Batteries and Renewables Are Saving Texas During the Heat Wave
forbes.com
forbes.com
Once a week or so, my utility (actually, a middleman wholesaler of power that they purchase from the actual generators, due to our deregulated electrical market structure) sends an email asking us to please limit consumption during the following day due to anticipated extraordinary demand.
My response is “get bent” - ERCOT has literally one job - grid stability - and the legislature had no business trying to attract crypto miners. So I’ll happily take advantage of the fixed priced electrical contract I entered into (nine cents a kilowatt hour) and keep my AC where I damn well please.
99% of time, it is literally my pleasure to act in pro-social ways according to the greater good, but I see no reason whatsoever why I personally should bail out the grid and state leadership from their political decisions.
I’ve spent plenty of time sitting in the cold or hot dark due to their mismanagement (probably an aggregate of about 10 days without power in the last three years), so when (if?) they’re capable of attending to the population as a whole rather than special interests, I’ll happy do my part. Until then, I’m simply going to continue to abide by the “every man for himself” ethos they’ve adopted.
…or so I thought. It turns out that accepting this $25/yr alllows the grid to remotely control my thermostat.
I was sweating in my living room, wondering why it felt so hot. Apparently the grid was facing peak load, so they raised my thermostat temperature by 2 degrees!
Thankfully there is a manual override when this happens, but I have to call my energy company to disable this “feature” completely.
I’m sorry, you cannot pay me $25/yr to sweat on my sofa.
I think demand reduction is generally a great idea, but considering what that two degree increase is saving your utility, there really ought to be a 50/50 split of savings than kicking back a pittance of $25 a year.
Actually, 99% agree. In Texas, up until one of our recent power debacles, there was a retail energy provider whose schtick was passing through spot rates to retail customers. Normally this was a small fraction (30%) of typical retail pricing. Until the grid went under stress, spot prices skyrocketed, and retail customers who opted into that limited-upside potentially-unlimited-downside plan were paying something like 10,000% of typical pricing. To quote a former Texas governor who forgot which cabinet agencies he wanted to eliminate, “Oops.”
I’m not sure how something like that could happen with what you suggest, but I’m a little wary of unanticipated consequences so as to degrade my degree of confidence slightly given recent events.
I’m sorry, but you get much less sympathy from me for this generic comment. Raising your temp from 68 to 70 means nothing. Changing your temp from 78 to 80 is totally different. I’m also supposed to feel sorry for you because you didn’t read the fine print? Sure, maybe I’m victim blaming, but come on
In Illinois, Exelon has a similar program. In exchange for $40/year, they install a control on your AC that lets them cycle it off during summer months for a period of time each day. Connecting the program to a smart meter would let them make finer adjustments, and probably more frequently.
We stay enrolled in the $40/year program because if they’re cycling us, it’s unnoticeable. I’m not sure how much discomfort we’d tolerate.
I live in a northern, Midwestern state and our coop (part of MISO) offered a one time $1500 and continued discounts (11%) per month on electricity for the capability to control utility curtailment (power control to the unit, no ability to adjust set-point or collect any other data). For winter it can only be in buildings that are non-primary living and can only shut off power to an electrical heating appliance (heat pump, boiler, etc). In the summer they can curtail your heat pump / AC for up to 15 minutes at a time.
I see the curtailment notification on my thermostat on hot days. But the house never gets warm. I have a newer heat pump that is rated up to 22 SEER2 and compared to my old on/off AC unit the variable speed unit makes a huge difference in performance, cost and noise levels. I never hear it running when it is and so during curtailment I don't notice it unless I see the notification.
And I believe the contract states curtailment events can only happen up to 4 times in a given day and cannot happen more than once an hour.
I do find it interesting that these terms are still valuable to a power company. Obviously being able to shed the load for 15 minutes is fantastic, but I would think the system would then just use more energy (say for the next 45 minutes) to make up for it. But perhaps staggering the curtailment times, and paying the debt of more draw from the units that were curtailed by doing even more curtailments, can kick the can down the road enough for the few hours they need to smooth peak load?
Also just a guess: is the story with heating that your heat pump is sized based on your max heating load, and so losing up to 25% of its capacity on the coldest days means it would never be able to catch up?
