[HN Gopher] Texas Power Companies Remotely Raise Temps Amid Ener...
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Texas Power Companies Remotely Raise Temps Amid Energy Shortage
Author : Jerry2
Score : 24 points
Date : 2021-06-18 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dailydot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dailydot.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Electrical users typically agree to this demand shedding/response
| [1] in return for electrical bill credits, and it requires opt
| in. I expect Texas will see a pretty rapid uptake in rooftop
| solar and distributed storage after these events. For
| homeowner's, you can capture a 26% federal tax credit for both
| solar and storage, and finance the entire system (if you don't
| want to or have the cash) to get a monthly payment that replaces
| your utility bill (mostly) with the benefit that you're self
| sufficient when the grid fails (if you purchase storage).
|
| Until the Texas grid operator and the Texas legislator are
| comfortable enacting and charging for a capacity market [2] to
| ensure adequete electrical supply during periods of high demand,
| you should be prepared to go it on your own [3] [4], which is a
| very Texan sort of attitude I would think.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-power-
| prices-... (control-f "What makes the state's grid different from
| other grids?")
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27551254
|
| [4] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/14/texas-power-grid-
| con...
| adamfeldman wrote:
| Reliant/NRG offered me a one-time $25 bill credit for joining the
| program, as a Nest thermostat user. Not worth it.
|
| https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9244031
| allears wrote:
| We typically keep the thermostat at 78 or even higher. If I wear
| shorts and a tank top around the house, without shoes and socks,
| that's not at all uncomfortable. And a simple electric fan makes
| it even more comfortable. Either Texans are wusses or this
| article is clickbait.
| lsaferite wrote:
| For me it wouldn't even be about the temp. Our HVAC is
| _essential_ for controlling humidity in the South. Ceding
| control over that ability is bonkers.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| People are digging on power companies, but this is likely the
| future of America- and Texas will be on the leading edge.
|
| For power generation, infrastructure is the BIGGEST cost. All of
| the power lines and generators are sized for the single hottest
| day of the year. So companies pay big bucks for big power lines
| and generators that are under used 95% of the time. And "peak
| heat" only lasts for a couple of hours.
|
| There are 2 solutions to mitigate this:
|
| 1) Solar. Local solar panels can take the edge off of "your house
| needing power from the grid" - and this helps everyone
|
| 2) PRE COOLING houses. Our houses can act as storage. At 3:00 pm,
| 50% of the houses cool down 3 degrees. At 6:00 pm their AC turns
| off, and the other houses turn their AC on. Thus distributing the
| load over time.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| texas is behind in realy future tech if you consider theres _no
| such thing as external costs_.
|
| they are ahead if you think maximizing the value of the social
| construct
| ruffrey wrote:
| When compared to losing power in a rolling brown out, it seems a
| reasonable option. I only set the AC to 78 anyways. I guess
| humidity may require lower norms?
| lsaferite wrote:
| Without a dedicated dehumidifier attached to your HVAC, and
| those aren't very common from what I've seen, you need to run
| the AC side to remove humidity.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I am getting pretty tired of the Texas energy market. I've got a
| contractor working up a quote for a generator install right now.
| WFH with the concern of constantly losing power (especially like
| in Feb where people actually died) is too stressful for me to
| deal with anymore.
|
| How do we feel about every Texas homeowner installing a very
| inefficient ICE from a car next to their house and relying on it
| as a means to power their homes for days on end? What would the
| emissions from 500k+ of these units look like over the course of
| days or weeks (assuming natural gas supply holds)? Perhaps these
| questions should be considered when decisions are made that could
| potentially compromise the stability of the power grid,
| presumably in favor of certain environmental factors. A combined
| cycle power plant, even burning some shitty thing like coal, is
| probably better for the environment than 500k cars driving around
| at 50% load.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| Pretty overblown, been WFH in Texas for 8 years now, the big
| freeze was the only time we had a power outage, and the only
| time in my life in Texas we had ice for more than 3 days for
| that matter.
|
| Is it much better WFH in California during fire season? Seems
| worse with controlled shutdowns vs friendly letters to conserve
| energy.
|
| edit: actually a squirrel blew itself and a transformer up on
| our street one time, that took down power for an hour or so.
|
| edit2: to the poster below, it's possible Oncor in that area is
| mismanaged like most of ATX, but your experience does not align
| with my experience.
| yao420 wrote:
| I'm a native Texan and have had several power outages this
| year including one last week outside of San Antonio. Also
| pretty sure I had at least one in 2019. I remember frequent
| blackouts during the hurricane season in the TX city I grew
| up in ~20 years ago.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Overblown? I disagree. The situation has degraded
| substantially since I have lived here (going on 4 decades
| now).
|
| From 2011-2014, the ATX power grid was so stable, that I was
| able to run a TS3 server out of my apartment with 100%
| uptime. It was plugged _directly_ into the wall with no hope
| of survival if any power disruption occurred. 3 years.
| Probably didn 't even miss a single 60hz cycle.
|
| Fast forward to 2021, I can expect to reset the clocks in my
| house about once every other week.
