18 ms·

Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

• jedberg 6y ago
  I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?
  • bob1029 6y ago
    This is 90c/KWh. Arguably very expensive rate for electricity. Not sure if related to the Texas/ERCOT grid situation, as the DC tie-ins are not that substantial.
    • pkaye 6y ago
      If they are not connected, what is driving up the cost?
      • denkmoon 6y ago
        Demand, Texas isn't the only location experiencing severe cold weather that it isn't prepared for.
        • sumoboy 6y ago
          This will all repeat itself during the summer for excessive heat.
      • cperciva 6y ago
        Texas isn't the only place with cold weather right now. Even if other grids haven't collapsed, they're surely under higher strain than normal.
        • geerlingguy 6y ago
          Ameren (electric company serving parts of MO and IL) has requested customers cut back on power consumption if at all possible. When there's a sustained negative-degree-weather event for over a week, many people start plugging in extra space heaters or run their electric central heater longer, which places a huge amount of strain on the grid. Luckily there are many in the midwest who use gas for heating, since it's way more efficient in the long winter months. There are other factors too, like some plants not being maintained to a level where they can operate at full capacity in freezing weather for weeks at a time (many can, but some are not maintained to that standard—see TX), so those plants can't just pop online like they normally would during the summer.
          • hnburnsy 6y ago
            Southwest Gas asked their Arizona natural gas customers to cut back as the pipeline through Arizona feeds Texas.
            • rblatz 6y ago
              Did they? I have two properties serviced by them and didn’t get any notification.
              • hnburnsy 6y ago
                >Southwest Gas is asking customers to conserve resources as states contend with cold weather. According to the utility, shortages are not anticipated in Arizona, but conservation will help maintain the interstate pipeline system. https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/southwest-gas-asks-customers-to-conserve https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/southwest-gas-asks-cus...
        • Scoundreller 6y ago
          Ontario Canada reporting. CAD$85/mwh (or ~US$65). We have several gw available on standby, and pretty much even on exports/imports. And we do export to USA as needed to/through Michigan/NY. Parents got ~10" of snow yesterday night. But it's just business as usual. https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data
      • etimberg 6y ago
        Could be a number of factors. Prices are generally composed of generation, loss, and congestion terms. The generation term is driven by the marginal cost of energy (i.e. what's the cheapest generator that still has capacity). The losses term is fairly self explanatory. The congestion term factors in the thermal ratings on equipment based on what can be delivered to a location. Someone else speculated that this is due to a rise in Natural Gas costs. This would make some sense given that the rise is uniform across the region. Disclaimer: I work in the energy space. I know nothing about what is happening here and these are personal opinions.
      • rovr138 6y ago
        capacity and demand.
    • stefan_ 6y ago
      I think it might be related to this: https://twitter.com/MattOswaltVA/status/1361442090979262465 https://twitter.com/MattOswaltVA/status/1361442090979262465
    • sremani 6y ago
      Texas banned out of state sale of NG, that will have consequence but not sure that is the reason.
      • tt433 6y ago
        How is it legal for them to regulate interstate commerce?
        • selimthegrim 6y ago
          Texas Railroad Commission has been around since before relevant federal statutes were passed
        • wahern 6y ago
          Probably not. But especially in emergencies it's often better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. (Also, domestic in-state political signaling.) Anyhow, the legal effect may be irrelevant if the gas producers wouldn't bother trying to export. I would imagine that producers are having trouble just delivering on their long-term, fixed-price contracts in Texas. The short-term prices might be so jacked up precisely because there's little to no surplus to export, period.
      • reducesuffering 6y ago
        For such a historically red state, that doesn't appear very laissez-faire.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • addicted 6y ago
          Red states in the US don’t follow laissez-Faire economics. They follow race to the bottom and beggar thy neighbor economics. Essentially, they are willing to burn all sorts of rules and regulations in order to beat a neighboring state to attract businesses and individuals. They then make up for this loss by drawing federal dollars that are usually paid for by people and companies in those same states they drew people and businesses away from. But they are absolutely willing to regulate where it helps them individually even if it is against purported principles. And then, of course, there’s the annual hypocrisy where red state senators will decry any funding towards blue states (for example, emergency funding to California for fire disasters) but jump right into demanding as much money as they can get when there are disasters in their states. Texas’s energy supply bounties hides this there but it’s evident all over the remaining red states.
    • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
      In California it’s about 30 to 40 cents kWh during normal times.
      • pixelpoet 6y ago
        Average in Germany is 30 euro cents per kWh in 2019 apparently; I'm at 31c with this Energiewende Ökostrom which I sure hope is going to help transition to sustainability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende
      • Lammy 6y ago
        It didn't have to be this way :( https://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/CALIF.HTM https://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/CALIF.HTM "Northern California is the home of the first successful opposition to the promotion and development of commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S. In the 1950's northern and central California's privately owned utility company, PG&E, was planning to be one of the giants in the new field of nuclear energy."
        • wahern 6y ago
          Nevada or even Mexico could play regulatory arbitrage, build nuclear plants in their jurisdictions, and export the electricity to California. I suppose Mexico might be cheaper as Nevada lacks water, particularly in remote regions where there'd be the least local resistance. Baja California has the Pacific and the Gulf of California; Sonora has the Gulf of California. California's unique history of opposition to nuclear is unfortunate, but there are larger dynamics that are also suffocating nuclear in California; dynamics that at most are only marginally stronger in California as compared to elsewhere in the United States. Oregon or Washington could also build more nuclear plants. They already export a significant amount of electricity to California, especially to Southern California. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie) Nuclear is disfavored everywhere, and even where it's allowed and nominally profitable the RoI still sucks, so it doesn't take much friction to shift investment elsewhere. We need change at the national level to make nuclear practical again. Though, now I'm genuinely curious why Mexico doesn't have more than its current two nuclear plants. PEMEX? (Note: Not that I think that Mexico is some third-world country bereft of regulations and organized opposition. I'm sure many of the reasons are similar as elsewhere. Still, I bet therein lie some interesting and informative stories.)
  • ericd 6y ago
    I think this maps to 0.90/kwh, which is ~7x the normal retail national average of 0.13/kwh.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • azundo 6y ago
    The scale embedded in the map maxes out at $150... So I would say it's a lot.
    • lainga 6y ago
      Not great, not terrible...
    • mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
      If you click on the dots, you'll see that the day ahead power prices are ~$900/MWh. It's extremely high.
  • etimberg 6y ago
    This is a lot. $1000/MWh is $1/kWh. A kWh is leaving 10 old school incandescent lightbulbs on for an hour. Usually this costs a few cents.
    • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      I live in a state that doesn't exactly prioritize low consumer energy costs to put it mildly and my first thought was "$1/kwh is high but sounds reasonable if there's a massive supply restriction and demand spike at the same time". Goes to show you the power of anchoring.
    • refurb 6y ago
      A single 60W bulb draws 0.06 kWh. So not 10 bulbs, but 17 bulbs.
      • jagger27 6y ago
        100W bulbs used to be common and standard.
  • cosmotic 6y ago
    The scale on the map appears to have a filter maximum of $150 so I would guess it's 6 times their expected maximum, so very very expensive. Here's another region to compare to: https://www.pjm.com/library/maps/lmp-map.aspx https://www.pjm.com/library/maps/lmp-map.aspx
  • nimos 6y ago
    900/Mwh is 90c per kwh. Normal wholesale is about 5-7c. Retail national average is about 14. Higher cost states are around 20c with Hawaii near 30c.
    • ardy42 6y ago
      > 900/Mwh is 90c per kwh, national average is about 14. Higher cost states are around 20c with Hawaii near 30c. And IIRC, electricity in Hawaii is so expensive because they generate most of it with diesel.
      • notyourwork 6y ago
        I'm surprised by this. I would have guessed lots of solar there and potentially wind.
        • toomuchtodo 6y ago
          Substantial amounts of solar coming online in Hawaii, causing the utility to carefully manage additional distributed solar installs [1]. Still expensive because there is much diesel and coal generation (~2GW) left to displace. [1] https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/clean-energy-hawaii/integration-tools-and-resources/locational-value-maps/oahu-locational-value-map-(lvm) https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/clean-energy-hawaii/integra... (red = saturated local electrical infra)
          • wartron 6y ago
            Why is geothermal not more prominent?
            • ceejayoz 6y ago
              Apparently you can have too much geothermal. Their first plant got knocked offline by the 2018 eruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puna_Geothermal_Venture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puna_Geothermal_Venture There's also this bit: > Additional concerns and opposition to the plant have been raised by Native Hawaiians, who view all forms of volcanic activity as manifestations of the goddess Pele. To the Native Hawaiians who revere Pele, geothermal wells and energy production are a desecration of her body and spirit.
