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Comment by kyrra | Hacker News Reader

WSJ (editorial pages) has a theory of that the expanded use wind power in Texas is part of the cause. When 30 to 40% of power for the state can be produced by wind, you have fewer backup natural gas and coal plants, as maintaining backup capacity is expensive. And then there tends to be much less wind when there is a heat wave, such as last week when wind was only producing 6% of the state's power.

To me it seems the state needs to enforce x amount of backup not a renewable capacity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/californiapowerproblems-hit-tex...

Edit: they have another editorial today postulating the moved to green energy without sufficient backup is leading to problems across the US and Europe. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wests-climate-policy-debacl...

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The WSJ's Editorial Board is not a great place to get level-headed policy assessments.

Even if that’s true (debatable), it’s important to not use it as ammo to slam renewables as a whole - which republicans are keen to do. We need to wean off of fossil fuels asap, and this sentiment is easily manipulated to hurt that cause.

So even if a technology isn't fulfilling our needs and is leading to problems, we should ignore that because it's the "right" thing to do?

Your unstated assertion here is that we don't actually need to try to mitigate global warming and that it's merely a moral question, or like some culture war tempest-in-a-teapot. We need to mitigate global warming. That's a need we have to fulfill. It's the "right" thing to do for that very reason. Creating a strawman by saying 'haha, you think we should ignore that because it's the "right" thing to do' suggests that it's the "right thing to do" in the same way that it's the "right" thing to put toilet paper with the free end facing the room rather than facing the wall, rather than a slow-moving catastrophe that will kill billions through crop failures.

I believe the point is that there is more than one type of renewable energy. Using the shortcomings of one under certain circumstances as an excuse to pursue nonrenewable energy at the expense of the long-term consequences of nonrenewable energy is shortsighted.

It should also be noted that nonrenewable energy sources also face supply issues. If anything, the issue is worse for nonrenewable energy in the long term since scarcity can only increase with time. Exploration and more intensive extraction techniques only postpone the exhaustion of resources while increasing costs.

(I also find it somewhat ironic that the burning of carbon would most likely intensify the problem in the long run by increasing energy demands and decreasing the effectiveness of renewables.)

Fossil fuels are failing our very immediate need to stabilize climate change and survive for the next century. So yes, we should be considering other options, even if they’re not perfect.

Yes, the religion requires intellectual sacrifice.

You of course mean the religion of "Ignore man made climate change, pollute and ravage the environment as much as possible to maximize shareholder value, who cares it's the end-times Jesus will rapture us all any day now" ?? That religion?

No, the one that is against building nuclear power plants.

So, just ignore the problems and double down? Sounds like a terrible strategy. If it doesn’t work we need to pivot to something more reliable, like nuclear energy.

If nuclear plants in Texas are maintained as well as the rest of the equipment, sure it will be reliable.

In the case of Texas, where idiocy rules to the level that the state is bonding billions to reimburse power companies for the failures and chaos caused by very predictable cold weather, that won’t work.

Unfortunately, whomever runs the Texas public utility commission doesn’t work for the people of Texas.

Texas is one of the fasting growing states in the union, so the idiots running things must be doing something right.

Yes, making money for their patrons. Texas is blessed with many things.

Low taxes and flat planes of land that you can keep building new housing on, cheap, that makes it easy to keep growing out. Good for them I guess. But providing infrastructure for that expansion does cost something eventually, thus the struggles with increasing electricity in a state with less oversight. I find your comment pretty generic that could be applied to almost anything. California must be doing something right, because their tax surpluses are incredible. Same for lots of other states. So what, just because California has huge budget surpluses doesn't clarify if the state is serving its citizen's needs.

Ah right, must be the topology. Brilliant insight. Wake me up once people start voting for California with their feet again.

This reads like you only read the first half-sentence of that comment and stopped there.

Your reductive reasoning is palpable. People will move to Texas in the near term for the promise of low COL, but I wonder how many massive power grid failures it will take for the rich to begin fleeing for greener pastures.

The same things were said of California!

When my dads family grew up in the 1950s, the allure of buying a cheap bungalow in a lemon farm outside LA felt like paradise…

I moved out of Texas long ago precisely because the geography sucks and it's too hot.

Pablo Escobar's business grew fast, too.

It had (ahem) some externalities, and wound up collapsing. Fast growth isn't inherently a sign of something being done right, or we'd be talking about Zynga a lot more.