The unit I have has a HSPF2 rating of 10.5. It's very efficient at the transfer of the heat available. Heat pumps can extract more energy than the consume. New heat pumps can operate over 300% efficiency. The best furnaces are generally in the mid-90 percentages.
I have a dual-fuel system and can set where the heat pump locks out. The system is rated to a COP of 1.75 at 5F. Meaning it's still over 100% efficient at that temperature. The unit will operate down to -22F but would be at, likely, less than 50% capacity of output. To save on wear and tear of the unit, however I have my setpoint lockout at 15.
It would have to be significantly below 0 for days on end to have a problem. But even then the furnace would be providing primary heat. There are people in my area that heat their entire home with ductless heat pumps [0]. My unit is rated at 48k BTU. The furnace at 100k BTU. I only really "need" the furnace for emergency. But we do have sub-zero highs rather often and during those days the heat pump would be running continuously.
I also have an 80 gallon hybrid heat pump water heater which has saved us thousands over the last few years. 98% of the year it only uses the heat pump.
[0] https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/can-a-heat-pump-work-in-...
By "lose 25% of its capacity", I mean because with curtailment it could be off up to 25% of the time (assuming the same curtailment schedule as summer). The focus on "coldest days" is because that is when your house needs the most heat (regardless of source type). Based on the climate, I assume your heat pump was sized based on the minimum it needs to supply for heating loads on the "design day" (coldest day generally expected for your climate), meaning on the coldest days it requires most of its capacity to keep the house temperature steady. Whereas it's oversized for summer so it can still keep up even if it loses a bunch of capacity due to curtailment.
I'm a bit surprised with a solid backup heat source that winter curtailment isn't more attractive to you (it would also help exercise your backup heat). Does it really not make financial sense? Or is it more of an idealistic thing of not wanting to burn oil/gas as much as possible?
Can I ask why you got a heat pump with such a high SEER rating? I look at flyers advertising heat pumps near me and the price differential between 16 SEER and 18/20 SEER units just doesn't seem worth it at all even accounting energy savings.
[0] https://yourallweatherhvac.com/media/2022-Carrier-Cool-Cash-... (PDF) [1] https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-minnesota-energy-law.htm... [2] https://www.minnpost.com/greater-minnesota/2023/03/dfl-energ...
I got a $1400 rebate from the manufacturer at the time $2000 tax credit from the fed and another $1200 from the state.
1. That (but never really set it up due to the number of people going in and out, but nice to turn things back when we’re all away for an extended period and turn it back on before we return)
2. Run the fans for a little bit every hour (i wish it could be smarter within which part of the hour it could run tho)
3. Disable the AC entirely when it’s cool outside (but had to use some unintended setting designed to prevent « heat pump » stress). Though lead to some head banging by family members asking why the ac isn’t running (answer: open some windows).
4. Tried and failed to get it set up to properly account for humidity when it comes to AC (25C and dry is nice, 25C and humid can feel too hot)
5. Set up too much programming to properly pre charge for in anticipation of time of day price increases and step back when it’s going to go down soon. IMO, this should have been out-of-the-box functionality, not require the complex scheduling i had to do. Even though we have gas heat, I still have some programming for this because its electric load is still like 1kw.
I did immediately turn off the « community electricity savings » thing. You gotta pay me for that!
I mean, if the grid goes down because everyone refuses to sweat a tiny bit during a massive heat wave's peak load, you might be sweating anyways... for longer and $25 poorer.
As with most things, there are good and bad ways to use this ability.
Every state and most (all?) of the EU uses the same "deregulated electrical market structure" that separates electrical utilities from power generators.
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/why-the-texas-power-m...
> Yes. Fundamentally, the difference between the Texas market and other energy markets across the U.S. is that it’s an electricity-only market. There is no capacity market paying generators to ensure there will be enough power to meet peak demand. The generators only make money when they’re delivering electrons into the grid.
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/27/970877890/the-power-is-back-o...
> Take DeAndrew Upshaw of Dallas. His electricity bill is normally $80. A bad month is $300. His electricity bill over seven days in February? $6,700.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-b...
> He said he had nearly emptied his savings account so that he would be able to pay the $16,752 electric bill charged to his credit card — 70 times what he usually pays for all of his utilities combined. “There’s nothing I can do about it, but it’s broken me.”
That's not very standard.
