Winter Storms, Summer Heat, and our 3rd World Electric System

I think ERCOT has said if rolling blackouts become necessary they will alert us wgen and where. And they will be as short as possible
This heat dome is so extreme I am surprised and pleased we haven't had any yet.
Hopefully enough people will cut back a little
 
Monahorns said:
Rolling blackouts in the 21st century is a result of green woke marxism. Anyone who would vote for a dolt like this needs to get ready to sweat ALL SUMMER LONG.
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Naaaaaah. The Al Gores of the Sun Belt will (private) jet up to Martha's Vineyard for the hottest parts of Summer and enjoy highs in the 70s with the Obamas and the Clintons.
 
Monahorns said:
wth? This is brain dead. Storage? Want to bankrupt the state? Li+ batteries are super expensive compared to natural gas, coal, and oil. Fossil fuels are energy storage made by nature.
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Plus, I never saw any mention of nuclear. It takes a moron to run through a whole litany of ideas like that without acknowledging nukes.
 
6721,

Greater Houston has about 20,000 homes without power right now, but that's due to THUNDERSTORMS. You can look those up on the interweb. I think I remember having one before.
 
6721,

They are fast building out of nowhere, rain hard for a few minutes, 90% of water runs off. One this afternoon blewup South of Katy Frwy, West of Beltway, basically from Memorial Drive out to Barker Dam down through Mission Bend. Only thing Memorial may have gotten is if someone threw their ice from Whataburger out the car window.
 
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TIME Magazine does not like air conditioning:

Air-Conditioning Almost Wiped Out the Planet—and It’s Threatening To Do So Again, Unless We Make a Change

"It’s time we become more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it." :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

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I read something a few years back about the California rolling blackouts. Apparently, home builders were installing HVAC units that were larger than necessary. This caused them to cycle on and off more often. This cycling on uses more energy and hits the grid hard and led to rolling blackouts at the time. My heat pump pretty much stays on when it's hotter than 95 and colder than 20.
 
If there are rolling black outs in Texas, my hope is that they will be targeted to industrial plants and other heavy machinery users. There are two possibly good outcomes from that focus.

1) We don't get 100s of old or sick people dieing from heat exhaustion in their homes.
2) It will piss industry off and maybe they will use their clout to demand changes to the grid.
 
Mona,

Most of the "industrial plants" in Texas have to have their own power generation systems because it takes 24-48 hours to shut down a refinery or chemical plant. That's why the workers volunteering to work "through a hurricane" are there 24 hours a day at time and a half or two and half times pay.

Why are the lights on 40 of 50 floors in area office buildings after 7 pm? The landlords charge tenants extra to have lights and AC after 6 and on weekends, yet they have over half the building lit up with no one there.
 
SabreHorn said:
Most of the "industrial plants" in Texas have to have their own power generation systems because it takes 24-48 hours to shut down a refinery or chemical plant. That's why the workers volunteering to work "through a hurricane" are there 24 hours a day at time and a half or two and half times pay.
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Good feedback. Those power sources are outside the grid, so no harm no foul. But there are many industries for which that is not the case. I was in California in 2000 when there were rolling black outs. It shut industry down for hours at a time.

SabreHorn said:
Why are the lights on 40 of 50 floors in area office buildings after 7 pm? The landlords charge tenants extra to have lights and AC after 6 and on weekends, yet they have over half the building lit up with no one there.
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That is definitely low hanging fruit. But operating heavy machinery is the biggest usage of power. Extruders, Fork Lift batteries, Forges, Surface Mount, Foundries, Roll to Roll mfging, Machine Shops, Automated Assembly lines, etc.
 
Chop said:
Texas grid avoids blackouts with voluntary cutbacks amid scorching heat

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) warned of a potential shortage in reserves "with no market solution available."

Well, I suppose they could have jacked up the price 3 or 4 times, and the market would have rationed electricity by price. Not saying that's necessarily a good thing though...
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I'm curious whether they run with the recent SCOTUS decision and decide to un-mothball some of the coal-fired plants that got shut down in the past decade.

It takes time to do so, but it would likely have them available come the winter months...
 
There are at least 10 more days if 100÷ heat ahead
I hope average people and businesses continue to cut back.
It is working
And not that big of a deal with the upside of no rolling blackouts
 
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Webber-Michael-2021.png

:arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up::arrow-up:
Michael Webber -- UT's expert on energy policy

Michael Webber

... unlike previous extreme weather events in Texas which led to deadly blackouts, the grid is holding up remarkably well this week. Several experts told CNN that it's owed in large part to strong performances from wind and solar, which generated 27 gigawatts of electricity during Sunday's peak demand -- close to 40% of the total needed.

"Texas is, by rhetoric, anti-renewables. But frankly, renewables are bailing us out," said Michael Webber, an energy expert and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "They're rocking. That really spares us a lot of heartache and a lot of money."

