[HN Gopher] Two-thirds of North America at risk of energy shorta...
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Two-thirds of North America at risk of energy shortages during
extreme demand [pdf]
Author : ubj
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-05-27 18:48 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nerc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nerc.com)
| ronnier wrote:
| Go off grid now while you can to get grandfathered in before they
| make it illegal to go off grid. When the people with money go off
| grid and stop paying in and the grid starts to collapse from lack
| of funds... expect laws forcing you to pay back in regardless.
| Just a baseless conspiracy theory :-)
| pat2man wrote:
| If you go off grid but still have a grid connection that you
| can use any time you want, you should still pay in. All the
| transition equipment is still needed.
|
| Full off grid should probably not have to pay anything. But if
| something breaks you are on your own.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| 100%, I'm in the process of taking a tiny house fully off
| grid and part of that is planning my own backups. I'd never
| expect the power company to help if/when I cancel my service
| completely.
| HyperSane wrote:
| " I'm in the process of taking a tiny house fully off grid"
|
| Why?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'm in a multi-residential building, and like 50-75% of my
| bill is what I have to pay whether I use anything or not.
|
| (Helps that it's well insulated and that hot water is
| central. hvac is not, but due to good insulation, hardly gets
| used except in summer)
| HyperSane wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. Since I like it cooler than my
| neighbors do in the winter I almost never need to actually
| use the heater.
| HyperSane wrote:
| It makes absolutely no financial sense to go "off grid".
| crooked-v wrote:
| The link doesn't mention it, but ERCOT (the Texas grid) is the
| one most at risk here, because state law specifically forbids
| linking it to other regional power grids so that the state can
| avoid federal laws regulating utility companies. The other grids
| are all connected to their neighbors, which can help compensate
| for issues by transferring power between them.
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| Connecting to a larger system seems like it would reduce your
| risk on average, but increase systemic risk. Perhaps a
| coordinated terrorist attack would cause a power outage across
| the entire country except Texas, making it more appealing?
| coliveira wrote:
| Following this logic they should disconnect each
| municipality, so if one goes dow the rest can continue
| operating...
| rapjr9 wrote:
| This is what microgrids are:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgrid
|
| If solar on rooftops (with batteries or EV connections)
| became really widespread in the US it may make some sense
| to be able to isolate communities from the rest of the grid
| to localize failures. Utilities would probably hate it but
| it could be really resistant to disruption.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| If that were feasible and comparably efficient (which I
| doubt), then yes, I imagine they ought to!
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| The option to connect to spare capacity and to sell power to
| another market is more useful than not having it. The worst
| case would be needing it but not having it.
|
| The risk of very high altitude "super EMP" nuclear attacks is
| the most concerning. If Taiwan were attacked, it would stand
| to reason that China would first create CONUS disasters
| against infrastructure without a direct, kinetic military
| attack. This would be most effectively deployed by EMP at
| very high altitude while simultaneously sabotaging
| infrastructure with hacking.
| profile53 wrote:
| The core problem with this argument is that if China were
| to detonate a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere the US
| will immediately retaliate with massive nuclear strikes in
| which case the world would effectively end
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| I live in ATX, where the ice can knock out power for days to a
| week. This winter, Austin Energy accomplished a Herculean but
| Sisyphean task of reconnecting 130k customers in a few days.
|
| Municipal grid gear here isn't rated for the ice burden like
| utilities in the north east.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I'm just struck that no one ever writes "Atlasean" task, of
| which general grid maintenance would be an example.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I'm curious why ERCOT has become so politicized.
|
| It seems to stem from the 2021 ice storm outage, but that
| wasn't even close to the worst power outages seen in other
| parts of the US that are part of larger interconnects, so I
| don't see why it's special other than it's hip to hate on Texas
| by coastal elites like us.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Because the Texas state government has politicized it:
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/03/texas-power-grid-
| ope...
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Probably because they are literally overseen by political
| entities and their leadership is partially selected by the
| legislature. They are a political entity.
| wilg wrote:
| Well a lot of people were annoyed Texas tried to blame the
| issue on renewable energy. Also people saw the private
| management of the grid or whatever being arguably
| attributable to the failures (outages, people freezing,
| people being overcharged) as a case study for why Republican
| strategies are less than ideal. Also, just everything is
| politicized because it's easy to do so when you're constantly
| on Twitter reacting to other people's reactions.