  • rodgerd 6y ago
    At the start of the month it was around $30. It held there for a week and a half, and has escalated rapidly. You can visualize at http://www.energyonline.com/Data/GenericData.aspx?DataId=22&CAISO___Day-Ahead_Pricehttp://www.energyonline.com/Data/GenericData.aspx?DataId=22&CAISO___Day-Ahead_Price http://www.energyonline.com/Data/GenericData.aspx?DataId=22&...
  • kevindong 6y ago
    The national US average is ~$104.50/MWh (1000 kWh = 1 MWh). So, it's about ~9 times more expensive right than than normal. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
    • dathinab 6y ago
      This are end-user-prices, but the website is about wholesale prices which are normally much smaller e.g. in 2020 the wholesale average had been around $38/MWh (the price companies selling electricity to end-users and companies pay). Also note that the site contains not just "real-time" prices but also day ahead prices (selected by default) which due to instabilities are quite a bit higher then real-time prices.
    • adev_ 6y ago
      I find the average already pretty expensive. You can find here the market price in Europe from the French dispatcher [^1] and it's around 30-40% cheaper depending of the country [^1]: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche
  • dathinab 6y ago
    I wasn't able to find the right data to compare it to but it seems to be roughly over 5 time the price compared to Germany and Germany has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. I.e. compared to some of the Countries with the cheapest electricity in the EU it's something like 15 times the price. In 2020 the highest wholesale electricity price spike in the US seem to have been $127/MWh with an average of $38/MWh.
  • nomoreme 6y ago
    This is a very high price. A peak price of over $100 used to be considered high. But peak power prices in CA have been going up, specially in Southern California. In this case the reason is high natural gas prices due to the cold weather and production freezing -- gas is the marginal fuel and tends to set power prices in CA. Anyhow. CA should have been OK, since it has a lot of storage. Unfortunately, regulation has prevented the utilization of a major storage field in Southern California. So gas prices went up, to well over $100/MMbtu (they are usually under $5). In Nor Cal, where storage is allowed to operate, gas prices remained under $10. But the power market is pretty much a single market in CA and So Cal dictated the prices. (I used to be a trader in the market).
  • hammock 6y ago
    $900 to charge a Tesla in Texas right now
    • m463 6y ago
      The biggest battery tesla sells will will hold 100kwh, not 1000kwh.
      • hammock 6y ago
        I said Texas >Spot electricity prices at the West [Texas] hub have soared above the grid’s $9,000 per megawatt-hour cap That's 10X more than even OP headline price. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Texas-Freeze-Raises-Cost-Of-Charging-A-Tesla-To-900.html https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Texas-Freeze-Rais...
  • m463 6y ago
    When things were bad in California, I was surprised to find average wholesale electricity cost was $38/mwh (3.8c/kwh) even for PG&E. This is marked up 10x for the consumer. Texas has a lot of competition and is usually marked up less that 2x.
  • cbozeman 6y ago
    It's like 3.6 roentgen. Not great. Not terrible.
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    You have to look at the three tabs to get the full picture. The day-ahead contracts are high ($900) but the 15 minute and real-time prices are only $900 in a smaller region. Still not great.
  • jillesvangurp 6y ago
    It's a lot, it's 0.9 $/kwh, which depending on where you live is about 10-30x the retail price of electricity under normal circumstances. If it's only for a few days/weeks, it's not going to matter a lot (financially) to most. Of course there are a few people who are going to get squeezed hard by this and I imagine some businesses are also going to have some hefty bills. It's tempting to single out technologies or particular energy sources here as the problem or solution. But the bottom line is that this is fundamentally a policy failure and not a technical problem. Price incentives and signals are probably part of both the problem and solution here. Although none of that will matter this winter of course. The long term effect of this kind of price instability becoming a regular thing combined with frequent blackouts are going to be interesting. IMHO it's a great opportunity for technology that is basically proven to be highly effective both in providing grid resilience and cost reductions; i.e. clean tech. Nothing like 10x spikes in bills becoming a regular thing to cause people to look for solutions.
    • biased_coin 6y ago
      Do normal households and small businesses keep track of prices ? Are they able to cap their bills in any way ? In my country, where I live, the per unit prices are fixed and any increases are announced. I doubt whether people anywhere could keep up with 10-30x changes in prices.
