[HN Gopher] Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid
___________________________________________________________________
Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid
Author : kmax12
Score : 199 points
Date : 2024-08-21 19:18 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.gridstatus.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.gridstatus.io)
| hmcdona1 wrote:
| If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem to
| be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually end
| (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of usage)
| right around net load peak...which this is now reporting is when
| energy prices go through the roof.
|
| So basically the "rush hour" program has likely been costing me
| more money than if I just ignored them to begin with up to this
| point. I do realize these programs are primarily about limiting
| peak gross load and not saving individuals money but maybe I
| won't go out of my way to abide by them now...
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| Maybe this is obvious, but make sure to check your rate
| structure with your energy company. Just because market prices
| are high later in the day doesn't mean that's when your prices
| are highest.
| hmcdona1 wrote:
| While this is true for much of Texas. I happen to live in a
| city that still has a public operator. So we just get more
| generalized flatter rates. I haven't looked into the details
| of my plan closely in a while as a result though, so you
| might be right.
|
| En masse though, it seems not ideal from a cost perspective
| the way things have been scheduled up until now. I'll give
| them the benefit of the doubt that it might be adjusted
| better in the future.
| fnordfnordfnord wrote:
| Austin Energy? There aren't many providers that I am aware of
| in Texas that have variable rates.
| jhayward wrote:
| Austin Energy does Tiered Usage billing, not time-of-use, for
| residential customers.
| bradknowles wrote:
| See powertochoose.org for examples.
| gre wrote:
| My rush hour went off yesterday afternoon and the temp rise
| made me doze off and i woke up sweating with it set to 80
| degrees. I'm in the process of canceling, it's not easy. I used
| the chat and someone is going to send me an email (which says
| it's canceled?) within 24-48 hours.
|
| Harder to turn off than anything else in recent memory. If
| anyone has a pro tip on an easy way to cancel let me know.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Just connect the wires manually To turn on the fan and AC,
| you'd connect R and Y (or R, G, and Y on systems where the
| thermostat controls the fan).
| tedunangst wrote:
| For real, you have to hotwire your AC for manual operation?
| gre wrote:
| You can change the temperature after rush hour starts. I'm
| talking about turning off the rush hour crap entirely.
| xnyan wrote:
| Don't do this, a cheap non-programmable thermostat is a
| better option and inexpensive.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Wire them both up so that your cheap thermostat provides
| hard upper and lower limits.
|
| Your HVAC doesn't care where it gets a 24V signal. An
| open relay won't mind being energized from the "wrong"
| direction. AFAIK, thermostats won't tattle.
| bdcravens wrote:
| When I had them hooked into my EV, I literally had to change
| my Kia password when they ignored my requests to disable the
| feature.
|
| Presumably they similarly have some sort of cloud permission
| into your thermostat, which can be disabled by changing the
| password, resetting the device, or worst case scenario, get a
| new thermostat.
| bdcravens wrote:
| After giving my electricity provider access to my EV for
| optimal charging pretty much killed the 12v battery (they were
| pinging it hundreds of times an hour, meaning it never went to
| sleep), I'm never going to give them access to anything.
| nsriv wrote:
| I had no idea this was a thing that could happen, I thought
| (naively, I suppose) that all they'd get would be the
| equivalent of a meter reading with a suggestion to limit load
| at certain hours.
| rch wrote:
| Next day load shapes are predictable, so devices should
| optimize their charging accordingly.
| miguelazo wrote:
| Which utility was this? That reeks of gross incompetence.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Reliant, in Houston
|
| You can setup the integration in the app, but disconnecting
| requires you to send an email with absolutely zero
| acknowledgment that it's not going straight into /dev/null
| danans wrote:
| > If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem
| to be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually
| end (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of
| usage) right around net load peak
|
| Either you are not reading it right, or there is a problem with
| your thermostat's demand response schedule, because the only
| way demand response makes money (hence rewards for users) is by
| reducing demand during net load peaks, because that completes
| with the high marginal cost of fossil spinning reserves.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Demand response also targets gross load because (assuming the
| renewables are not entirely rooftop solar) that electricity
| still needs to be carried by wires to consumers.
|
| Sizing transmission for the absolute yearly peak is not cost
| effective, so various schemes are used to reduce that peak,
| including efficiency improvements and demand response.
|
| This is entirely separate from questions of renewable cost
| and carbon and pollution and makes economic sense even on
| 100% fossil grids.
| danans wrote:
| > Sizing transmission for the absolute yearly peak is not
| cost effective, so various schemes are used to reduce that
| peak, including efficiency improvements and demand
| response.
|
| Nonetheless, voluntary curtailment of demand by consumers
| (for any objective) must be compensated, right? And
| generally speaking, demand response curtailment (especially
| on shorter notice) is compensated at a higher rate than
| peak energy rates (4x in my area). It shouldn't be the case
| that one spends more money by participating in a demand
| response program that not participating, which is what the
| OP implied.
| infecto wrote:
| In my experience these programs are terrible in Texas, which is
| surprising given how advanced the data and services around the
| grid are there.
|
| I briefly tried out the thermostat program and it was honestly
| trash. It was near impossible to unsubscribe too.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| What is triggering the battery discharge? I assume these are
| referring to decentralized battery storage in people's homes.