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| analog31 wrote:
| Part of it is that the rest of the country is being told that
| Texas (and Florida) are economic miracles, so their influence
| could extend beyond their borders.
| robocat wrote:
| Except that ERCOT does have interconnections [I mean DC links -
| interconnection has a different meaning in this context]...
|
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#Ties
| The Texas Interconnection is tied to the Eastern
| Interconnection with two DC ties, and has a DC tie and a VFT to
| non-NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation)
| systems in Mexico. There is one AC tie switch in Dayton, Texas
| that has been used only once in its history (after Hurricane
| Ike). On October 13, 2009, the Tres Amigas SuperStation was
| announced to connect the Eastern, Western and Texas
| Interconnections via eight 5 GW superconductor links.
| woodrow wrote:
| It's a matter of capacity. ERCOT only has 1220 MW of
| interconnection capacity across 4 asynchronous links [1].
| Compare this to e.g. California ISO which seems to have about
| 10,000-15,000 MW of synchronous interconnection capacity [2].
| Neither is adequate to fully support historic peak demand in
| the system [3-4], but California has much more flexibility in
| emergencies.
|
| [1] https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2020/07/30/ERCOT_DC_Tie_
| Ope...
|
| [2] http://www.caiso.com/Documents/ISOMaximumResourceAdequacy
| Imp...
|
| [3] https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhist
| ory...
|
| [4] https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2022/07/20/ERCOT%20Month
| ly%...
| theteapot wrote:
| Link 1 is dead. This doc from May 2023 lists the 1220MW
| figure for async links -- https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/
| 2023/05/05/SARA_Summer2023_....
| [deleted]
| sb057 wrote:
| Strictly speaking, 100% of any energy network faces shortages
| during extreme demand.
| mordae wrote:
| Sounds nice. Rich ones will get panels and batteries, poor
| ones... Well, the usual.
|
| It's a nice symptom of investments to the public infrastructure
| lagging.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| They'll get batteries and solar too eventually. Prices of these
| things will come down over time. And grids will adapt to
| incentivize people to have them as that is cheaper than
| building a lot of new plants and infrastructure. Virtual plants
| are much cheaper for them and can be used to balance the grid.
| more_corn wrote:
| If only there were a way for every home and business to generate
| electricity locally as a sort of decentralized power grid, like
| by putting some sort of low-carbon powerplant on their roof.
| HyperSane wrote:
| How did decentralization become such a religion?
| rr808 wrote:
| How is that going to help heat my house in my cold snowy
| Winters?
| londons_explore wrote:
| And yet, me with my tiny gasoline generator has absolutely no
| incentive to use it at times of peak demand.
|
| When any market gives no incentive for most participants to
| resolve any supply/demand imbalance, then shortages are sure to
| happen from time to time.
|
| Electricity isn't even a market where people can 'panic buy' like
| toilet paper.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > Electricity isn't even a market where people can 'panic buy'
| like toilet paper.
|
| People can "panic buy" generators, and have been doing so for a
| while. With solar panels on the roof for when the sun is
| available and some alternative source like your generator
| (cheap to buy, expensive to use) or batteries (expensive to
| buy, cheap to use) for when it is not and power has failed you
| can be mostly energy independent.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| That happened in NorCal in 2019. There were no generators to
| be had south of Chico, CA that summer. Had to go halfway to
| Redding to a random Home Depot that didn't have a large
| customer base. When you need a generator because PG&E decided
| to have a PSPS for a week or 2 without warning, then you need
| it immediately. It's not a panic purchase when it's an
| emergency purchase of inelastic necessity, not hoarding of
| 4000 rolls of toilet paper.
|
| Gasoline generators are a PITA. Most of them require frequent
| oil changes. And floating neutral generators generally won't
| work well with GFI circuits because they easily see an
| imbalance in current across neutral and to the ground path.
| If you want your generator to be safe and work with GFI,
| you'll have to use a bonded one and ground it.
|
| Most residential solar sets in California lack battery backup
| capacity and do not generate power in the absence of grid
| power "for safety". This is because most homeowners are
| uninformed consumers and don't know what options they need.
