Texas power emergency heat wave
cnn.com
cnn.com
we broke 90 GW for the first time, compared to 85ish last year. much of that has come from industry growth. in an ideal world there's a straightforward solution: ban industrialized crypto mining, and require miners, heavy manufacturers, and refiners using a certain amount of power to generate a majority of their base load in-house _and pay their full share of transmission infrastructure costs_ (transmission issues being a factor in the emergency alert that went out this past weds)
the article says wind and solar are "propping up" the grid but what i've observed is the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing at exactly the worst times. hopefully companche peak doesn't have a unit shut down at the same time, as happened in 21
ercot have been doing a fine job with the hand the PUC dealt them, but my goodness is it scary to watch how often and drastically the frequency swings out of the clean range
When the grid is strained due to AC loads, solar is pumping out full capacity (with a de minimis performance decrease at utility scale if the temp is exceptionally high). Lots of questions about how much of their fossil gas infra will be stranded as batteries rapidly decline in cost (battery firmed renewables directly compete with fossil gas).
I don’t live in Texas, but have friends and family that do, so I’ve been there to install renewables and batteries for them and am very familiar with the situation (and also monitor grid stability remotely where their equipment touches the utility); Victoria Electric Cooperative is particularly on my shit list for making public statements that renewables are the cause of ERCOT instability (for political purposes in direct contradiction of the data).
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/28/texas-solar-power-gr...
This is utterly disgusting.
energy pricing is ostensibly all market-based here, with only spot and day-ahead markets whereas most (all?) other ISOs have year-ahead capacity auctions. the upshot for producers is that peak rates are capped much higher, around $10k here vs around $2k elsewhere. this worked for a while but renewables can often sell at near zero thanks to tax credits, so there's more volatility and destructive competition now. dispatchable producers stay competitive with a poor state of repair and a more selective approach to generation that favors peak hours. this is why in the summer we are constantly getting conservation notices but rarely have wide blackouts, as spikes to $1500+ are ordinary and we've hit $4000+ more than once this year
> Why the Request to Reduce Usage?
> * Heat. Continued statewide high temperatures.
> * Demand. Texas is seeing high demand due to the heat.
> * Solar. Solar generation starts to decline earlier in the afternoon hours towards the end of summer before completely going offline at sunset.
> * Wind. Wind generation is forecasted to be low this afternoon and into the evening hours during peak demand time.
I understand the wind part, but how can you blame solar here? Surely the description they give here is entirely predictable?
https://www.ercot.com/news/release/2023-09-07-ercot-expects-... ( vpn needed outside the US )
As opposed to the "we failed to compensate for obvious variables which affect power usage like global warming and isolated power grid.
It's the last resort of "rational " people who've chosen ultimately irrational positions.
Think of them like staking out a local maximum of rational statement despite being in a global irrational state (Texas).
The Dutch gas reserves were not 'wiped out' by the Ukraine war: if anything, the earlier decision to pretty much stop in-country extraction due to perceived earthquake risks was a bigger factor. Nevertheless, reserves never went below 80% or so: there are sufficient LNG terminals and storage facilities to make things work.
But the most important factor why The Netherlands are not facing (many) energy shortages, is that's it's very much part of the European energy grid. So, any local shortfalls can be compensated by instantly importing energy from anywhere between Sweden and Italy, the UK and Poland, and vice versa.
Texas explicitly opted out of the US-wide grid. What's available in-state is what you can get, and that's it. This has been sold as 'not leaking precious Texas Power to other not-as-prepared states', but the net result is... the answer to your question?
The trick is that we don't import or export even 1GW of power at peak, so it never really has that much impact.
You do need to distinguish between what absolutely does or does not happen, versus what effectively does or does not happen.
We are agreed on what effectively does or does not happen.