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| Texas has quite a bit of utility-scale commercial batteries
| now.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It is the largest market for utility scale storage in the US
| at the moment, rivaling California.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| We have lots of variable production (wind and solar) and
| those peaks don't line up with peak load (generation peaks
| in the morning and peak load is noon-8pm). So utility scale
| batteries to capture the morning excess and discharge in
| the afternoon makes perfect sense.
| powerbroker wrote:
| Unfortunately it these batteries are unable to multiple
| gigawatts over many hours of excess wind energy. It will be
| at least a decade before the battery energy storage systems
| are close to big enough to absorb the oversupply of wind
| energy that happens a few times a week.
|
| Don't get me wrong. The BESS helps with frequency,
| synchronization and voltage issues. They just do very little
| to flatten the wind spikes without turning off 10-20% of the
| wind fleet.
| konschubert wrote:
| It's not necessary that the batteries absorb all the
| oversupply. Curtailment will always be part of an efficient
| renewables energy system.
|
| The batteries are there to make sure that the prices don't
| go crazy on the evening.
| sounds wrote:
| Summarizing from the article, this link [1] shows that there
| were more sources of generation that ERCOT didn't ask to come
| online. Specifically, all the capacity that could come online
| with 5 minutes was online except for a tiny 130 MW of
| generation.
|
| [1] https://blog.gridstatus.io/content/images/2024/08/ERCOT-
| Reca...
|
| Instead of calling for something that needed more than 5
| minutes, ERCOT relied on all the batteries on the grid. I don't
| know what this quote means:
|
| > 2,000 MW of extra capacity released from ECRS.
|
| But I do know what this means:
|
| > battery discharge peaked 20% higher than the previous record,
| which was set only the day before.
|
| It's referencing this graph: [2]
|
| [2] https://blog.gridstatus.io/content/images/2024/08/ERCOT-
| Reca...
|
| The graph has units of Megawatts. In other words, the thing
| that was record setting about the batteries was not the
| Megawatt-hours, or total storage in battery systems.
|
| What set the record was the instantaneous power usage, and
| apparently the batteries in Texas were at their hottest ever.
| (No idea if anything caught on fire though!)
|
| Here are some more assumptions I am reading into this:
|
| * The 130 MW that didn't come online may have been rotated
| around. Maybe all the generation jumped in at different times,
| guided by supply and demand, but ERCOT regulations likely
| played a role in keeping the existing systems from exceeding
| the demand or blowing up transmission lines, etc.
|
| * The article says "Solar and Demand Were High Throughout the
| Day" but I assume that simply means that over time, more and
| more solar will be installed and more businesses and cities are
| becoming aware of https://www.ercot.com/services/programs/load
| (Demand Response). It means they can get cheaper electricity at
| night for instance, so they run their power-hungry machines
| when the prices are low.
|
| * Never underestimate the power of Nature. Probably the daytime
| temps in Texas right now drove the high solar production and
| high demand. High temps usually mean clear, sunny days and
| everyone huddling near an air con.
| scrlk wrote:
| > I don't know what this quote means:
|
| >> 2,000 MW of extra capacity released from ECRS.
|
| ECRS = ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service.
|
| Contingency reserve services are used to maintain system
| reliability during unforeseen events. Think of power plants
| that can quickly ramp up generation, or other assets that can
| quickly reduce their demand.
|
| In this case, ERCOT tapped 2,000 MW of capacity from ECRS.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Probably the daytime temps in Texas right now drove the
| high solar production and high demand.
|
| Probably?
|
| > High temps usually mean clear, sunny days and everyone
| huddling near an air con.
|
| Or all of those mandatory RTO forcing large open spaced
| cubicle farms to run AC in a building made of glass. Not sure
| of the image you have in your head being the reverse of
| homeless huddled around a barrel fire.
| jhayward wrote:
| RTO is actually energy positive from a heating/cooling
| point of view (i.e., excluding transportation). People set
| their home HVAC to "away" to reduce use, and the central
| HVAC systems found in commercial buildings are far more
| efficient than home systems.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Higher temperatures mean less efficient panels. The best
| day for solar is very bright and very cold.
| maxmcd wrote:
| afaik there are no residential loads in emergency response
| programs in Texas
|
| ECRS is a program run by ERCOT, they trigger the battery
| discharge directly, or in some situations the resources might
| respond to an under-frequency relay.
| MBCook wrote:
| So the day peaked at 85 GW of load, and they got down to only 130
| MW of spare capacity. Just 0.15% from running out.
|
| And they never asked for conservation?
|
| Is it normal to go that close to the edge without trying to cut
| load?