Unfortunately, plenty of horrid people DID talk about Zynga a lot.

Yes; the point is that "this is popular now" is not necessarily an indicator of quality or long-term sustainability.

A tragedy of the commons is preceded by a gold rush before the predictable tragedy strikes.

don't slam a solution that can't do what's promised? Why? It's obviously failing on all levels...

"hurt the cause" facts tend to do that when promises aren't met and people suffer.

the thing is, wind in general has far surpassed its expectations.

How so?

Our transition to wind and other intermittent sources instead of building base load is creating a worsening reliability crisis.

It seems that people forgot that we still don't have many good ways to store energy.

We never transitioned, wind was just the most economical growth opportunity for generation and it works really well in that regard. Just because we have increased wind doesn’t mean we don’t need to increase base generation. Not sure why you frame it like this.

Because it is clear who is paying for the additional wind generation, it is not clear who is going to pay for the mostly unused backup base generation.

Which is why the Texas model fails in this scenario. It's unprofitable to have emergency backup load, so it doesn't get built.

The reason Texas has failed is because this state is a state of excess and they’re proud of fact.

If we incentivized efficiency we’d be much better off but instead we champion mocking that as something Californian.

CA is actually facing rolling blackouts for exactly the same reasons, yet it's always amusing that TX only ever seems to get talked about here :p

CA had a blackout for non-safety (fire) issues recently?

CA's system has issues because it is a 100% captured monopoly and have utterly refused to fix problems that were identified by Enron in the 90s.

Meanwhile, 48 more states in the union have a variety of significantly more or less regulated energy sectors than either Texas or California and how many of them have rolling blackouts every year?

I don't know why people keep pretending Texas's and California's problems are anything more than the stupidity, or willfull negligence of their respective governments.

Bingo. "Emergency Base Load" isn't a thing and would never make financial sense.

In Germany, we (via the grid operators) literally pay these power plants just for providing backup capacity. Another idea could be paying companies to stop consuming power in times of high demand. Things like cold storage facilities can easily shift their power consumption by a few hours.

> most economical growth opportunity for generation

Umm, I think you're missing something big here. The only reason this was "economical" were huge tax benefits/subsidies.

Decentralized energy production that involves a bunch of large moving parts will NEVER be as efficient as centralized energy production.

Literally nobody is saying "we should only have wind", though.

The point is to have an array of energy sources. If there's no wind, solar can compensate. If there's no sun, nuclear can compensate. If nuclear goes down, then you can tap into natural gas. If there's no natural gas, then go for coal or whatever.

> If there's no wind, solar can compensate.

Except... There can be a large part of the day when there is neither wind nor sun.

> If there's no natural gas, then go for coal or whatever.

Uh huh, but those coal plants aren't just sitting there waiting for you to use them. They have a long startup period and have to run pretty much all the time to make sense.

I think you're missing how badly we've screwed up base load and creating a reliability problem as we decommission coal plants and think we can replace them with wind.

> Except... There can be a large part of the day when there is neither wind nor sun.

If people stopped wasting money on EV's and bought residential batteries instead...

You can also use an EV as a residential battery - we just need better control systems/integration to make it easier for normal people.

There is no part of the day where there is no sun and no wind. The sun shines 24/7. If you say "the sun doesn't shine 24/7 on my country" you just getting energy from your country is the problem.

Huh?

Are you proposing that we build some worldwide network of transmission lines to move solar power from Africa -> North America when it is night time in the latter?

Yes. Research on the idea is limited. But even just intercontinental connections are profitable to society https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261... . I assume network effects are gonna increase the benefit more. Even seasonal differences can be compensated without long term storage.

Solar and wind behave antiproportional most of the time. When there is less sun (due to clouds) there is more wind. With a little bit of overbuilding both energy sources, most of our energy needs could be compensated.

Who's going to pay for these mythical natural gas and coal plants that are idle until needed?

Also with coal in particular it can take days to ramp them up - coal is for base load, not demand.

If it were only as simple as you are postulating - which is why these 2nd level effects of blindly pushing renewables without taking the whole system into account are causing issues like we are seeing in Texas, California and many other places too.

Up front: I agree that there's generally too much posturing and too little focus on the data and how to actually solve our energy challenges.

