, it was actually quite funny to see so many libertarians fall in behind progressive policies that they would never support during the pandemic's worst days after they saw the impact that it had on the economy and the ability for businesses to continue operating. Some of these libertarians left the states for Puerto Rico where they could pay a pittance for large private tracts of land, dodge tax obligations they would've had to pay or work around back home, and make sure they got their "share" of the PPP monies that were thrown out onto the streets with no oversight. They can now tweet about the delicious food options on the island, the great climate, etc while ignoring the plight of real Puerto Ricans, many of whom are still rebuilding after the last major hurricane.
Hypocrisy is one of the under-reported attributes of a true libertarian.
Those of us that actually prioritize preservation of liberty for future generations and leaving the management of said reprobates to the community to do with as they wilt was what I understood the libertarian cause to be about.
I may just be co-opting the label though. Not that it makes much difference, there is no room for an "I reject the two major parties for being two sides of the same idiot" party in the U.S.
That being said, the Texas government of late is... Not at all an example of what I'd consider "how it should work", but as I'm frequently told, I'm a madman for having standards and expectations.
For someone who hates the Fed, Rick Perry is a National Treasure.
Somebody didn't do their homework and gave this idiot the talking point to abolish the dept that's in charge of the fucking nukes.
That's like Defund the Police on steroids.
Ironically, he ended up running it from 2017-2019.
I didn't realize that. I laughed out loud. He couldn't remember the third 'E' department he wanted to abolish.
It sounds like someone is not telling the truth.
Your personal experience doesn't appear to be universal. There's plenty of news coverage about six power plants going offline because of high usage: https://www.google.com/search?q=ercot+six
> It sounds like someone is not telling the truth.
Are you sure you're not from Missouri? (The "Show Me" state. Ba dum tish.)
This came into play a year and a half ago when we had severe cold, one of the exacerbating factors was - those homes weren't well-insulated, so they had to use way more energy for heat than a properly-insulated home would have.
Texas is basically a fractal of aggressive and deliberate fuckups all the way down, because ain't no ivory-tower elitist going to tell ME how to build my house/grid/power plant!
Uhh no. It's because it is cheaper. Especially homes built in the last five years seem to be lacking on insulation.
> Texas is basically a fractal of aggressive and deliberate fuckups all the way down, because ain't no ivory-tower elitist going to tell ME how to build my house/grid/power plant!
Yes. Please don't move here and tell all your friends not to move here.
They say “they have to maintain the generating and transmission capacity anyway” but there is a mismatch here - they are happy to charge another customer full-price for it, despite the fact that customer will be local and thus they don’t need the transmission capacity during peak when solar is putting out it’s max and everyone is blasting the AC. Also actually they are usually charging the other customer a premium for “green energy”.
Entrenched monopolist uses market and state power to keep competitors out, even if it means reduced quality of service.
Even if, at a federal level, you straight up gave the things away, places like Texas would outright ban them or require contractual terms that made them effectively impossible to install, like different billing rates (large charges for any returned capacity, rather than credit) or just forbidding them in any home that is publicly interconnected (which is usually a requirement for having a mortgage). They straight-up will not allow rooftop solar to succeed under any circumstance, conservatives are politically and emotionally invested in making sure it fails, just like they blamed renewables when the gas power plants froze last year. And they are too entrenched with gerrymandering to ever get out of office, no matter what they do. It is a de-facto one-party state despite democrats consistently returning near 50% in elections.
Samsung moving there is going to be a problem for them, all these disruptions are terrible, not just the outright brownouts but also fabs are extremely sensitive to power quality, small surges or drops will screw up wafers and reduce output quality too. But none of this is a surprise, if you move a business to Texas, and you are some type of commercial or industrial operation that depends on electricity, you really get what you deserve.
I feel bad for the people though.
Basically, we mooch off the grid. We're supposedly freeloaders, using the grid as our giant battery - only when we need it, and we're not paying to maintain the grid*.