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was just chatting with a friend on how we haven't received
| the conservation emails like we have in previous years. This
| year has not been as extreme either as the DFW metroplex has
| not had the extended 100deg+ days. We've just had a run of 3 or
| 4, but we've had 30+ consecutive days in the past.
| justanorherhack wrote:
| Last year was brutal, this year is great.
| nvahalik wrote:
| Indeed. We still had grass at the end of July.
| MBCook wrote:
| I'm not in Texas but that matches my local weather as well.
| Lots of 90s, a few around 100, but not the sustained 100+
| for weeks we had last year.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me my friend. I would not
| define this heat as great; more like just this side of
| deadly.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| No, this summer is objectively one of the best we've had
| in a long time, at least in Austin. The fact that we've
| only had a few days above 105 is a blessing.
|
| I mean, it's Texas - it's always blazing hot at the end
| of August, and that's to be expected. What's really
| changed over the past 25-50 years is that the plus 100
| days have been starting earlier and earlier, and we've
| been having more of them. Thankfully, that wasn't the
| case this year.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Again, that is far from the definition of "great". I
| would say fortunate to not have those string of triple
| digits, but man, it's not great at all. 100deg+ is still
| miserable, but it's amazing how different 98deg feels
| from 105deg. I get Texas hyperbole, but even my feet are
| firmly planted in reality to not accept "great" in this
| meaning. Bless your heart! ;-)
| zdragnar wrote:
| I think I prefer 100+ degree heat to -40. Where I live we
| often get both in the same year (though we didn't hit 100
| this particular summer).
|
| At least with the heat, you aren't worrying that your
| plumbing might freeze and burst a pipe in your walls if
| the power goes out.
| infecto wrote:
| Bless your heart for trying to be so witty but in fact
| coming off foolish.
|
| Texas is simply hot and has been for our timelines. You
| could make the same silly comments about locations that
| have long and cold winters. Texas is hot we get it, you
| don't like it but it does not change that this summer has
| been great, it is a lot cooler than usual.
|
| ;-)
| herewego wrote:
| He's saying Texas is hot for humans, which is objectively
| true. One's willingness to tolerate it is subjective, but
| that's not the point here. Don't take it so personally.
| infecto wrote:
| Why are you taking it so personally, I was simply
| responding to snark with snark.
| dayjah wrote:
| Austin here, we're enrolled in a conservation plan through
| Austin Energy whereby they control our smart thermostats
| (Nest in our case). These "Rush Hour" notices have been
| firing a lot over the past two weeks; perhaps only two days
| where we haven't been asked to conserve somewhere between 3-6
| hours a day.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Are you sure? I just looked and there was a Rush Hour for
| Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and today. The last one before
| that was Aug 8. O16 days total this summer, the first being
| June 13.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Last year was an extraordinarily long and hot summer.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The year before was worse to me, but followed by another
| one just as bad it just made it feel worse. I don't
| remember '23 being as humid as '22, but maybe that's just
| faulty memory shorting out from the humidity???
| username135 wrote:
| Thats how they edge in Tx
| maxmcd wrote:
| The 2 GW of ECRS capacity does include Demand Response
| resources that are reducing their load to provide the capacity.
|
| I imagine the other ERCOT demand response programs were also
| dispatched.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| This is a state that should basically be peppered with
| residential rooftop solar.
|
| Of course, there's zero chance of any sort of state
| governmental policy to help incentivize it in deep red state
| land.
|
| But if recent history has shown anything, I would consider it a
| primary feature of any home in Texas to be relatively grid
| independent with its own generating capacity and storage.
| strivingtobe wrote:
| Texas has a lot of incentives for residential solar. I'm not
| sure where you live, but in my DFW suburb, my neighborhood
| _is_ peppered in rooftop solar.
|
| https://www.gosolartexas.org/available-incentives
|
| A lot of the incentives are from local power companies like
| Oncor, but one notable state-wide incentive is that solar
| installations are exempt from property tax by state law.
|
| I dunno why people act like Texas is staunchly anti-
| renewable. TX state politicians have said some goofy stuff
| about "windmills freezing over", but overall Texans are
| extremely pro-wind and pro-solar. It's a huge economic driver
| for a large part of the state, and it's seen as an overall
| part of Texas's strong energy industry, complimentary to oil
| rather than as a competitor to it. George Bush and Rick Perry
| were both Republican governors but both were _very_ pro-
| renewable and oversaw massive booms in wind energy
| especially. In 2005 Texas (including Perry at the time)
| passed a law to invest billions of state dollars into
| building transmission lines specifically to make it feasible
| for renewable energy generation in west Texas to bring power
| to the populated areas in the east, which is attributed to
| the massive wind boom. Abbot, on the other hand, has sadly
| not been very pro-renewable, but much of the state still is.