OP is imputing some ideological aspect to ERCOT’s design, but electricity-only markets versus an electricity-plus-capacity markets is a technical detail of how the market is structured. Both are “deregulated electrical market structures” that separate electric utilities from generators—which is the specific feature OP was complaining about.
In fact, capacity markets are typically seen as subsidies for fossil fuels. The whole point is to take money from ratepayers and give it to generators who can commit to producing a definite capacity. That process favors gas plants; renewables capacity is heavily discounted in capacity auctions.
I personally enjoy the Western standard of living, and that, today and for the foreseeable future, is absolutely predicated on fossil fuels being a substantial part of the energy mix. I also try not to be a hypocrite so I actually consider myself pro-fossil fuel when used efficiently and appropriately. As such, I favor just about all types of electrical generation, except for coal and oil fired plants (and possibly biomass - I don’t know the technical details well enough, but my vague understanding is that’s basically regulatory arbitrage that does more harm than good). At least fortunately oil-fired plants are vanishingly rare these days.
If you can generate when called upon, you should get paid to be there when sufficient capacity is questionable. If you cannot, your generation should trade at a discount to reflect its intermittent nature.
In most of the US electricity is a lot like cable TV: the company that owns the cable is the company that you buy your cable TV from.
In around 15 states there are districts where it works like the wired phone system worked after local loop unbundling: you paid the company that owned the wire for access to the wire, and independently paid a phone company for telephone service over the wire and/or an ISP for DSL service over the wire.
Riot Platforms’ mine in Rockdale, Texas, uses about the same amount of electricity as the nearest 300,000 homes, making it the most power-intensive Bitcoin mining operation in America.[1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-e...
Bitcoin mining is great for the Texas grid. Miners end up buying cheap excess energy and when there is a shortage they just turn off their miners, keeping the price from going haywire.
Here's the CEO of Ercot explaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKnRfDeFgr0
[0]: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/did-the-new-york-times-m...
I don’t see a single person in this thread commenting in good faith who’s not in favor of a robust energy mix. But you’re deluding yourself if you think that the political body that is ERCOT is acting solely (or even primarily) toward the establishment of a robust grid based on apolitical engineering and a variety of predictably reliable sources of energy without regard to how that power is generated.
Sure, there's a political bias towards phasing out fossil fuels. Most of the new construction is in renewables. Anyone in the energy industry knows that depletion, EROI descent, and climate change are real problems associated with long-term fossil fuel usage. There are also well-known mineral resource limits and intermittency/storage issues with renewables.
There are voices, on the right and the left, that take extreme positions on the role of renewables and fossil fuels. Maybe not anyone in this thread, but the world at large is full of people advocating for an energy mix that uncompromisingly reflects their moral philosophy. Fossil fuels bad. Renewables will save us. Or vice-versa.
My point is that these extreme positions tend to dominate social media and news cycles - but they don't reflect the actual development of our energy systems, which take a more nuanced and balanced approach by necessity. ERCOT is beholden to actual results, unlike political advocates.
Again, reasonable people can disagree here, but for me personally, the Texas grid has gone from a point of pride about a well managed system that reliably delivers power to some of the most energy intensive industries in the country (to say nothing of a fast growing population in a not exactly temperate climate) to a creature of the governor and the legislature that’s failing at job one.
The time to build a gas/coal power plant is around 4 years, and a nuclear power plant is around 7 years. Texas had huge problems demanding 69GW in 2021, yet in 2023 they demand 81GW and the grid provides. So yes, from 2020 to 2025 at least, renewables are "saving" Texas.
- Texas is the "energy capital" of (USA/World?)
- Texas have its own grid disconnected from West/East grids
https://www.houston.org/why-houston/industries/energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Texas
Someone more knowledgeable feel free to chip in with more data points
It very much is on all those axes, even if it does have some hightech/liberal urban centres.
In re: other points, much of the "energy capital" is due to its long history of oil and gas extraction, and the disconnected grid is arguably a bug rather than a feature. Even if they don't want to maintain grid sync, a HVDC link east and/or west would be of significant benefit to cost and stability.
The disconnected grid is to avoid any federal regulation (because a connection across state lines would obviously count as "interstate commerce"), which seems to have real value given the current clusterfuck of a political environment.
Could you explain the practical advantages of this and which federal regulations the state is better off without? What particular details of federal energy regulation are bad?
