Texas power prices briefly soar to $9,000/MWh as heat wave bakes state

On 2019/08/15 11:35 a.m., snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:


Folks will buy air conditioners. You do realize that the more people  
that live somewhere where it gets hot and they like air conditioners  
that the power draw will only go up.

http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/texas-population/

4 million more people in 2018 than 2010 - some of them use electricity...

John

John Robertson wrote...


 Yes, but if they're smart, they'll cool their house
 down in the early AM, when (1) the AC is efficient
 due to cooler outside air, and (2) the electricity
 is cheaper.  Most houses will retain their coolness
 throughout the day, rising no more than 10-deg, so
 push it down to 68 or 70 in advance.  If Texas were
 to give individual users demand pricing, they'd soon
 start adjusting their demand timing.  End of problem.

On Thursday, August 15, 2019 at 4:49:41 PM UTC-4, John Robertson wrote:


Ummm-the utilities install the service feeds for these places, so that presumably they know exactly what loading to expect.

On 2019/08/15 3:03 p.m., snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:


My point was that more people = higher energy consumption, so the  
'record' energy use could have been predicted and as Winfield pointed  
out could have been mitigated somewhat by intelligent planning.

I suspect the electrical suppliers have not been building power plants  
to match the increased usage. I haven't researched this, it is simply an  
assumption on my part. I've seen it so many times before...

John :-#)#

On Friday, August 16, 2019 at 3:02:13 AM UTC-4, John Robertson wrote:


The idea that regulators didn't know the load demands is ridiculous. What happened was their wind power, which normally runs at 20GW, a significant fraction of their total capacity, dropped to nearly zero during the recent weather.

On Friday, August 16, 2019 at 8:25:17 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wro
te:

e:

eserve.
at-pushes-power-prices-to-near-record-levels

ty...
t presumably they know exactly what loading to expect.

  

  

n  

 happened was their wind power, which normally runs at 20GW, a significant  
fraction of their total capacity, dropped to nearly zero during the recent  
weather.

Yeah, there is no correlation between wind and the sun shining.  In fact, i
t may be an inverse correlation.  I'm sure Bill can tell us about that.  My
 experience with ground level wind is that sunny days tend to be calmer, in
 particular toward the late afternoon when energy usage is peaking.  But th
at's ground level wind as felt by boomerangs.  Don't know what's happening  
at 100 - 200 feet.  

Certainly solar has some advantages and the correlation of power output wit
h insolation is one of them.  

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

   Damn! Reached the free limit on articles.

On Friday, August 16, 2019 at 12:09:39 AM UTC-4, Robert Baer wrote:


Clear your cookies and it will reset.  I do that all the time on the PC.  Can't figure out how to do it in Google News on my phone though.  They feed a lot of Wash Post and NY Times articles and you only get 3 a month.  

On Thursday, August 15, 2019 at 2:35:30 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:


Isn't the sun shining when it's that hot?  So much for the solar miracle.....  

On Friday, August 16, 2019 at 8:58:20 PM UTC+10, Whoey Louie wrote:

 wrote:

ve.
ushes-power-prices-to-near-record-levels

....

Trader4 hasn't noticed that while solar cells are now cheap Texan power gen
eration firms are even cheaper, and haven't bought any (China is the big su
pplier), let alone the power storage gear you need when you start getting l
ots of power from erratic renewable sources.

  IIRC, Texas has one or two(or more) of those big solar oven  
mirrors-to-tower-collector/heat exchanger types.  No semiconductor  
solar panels in those.

On Friday, August 16, 2019 at 10:36:38 PM UTC+10, snipped-for-privacy@decadence.org wrote:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations

doesn't include any in Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

is in California and doesn't seem to have bothered with thermal storage - they burn gas every morning to melt the molten salt heat transfer medium.

Pretty much everybody else seems to have nice big insulated tanks to keep lots of hot molten salt around to generate power after dark.