| Salgat wrote:
| Here just north of Austin, PEC implemented one of the most
| regressive solar programs in the country. Their argument in
| their study was that they make less money off solar since
| they can't sell as much power.
| infecto wrote:
| Regressive in what manner? Historically a lot of solar
| buy-back programs were incredibly inflated. Residential
| solar can be great for the resident but is usually not
| great for the grid. Paying resi. solar producers greater
| than market rates always felt foolish to me.
| herewego wrote:
| Regressive in that solar programs are not inflated, but
| do require distribution upgrades to realize their
| efficiency advantages over centralized power
| transmission. These distribution upgrades are costly to
| IOUs because they cut into their margins when the
| efficiency of distributed generation is considered.
|
| Paying distributed generation export at retail rates or
| higher (DR, etc) makes plenty of sense because there are
| significant load, resiliency, and efficiency advantages
| to homeowners who are supposed to be the ones to benefit
| most from the grid.
| internet101010 wrote:
| I don't know anything about durability of solar panels but it
| should be known that in Texas there is always expectation of
| annual hail damage to roofs.
| antonkochubey wrote:
| Replacing solar panels is cheaper and easier than replacing
| roof tiles, so you can even use solar panels as hail
| protection for your roof :^) (I'm half-serious, ofc)
| infecto wrote:
| Please don't bring red or blue into the argument. Texas is
| indeed peppered with residential solar, it can make real
| economic sense for the homeowner. Of course you probably
| won't see the inflated solar programs that California created
| back in the day but they also have largely pulled back on
| those as they don't help the grid and can become quite costly
| to buy back at inflated rates. In my experience the best you
| will get in Texas is close to ercot market rates, so not
| much. On the other hand that can make on-site storage more
| economically attractive.
| asciimov wrote:
| Here in San Antonio (CPS is our sole provider) we get emails
| asking us to reduce our use during peak hours on high demand
| days like today.
|
| Not sure how well it works, but they send out another email
| letting us know how we did compared to similarly sized houses
| in my area.
|
| If demand goes over the edge, they will start doing rolling
| black outs.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| "A message from CPS Energy"
|
| I haven't paid much attention to them. Perhaps they should
| put a threat level code in the subject line.
|
| Green = Go about your day
|
| Yellow = Don't use your big appliances or hot water as much
|
| Orange = Yellow, plus turn the thermostat to 80 and keep the
| doors closed
|
| Red = Bitcoin mines offline. All buildings shut down
| ancillary consumption. A/C in common spaces set to 85.
| Prepare to roll blackouts.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Red = Bitcoin mines offline.
|
| We're at a point in time where I can't even tell if this is
| a joke or not.
| fragmede wrote:
| https://www.tpr.org/news/2024-01-03/texan-bitcoin-miners-
| pro...
|
| it's a thing.
| strivingtobe wrote:
| No. The 130 MW remaining capacity was the amount available "in
| SCED within 5 minutes", which in super simplified terms means
| "the amount of energy available quickly and economically".
|
| The grid actually had ~4 GW spare capacity (according to the
| graph) if it was needed, but it wasn't part of SCED.
| MBCook wrote:
| But if you can't get more in under 5m, then if the demand
| goes up that much in under 5m you hit the point of load
| shedding to protect the grid right?
|
| The graph showed it increasing fast just before. Is it so
| unthinkable it could jump again?
|
| Or is that they could get more (non-SCED) in time, it would
| just cost a ton so it's avoided if at all possible?
| strivingtobe wrote:
| My understanding is that it's the latter. "in SCED"
| basically means they have pre-planned availability that is
| cheap.
|
| The "Physical Response Capacity" in that graph is the
| amount of capacity actually available, but it's not part of
| SCED. However it doesn't say anything about the timeframe
| it would be available in. Given that ERCOT didn't call for
| conservation, I would have to assume it was capacity that
| was "quickly available, but not cheap" rather than "not
| quickly available", but I don't know for sure.
| chardz wrote:
| Being in SCED just means that the resource bid into the
| real time energy market (which clears every 5 mins), it
| does not necessarily mean that the resource is cheap to
| dispatch. The confusion here might be caused by the
| differences of the ancillary market (PRC) and the energy
| market (SCED).
|
| Your second paragraph may be answered by this: https://ww
| w.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/gridconditions. PRC
| units are available in real time, immediately on request.
| esaym wrote:
| Not sure where they are getting all the numbers, but 85GW is no
| where near the "max":
| https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/supplyanddemand
| miguelazo wrote:
| If they ask their customers to conserve, they can't rant about
| California "running out of electricity because EVs" anymore.
| danans wrote:
| > And they never asked for conservation?
|
| Uncompensated demand curtailment is such a scam. Just pay
| people to curtail demand.