(Besides, given Wickard vs Fillmore I'm not convinced that disconnection would be enough to avoid incurring commerce clause regulation given a sufficiently motivated supreme court)
Their power is significantly cheaper. I naively assume this is a practical advantage.
> Despite the recommendations issued by the PUCT in its report on the 1989 event, the majority of the problems generators experienced in 2011 resulted from failures of the very same type of equipment that failed in the earlier event. And in many cases, these failures were experienced by the same generators
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-...
https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2021-08-05/if-the-tex...
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/pepco-week-long-resto...
> More than 160,000 of their customers in East Texas and Louisiana remain without power as of 4 p.m. Sunday. Some Texans may have to wait for full restoration until June 23 — a week after losing power, the provider said.
Are you expecting Texas to roll out Tornado proof lines?
No, I'm expecting Texas to be just as vulnerable to severe weather damaging lines requiring a week's repairs as DC.
Yes, and that's why people were freezing to death in 2021. Texas is worse than all the other "redneck republican southern states": they're all smart enough to be on the grid so they can get power from other states if there's some kind of emergency or disaster. Texas is far more stupid.
The humidity of this heat dome has been murderous. FWIW, I'm right at the 30 N parallel along the same plane as Cairo.
My smart thermostat went into "eco" mode from the power company (Austin Energy), but I turned that off because I usually keep my inside temp at 77 F (25 C) 24/7/365. "Alexa, it's hot in here." and she nudges the thermostat (instead of playing hip-hop).
How does the power company have access to your thermostat?
Some smart thermostats have links in their apps that search for local incentivized rebate programs. The mechanism of it is likely integration between the power company and the smart mfgr's cloud, especially to prevent blackouts during peak capacity shortfalls.
Edit: I have an ecobee4 (calls it "eco+") but I had a Sensi thermostat on PG&E that called it something else.
So you get rich Republican rednecks who have a strong vested interest in the petroleum industry being willing and able to give them their due, either now or someday.
(Grew up in a red-leaning, increasingly exurban county between Waco and Austin, with roots in deep red East and West Texas, and in the economic class of people with "would pay off a small mortgage"-level hopes in mineral rights)
Texas has 38 House seats. Republicans won 65% of seats and 58% of the popular vote.
California has 52 House seats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Re.... Democrats won 77% of seats with 63% of the popular vote.
Texas is just a red state. Abbott won by more than 10 points in a statewide election. The cities aren't even that blue. Beto won Harris county by less than 10 points.
Beto was (and is) damaged goods politically; I voted for him but figuratively held my nose doing so.
I don't know how you unwind such a system, but it seems like moving towards thinking of it as a collective resource of the citizens makes some sense, and I'm lead to believe that that's the way it's done in other places like Norway or Alaska.
Texas will get state-funded universal healthcare and Tesla will be able to sell you a car right there in downtown Dallas before mineral rights are seriously reformed. For non-Texans: those first two things have two of the more powerful lobbies in Texas against them, but not the even more widely-distributed power of mineral rights holders.
If you’re interested in knowing more about what your family might own and how this works, happy to take some educated guesses. Just let me know if you’re interested, and I can pose a few general follow up questions to narrow it down. Smart of your great-grandparents though - my west Texan forebearers never retained any mineral rights lmfao.
By the way, for what it’s worth, Texas’s public university systems are in large part funded by state-owned mineral rights in West Texas which includes a little oil field called the Permian Basin. As a result, UT’s endowment is either comparable in size, or perhaps now larger than, Harvard’s famously large endowment (that’s what she said?). Obviously smaller on a per capita basis, but definitely the mineral resources of Texas do fund some public goods.
Final comment - I can still hear a quote from some game on unlocking part of the tech tree (Civ VI? Alpha Centauri?): “The meek shall inherit the earth - but not its mineral rights.”
At least they actually got some new units out of it, unlike South Carolina that spent billions and billions and shuttered the project.
Their retail prices are quite a bit higher, for now at least, but that differential may narrow as the states that deregulated their power systems rebuild the reliability gap.
weird. Currently, natural gas is 62.4% of the fuel mix
PV generation maxes out at ~12GW, the bulk of our renewable energy comes from wind but it isn’t blowing this week ergo outsized natgas generation before the sun is up.
A friend mines several non-PoW cryptos at home here in TX since there's no money in GPU mining anymore. Also, Helium, if that counts but it's really "Airbnb for LoRa".