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Texas power prices soared 20,000% Wednesday evening amid another brutal heat wave.
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Spot electricity prices topped $5,000 per megawatt-hour, up more than 200 times from Wednesday morning.
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The state’s grid operator issued its second-highest energy emergency, then later said conditions returned to normal.
Hey little buddy, how’s the independent grid working out for you?
Jesus Christ.
As a lib, I feel so owned.
I’m glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.
You are kind of owned, since these red states fucking up just means that more of your tax money will go to saving these idiots from themselves through federal aid
As another fellow Washingtonian, I’m getting pretty tired of subsidizing willful stupidity.
Red states are a luxury we can’t afford anymore. They need to pull themselves up by their freedom bootstraps and start turning a profit, or the spigot turns off.
honestly it’s not willful for a lot of residents there because of gerrymandering instead of redistricting.
Never should have let the southern states back in like we did.
We should have hanged every last confederate.
It’s not too late though.
Texas has plenty of power. Their problem is the delivery network. Their prices surge because power can’t be delivered to everybody, not because there isn’t enough for everybody.
I need you to explain this further? The price goes up because the demand on the grid goes up, and as the price goes up, typically additional generation comes online to take advantage of higher rates. I’m not saying it’s a good system by any means, but I don’t understand what you mean saying “power can’t be delivered to everybody”
They lead the nation, iirc. Not just in the space for it, but for the actual amount that’s been implemented.
apperently not on peoples roofs though.
Especually for ACs having your own solar panels is perfect. The demand and supply are always highest at the same time.
If you had the same amount of heat, you’d have more sunlight hours and thus better conditions for solar power. If you had more wind, wind power etc.
There’s no scenario anywhere in the world where the entire energy consumption and more can’t be supplied via renewable sources. All that’s missing is the political will to go against the fossil fuel industry.
Texas actually does better in the renewable energy front than you may expect.
A quarter of the state’s energy is produced through wind and solar. The biggest bottleneck preventing more wind adoption is the capacity of transmission lines up and the lack of energy storage.
The advantage of natural gas is that it can be dry up pretty much anywhere and isn’t dependent on weather.
The biggest problem Texas has right now regarding energy (and housing costs, and inflation, and municipal planning, and traffic, etc) is its extremely rapid population growth.
Yes, the heat wave is historic and ERCOT is awful, but even in perfect weather the grid is being stressed from the sheer number of people and businesses moving here
Don’t forget natural gas lines can freeze. Remember Ted Cruz going to Cancun? Pepperidge farm remembers.
While a lot of shitty things happened regarding ERCOT and that freeze (and ESPECIALLY the lack of response to prevent the next 2 freeze emergencies), Snovid was a perfect storm. And again a lot of the issues were from transmission problems when lines iced over and tress took out transmission lines.
We’re lucky the 2023 freeze was as short as it was, because it’s impact on the grid was almost as severe even though it was shorter and not nearly as cold. It was an ice event instead of snow, and had a much larger impact on trees and therefore transmission lines. Some people were without power for 3-4 times as long as with the 2021 storm despite it being a much milder event.
I’m glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.
Texas has more renewable energy production than you do. In Q1 of 2022 Washington State generated 25 Million Megawatt hours of renewal energy and Texas generated 34.
I remember my parents planning to retire to Texas about 10 years ago, I told 'em “that state’s going to be unlivable b/c of climate change pretty soon, don’t buy land there”.
They’re Republicans so pish-tosh. They have spent weeks this summer essentially unable to be outside anywhere.
Retiring somewhere where you can be burned by the pavement if you fall over? That’s an interesting choice.
Maybe stop electing Republican orcs and your state will improve.
I’m trying so hard… I swear, our ballot boxes should be called wishing wells to better curb my hopes…
The problem is Texas Democrats and those who’d stand against Republicans don’t vote. I don’t feel like digging out the exact numbers, but the 2022 gubernatorial race shows it best. Abbott got nearly 80% of the votes Trump did in 2020. Beto got 60% of the votes Biden did. Republicans show up, Democrats don’t. Until that changes. nothing in this state will change.
Wow, I’m so shocked that Democrat turnout is depressed in *checks notes… states that go out of their way to gerrymander so only the Republicans can win, and use authoritarian tactics and putting Yes Men in key positions, have laws like it being illegal to give water to people standing in the voting line, and in general violently repress their Democratic constituents.