| baldeagle wrote:
| What I want to know is how much we spent kicking crypto miners
| off the grid for a couple hours.
| pstrateman wrote:
| Paying people to stop consuming is just an accounting
| replacement for interruptible power.
|
| The net effect is more power generation available, not less.
| Quindecillion wrote:
| They provide a legitimate demand response service i.e. when the
| grid is generating excess energy that there's no other demand
| for, Bitcoin miners buy what no one else wants/needs.
|
| Buyers of first and last resort.
| Salgat wrote:
| Texas has a lot of gas plants (51%) that we want to idle when
| possible. Just because it's cheaper power doesn't mean we
| should be generating it when the only customer is
| cryptocoins.
| chgs wrote:
| If the cost of gas isn't covering the actual impact then
| the cost should be higher, doesn't matter if the kWh is
| used by a bitcoin miner or someone with their AC at 70,
| it's still the same externality.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Thank God Texas generates power from unlimited resources. In
| my place, the more we generate and consume, the less we have
| left for the future. In Texas, the plants have to generate as
| much as possible for some reason !
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Do miners run in Texas?
| Nursie wrote:
| Yes, and there's a fair amount of controversy over it,
| particularly the noise levels -
| https://time.com/6982015/bitcoin-mining-texas-health/
|
| And the fact that in some time periods it seems the miners
| made more money from downscaling energy demand during peak
| loads than they did from mining activities.
|
| Plus residents in some areas are up in arms that these
| companies got a variety of tax exemptions and sweetheart
| deals, jobs never materialised (because how many people do
| you need?), and what they seem to get in return is more
| expensive power bills.
| shagie wrote:
| They were. https://earthjustice.org/feature/cryptocurrency-
| mining-texas
|
| Though the data centers are pivoting to AI.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/18/bye-bye-bitcoin-hello-ai-
| tex...
|
| Though it's still significant.
| https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/10/texas-bitcoin-
| mine-n...
|
| The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/bitcoin-
| mining-e... ( Published April 9, 2023; Updated Jan. 3, 2024
| ). It's a well done presentation.
|
| And they are shocked that this is driving up electrical
| prices. https://x.com/LtGovTX/status/1800968003636408657
| (June 12th, 2024)
|
| > ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas and others gave shocking testimony
| today in the Senate Committee on Business & Commerce that
| within only six years (that's only three legislative
| sessions), our power grid needs will grow from about 85,000
| to 150,000 megawatts. That is much higher than the 110,000
| megawatts they previously projected. The 110,000 megawatts
| was already a big increase, which is why the Senate pushed
| our incentive plan to build more dispatchable power last
| session. 150,000 megawatts is almost double the megawatts we
| now have on the grid.
|
| > Later testimony said the growth is due to the increases in
| population, normal business growth, and Artificial
| Intelligence (AI). However, crypto miners and data centers
| will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth. We need
| to take a close look at those two industries. They produce
| very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place
| on our grid. Crypto mining may actually make more money
| selling electricity back to the grid than from their crypto
| mining operations.
|
| > Texans will ultimately pay the price. I'm more interested
| in building the grid to service customers in their homes,
| apartments, and normal businesses and keeping costs as low as
| possible for them instead of for very niche industries that
| have massive power demands and produce few jobs. We want data
| centers, but it can't be the Wild Wild West of data centers
| and crypto miners crashing our grid and turning the lights
| off.
|
| > The Senators asked why this had not been disclosed before
| today. #txlege
|
| ---
|
| The theory is/was that Texas grid works "best" (the market
| runs most efficiently) when its running at the most capacity
| (everyone with something that can generate power is making
| money - this is better than conserving and asking polluting
| or less efficent sources to spin down when the demand isn't
| there ... in theory) with the ability to have things that
| can't pay for the increased price (in theory, that was
| supposed to be crypto) scale back their use when other demand
| goes up.
| mjevans wrote:
| They should 'ask'.
|
| After background thought for an hour, they should ask. Their load
| projections and needs should be fed out to the network somehow,
| and it should be opt in for the customer to help support the
| projected load shaping IF they desire and can. It should never be
| forced upon the customers.
|
| The incentives and potential for abuse of the billing provider to
| provide data that negatively shapes the customer's use into more
| expensive use is an issue that should be avoided.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Isn't that pretty much how it works? Projections and needs are
| shared, when it starts to get tight, requests for conservation
| go out which are opt-in.
|
| https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
| thesis wrote:
| Texas has these free electricity nights. Anyone know of a battery
| system that can fill the batteries at night (from the grid) and
| use them during the day? And then recharge at night again. Due to
| location solar isn't an option but still interested in batteries
| due to free nights.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Tesla power wall?
|
| No batteries I know of will make economical sense though.
| Batteries are expensive, wear down and/or require maintenance.
| After x years / cycles your batteries will be dead and will
| need to be replaced.