This argument was new to me. The state I live in doesn't credit me 1:1 per kWh, per se.
Each kWh of power I pay for has 3 components; when added together, consumers pay a rate per kWh anywhere from 7-15cents. Each credit of power I produce can only offset 2 of the 3 components (like 95% of the cost)
Tldr - it sounds like some utility providers do not require solar owners to pay for transmission costs, or break their bill up in such a way that the credit can only be applied toward the power, but not the transmission.
Net metering sounds like a topic that needs to be defined. Some states definition of net metering could be very advantageous to solar owners, while other states have reasonable net metering rules that still incentivize residential solar.
I can only assume that they hate it only because those dirty hippies love it.
Solar subsidies have paid off in helping build demand and now solar gear is really cheap and the cost is split on the labor to install it (creating local jobs).
I'm going to guess that your folks consume Fox Entertainment programming? They are rather consistent in denigrating renewable energy: https://www.businessinsider.com/fact-check-fox-personalities...
This topic has unfortunately been highly politicized and I can only assume it's because the petro ruling class does not want to let go of their monetary pipeline and buys influence in the political realm to maintain it.
This is probably especially true in Texas where one of the defining characteristics of the controlling party of the one-party state (thanks to intense gerrymandering) is anti-intellectualism. They not only won't listen to "liberal academics" or opinion pieces in "liberal newspapers", they'll actively oppose whatever they say on the simple basis of who said it.
No longer need to worry about the clowns in office since clearly they have not learned from the February 2021 debacle.
* 4.80 kW Solar Panels -- +$12,576
* 2 Powerwall Batteries -- +$18,500
* Cash Price -- +$31,076
* Federal Tax Credit -$8,080
* ---------------------
* Net Price: $22,996
I know this sounds like a bizarre setup (4.80 kW?) but my main goal was to be able to have two Powerwall backups that I would have incase the grid fails me. I charge the Powerwalls at night during offpeak hours for free and keep them near 100%.
29% of my energy needs are offset with the 4.80kW panels.
I plan to add more powerful solar panels soon. 9.6kW panels would allow me to offset 58% of my energy needs; it would add on $12k to my costs, but I am safe knowing that I don't need to completely rely on ERCOT and their mafia anymore (to an extent).
TL;DR $23k USD. I was able to get a 0% APR loan as well, so I'm paying around $130 / month. After including the energy generated/offset, it goes to net ~$93 month.
[1] https://justenergy.com/get-offer/free-nights-or-weekends-ele...
„ Texas, Our Texas! All hail the mighty State! Texas, Our Texas! So wonderful, so great! Boldest and grandest, withstanding ev'ry test O Empire wide and glorious, you stand supremely blest.“
What a Match
Serious question.
It's like these people either know something we don't, or they're forehead-slapping dumbasses who've accidentally stumbled into billions of dollars, over and over. I don't know which to believe.
Maybe they can even strike deals to go off grid when paid to do so.
https://www.powergrid.news/2020-08-19-blackouts-demonstrate-...
Yeah, I can't take this guy seriously.
I can't imagine not running AC, if only for its dehumidifying effects, in a Houston summer.
It was more of an eye-roll at the idea that covid made demand impossible to understand.
Reportedly, six power plants were offline, accounting for "roughly 2,900 megawatts of electricity — or enough to power nearly 600,000 homes".
Massive demand combined with substantial supply reduction is generally bad news.
My thermostat is set to 77° year round. It stays comfortable inside my house here in NTx near DFW. The temperature varies between 76-78° all day long. I have found that the AC runs about 20-30 minutes to get that 2° drop every other hour or so and it is pretty easy to achieve no matter the outside temperature.
If I still lived near Houston with the higher humidity and all the general suck I would probably do it differently but up here this works great. I can work outside in the heat and humidity, step inside for a break every hour or so and go back outside and it feels like I stepped into a cave while I'm inside.
I’m in Eastern Europe and my thermostat is usually set between 18 and 20°C (64-68°F)
I can’t imagine sitting in 25°C all day long.
