Texas Power Use Breaks Record as Heat Wave Continues to Roast the South | Hacker News Reader

Texas Power Use Breaks Record as Heat Wave Continues to Roast the South

gizmodo.com

27 pointsrntn24 comments

In many years, the US seemed to be cooling, even while the rest of the world was warming. The temperature anomaly map often looked like this:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/2-Map-of-the-globe-showi...

It just felt so weird that the one place on the planet ideologically disposed to disbelieve in climate change would also be the one unaffected. The planet itself seemed to be conspiring.

Of course it wasn't, and neither is it "karma" to have an oil-wealth state suffering. It would be nice to have it nudge Texas (and its political allies) in the direction of accepting that climate change is not a gigantic hoax on them. Weather continues to not be the same as climate, but if a weather event convinces people to stop making excuses about climate change, then perhaps two bad things can cancel each other out.

Looks like Canada shut off the A/C. Albertans should have tried that decades ago.

(This is a parody of the very real race-to-the-bottom attitude in the industry, and the oft-repeated "a little global warming goes a long way in Canada")

> neither is it "karma" to have an oil-wealth state suffering

Texas is an energy state. It has lots of oil. But it also has lots of natural gas [1], solar [2], wind [3] and uranium [4], geographically overlapping and exclusive in a way that's almost preternaturally ideal for extraction and commercialization.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=14431

[2] https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html

[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/wind/where-wind-power-is...

[4] https://www.eia.gov/uranium/reserves/reservemap.php

It also has a lot of climate denialists, including politicians with national levels of power. And it's clear that a huge chunk of the reason that it selects climate denialists to be in charge is to preserve the wealth from fossil fuels.

It's also great that they're investing in renewables. But they're also preventing the country as a whole from taking actions that are required to deal with climate change before it becomes a calamity. And the rest of the world isn't eager to shoulder that burden themselves while the US is still one of the largest contributors to the problem.

> also has a lot of climate denialists

On the ground level, Texans' views on climate change are middle of the road for America [1].

> politicians with national levels of power

Texan politicians wax lyrical about coal and oil. Do they actually block renewable projects, or is it all talk?

[1] https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...

One data point, but ~10 years ago, I called the electric providers in DFW to get some quotes. We have this and that option, yada yada yada. I told them that I wanted whatever was cheapest, and much to my surprise, it was the 100% wind option.

Texas' statewide politicians are all Republicans, and climate denialism is the official position of the Republican party. We withdrew from the Paris accords, and it's impossible to establish a national climate policy. It's less about any one project as that all projects that require legislation are dead on arrival.

It's hard to separate out the effects behind the scenes, but it's clear that Texas lawmakers are making promises about it.

Texas has built a lot of solar (more than California in recent years IIRC) because it's generally building-friendly. There has been some talk that they are going to start making it harder to do renewable projects due to politics.

So: so far all talk, but there is now some more specific talk.

It has other forms of energy available to it, but as a state, it's industry and political structure as a whole leans towards petro.

I got solar + a battery on my house after all the power shenanigans during the 2021 winter storm. I’m off the grid completely pretty much the entire peak period atm (~11am to 7pm)

Makes me feel a little less guilty having the AC running all day ;P

Looks like the forecast is for even more consumption tomorrow.

I'd be surprised if the TX grid doesn't break 100GW by next summer... The rate of growth in the region is still absolutely incredible.

Everyone in Texas should put solar on their roof and add a small battery pack. If (when) the grid goes out again you have to be able to run your air conditioning (or your heat if it happens in the winter again) The Texas grid is woefully unprepared for extreme temperatures.

That would be great in theory if everyone in Texas had an extra $50,000 to spare for this. Sure, there are ways to finance it, and yes, in theory it should pay for itself over time, but there’s no denying that this is a large sum of money for most homeowners, particularly with inflation hitting so hard these past few years.

$50k? Try <10k

For a solar roof and a battery on a typical Texas sized house? I'm going to need to see a source on that one.

I assume this person took one look at ecoflows lineup and saw the 10k home kit, and thinks a disconnected solar generator setup is Ok enough to run a house on gros tied under full load...

bro how do you get a 10kwh battery purchased and installed for less than 10k, AND have money left over for a solar array to power your home and charge it.

I got quotes for a 1.2kwh solar array for my TINY house, and they ALL came in over 20k.

in most places it's not legal to hook solar up to a house that is grid connected without a license, and the lake and installation costs more than the panels and batteries

There was a report suggesting California might flip to being a net power exporter in their peak periods this year.

If true then these high temp grid dramas will be a thing of the past by next year.

AFAIK, it would not help Texas as the state is generally not connected to the national grids to avoid federal regulation of their state grid.

Yep. We are basically a power island with a tiny bit of DC-DC interconnect.

Interesting stats are here: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

And based on news articles, Texas has the most unreliable grid of the country.

Maybe those federal regulations do some good.

Yeah but Texans don't read, or worse, choose not to believe those news articles. Instead, their problems were clearly caused by the Green New Deal (which didn't exist yet) or renewable energy (which has no difficulty producing power in canada)

> Texans don't read, or worse, choose not to believe those news articles.

There's "blue Texas," i.e., the big cities, generally voting Democratic but outvoted in the state legislature (thanks in part to aggressive gerrymandering) and in statewide races (governor, lt. gov., etc.) by "red Texas," the more-sparsely-populated regions that consistently vote Republican (and, increasingly, MAGA).

Considering that California imports around 30% of its power now, that may be a ways off.

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