| It's worth getting a subpanel, moving critical loads to them,
| and having a 3-way ATS with solar-batteries-inverter, grid
| tie, and an autostart natural gas generator.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I have a dynamic pricing contract, prices are generally around
| or slightly below fixed market rates, but when it's sunny or
| windy I get power for free, or better. Got paid to charge my
| car today. I like it, because it makes me more mindful of the
| e-grid (also free power)
|
| So, it _is_ possible to have some force changing consumer
| behavior. It all depends on sane legislation, allowing a system
| like this to exist.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| We have a dynamic (hourly rates) contract as well and well
| and we sometimes see negative electricity prices. This does
| not mean electricity ends up being free since there is also
| the transmission charge, energy tax, renewable energy
| surcharge and value added tax on all of these to pay. Do you
| _actually_ get paid to use power, i.e. do you not have to pay
| any of the mentioned charges?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| If they do get 100% free, this continually reraises a
| question of mine: outside of crypto mining, is there
| anything a consumer can do to capture benefit from free
| electricity? Low efficiency synthesis of ethanol, hydrogen,
| carbon capture, desalination, precious mineral enrichment
| from seawater? With net metering rates tanking, I would
| love to see some way to productively capture spare juice.
| The duck curve is not going anywhere.
| londons_explore wrote:
| If in a cold climate, heat the earth under your house.
| Then, that earth slowly gives its heat back to you over
| the coming months (soil is quite a poor thermal
| conductor, so the heat hangs around underground for a
| really long time)
|
| Obscenely powerful heaters are rather cheap. Assuming
| prices only go negative pretty rarely, you really want
| 100 kilowatts or more of heaters under your house to get
| as much free power as possible.
| willglynn wrote:
| Residential power here for single family homes -- the
| type which could reasonably do what you suggest -- is
| almost always single phase 120/240V. As an upper bound,
| let's consider 400A service. (Most homes have services
| smaller than 400A, and even 400A service is typically
| delivered to a pair of smaller panels to keep conductor
| and busbar sizes manageable.) Such heaters would be
| considered continuous loads, reducing the 400A service to
| 320A of current. Resistive heaters are a linear load, so
| we can multiply 240V * 320A to get 76.8 kW at maximum.
|
| Hitting 76 kW is wildly impractical. Exceeding 100 kW is
| nonsense.
| Hextinium wrote:
| Easiest is probably using your house as a thermal battery
| and just temporarily dumping energy into cooling or
| heating down to a set temp and then when allowing your
| house to normalize when prices go up.
|
| Alternatively, charge your own batteries and load
| balance. It's boring but effective.
|
| You could have your computer queued to run high energy
| ops when free, queue training models, compiling, etc.
| Which would generate a lot of heat, thus cranking the AC.
|
| I could see how this could easily 10x your power draw for
| a few thousand dollars and work in the background.
| dv_dt wrote:
| It's possible, but in California for instance, I see large
| utilities constantly placing blockages in the way via
| regulatory capture of the PUC.
| nonfamous wrote:
| I had a similar contract when I lived in IL, and I also liked
| it and it made me more conscious of my energy usage patterns.
|
| But there was always this niggling concern that the price
| could spike to 200x like it did in Texas, without me being
| able to react. Regulation to cap the peak rate would help
| allay consumer fears, IMO, while still offering ample profit
| potential to providers.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I want to see electricity meters configurable with a "max I
| am happy to pay per day" setting. When that limit is near,
| they beep/alert you. When you hit the cap, they turn off
| the whole house.
|
| You could adjust the limit as you please, with a default of
| perhaps $100 - but they spare you from million dollar
| bills, even with uncapped dynamic pricing.
|
| If a reasonable number of these were deployed, the prices
| would never spike super high, because there would always be
| someone else willing to turn off their tumble dryer to save
| 50 bucks.
| bushbaba wrote:
| There's circuit breakers with wifi connectivity that lets
| you turn off load through an api. Could code this up or
| use their apps for energy management.
|
| Consumer demand just isn't there for this type of product
| yet
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Even with a cap, it feels like it would just take one freak
| occurrence (power plant/transformer/blizzard) meltdown to
| erase any potential savings from subscribing to dynamic
| pricing.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Nah, just switch over to a generator for your bare
| essential needs and hunker down for a bit.