      • dathinab 6y ago
        As far as I know many electric contacts for end users have fixed prices. (Potentially with some auto price correction every year or so based on averages, but this shouldn't matter for now.) Given that this are wholesale prices it about how much the company selling electricity to end-users pays for it to (simplified).
      • jillesvangurp 6y ago
        Smart meters are extremely popular in places that have flexible pricing. And given that electricity is expensive in lots of places, there are lots of home owners and businesses spending lots of money on solutions that help them reduce their energy cost. Even simple things like off peak tariffs can drive stuff like this.
• lainga 6y ago
  Do wholesale prices directly translate to consumer prices?
  • gruez 6y ago
    Likely not, and that's part of the reason why it's so high in the first place. Price is a function of supply and demand. In this case the supply is limited, but demand stays the same because there's basically zero incentive for consumers to reduce discretionary electricity usage.
    • jstrong 6y ago
      it's pretty crazy. even when we are not in the middle of a 'once in a generation' winter storm electricity prices regularly spike as much as 100x as peak gen ramps up, and the whole world (basically) goes on consuming it as if the price is static. like what if gasoline cost gas stations $30/gallon between 4-7pm and they just kept on selling it at $2-3/gallon?
  • nimos 6y ago
    Depends on your contract but a lot the time no. Interesting article: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Texas-power-retailers-to-customers-in-face-of-15953843.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Tex...
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > Do wholesale prices directly translate to consumer prices? I don't think they do where I live, because the rates are regulated and the power company needs permission to raise them.
  • twunde 6y ago
    Not directly. In Texas and other deregulated markets, you can be on either a fixed rate for n months or on a variable rate. If you're on a variable rate, the rate will be much higher than normal for the next few months. If you're on a fixed rate you're fine for now, but keep an eye on when your fixed rate expires. This assumes that your supplier is still in business after the next few months (many suppliers will go bankrupt because of this). For the suppliers, they're going to be hit hard by people who either decide not to pay their supplier next month, or have people who switch to budget billing. They're going to suffer a cash crunch for a bit. If you are in a regulated market or are using the regulated utilities like ConEd in NYC, you'll see limited rate increases to deal with the increased cost to supply. These rate increases need to be approved by the state's Public Utility Commission.
• karaterobot 6y ago
  Does this extend beyond California?
  • burger_moon 6y ago
    I clicked a dot by my house which is not in california and it shows $929
• bmurray7jhu 6y ago
  Likely corresponds to the nationwide spike in natural gas prices. Even in California, natural gas prices are an order of magnitude higher than usual. Prices appear to have hit ~$90 per quadrillion BTU, versus a typical price of ~$2 per 10^15 BTU https://www.naturalgasintel.com/data-snapshot/daily-gpi/CALRAVG/ https://www.naturalgasintel.com/data-snapshot/daily-gpi/CALR...
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    Michigan is about 3x for natural gas. https://www.naturalgasintel.com/data-snapshot/daily-gpi/MCWMCON/ https://www.naturalgasintel.com/data-snapshot/daily-gpi/MCWM... (I was curious and it provides a Midwest data point)
    • maxerickson 6y ago
      Here's the Midwest electric grid: https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/real-time--market-data/real-time-displays/ https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/real-time-... Roughly $100.
  • gshubert17 6y ago
    > ~$90 per quadrillion BTU I think this misreads the abbreviation MM BTU (where M in this case is the Roman numeral thousand or "mille" rather than the metric million or "mega"). 1 MM BTU = 10^6 BTU, not 10^15. A therm is 10^5 BTU. Last month I paid $77 for 117 therms, or about 66 cents/therm. This would be $6.6 per MM BTU. By the way that was 126 ccf (ccf = 100 cubic feet) or 12600 cubic feet (357 cubic meters). As you say, $90 wholesale for something I'm used to paying less than $10 for, is a big increase.
    • bmurray7jhu 6y ago
      Good catch
• kasey_junk 6y ago
  I track my electricity in Chicago pretty regularly and we’ve been seeing between 5x and 100x ‘normal’ pricing all week. For scale, at this time of night I’d expect my power to be priced at ~ 0.8 c/Kwh. Right now we are sitting at 15 c/Kwh.
  • thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
    Here in CA we pay 24c / Kwh on a regular basis. Why is it your power can be 0.8c/Kwh?, that seems really really low.
    • bfrog 6y ago
      We have several decent sized nukes powering the city
    • yborg 6y ago
      Chicago area is mostly natural gas heat, so less direct demand. Illinois also has the most nuclearized power grid in the nation.
    • kasey_junk 6y ago
      I don’t know the market dynamics but I’d assume it’s a combination of the excessive amount of nuclear available around us and old coal. I put the hourly numbers on a couple of dashboards around my house populated by this api https://hourlypricing.comed.com/hp-api/ https://hourlypricing.comed.com/hp-api/
    • geerlingguy 6y ago
      In St. Louis, MO (which is also seeing a long cold week and winter storms), our power has averaged 8¢/kWh this month. We have a mix of hydro, nuclear, gas, and I believe one coal plant serving our area.
    • rovr138 6y ago
      Another data point. I'm in Indiana. My bill just closed on the 15th, 300 kWh @ $0.148799 288 kWh @ $0.108297 There's some adjustments on the bill that actually reduce it but those aren't included above.
• vmh1928 6y ago
  it's bitcoin miners turning on server farms.
  • buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    They won't be keeping them on for long at this price.
  • CydeWeys 6y ago
    Not at these electricity prices it's not.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • vmh1928 6y ago
    If I understand this correctly, this is a picture of the western power market showing "next day" purchases as well as "real-time spot prices" (and one other category - something about 15 minutes.) Anyway, if a utility has generating capacity then the cost their electricity is what it's always been subject to natural gas prices or other "cost of manufacturing" costs. If a utility has to purchase extra power then they turn to this market and purchase only what they need at these prices. So what's causing the run-up of market electricity in the western US? Possibly demand from the colder parts of the country assuming there are transmission lines over which the electricity can flow. My recollection is that most of the lines run north-south rather than east-west.
• SubiculumCode 6y ago
  Excuse my ignorance, but am I, as a California residential user, going to pay these prices for the electricity I'm using in my home right now? Should I shut everything down?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • pishpash 6y ago
    Aren't residential prices controlled by the public utility commission? So probably not immediately. But if CA utilities buy on the wholesale market and can't raise rates then they may go bankrupt.
    • jeffbee 6y ago
      Surely there must be a cooling-off period before PG&E can go bankrupt again.
  • harmonious 6y ago
    It depends on your utility contract, but very likely not. Most consumers pay a fixed volumetric rate, and it's the utility that is exposed to real-time fluctuations in the wholesale price of power.
  • RobLach 6y ago
    If you're a residential PG&E customer you'd have to look up your current tariff schedule here: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/electric.shtml https://www.pge.com/tariffs/electric.shtml Likely, no, as your rates have been set some time ago.
  • epistasis 6y ago
    No your rates are fixed and agreed upon ahead of time. However if you sign up for a service like OhmConnect, you can get paid to lower your energy usage at times when prices are high (which tends to coincide with use of the dirtiest energy). They warn you a day ahead for the time period, usually an hour but sometimes two, and you get credit for being under your typical usage for that time period.
• tomc1985 6y ago
  The state that brought us Enron now getting Enron'd itself. Turnabout is fair play! Sucks for the regular folk, though...
  • coliveira 6y ago
    Well, when you play these games with energy prices it is just a matter of time... and with the "new normal" in weather changes, it seems that it won't be the last time either.
    • dillondoyle 6y ago
      And Republicans down there seem to be pushing for even more!! Rick Perry just said this in response to the White House pushing infrastructure spending after this disaster: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business” But it was alright when Trump wanted to launch 'infrastructure week'? And it's totally ok to send in FEMA and a lot of other government assistance?!?! BTW tangent why hasn't FEMA sent in the ships that can provide power? I think the nuclear ones can and maybe even the Comfort but i'm not sure on that specifically
  • dang 6y ago
    Please don't take HN threads into regional flamewar. That never ends well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • morninglight 6y ago
    Many young people have no memory of Enron. Instead of pointing fingers, it would be better if we presented them with historical facts. Because of fraudulent energy market manipulation, many thousands of people from around the world lost their jobs, homes and savings in the blink of an eye. Hopefully, we are not seeing a repeat of that fiasco, but if we are not vigilant, it could happen again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qC1YGRMKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qC1YGRMKI You might also be interested to know that former Enron CEO, Jeff Skilling, is no longer in prison and was reported to be starting a digital energy marketplace. https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2020/06/05/former-enron-ceo-jeffrey-skilling-veld.html https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2020/06/05/former-e...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• PostThisTooFast 6y ago
  We should be busily building nuclear plants. This isn't going to get better otherwise.