With that said, it's worth considering the aspect of what it takes to ensure energy is available when it is needed. With fossil fuels, plant generation capacity has been historically built to ensure satisfaction of peak loads. Fuel was stored nearby to allow meeting rated capacity whenever that capacity was needed. Renewables' generation is slightly more complex, since we have less control for making rated generation happen when we need it to meet demand.

Of course, there are many options with making renewables work. Storage is one approach, overbuilding renewables to ensure a minimum actual generation in adverse conditions is another. As we work to reduce the costs of renewables (and storage), various renewable based options become increasingly economically advantageous. We shouldn't ignore the downsides; we should seek to understand what can be done about them.

As far as data goes, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) provides power generation/consumption data for the US grid, including breakouts by generation source [1]. The data for the Texas grid (ERCO) is interesting to explore.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr... (you can expand the graphs and view hourly data for up to 30 days and daily data for a much longer period of time).

> We need to wean off of fossil fuels asap, and this sentiment is easily manipulated to hurt that cause.

Even if it makes absolutely no sense to do so?

A friend of mine purchases power for a municipal utility. Regulation requires that they have to reserve capacity for up to estimated peak usage. If they choose wind generation they can only apply 7% of that capacity to their requirement! So, in order to match the reliability of other forms of power they would have to purchase 14.3x as much as required.

Wind power is VERY unreliable. That isn't opinion, that is a fact recognized by everyone in the industry. If someone is telling you we can build a reliable grid with wind power as a large component, they are lying to you and pry lining their pockets.

Attitudes like the one you express in your statement are music to the ears of those seeking to take advantage via profiteering and crony capitalism.

I am sad that nobody ever discusses overbuilding by huge amounts to be a viable option. Wind power or solar power sometimes underdelivers? Well they are fantastically cheap systems, so just quadruple the investment/build out, and be pretty well off.

This isn't investigated because 1) It is more expensive and 2) That will result in significant extra supply that will literally need to be "wasted". Electricity in many situations literally becomes "too cheap to meter"

I personally don't see that as a downside because that "overproduction" should be thrown at things like carbon capture, which is much more viable when the electricity is literally priced negatively

This is only not possible because people refuse to turn electricity into a fully public utility. They want their profits. The USA should treat it as a huge infrastructure project though, like the highway system, and either force or hugely subsidize the buildout of excessive renewable systems.

Has something changed since early 2021 and the ice storms, when similar, false claims were made about renewables having anything to do with the problem?

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-texas-wind-turb...

Yes, the collective memory of the citizens. They were told it was okay and nothing to worry about, so they stopped worrying and went about their lives.

You know, I'm no Wall Street Journal editoralatician, but I am someone who lives in Texas. I haven't noticed much change in the wind when it's hot, but it's not something I really pay attention to, so I'll take that as true. You know what I have noticed when I go outside and it feels like an oven? Tons of sunlight.

That's a pretty disingenuous argument.

If you're in the business of providing power (or being a regulator of those providing power), then one of the things you need to be good at is predicting demand. You should be able to model various kinds of weather scenarios and their impact on electricity demand, and find out what the worst-case scenario is, and roughly how likely it is to occur. And then you can plan your capital expansion plans to be able to meet that future demand.

So if supply is struggling to meet demand, there are three possibilities. First, supply could be lower than forecast due to unforeseeable circumstances. Second, maybe things were worse than you forecast, and demand was unexpectedly high. However, we appear to be in the third possibility: you knew that supply was insufficient to meet demand, and you didn't care.

Texas seems to be regulating its grid to ensure low prices above all else, even at the expense of reliability of the electrical system. If you need 1000 MW of spare electrical generation capability, you need that whether your grid is mostly based on solar and wind or whether it's based on gas and coal. That the complaints are directed against renewables are I think because the renewables are undercutting fossil fuel plants, and the state is too cheap to ensure reliability--and the renewables are a more politically convenient scapegoat than the bad regulatory oversight currently in place.

That's why it's wise to build both solar and wind, as they behave antiproportional most of the time. When there's more sun, there is less wind and vice versa.

I was in Midland next to an oil well (what else is there in Midland) where it was 24mph winds and 104 on the thermometer. When is it not windy and hot in Midland?

Most wind turbines have a safety shut down after 20+ mph winds.

This seems kind of myopic. This article is about heat waves, which are not a "base load" problem, they are a problem that's near-perfectly solved by solar deployment.

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