|
| You can't go into a dynamic environment and only plan for
| upsides.
| alar44 wrote:
| [dead]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| TLDR more batteries (to firm renewables), renewables (to
| overproduce), and streamline ISO interconnect processes
|
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/grid-interconnection-queue-...
|
| > The total capacity of energy projects in U.S. interconnection
| queues grew 40% year-over-year in 2022, with more than 1,350 GW
| of generation and 680 GW of storage waiting for approval to
| connect, according to a new report from the Lawrence Berkeley
| National Laboratory.
|
| https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/queued_up_2022_04-06...
|
| https://electrek.co/2023/04/19/tesla-reports-massive-increas...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| From my quick skim of the site, it was unclear to me the timing
| of the queue. Do projects sit in there for 90 days or three
| years before approval?
|
| Once approved, the project still has to be built, correct? Is
| there a resource that lists plants which are actively
| expanding? That seems like a more useful short term metric to
| understand new capacity, because items in the queue may never
| be constructed.
| Wohlf wrote:
| It's both, a small project with grid capacity nearby can be
| approved quickly but larger projects without nearby capacity
| can take years to get resolved.
| snarf21 wrote:
| While listening to a recent NPR podcast about green energy, the
| claimed that there were projects proposed for green energy that
| in sum would be larger than todays complete US generation from
| all sources.
|
| The main problems are around interconnect and upgrading
| infrastructure. Lines and transformers are built to a certain
| capacity and connecting all these new projects could cause
| failures and blackouts. _BEFORE_ you can even get approved,
| there has (historically) been a multi-year study required to
| validate everything. They are now doing them in groups of
| projects of 50 or more. However, then the estimates are for
| what would be needed for ALL 50 projects which is clearly
| overkill as they won 't all pan out.
|
| There is money in the Inflation Reduction Act to help upgrade
| the infrastructure and expedite the process but it is a trickle
| when we need more. The other approach is to just hook things up
| and wait until something breaks. Then the supplier would have
| to limit their capacity until they paid for increased carrying
| capacity. All said, this seems to indicate that infrastructure
| is the main bottleneck.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Contrary to this report, I've seen multiple predictions[0] that
| due to a generous amount of hydro generation available after the
| winter storms, California should have adequate supply this
| summer.
|
| [0]https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/eia-
| forecasts...
|
| "An abundance of hydro also means grid operators can be a bit
| less reliant on electricity from out-of-state sources. "[1]
|
| [1]https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-01-18/california..
| .
| MortimerDukePhD wrote:
| [dead]
| cronix wrote:
| They don't really have anything to do with each other other
| than both dealing with "power." Your report is talking about
| total capacity/generation due to having average stock of hydro
| and the linked report is talking about usage during "extreme
| demand" periods.
|
| It doesn't matter how much generating capacity you have if you
| can't transmit all of it to where it's needed when all AC's are
| on full blast and everyone is charging their cars and everyone
| is cooking on electric stoves, or need to totally cut it off to
| large areas to prevent forest/wild fires during these extreme
| demand periods, which is when it's hottest. Blackouts/brownouts
| will still continue, and even be planned for, even with excess
| hydro. Infrastructure/delivery goes way beyond just raw
| generation.
| jyu wrote:
| Solar + battery wall is looking better and better.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| For some it's the cause of all the troubles, for others a
| solution; -\\_(tsu)_/-
| jyu wrote:
| The problem is unreliable access to power. The same solution
| solves many problems: monies.
| HyperSane wrote:
| That is the most expensive source of electricity.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Don't get the Tesla power wall, it's more locked down than
| anything else in the market. Get a system you control with an
| API you can access, not proprietary crap.
|
| Like locked down OSes and hardware, locked down distributed
| energy resources will be the next place where you'll lose your
| access to your devices due to corporate greed. The data and API
| access for DERs are like GOLD today. If you don't control them,
| someone else will, and poorly. No company I've seen today is
| competent enough to scale to what's going to be needed in the
| future. They're all focused on cloud stuff, but at the scale
| energy works at and the compute necessary to efficiently use
| future energy systems, we're going to need to switch to a
| distributed system on the edge, at the generation and load
| sites.