The latest generation of solar cells seem to become cheap enough that some of the thermal solar systems have been ripped out and replaced with photovoltaic devices, but big insulated tanks of molten salt seem to be tolerably cheap energy storage systems.

  Yeah...  I thought they should make tall water towers and pump,  
slowly to fill them using tidal energy.  The stored water has kinetic  
energy but takes a along time to fill with free tidal energy.
Note I am not talking about using sea water in the tanks, merely sea  
energy to run the pumps that slowly fill them.  Not much juice, but  
every penny helps.

On Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 6:12:15 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@decadence.org wrote:




Every penny doesn't help if the power it produces costs so much that it
can't compete.  What do you think all those tanks, pumps, and most of
all the infrastructure to harness the tide energy would cost?

On Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 1:49:45 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:


You mean like nuclear?  Yeah, I agree.  We need to phase out the overly expensive technologies.  

On Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 2:13:19 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

dence.org wrote:

  

  

  

xpensive technologies.  



Nuclear is competitive and viable, which is why plants continue to be built
 around the world. The US is unique, because we let radical obstructionists
 block it. The same obstructionists who say the world is being doomed by CO
2. How hypocritical and stupid is that?

On Sunday, August 18, 2019 at 7:20:31 AM UTC+10, Whoey Louie wrote:


Where? Trader4 won't actually know.



The US has grown quite a few of them since Love Canal. The free market loves to exploit un-monitored externalities, but the nuclear industry grew up in a world where people had started paying attention to externalities, and imposed sensible regulations.



The fact that one technology - burning fossil carbon for fuel - has created a large scale problem that is getting steadily worse, is scarcely an argument for letting the nuclear industry cheap-skate it's way into different disaster.

The nice thing about wind energy and solar power is  that they don't have the same kinds of built-in disasters. Trader4 is too stupid to have figured this out.

On Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 9:55:00 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:


Google broken down under?  There are about 50 under construction around
the world with another 50 in the planning stages.




BS.  If CO2 is going to screw the world, is already creating weather
calamities like the proponents claim, them we should be going all out
on nuclear right now.  Nuclear generates 20% of US power.  Solar, after
all the talk and two decades of doing, generates 1.6%.  Those are the facts.

On Sunday, August 18, 2019 at 9:39:31 PM UTC+10, Whoey Louie wrote:

:

.@decadence.org wrote:

ugh
nd
f
.  

p,  

inetic  

y sea  

 but  

hat it
t of
erly expensive technologies.  

 built around the world.


So post the list. It will expose the fact that you can't actually use googl
e, and draw absurd conclusions from stuff you don't actually understand.
  

loves to exploit un-monitored externalities, but the nuclear industry grew  
up in a world where people had started paying attention to externalities, a
nd imposed sensible regulations.

w hypocritical and stupid is that?

ated a large scale problem that is getting steadily worse, is scarcely an a
rgument for letting the nuclear industry cheap-skate it's way into differen
t disaster.


Actually we should all be going all out on wind and solar cells - which is  
pretty much what is happening - because you can put up a wind farm or a sol
ar farm a lot faster than you can put up a nuclear plant, and because there
 are whole lot of them working right now you can be pretty confident that a
ll them will work.

Twenty of France's fifty nuclear reactors aren't working at the moment beca
use they were built with steel castings that didn't turn out to be up to th
e job.


ts.

Actually, it is 19% and declining.

Renewables - wind and solar - are 8% and rising rapidly. Solar cells halved
 in price a few years ago, and suddenly became a lot more economically attr
active.

If they push up from 1% to 10% of the world market, the price will almost c
ertainly halve again, and make them even more economically attractive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States#/media/Fil
e:US_Electrical_Generation_1950-2016.png

The fact that the Koch brothers, who bought the Republican Party when they  
funded the Tea Party movement, make most of their money out of the business
 of selling fossil carbon as fuel, does seem to discourage a sensible attit
ude to renewable energy sources in the current government (not that the cur
rent administration has sensible attitudes to anything except staying in po
wer, and they miss the bit about persuading people that they ought to stay  
in power).