  • epistasis 6y ago
    Nuclear plants are the worst possible way to reduce energy costs. They are also incredibly massive single points of failure, so they tend to reduce reliability compared to more distributed smaller generation units. Germany, for example, has seen reliability increase massively as they shift towards more distributed renewables, even though it's not a super high penetration level. As we shift to more renewables and start to install more and more grid storage, and even home storage, reliability will increase massively. Those people with solar and batteries that can island their homes are completely fine the past few days. We have a much more modern, cost effective, and scalable set of technologies now than we did in the 1970s. I don't see how nuclear can compete on any level, as it's incredibly inefficient and has proven that it can't scale in the modern world.
    • acidburnNSA 6y ago
      That's really not justifiable unless you assume nuclear construction costs in the out-of-practice west apply everywhere, always and forever. To think this is to completely disregard the amazing nuclear builds in China (see Hualong One), the UAE (3 APR-1400s build by the Koreans), Russia (lots of VVERs), etc. At the costs they're delivering, current low-carbon 24/7 nuclear is a rock-solid choice. Solar photovoltaic and wind are much older technologies than nuclear, to be fair on the "modern" quip.
      • Maursault 6y ago
        > Solar photovoltaic and wind are much older technologies than nuclear, to be fair on the "modern" quip. To be completely fair, the development of nuclear power took governments and would have been impossible otherwise. Solar and wind, not so much. The problem with nuclear is only cost, not NIMBY and before it is said so, it certainly is not the regulations jacking the cost of nuclear so high. If nuclear power was economically viable, you could not beat off the investors. The trouble is, the investors don't want to pay the $15B or so it costs to build a single plant, nor the cost of decommissioning, nor for the cost of storing the waste effectively forever, plus the cost of securing that, and certainly not for any accidents, as improbable as they may be. They just want to sell electricity and profit, and leave the government with the responsibility of paying for all the things. And really to be fair, the cost of R&D for nuclear power has never been paid back. Pay the US and UK taxpayers back for the R&D and you can have all the nuclear power plants you want.
• gbronner 6y ago
  Charging your tesla is going to cost $200.
  • aeternum 6y ago
    Yeah, this should boost the solar roof demand
    • cbozeman 6y ago
      Good luck using solar cells when they're covered by 2-3 inches of snow.
      • aeternum 6y ago
        The snow won't last, the prices might
      • nielsbot 6y ago
        Guess you need solar panel de-icers. Are those a thing?
        • Dma54rhs 6y ago
          They do exist but for a homeowner it's not that hard to go to the roof and clean the cells and roof either?
          • cbozeman 6y ago
            Yeah that's a good idea. Climb onto your roof, onto a notoriously slippery surface, to "clean" said surface off the roof (how exactly are they to do that...?). That way you can slip on the snow and fall onto not just the snow, but the compacted snow that's now become ice, and not just ice, but the incredibly hard concrete that is your driveway... Yeah I don't see that ending poorly at all.
            • Dma54rhs 6y ago
• quercusa 6y ago
  Anyone use a 'alternative energy supplier' (e.g., not the local power company, who you do pay for the transmission). Are your per-kWh prices fixed or do they float?
• slavik81 6y ago
  Is it possible for Western Canada to contribute into the US grid?
  • core-questions 6y ago
    Pretty sure that it already does. https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/operations/power-trading-and-its-benefits-to-b-c--.html https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/operations/power-tradin...
  • snaveed 6y ago
    BC and Alberta are part of the Western Interconnection [1]. BC Hydro, via Powerex, trades energy within this region [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection [2] http://www.caiso.com/Documents/PowerexWillJoinWesternEnergyImbalanceMarket.pdf http://www.caiso.com/Documents/PowerexWillJoinWesternEnergyI...
  • snowwindwaves 6y ago
    The intertie from BC to Washington is 3150 MW from north to south.
• dukeofdoom 6y ago
  So did the windmills freeze or not? Starting to doubt the fact checkers.
  • mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
    The natural gas infrastructure froze! Texas lost 28GW of natural gas. It's a catastrophe. https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1362160723552579595 https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1362160723552579595
  • acidburnNSA 6y ago
    Some did, but at least in Texas the ERCOT planners basically assume ~0 wind for some week-long periods in winter and just expected to rely on their natural gas generators. But then when 30 GW of thermal plants went offline for weather reasons (pipeline freezes, priority to heating customers, a faulty sensor on a nuclear plant, etc.), that's what really brought things offline.
    • dukeofdoom 6y ago
      I only have electric heating, this Texas disaster made me realize that I need to have gas as a backup. 10k to install a gas furnace. Lower bills, but also the damage done by burt pipes during a power failure in winter, could easily exceed that. Also thinking about all the Tesla owners, stuck in their cold houses not even be able to drive to buy groceries right now in Texas.
      • acidburnNSA 6y ago
        I'm now a little upset that my family's house converted from propane heat to natural gas years ago. That big propane tank that got filled up a few times a year was such a resilient decentralized system. Now being reliant on the regional just-in-time nature of gas and increasing amounts of just-in-time-as-long-as-windy/sunny wind & solar feels really sketchy. And batteries wouldn't really help in Texas since the wind/sun lull is like 6 days long. At least there's also a wood stove!
      • 6y ago
• lsllc 6y ago
  I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthquake/tsunami zones, don't play games with the control rods and these days we've gotten pretty good at control systems. I think it's about time to look at it again.
  • rtpg 6y ago
    Gas-based electrical generation is what are failing right now! They are failing left and right! If 100% was gas there would be more problems, not less. Wind and Solar is pulling above planned generation right now. If you believe your logic, time to go all-in on wind + solar.
    • acidburnNSA 6y ago
      Wind and solar are above planned generation right now, which was 0. In ERCOT wind has been making less than 6 GW out of 33 GW installed for over 7 days straight [1]. Natural gas is pulling almost all the weight right now, as you can see. So no, not time to go all in on wind + solar. [1] https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png (screenshot from EIA, original data here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/ERCO https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/e...) Your first statement is partially true. The ERCOT "planners" expected their gas capacity to basically always be there, and the fact that 30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out. But the remaining gas is pulling almost all the weight keeping people alive so we shouldn't neglect that.
      • mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
        You're correct that, "30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out." I think wind can play a huge role in fixing this. Check out: https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4 https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4 And you've got plenty of massive offshore wind resources on both sides of the continent that are blowing right now (Feb 17th 7:49pm PDT) if we had installed capacity. We need to keep our nuclear fleet (20% of electrical generation) and invest in a TON of transmission. If we had this electrical grid, we'd be doing far better: https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766 https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766
• athollywood 6y ago
  Texas electric prices have been capped at $9000/MWHr for the last few days. Average is about $35/MWhr. The Texas electric bill is about $10 billion per day right now.
  • mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
    Yeah, a large fraction of the natural gas infrastructure froze and the governor prioritized gas for home heating over electrical generation. So natural gas spot prices have gone from around $3-MMBTU to like $350-MMBTU and there is 30GW of electrical generating capacity offline.
  • xx789 6y ago
    Looks around 1k right now. http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html There must be lots of generators making bank.
    • cbozeman 6y ago
      When this winter storm set in, I switched from grid power to my natural gas generator. I have a 48kW Generac attached to a 1000 gallon natural gas tank. The tank also feeds all my gas appliances and fireplaces in my home. At the current rate of usage, I have another 24 days on which to operate. Where most people are paying enormous rates, I purchased my whole tank of gas for $940, plus delivery fee. I have strongly recommended to my friends to have generators installed and to buy their own natural gas storage tanks to power them. While my personal setup was about $20,000 fully installed and hooked up, you can easily get a 24kW model that would power most homes 2000-2500 sq. ft. easily, for about $7000-$9000. Best part is, many whole home generator providers will allow you to finance if the upfront costs are too burdensome.
    • sephamorr 6y ago
      Careful what you look at. The relevant number here is the RTT-SPP level from your link (not RTM-LMP), which then shows $9000/MWh everywhere in Texas.
  • cma 6y ago
• post_break 6y ago
  Sitting here from texas with no power. I'm cold. I hope my fish don't die. Not looking forward to my gas bill.
  • linuxhiker 6y ago
    At least gas is pretty cheap. I hope your fish make it. And now you know the value of camping gear :)
    • post_break 6y ago
      My expensive 12v camping fridge and lithium battery just saved the contents of my fridge so there's that at least.