|
| Storing your "free" energy in a battery will end up costing
| more than just buying the energy when you need it.
|
| Expensive energy storage is a big part of the reason why
| "green" energy countries like Germany have some of the highest
| energy prices in the world. And also some of the highest CO2
| emissions per kWh in the EU (they need coal and gas powered
| plants as backups for when there's no wind and solar, because
| batteries don't make economical sense).
| ziga wrote:
| I agree about home batteries being too expensive, hopefully
| prices will come down with scale.
|
| But the part about battery degradation is not true. Tesla
| Powerwall has a 10 year warranty[1] with 70% capacity
| retention. This means that Tesla has data showing that the
| battery will have higher capacity than 70% after those years.
| That's a lot of cycles and a lot of renewable energy that the
| battery will provide in its lifetime.
|
| [1] https://energylibrary.tesla.com/docs/Public/EnergyStorage
| /Po...
| bboygravity wrote:
| There's a reason why Tesla picks 10 years (8 years for car
| batteries) as a warranty period. Ask yourself: why 8 years
| and not 10 for cars? Why 10 years and not 15 or 20 years
| for home batteries? It's not arbitrary.
|
| Battery degradation is not linear. It's not like: 10 years
| = 70%, 20 years = 40%. It's probably closer to 20 years =
| 20 % capacity left. The decay becomes exponential-like
| after a relatively linear period of roughly 10 years.
|
| If you want to get an idea, this is what the decay of
| battery capacity roughly looks like:
| https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Montoya-
| Bedoya-2/...
|
| The Tesla warranty will fall under "first life" in the
| image in the link above.
|
| So batteries (even Tesla Powerwalls) do degrade and do
| degrade to the point where you need to replace them a bunch
| of times during lifetime of a house.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| Tesla and other car makers set their warranties at the
| mandatory minimums. Why would they offer more when they
| don't have to and consumers find them long enough and/or
| other car makers aren't competing on warranty length?
| That doesn't tell you anything about battery longevity.
|
| Edit: Does my MacBook Pro die after 1 year when it's
| applecare warranty is over?
| bboygravity wrote:
| The mandatory minimums? Got a source of the mandatory
| minimum for cars (US and/or EU) as well as power walls?
|
| The fact that other car makers aren't competing on
| warranty length seems to me to prove my point, but you
| seem to think it doesn't? What I mean is: if battery
| degradation for cars isn't that bad after 8 years, then
| why are other brands not offering significantly longer
| warranties to compete with the Tesla one? Not sure about
| the competition argument anyway, since Tesla didn't have
| any competition initially and arguably still doesn't have
| real competition (depending on what features of the car
| you value most).
|
| Edit: Does my MacBook Pro die after 1 year when it's
| applecare warranty is over? --> Pretty close yes IMO. My
| personal experience is that my laptop and phone battery
| capacities degrade very fast after 1 year and need to be
| replace after about 2 years, 3 years if you really really
| push it and are OK with constantly charging.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| Interesting, it seems to be a statement that's spread
| around, but the sources do seem to be lacking, e.g., http
| s://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/vp2e7p/us.
| ..
|
| RE: MacBook Pro dying close to a year right after it's
| warranty it over --> well now you're just trolling. My
| iPhone 15 pro battery still maintains 100% battery health
| a year after its manufacturing date. It obviously won't
| need replacing in 1-2 more years even if I "really really
| push it and are OK with constantly charging". I used an
| iPhone XS until last year after it was about 5 years old,
| 5x longer than your supposed device-dead date. I don't
| think this is unusual.
| geysersam wrote:
| > "green" energy countries like Germany
|
| Not sure why you consider them to be "green" given the facts
| you brought up. Germany has never been particularly green
| energy wise. It's a big population and lots of heavy industry
| with relatively little energy resources like hydro.
|
| The are building solar and wind quickly now. Maybe that's why
| you got the impression that they are "green".
| bboygravity wrote:
| The reason I wrote "green" is because, Germany actively
| hypes itself up as being very green and many people believe
| them because they have such a vast amount of solar and wind
| installed.
| baq wrote:
| Germany's energy policy is one huge cognitive dissonance
| at best, gross mismanagement in the base case and a
| three-decade-long foreign intelligence job at worst.
| bboygravity wrote:
| I completely agree. Keyword: Gerard Schroder for those
| who are curious about "three-decade-long foreign
| intelligence job".
| Symbiote wrote:
| For all the criticism Germany's energy policies get on
| HN, they're still approximately as "green" as Texas, and
| better than several other US states.
|
| Set https://app.electricitymaps.com/ to the yearly view
| and see the CO2 figures.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Germany is still very much captured by its coal lobby. The
| extent to which they are green is that they have a fairly
| vocal green party .. with 14% of the vote.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_90/The_Greens
|
| (This is incomprehensible to Anglosphere FPTP two-party
| systems)
| guerby wrote:
| LFP cells prices for direct sale to consumer are about 70
| EUR/kWh right now. With 5000 cycles that's 1.4 EUR cent per
| kWh cycled out of the battery, so it fully makes economical
| sense in all electricity markets.