| readingnews wrote:
| Not to berate the family, but I live in the deeper, hotter, more
| humid south than Houston. We keep the thermostat on 80 all day,
| and lower it to 78 at night, as our house is old and not well
| insulated and it costs a fortune to cool.
|
| This makes me wonder, more specifically, my parents had no AC
| until later in life. My gradparents had none until much later in
| their life. They lived in the same town as I do. People seem to
| really get upset about it being relatively mild in their house,
| and I note this with many of my colleagues (I went to a torture
| high school with no AC, and my folks did not turn it on much at
| home as we did not really have the money for it)...
|
| Not trying to be an old grumpy person, but we seem to lack a
| little "eh, Ill be uncomfortable for a short while to help out a
| straining system that, oh, I don't know, needs to stay on to
| power hospitals and nursing homes and such".
|
| OTOH, I would never consent to having someone else remotely
| control my IoT device. Sheesh, can you imagine a ransomware
| attack on that system?
| [deleted]
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| People are paying for the resource, they should be able to use
| the resource. If there's not enough resource then the supplier
| should not sell the resource. No need to shame people for
| having a preference and using something they paid for.
|
| The hospital and nursing home bit is nice fear mongering but
| unless you have an instance where that has happened it's not
| relevant. If we neared too close to capacity due to over demand
| the electric companies would due controlled brown outs for
| residential areas. There's also backup generators at hospitals
| for natural disasters incase a brown out is not possible, and
| those would not have been prevented by rationing.
| milesvp wrote:
| I might agree with you generally, but the more I learn about
| power generation the harder the problem looks. A power grid
| requires balancing load with a higher degree of precision
| than you might think, and not just total sums, but also in
| different areas of the grid.
|
| 'Ideally' people would be paying spot pricing, so they'd be
| incentivized to ration properly. But we saw how well that
| worked out for the people doing that during Texas' winter
| storm.
|
| Now if everyone paid spot pricing eventually we'd have lots
| of smart outlets shutting off all but the most important
| power consumers in a house, and it wouldn't be as big an
| issue to pay spot pricing, you could be asleep and know that
| only the refridgerator and thermostat are going to blow up
| your bill.
|
| I don't see a system like remote thermostat adjustment being
| an absolutely horrible solution to the general problem, when
| used sparingly and treated as the failure that it us, so it's
| not relied on. Particularly when the alternative might be a
| total blackout. I'm not sure, but I suspect this might also
| be preferrable to rolling brownouts.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Can I ask why you don't/haven't insulated your house?
|
| I'm not asking to pick on you, I was wondering if it's just
| impossible given the construction of the homes, or what. During
| the power failure, I saw it mentioned that homes were poorly
| insulated. What gives?
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| Our homes are usually very well insulated to keep our cool
| air in, we also don't usually have multi-stories, just a long
| ranch home that's easier to cool.
|
| What you saw mentioned during the freeze was the conflating
| of pipe insulation with wall insulation.
|
| We usually don't insulate our pipes because we don't have
| freezes, this led to bursting of pipes, that was the main
| damage during the freeze.
|
| There's flex piping that doesn't need insulation, but
| squirrels and such can chew through them and it's just
| expensive to re-pipe your home.
|
| I'm sure everyone that had their pipes freeze most likely has
| flex piping now, at least partially.
| yostrovs wrote:
| There is no freeze proof piping, sadly. Up here in the
| northern states all the piping has to be protected and the
| stuff that's outside the walls needs heat tape.
| randrews wrote:
| There have been a lot of (I'll charitably say) misleading stories
| about how bad the power system in Texas is lately, and this is
| one of them: these folks opted into this program, most people
| foresaw this exact sort of thing happening and did not. Just like
| the meme about multi-thousand-dollar power bills: they opted into
| paying whatever the spot price was, and then expected a bailout
| when the bet didn't go their way.
| tpowell wrote:
| The City of Austin actually sent me a check (~$100 I think?)
| YEARS ago for opting into this when I first installed my Nest
| thermostat. It's very transparent/obvious and easy to override
| when a rush hour activates (usually between 4 and 6 p.m.). It
| cranks your A/C for a bit before turning the temp up to 78deg
| or so during the "rush hour" as it better distributes the load
| on the grid. If I was home working I would often turn it down
| some. I did like knowing when it was more expensive to run A/C,
| and it's a no-brainer to let them adjust when you're away. This
| article is very disingenuous, at least for how my utility
| implemented this capability.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| > these folks opted into this program
|
| I like "personal responsibility" as much as the next person,
| but we both know that companies love to bury things like this
| deep into contracts in the smallest font sizes know to man.
|
| So while I do agree that "they signed up for the program" I
| doubt the fully read the TOS and other jargon associated with
| this part of the plan.
| foxyv wrote:
| It's amazing how bearable 80-85F is when you have a small fan
| pointed at you. We started setting the thermostat to 82 and using
| fans. Very comfortable and the A/C barely runs now.
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(page generated 2021-06-18 23:03 UTC)