      • j-wags 6y ago
        The fridge should be a very efficient heat pump, moreso than an resistive electric heater. Can you get its waste heat to the fish tank?
      • snowwindwaves 6y ago
        Put the food outside?
• mint2 6y ago
  That’s nothing, I just saw an article citing that in Texas “Prices skyrocketed to more than $9,000 per megawatt-hour”
• PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Note there are three tabs in this graphic: Day-ahead, 15 minute, and real-time. Day-ahead contracts are high because uncertainty is also high. 15 minute and real-time prices are an order of magnitude lower, despite the sun being down and electric heaters presumably consuming a lot of electricity. Energy companies need to decide how much of their capacity they want to lock in at the high $900 rate for tomorrow, and how much they want to risk on the shorter interval contracts. This does not mean that every MWh of electricity costs $900. It does mean power companies are doing a lot of risk management calculations right now, though.
  • bestnameever 6y ago
    > 15 minute and real-time prices are an order of magnitude lower, despite the sun being down and electric heaters presumably consuming a lot of electricity. Not everywhere. I'm seeing prices exceeding $900 when I select real-time. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong but take a look at so cal.
    • Bedon292 6y ago
      That is what I am seeing in San Diego right now on the real time price.
  • baybal2 6y ago
    Yes, daily averages vary wildly in industrialised countries with real time electricity pricing. In much of Europe, residential, and office will pay $0.3-0.5 during normal use in winter, but dramatically less in off-peak hour in countries with "smart meters." This way you get seemingly sensible $0.1-$0.2 per kWh averages, but drop your jaw when you see your electricity bill.
    • panarky 6y ago
      Just like a car load of hard disks driven 2000 miles has greater bandwidth than transmitting that same data over the internet, I wonder if you could arbitrage Texas electric costs by driving a semi-truck full of Tesla Powerwall batteries from Florida.
• akamaka 6y ago
  There’s an elegant solution to all this: better energy efficiency for buildings. It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. And before you say it’s not feasible to upgrade hundreds of millions of buildings in the USA, you should be aware that upgrading homes to be more energy efficient actually pays for itself (albeit in the long run, which is why most of us have not bothered doing it).
  • chemmail 6y ago
    This is what the WOZX token plans to do. If you read what website and whitepaper, you will absolutely not get what they are trying to achieve. What i think they are doing is a marketplace for people to chip in to do renovations to improve energy efficiency and then dividends of the savings be vested back into those investors. It sounds like a good place, but ultimately seems too convoluted.
  • konjin 6y ago
    >It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. The root cause is extreme weather events which will will get more of. Non-renewables are not affected by the wind and sun. Since we don't want to go extinct by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere we are left with nuclear. I don't understand how people can want to return to feudalism where land is the only way to extract energy from the sun. But given how NYC and SF treat workers perhaps I do.
    • akamaka 6y ago
      Did you know that one third of US carbon emissions come from buildings? Upgrading buildings would massively reduce emissions, and we’d never have to generate the electricity in the first place. It pays for itself.
      • konjin 6y ago
        Do you know that if electricity generation doesn't produce CO2 then consuming it won't either?
• birdyrooster 6y ago
  PG&E has been raising rates to pay for upgrades to stop their grids from starting wild fires, wouldn't that explain most of this?
  • m463 6y ago
    keep this in mind: PG&E has been raising rates for <plausible-reason-this-week> for weeks → ∞
• kumarvvr 6y ago
  Yay Capitalism !
• qubit000 6y ago
  How does this happen in the richest country in the world which basically has monopoly on global monetary policy and prints $$ with impunity?
• protoman3000 6y ago
  So how does this work out in the end? Will people suffering in the cold due to outages in the end also get a thousand dollar invoice for the 2h of daily electricity they were given?
  • harg 6y ago
    I believe most people will be on fixed rate tariffs so it shouldn’t affect their bills (aside from lower usage due to the outages). This will hit the suppliers as they need to buy the energy for their customers on the wholesale market. I don’t know what the smart meter situation is like in Texas but there might be some people on price-linked tariffs who would be exposed.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  Whoever wintetised their power production is being rewarded handsomely.
• sunstone 6y ago
  This is a wake up call for modernizing the USA grid. Not including Texas of course.