|
| Edit: I'm in HN slow mode for some reason, likely that the
| fascists aren't my fan today and have been flagging all my
| comments, so here's my reply:
|
| Sorry, no, but I mostly deal with commercial products. I know
| of the power wall only because my friend got them and they
| kinda suck. Tesla sometimes fucks up control, too, draining the
| battery for their own use to make money on their VPP. I suggest
| asking directly to the sales people if you will have full, free
| access to your telemetry in bulk to download and that you have
| API access to the whole system. Those are the two most
| important factors.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Better still to use a hybrid inverter plus battery with an
| open API which you do _not_ allow access to the 'net,
| instead accessing the things through a proxy like OpenHAB or
| HA. Isolate all your IoT equipment on a network which is
| blocked from accessing the 'net and use proxy applications
| for control and data visualisation.
|
| I'm using a Fronius Symo GEN24 in this way, I can access all
| features through the API, it can not suddenly update itself
| without my knowledge or consent. I do not have a battery
| attached yet since these are too expensive still and I can
| sell any excess power at market rates for the coming 5 years.
| After that time I expect battery prices to have gone down so
| I'll probably get a set of batteries which should enable us
| to be mostly energy independent from spring to autumn.
|
| No third parties are involved in any way, no data is
| exchanged with "the cloud".
|
| Edit: I'm also rate limited for some reason, a common
| occurrence [1]. No idea whether this is related to flagging,
| my UID being throttled by default or some other cause. It
| does not seem to be related to downvoted posts since I have
| been rate limited many times without any visible downvotes.
|
| [1] documented in my profile at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=the_third_wave
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations?
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| I'm glad ERCOT added 4 GW of renewable generation capacity, but
| that doesn't translate into regional or localized energy
| reserves. Distributed energy storage relieves transmission grid
| capacity. Without enough grid capacity, consumption can't be
| fulfilled even with infinite generation capacity. The challenge
| is in deploying safe and efficient distributed energy storage,
| also realizing there are domestic terrorists who aren't above
| shooting holes in transformer fins.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Instead of investing in nuclear we wasted decades investing in
| solar and wind.
|
| Well, it wasn't a waste for the companies and countries who
| profited and their lobbyists.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Nuclear plants take 15-20 years to build in practice, cost
| double, triple or more of initial estimates just for
| construction, more billions for teardown, and even more for
| storing all the waste. On top of that they're at real risk for
| natural disasters (of which _no_ US state is secure - either it
| 's hurricanes or earthquakes) and accidents due to
| mismanagement and corner-cutting. And no one wants to live near
| one either, which means a shitton more cost in construction
| because you have to build them in the desert, or the project
| gets boggled down for years by NIMBYs.
|
| In contrast, you can build a solar or wind plant in less than a
| year. And the profits for these end up in the local community
| where they stand instead of investment funds owning the nuclear
| plant operators.
| HyperSane wrote:
| Nuclear has the distinct advantage of working at night and is
| far more consistent than wind.
| mordae wrote:
| Extreme heat events tend to go hand in hand with great solar
| yields. So actually building some solar power plants would be a
| sensible thing to do.
|
| But that would probably need some involvement from public
| sector and US public sector has been systematically dismantled
| since Reagan at least.
|
| I am not saying it's not happening elsewhere, but I sure am
| glad that it's not going to be me and my family who's gonna
| eventually reclaim the public sector at the cost of watering
| the democracy tree.
|
| Sorry for the irony. Have a nice day from EU.
| melling wrote:
| "So actually..."
|
| Just say we were wrong. "My bad"
|
| We completely missed our 1.5 goal and the batteries are still
| coming.
| melling wrote:
| We'll hit 1.5C within a decade.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-will-li...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| What's wrong with solar and wind?
| HyperSane wrote:
| You can't have it as 100% of the supply because it is too
| variable.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Generally, at it is now, they're unreliable and
| unpredictable, and we lack adequate storage capabilities to
| mitigate those things.
|
| It's not unreasonable to look to shifting to those
| technologies, but the course were on now of shutting down
| controllable power plants first is hard to characterize as
| anything but irresponsible.
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