7 ms·
Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid
- hmcdona1 2y agoIf 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...
- nothercastle 2y agoIt seems like it would be more grid efficient to use more power at 3-5pm to cool your house to temperature early while solar is still high in availability then to rush and cool from 5-6 when you get home. The current rate structure for anyone not paying spot rate does not incentivize that of course.
- sunshinesnacks 2y agoMaybe 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 2y agoWhile 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.
- sunshinesnacks 2y agoSorry for the late reply. That all makes sense. And it’s definitely possible that your power company’s rate structure isn’t really optimal for them (or the market, or you). Electricity rates seem to be generally messy and a mix of big compromises, in my experience.
- fnordfnordfnord 2y agoAustin Energy? There aren't many providers that I am aware of in Texas that have variable rates.
- jhayward 2y agoAustin Energy does Tiered Usage billing, not time-of-use, for residential customers.
- bradknowles 2y agoSee powertochoose.org for examples.
- gre 2y agoMy 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 2y agoJust 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 2y agoFor real, you have to hotwire your AC for manual operation?
- gre 2y agoYou can change the temperature after rush hour starts. I'm talking about turning off the rush hour crap entirely.
- gre 2y agoThey got back to me and wanted to do a phone call to unenroll me. I told them they could do it without speaking to me since I don't have any power in the process, so we got to skip the phone call. I'm officially out of rush hour.
- xnyan 2y agoDon’t do this, a cheap non-programmable thermostat is a better option and inexpensive.
- Scoundreller 2y agoWire 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 2y agoAfter 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoNext day load shapes are predictable, so devices should optimize their charging accordingly.
- miguelazo 2y agoWhich utility was this? That reeks of gross incompetence.
- bdcravens 2y agoReliant, 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoDemand 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoIn 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 2y agoWhat is triggering the battery discharge? I assume these are referring to decentralized battery storage in people’s homes.
- mechagodzilla 2y agoTexas has quite a bit of utility-scale commercial batteries now.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIt is the largest market for utility scale storage in the US at the moment, rivaling California.
- patmorgan23 2y agoWe 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 2y agoUnfortunately 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 2y agoIt’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.
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- MBCook 2y agoSo 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 2y agoI 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 100°+ days. We've just had a run of 3 or 4, but we've had 30+ consecutive days in the past.
- justanorherhack 2y agoLast year was brutal, this year is great.
- nvahalik 2y agoIndeed. We still had grass at the end of July.
- MBCook 2y agoI'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.
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- baldeagle 2y agoWhat I want to know is how much we spent kicking crypto miners off the grid for a couple hours.
- pstrateman 2y agoPaying people to stop consuming is just an accounting replacement for interruptible power. The net effect is more power generation available, not less.
- Quindecillion 2y agoThey 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 2y agoTexas 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 2y agoIf 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.
- mjevans 2y agoThey 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 2y agoIsn'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 https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
- thesis 2y agoTexas 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.
- te_chris 2y agoThere’s loads. Search for home battery storage. You don’t need Tesla.
- bboygravity 2y agoTesla 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 2y agoI 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/Powerwall/General/Warranty/en-us/Powerwall-Warranty-EN.pdf https://energylibrary.tesla.com/docs/Public/EnergyStorage/Po...
- bboygravity 2y agoThere'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/publication/340370454/figure/fig3/AS:882273738035202@1587361859468/Illustrative-capacity-degradation-curve-for-a-common-Li-ion-battery-at-its-first-and.png 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.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoPretty 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 2y agoConnecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like that.
- guerby 2y agoThey could do it with HVDC to "isolate" the two grids.
- actionfromafar 2y agoApparently they have some for "import" of electricity.
- bob1029 2y agoSee: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/dctieflows https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/dctieflows
- bilekas 2y agoI 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 ?