|
| Fully integrated consumer battery prices haven't (yet)
| followed the decline in cell price, probably because there's
| lot of demand for this kind of product.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Yes, that's correct and confirms what I just wrote.
|
| Dutch example: 0,12 EUR / kWh assuming 5000 cycles with 0
| degradation. Example source:
| https://www.otovo.nl/blog/kennisbank/lfp-batterijen/
|
| The real number is likely still significantly higher than
| 0,12 EUR / kWh due to battery capacity (and charge
| discharge efficiency) going down due to wear over time.
|
| It does look like when the price of integrated storage
| products goes down more, it could become interesting for
| countries who have had very expensive energy policies
| (Denmark, Germany, Netherlands etc).
| guerby wrote:
| Your computation is off: it's 0.014 EUR/kWh, ten time
| less and far below kWh market prices about everyhere in
| the world.
|
| As for cycling the industry standard is give the number
| of cycles to 80% capacity remaining so the battery is far
| from dead at 5000 cycles. The simple division I used is
| conservative.
| bboygravity wrote:
| No, it's not. From the link I posted (in Dutch
| unfortunately, I'll translate the relevant bit):
|
| Small integrated battery: 3.5 kWh
| Starting at about EUR 2.100,-
|
| You yourself indicated in your post that integrated
| batteries (as in: the ones with battery management, that
| you can actually use to store energy in as opposed to a
| bunch of lose cells) are more expensive. They are more
| expensive indeed. I did the calculation. They boil down
| to 0,12 EUR / kWh in the example above.
|
| The price of cells is not directly relevant, since you
| can't actually buy cells and just throw them at your
| house to magically start charging/discharging when you
| desire.
| guerby wrote:
| Well I bought cells a few years ago and use them with the
| necessary components, and those don't multiply the system
| price by ten.
|
| BTW because I'm lazy to expand my system I just ordered
| 14 kWh of fully packaged LFP battery (box, BMS, cells,
| breaker) for $1800, $130/kWh, $0.026/kWh cycled.
| te_chris wrote:
| There's loads. Search for home battery storage. You don't need
| Tesla.
| standeven wrote:
| Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is available in more and more EVs and
| will allow for this.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This is a bit like the joke about economists seeing money on
| the ground and not picking it up because if it was there
| someone would have already taken it, but:
|
| Note how ridiculously fast the battery rollout in Texas and
| California has been recently.
|
| If you've not got some local regulation that stops early
| adoptors from being left high and dry when the market changes,
| then you're in head to head competition for that cheap
| nighttime energy with big corporations building out grid scale
| batteries.
| baking wrote:
| You would have to be able to store a significant portion of
| your daily usage to make it worthwhile and that's before you
| even consider the price of the batteries.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Pretty interesting to see how this stuff is holding up. The
| market is evolving rapidly currently with absolutely massive
| amounts of wind, solar, and battery being deployed everywhere.
|
| What's odd in Texas is that they are resisting the notion of
| connecting to the rest of the US grid. This would allow them to
| import power cheaply when they need to and export power when they
| have too much of it. My guess is that they actually curtail a lot
| of energy at this point because there's simply too much of it
| most of the time.
|
| A quick glance at the main page of gridstatus.io shows that right
| now California and Texas are burning a lot of gas while there is
| negative pricing due to wind delivering over capacity in the
| states in between. They are literally paying people to consume
| more power there while they are paying for huge amounts of gas to
| be burnt in California and Texas. It's night time there of course
| so, solar is out.
|
| What's preventing states from doing the obvious thing here? The
| mid west could be exporting power at a profit right now and
| instead it has negative power. And California could not be
| burning many tons of gas right now because there's a surplus of
| power right next to it.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Connecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas
| grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like
| that.
| guerby wrote:
| They could do it with HVDC to "isolate" the two grids.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Apparently they have some for "import" of electricity.
| bob1029 wrote:
| See:
| https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/dctieflows
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Access Denied
| infecto wrote:
| works here.
| bradknowles wrote:
| Correction, the fat cats who own ERCOT don't like that.
|
| Your regular run of the mill Texan may not care one way or
| the other, most times. But if they get into a crunch where
| their electric bills are much higher, I assure you that they
| will care.
| gruez wrote:
| >the fat cats who own ERCOT don't like that.
|
| And who are those? Wikipedia says:
|
| >ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit
| corporation,[11][12] and its members include consumers,
| electric cooperatives, generators, power marketers, retail
| electric providers, investor-owned electric utilities
| (transmission and distribution providers), and municipally
| owned electric utilities.[13]
|
| It's not "owned" by anyone.
