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That’s not true at all. There is a huge amount of stranded power. Electricity is not fungible across large distances. Otherwise people in Texas wouldn’t be payi

That’s not true at all. There is a huge amount of stranded power. Electricity is not fungible across large distances. Otherwise people in Texas wouldn’t be paying $9,000 per mwh during the storm— power certainly didn’t cost that much in other states then.

ben_w 6y ago
WRT Texas, that was a deliberate political choice rather than physics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmi...
efficax 6y ago
lol yes it is, texas is huge btw, but also has no interconnects with the rest of the grid, hence the price rise at a time of zero supply and high demand
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
That’s a function of the rather peculiar decision of Texas not to connect to the rest of the grid. Every neighboring state is connected to the eastern power grid, which can transfer power from the Mexican border to Vermont.
delecti 6y ago
Texas is a pretty disingenuous and cherry picked example considering they deliberately siloed themselves off from the other two major power grids of the country. Energy within a power grid is fairly fungible.
miahi 6y ago
That was a political decision. Having your own grid means that you also have your own power frequency regulation, and importing power from a different network is not as simple as connecting wires - you need to connect them using DC instead of AC. These transfer points (interchanges) are sized just for temporary power import or export, you cannot use them to power the whole Texas grid. You can see more details about the interconnects here: https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/status https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/status
raisedbyninjas 6y ago
My initial reaction was skepticism. So the numbers I found were 121 TWhs consumed by Bitcoin annually. Hydro power produces 4200 TWhs annually of a total electricity production of 25,000 TWhs. Assuming all Bitcoin mining is powered by hydro, a 97% untilization for hydro doesn't seem far-fetched.

ben_w 6y ago

WRT Texas, that was a deliberate political choice rather than physics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmi...

efficax 6y ago

lol yes it is, texas is huge btw, but also has no interconnects with the rest of the grid, hence the price rise at a time of zero supply and high demand

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

That’s a function of the rather peculiar decision of Texas not to connect to the rest of the grid. Every neighboring state is connected to the eastern power grid, which can transfer power from the Mexican border to Vermont.

delecti 6y ago

Texas is a pretty disingenuous and cherry picked example considering they deliberately siloed themselves off from the other two major power grids of the country. Energy within a power grid is fairly fungible.

miahi 6y ago

That was a political decision. Having your own grid means that you also have your own power frequency regulation, and importing power from a different network is not as simple as connecting wires - you need to connect them using DC instead of AC. These transfer points (interchanges) are sized just for temporary power import or export, you cannot use them to power the whole Texas grid. You can see more details about the interconnects here: https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/status https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/status

raisedbyninjas 6y ago

My initial reaction was skepticism. So the numbers I found were 121 TWhs consumed by Bitcoin annually. Hydro power produces 4200 TWhs annually of a total electricity production of 25,000 TWhs. Assuming all Bitcoin mining is powered by hydro, a 97% untilization for hydro doesn't seem far-fetched.