Hacker News Reader

Comment by tr3ntg | Hacker News Reader

I live in Texas and we’ve been dancing on the edge of energy availability for weeks now. If you glance at ERCOT’s public graphs that estimate energy supply and demand, every evening we’re barely eeking by. From what I’ve heard, this should be improving daily as temperatures ease, but I guess not. Surprising that we had an emergency episode in September rather than two weeks ago.

If Texas can’t supply enough energy in the summer, I have no hope for what our future winters will look like.

View on HN

I feel like TX is doing more to push for energy independence than any other single organization in the country. the grid incompetence, and governments unwillingness to resolve, is the best driver for household battery and solar I can this of.

I don't live in TX, but if I didn't have 1day battery storage, coupled with solar capability to charge that battery to full in a single day, with a generator as backup, every ounce of effort would be going to that.

While that would work well in summer, and this current issue, the outlook isn’t so good for Texas winters. I recently spoke with another Texan who has had solar + batteries for a couple years.

Apparently, in our area, winters are so cloudy that their solar panels (which cover 100% of energy usage in summer) don’t cover but 20% of their usage in the winter.

No reasonable amount of batteries can ward off grid concerns with those inefficiencies.

Most people can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an off grid capable battery and solar setup.

isn’t it normal for supply to only barely exceed demand? That’s what’s most efficient.

Out of curiosity, what did those graphs look like to you on previous years?

I didn’t live here in previous years, but I think it’s abnormal that multiple days in a week demand is estimated to be above supply.

And yes, it’s most efficient to keep supply and demand close. But based on this article and our recent trends, it seems like there’s some trouble / concern with unlocking the extra energy needed to supply everyone lately.

Its also historically not normal for demand to hit >85GW nearly every day.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com