| herewego wrote:
| You are uninformed. ERCOT is heavily influenced ("owned")
| by Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) and market makers that
| are profit seeking entities. This is true of all ISOs for
| all intents and purposes. It is the primary reason why
| the U.S. grid is slow to innovate/change, e.g.,
| implementing distributed generation participation in
| wholesale markets, etc.
| infecto wrote:
| I don't believe grid connections are the obvious and easy
| answer. That would assume those other grids do not have base
| loads plants themself. There is a massive cost to starting and
| stopping gas plants that you are also not accounting for. So
| while yes, there are periods of negative prices, the cost to
| run that plant 24/7 may be cheaper than turning it on and off
| and not just cheaper in $ but cheaper in less resources being
| used.
|
| Negative pricing and "burning a lot of gas" are maybe not as
| bad as you think. As more wind/solar get added to the
| generation mix, there will be more peak times where prices may
| become negative. The lens I have is this means there is
| incentive for more storage to come on the grid to soak up those
| events and then offload at peak demand times.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| > There is a massive cost to starting and stopping gas plants
| that you are also not accounting for
|
| It's my understanding that basically the entire point of gas
| power plants is that they are very cheap to stop and start
| (as opposed to e.g. coal or nuclear), at least, that's the
| case in the UK - are these plants different in the US?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's still expensive relative to batteries. If you think
| about it, a steam turbine has a lot of water that needs to
| be heated before you actually get any steam and a lot of
| heavy, moving parts that need to start spinning. Once all
| that is up and running it's fine and you just expend fuel
| to maintain the steam pressure.
|
| But this takes a while. And to heat things up faster, you
| simply burn a massive amount of fuel; which is costly. And
| until you generate steam, it's not actually generating any
| power whatsoever.
|
| Any thermal plant has this overhead that makes starting
| them expensive and stopping them undesirable because the
| shorter you run them, the more inefficient they get. You
| amortize the startup cost over the runtime. The longer it
| runs, the better it gets.
|
| A battery provides power within milliseconds and it can
| switch from charging to discharging on a moment's notice as
| well. That's why batteries are displacing gas plants as
| peaker plants in a lot of places.
| infecto wrote:
| Your understanding is mostly wrong then. Modern combined-
| cycle turbines are more efficient but I would not call them
| cheap to stop and start. You are still looking at a
| 20-30min startup time and a similar cool-down period. So
| yes designed to be able to shutdown I think the general
| range is an on-time of 30-70% but I believe with those
| ranges you get different efficiency curves. You get
| increased wear, higher fuel cost and also need to predict
| that demand will not spike. When prices dip below zero it
| may be more cost effective to keep the plants online.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| A gas power plant (specifically a peaker plant designed for
| this) is still more expensive to start or stop than a
| battery or hydro.
|
| However, it is much more expensive to build the capacity
| for batteries and you need to charge the batteries with
| excess power that's available cheaply during surplus times.
|
| The advantage of a peaker gas plant is you can build it big
| and shovel fuel into it that you just brought over from
| wherever. Many of them were built with the expectation that
| they would not face competition from batteries, so the
| economics of running them is getting bad. However they're
| still important as a backup because you cannot depend
| reliably on the batteries being charged.
| boringg wrote:
| Connecting your grid to other markets for the premise of
| cheaper energy also puts you in a situation where you no longer
| control your own destiny. My expectation is that the presumed
| gains of some cheaper power don't balance the risk on
| reliability and control.
|
| I don't necessarily buy the argument but I am fairly certain
| that a big chunk of it.
| felbane wrote:
| As someone who very nearly lost a family member due to the
| state's complete inability to implement and enforce
| preparedness regulations, and due to ERCOT's herculean effort
| to do just barely not enough to keep the grid online...
| respectfully, fuck that argument.
|
| We live in a time where functional electric service is a
| necessity for life. We also live in a time where extreme
| weather patterns are getting more frequent and more intense.
|
| The very least Texas could do is implement the equipment and
| procedures necessary to enable importing power from the
| national grid in an emergency. The cost to implement
| interconnects at key locations is infinitesimal compared to
| the costs incurred when there are systemic outages.
|
| The "we can do it better ourselves" argument only works when
| you don't repeatedly catastrophically fail at "doing it
| better."
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance but doesn't connecting to other grid
| allow them to buy energy when prices are low and still allow
| them to generate their own when the national grid prices are
| high? It would also allow them to sell excess no?
| wiredfool wrote:
| I recall from reading the blog, there are definitely issues in
| Texas with grid capacity between the west where the bulk of the
| solar is and the east where there is load, and people and other
| grids. So grid interconnects to other grids wouldn't
| necessarily be enough, you have to get the power to the
| interconnect as well.
| bilekas wrote:
| I have to say, I don't understand very well these graphs, but
| this sounds like a good thing, but is there any information
| relative to other energy sources in TX ?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-22 17:02 UTC)