That's very cold. In Texas that would consume an absolutely enormous amount of energy, since it's so hot and (in some areas) humid. Houston, for example, averages 3 months with highs at or above 32 C (90 F).
That's bad for the grid and bad for the planet.
It'd be interesting to see survey data of how people configure these things.
Triple digits and high humidity are the norm for some parts of summer in some parts of Texas. No, opening a window isn't a fix.
By the time I was a teenager we had moved into a house with window units for AC and central heating.
Anything is doable if you are prepared. I suspect a lot of people today have become acclimated to an unnaturally limited temperature range and therefore they can't handle being outside all day in the direct sun without needing a way to cool down. Same thing in winter. People have acclimated to a range of 65-80 and anything outside that range requires different clothing, moving chilled or heated air, etc.
Except for that one day when the AC didn't work in my hotel room. That was a bit of a nightmare.
So if I have to spend a day outside, I'd prefer 32C in Miami over 8C, despite the fact that it's easier to mitigate against cold weather (just dress warmer)
> The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language identifies room temperature as around 20–22 °C (68–72 °F),[1] while the Oxford English Dictionary states that it is "conventionally taken as about 20 °C (68 °F)".[2] The ideal room temperature may vary by place and culture; studies from Nigeria show a comfortable temperature range of 26–28 °C (79–82 °F), comfortably cool 24–26 °C (75–79 °F) and comfortably warm 28–30 °C (82–86 °F).[3] Owing to variations in humidity and (likely) clothing, recommendations for summer and winter may vary; a suggested typical range for winter is 23–25.5 °C (73–78 °F), with that for summer being 20–23.5 °C (68–74 °F).[4] Some studies have suggested that thermal comfort preferences of men and women may differ significantly, with women on average preferring higher ambient temperatures.[5][6][7]
> The World Health Organization in 1987 found that comfortable indoor temperatures between 18–24 °C (64–75 °F) were not associated with health risks for healthy adults with appropriate clothing, humidity, and other factors. For infants, elderly, and those with significant health problems, a minimum 20 °C (68 °F) was recommended. Temperatures lower than 16 °C (61 °F) with humidity above 65% were associated with respiratory hazards including allergies.[9][10]
Not trying to save money or anything. Genuinely 78 + ceiling fan on low is most comfortable for me. Maybe it's the low humidity?
Some of it is certainly just tolerance or whether or not you're acclimated (heh) to it.
The AC removes the humidity when the AC runs.
But if you set your thermostat to 75F (24C), and your in-door air temperature is ≤75F with a humidity of 80%, the AC will do nothing for you because the temperature is "correct".
One needs a separate, stand alone dehumidifier with a hygrometer to deal with humidify independently of temperature.
Do a search for "whole house dehumidifier" for available products.
The situation you're describing can come up occasionally on mild days, but (unfortunately) Texas doesn't have many of those. It tends to go almost straight from winter to summer and vice versa.
On the rare occasion when I feel that it's too humid inside (a rainy day in spring or fall), I just turn on the AC for half an hour. It wouldn't be worth it to have a separate system for that.
Which will never ever happen during the daytime in Texas in the summer.
70 degrees F is my most comfortable indoor temp, and I try to let it go down to the 65-68 range in my bedroom for sleeping. This was true even when I lived in Los Angeles.
78 is uncomfortably hot even for lying around naked. 68 is far better for ordinary attire and activity.
Why would you even believe or say something like that?
Also, when you reach 100F+ outside, you have pretty dehumidified indoor air at 78F because it still takes the AC running a lot.
I wont turn air conditioning on until mid 90s, and then it gets set to 89F or so.
As far as I can see, the rest of the world isn't furry enough to live the way they do. Humans are far too fond of their clothes.
78 is quite comfortable during the day, especially if you spend even 5 minutes outside for any reason. When you come inside 78 will feel quite cool under your ceiling fan.
EDIT: Also, I hate this new “blogging format” of multiple tweets instead of a single page.