Despite the Texas Republican rhetoric that wind and solar are unreliable, Texas has a massive and growing fleet of renewables. Zero-carbon electricity sources (wind, solar, and nuclear) powered about 38% of the state's power in 2021, rivaling natural gas at 42%.

Wind and solar power are 'bailing out' Texas amid record heat and energy demand | CNN

Some of this is a tad dated (June 14, 2022 CNN article), but we'll soon see if renewables are still "bailing us out" and "rocking"...
 
Wind and solar are bailing us out is just another way of saying that wind and solar have replaced a significant portion of our capacity. If 100% of our energy production was coal, Texas would have 0 problems with heat waves as long as the capacity was planned to meet demand.

Chop said:
"Texas is, by rhetoric, anti-renewables. But frankly, renewables are bailing us out," said Michael Webber, an energy expert and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "They're rocking. That really spares us a lot of heartache and a lot of money."
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Webber and others like him are liars. They acting like wind and solar are doing what coal and gas can't His message is coal and gas failed but wind and solar saved us. He says it all with soft tones in his voice and a $h!t eating grin on his face.

He is why people don't trust "experts" anymore. We don't have real experts anymore. We have apparatchiks.

It is sad that nuclear has gone from 14% of capacity to 10%. You can see that it is being de-emphasized and replaced by wind and solar as well.

The other thing to be aware of is that "Percent energy (MWh) generated in ERCOT by fuel type" could actually be the percent energy capacity added not necessarily what has been actually generated. This is a common lie these liars use. I can't say if the tweet in question is correct or not though. As a rule of thumb for X MWh of wind/solar capacity you get about X/10 of actual MWh generated. That rule of thumb has held steady even up until now. Don't fall for the deception.
 
This is the operable phrase...."
Monahorns said:
as long as the capacity was planned to meet demand.
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Yes, wind is less reliable than a pile of coal, and yes solar is less reliable than a tanker of NatGas, but both wind and solar are acceptable forms of energy if CAPACITY IS PLANNED TO MEET DEMAND. Our problem is primarily one of waiting to build capacity until after it is proven to be required. In other words the architects of the system are trying to use bare-minimum planning standards based on normal operational requirements and we have had two weather events in the last year that have been outside normal operation planning standards. I'm not a big fan of solar farms or wind farms but the type of energy source is less of a problem than the piss poor capacity planning that seems to be common at ERCOT.
 
BrntOrngStmpeDe said:
Yes, wind is less reliable than a pile of coal, and yes solar is less reliable than a tanker of NatGas, but both wind and solar are acceptable forms of energy if CAPACITY IS PLANNED TO MEET DEMAND. Our problem is primarily one of waiting to build capacity until after it is proven to be required. In other words the architects of the system are trying to use bare-minimum planning standards based on normal operational requirements and we have had two weather events in the last year that have been outside normal operation planning standards. I'm not a big fan of solar farms or wind farms but the type of energy source is less of a problem than the piss poor capacity planning that seems to be common at ERCOT.
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You can't deploy wind and solar as needed though. In order to meet demand you have to plan for 10Xs the capacity than what is needed for load. That is way too expensive for people to pay for.

The type of source directly impacts how pitifully we are able to plan for capacity. The wind blows whenever it blows. We can't control it. The sun shines every day, but cloud cover also can't be planned. If you want a reliable, resilient grid you have to have a coal, gas, and nuclear powered grid.

Don't start about battery storage. Li+ batteries are too expensive for energy storage by a factor of about 1000X or maybe more. Coal, natural gas, and radioactive elements are batteries all by themselves. Nature gives us the best batteries imaginable.
 
Monahorns said:
You can't deploy wind and solar as needed though. In order to meet demand you have to plan for 10Xs the capacity than what is needed for load. That is way too expensive for people to pay for.

The type of source directly impacts how pitifully we are able to plan for capacity. The wind blows whenever it blows. We can't control it. The sun shines every day, but cloud cover also can't be planned. If you want a reliable, resilient grid you have to have a coal, gas, and nuclear powered grid.

Don't start about battery storage. Li+ batteries are too expensive for energy storage by a factor of about 1000X or maybe more. Coal, natural gas, and radioactive elements are batteries all by themselves. Nature gives us the best batteries imaginable.
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I don't think you have to run 10x if sound planning is used. More...yes, but not 10x. renewables are somewhat complimentary in the ebb and flow cycles. (Assessing solar and wind complementarity in Texas | Renewables: Wind, Water, and Solar | Full Text (springeropen.com)) But again, this can only be deployed by good planners, which seem to be in short supply at ERCOT. I'm not a fan of solar farms or wind farms. I'm much more a proponent for nuclear but the biggest failure in the system is not the sourcing but the poor planners involved. Figure 5 in particular.
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basically this illustrates that when the 3 dominant renewables are evaluated in aggregate their combined low is somewhere in the 0.9 range and high is somewhere in the 1.6 range. So a smart planner would use the 0.9 as a low and build in spare capacity for the unexpected. We don't seem to have smart planners.
 
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