Gee I wonder why those votes might be depressed! It certainly has nothing to do with a system that has already been rigged against them! /s
Being real though, that’s purposeful on the part of Republicans. They want Democrats to lose hope. Makes their job easier.
Texas is so gerrymandered that even when new maps are made anyone opposing Republicans gets annihilated by districting.
Republicans in Texas still blame liberals for the grid problems for some reason.
True. They need a scapegoat so they know if they say “low wind and unexpected thermal outaged”, they know people are too stupid to realize they’re saying its NG and/or coal plants playing a large role in the shortfalls and that centralized power NG/coal/nuclear power plants also have unpredictable swings in power (sometimes a 2-3 GW on/off if a large plant shuts down). Yet you can look at the comments on ERCOT to find plenty of people blaming renewables and saying we need to build more of those power stations that failed us in the winter storm in 2021 and have be causing issues this summer as well.
If only there was some kind of energy source that worked best during intense sunlight.
Solar is only half the battle though. There can often be a severe electricity shortage in the evening when solar power shuts off but temperates are still high. This issue is greatest in the late summer and fall because it’s still very hot but the sun sets earlier.
There are solutions to this issue but they are fairly early in development and sometimes expensive. California is struggling with this issue currently. We’ve installed a huge amount of battery power over the last few years which has prevented several catastrophes so far but heat continues to get more severe, increasing energy needs as we are trying to shut down the state’s remaining gas peaker plants.
Solar is only half the battle though. There can often be a severe electricity shortage in the evening when solar power shuts off but temperates are still high
That’s true of household panels (which are great for offsetting your daytime usage, which is usually your highest usage), but that is generally not true of large solar installations that heat up a huge mass of salt until it’s molten and then produce power from that source 24/7. Example: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16012018/csp-concentrated-solar-molten-salt-storage-24-hour-renewable-energy-crescent-dunes-nevada/
TL/DR: large solar installations produce power 24/7 (yes, even when it’s dark)
Solar thermal isn’t really what we mean when we say solar power. The vast majority, even at utility scale, is PV panels just like the ones on your roof. Historically, solar thermal was too expensive and PV panels are still far cheaper.
That said, for areas like CA that may soon approach maximum solar penetration it may deserve a second look because of its more consistent energy output. It will mainly be competing with batteries, pumped hydro, and new generations of geothermal technology. All of these are new and fairly unproven at scale so we’ll have to learn as we go which is the best option for the later stages of decarbonizing the electrical grid.
I saw something recently which is the same principle as molten salt, except the medium never melts, is stable, and… iirc is pretty much just carbon. I was trying to look for a source and all I could find was the equally-encouraging news that the humble red brick has now been turned into a capacitor (with a wall of bricks being able to perform as a supercapacitor)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200811120154.htm
I fail to see the problem. You cool your house down while the sun is up and even if it is still hot outside, then your house gets a bit warmer, so what? Still it is comfy inside and in the night you can open everything up to get some fresh wind in.
This is what I do, but there are still problems. Some people are at work and don’t have programmable thermostats. If you have a poorly insulated house, even if you do pre-cool in the middle of the day, by the time late evening rolls around, it can be getting quite hot again. And during extreme heat waves, the overnight temperature can remain very high. Last night I went to open my windows around 10 PM but it was still hotter outside than in my house. And yesterday wasn’t even particularly hot where I live, the high was only in the low 90’s.
This is solar’s half of the battle, high energy demand during bright sunlight.
The Texas grid issues have been right after solar drops off (evening, not day) because Texas does rely on solar for a small, but necessary, part of it energy. The second half is energy storage, and Texas lacks that which is why its been having many close calls this summer and has resorted to paying cryptominers to not mine to narrowly scrape by after solar power drops off.
Not to mention Diablo Canyon. Last I heard, we were working on an expansion at Long Valley Geothermal station, but it won’t be ready before DCNR goes offline.
I think they’re going to postpone its closure which will be controversial but necessary to avoid burning more natural gas.
recently learned that if we went with nuclear decades ago this whole problem wouldn’t even exist. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nuclear-power-isnt-perfect-is-it-good-enough/
