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That seems... super inefficient? California has ~40% more people than Texas (40M vs 28M) and seems to have historically [1] stayed at or below 50GW for the last

by boulos 4y ago

That seems... super inefficient? California has ~40% more people than Texas (40M vs 28M) and seems to have historically [1] stayed at or below 50GW for the last 20 years. [1] https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory.pdf https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory...

krasin 4y ago
Much of Texas energy consumption is industrial, actually. Source: https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=TX https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=TX * Residential use: 13% * Commercial use: 12% * Industrial: 54% * Transport: 24% (incl. commercial)
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  Good website, but note that the data is from 2020, which is better than I've got but one might expect Industrial to be actually higher in 2022, and residential somewhat lower. Hard to compare with CA though because their data is probably even more skewed by 2020 special factors.
- boulos 4y ago
  Huh, I did not expect such a huge swing in relative weights! TX uses ~15% more energy (1744 trillions vs 1508 trillion BTUs) than CA for Residential use, but an absolutely massive 7266 trillion BTU for "industrial" vs 1701 in California. Filtering the LLNL Sankey diagrams to Texas (last available seems to be 2019) at [1] sadly doesn't break down the Industrial use, but I'd guess it was for oil wells and such (and I'm disappointed I didn't think about that earlier). The summary at [2] includes the simple quote: > Texas leads the nation in energy consumption across all sectors and is the largest energy-consuming state in the nation. The industrial sector, including the state's refineries and petrochemical plants, accounts for more than half of the state's energy consumption and for 23% of the nation's total industrial sector energy use. But both the Sankey diagram and that wording suggest direct use of the energy (e.g., onsite burning of petroleum) and not anything related to the grid. I'm more confused than we began this :). [1] https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=TX https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=TX

by boulos 4y ago

krasin 4y ago

Much of Texas energy consumption is industrial, actually. Source: https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=TX https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=TX * Residential use: 13% * Commercial use: 12% * Industrial: 54% * Transport: 24% (incl. commercial)

rossdavidh 4y ago
Good website, but note that the data is from 2020, which is better than I've got but one might expect Industrial to be actually higher in 2022, and residential somewhat lower. Hard to compare with CA though because their data is probably even more skewed by 2020 special factors.
boulos 4y ago
Huh, I did not expect such a huge swing in relative weights! TX uses ~15% more energy (1744 trillions vs 1508 trillion BTUs) than CA for Residential use, but an absolutely massive 7266 trillion BTU for "industrial" vs 1701 in California. Filtering the LLNL Sankey diagrams to Texas (last available seems to be 2019) at [1] sadly doesn't break down the Industrial use, but I'd guess it was for oil wells and such (and I'm disappointed I didn't think about that earlier). The summary at [2] includes the simple quote: > Texas leads the nation in energy consumption across all sectors and is the largest energy-consuming state in the nation. The industrial sector, including the state's refineries and petrochemical plants, accounts for more than half of the state's energy consumption and for 23% of the nation's total industrial sector energy use. But both the Sankey diagram and that wording suggest direct use of the energy (e.g., onsite burning of petroleum) and not anything related to the grid. I'm more confused than we began this :). [1] https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=TX https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=TX