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Back in the old regulated days, the power company would just plan to have enough power for hot days. They would keep around a few old inefficient plants and on

Back in the old regulated days, the power company would just plan to have enough power for hot days. They would keep around a few old inefficient plants and only run them a few days a year. They might get the TV news to ask people to turn up their thermostats, but that was it. If there wasn’t enough power, somebody would get fired.

jcranmer 3y ago
Power companies are still required to do that. However, there are few things that make electricity less reliable in Texas: 1. Texas refuses to interconnect to the big synchronous grids for silly political reasons. 2. I suspect that Texan "worst-case scenario" planning assumes situations less extreme than are actually happening.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  > for silly political reasons An interesting side-effect of this is that the texas power providers make out like bandits during these surge-price situations. Much more than they would if they were connected to the national grid and were able to draw on it to ease peak demand. The incentives all line up for them to remain disconnected and to keep power-generating supply minimal to reap the profits that come with surge pricing.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Another interesting side-effect of this deregulation style is it splits up power producers from the actual utility providers managing the lines which (can) allow for more competition in generation. Those big spikes in prices are a signal there's money to be made building battery systems or more PV systems. Unlike places where there's a government-granted monopoly on generation construction, pretty much anyone can put solar panels in a field and start being a producer, you don't need to get the government's permission as long as you meet the requirements to hook up to the grid. Your idea is based around the concept that only a few orgs can participate in generation. Its just not true in the end, there's a pretty competitive market in generation. Its why Texas has added grid-sale solar and wind faster than the majority of other states; it doesn't take some entrenched interest to decide to build. Texas hasn't been experiencing these spikes because of some kind of captive industry pulling the strings and driving artificial shortages a la Enron. Its been having these spikes because we're consistently demanding more electricity than any state in the US has ever demanded at once, practically every day. Power demand and generation records pretty much keep getting smashed. Despite the fact its generally pretty easy to get new plants online compared to other places we're still having challenges building fast enough to meet demand.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      How many plants are currently under construction or in advanced planning stages?
      - vel0city 3y ago
        There should be another 7.7GW of solar coming online in Texas this year with another 36GW installed over the next 5. https://www.reuters.com/default/texas-solar-boom-turns-battery-dash-grid-pain-looms-2023-03-15/ https://www.reuters.com/default/texas-solar-boom-turns-batte... > Texas will continue to lead U.S. solar growth in the coming years as tax incentives in President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act accelerate activity nationwide. > At the start of 2022, only 27% of all solar projects in the Texas grid connection queue were coupled with storage and by the end of the year this had risen to 42%, according to preliminary data from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley lab) > Demand for solar and storage in Texas is soaring but many developers are also building separate storage facilities in Texas to take advantage of new tax credits for stand-alone storage in the inflation reduction act. Total planned storage capacity is estimated at 28.5 GW, twice as large as California, S&P Global Market Intelligence said last month. > Texas developers have benefited from a more streamlined grid approval process than other markets, with waiting times lower than the national average at around two years, but rising activity is increasing the pressure on power authorities. > Around 110 GW of solar and storage capacity was in the interconnection queue at the end of 2021 and initial data shows this rose by over 50% last year, according to the Berkeley Lab. And all of that is just solar and storage. There's many GW of gas peaker plants being planned as well.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        The article you linked to cites as a major problem lack of transmission infrastructure, which is going to make a lot of this incoming generation either localized or 'in queue'. Is there a plan for this?
        vel0city 3y ago
        The imbalance of lots of renewable generation happening in the further reaches of the State often far away from the major population centers is definitely a challenge. That real estate is the cheapest to build on and is some of the most prime wind and solar generation areas. The boom of construction of these alternative energy sources has definitely been lagged by the transmission utility corporations, which don't move as fast as their deregulated counterparts. There's definitely plans to expand and improve those lines, but those changes often move slower due to the entrenched utility interests. Here's an article from 2022 talking about these challenges. Many of these challenges still exist today, and can be seen with some of these price spikes. The prices of electricity in the West Hub will often be less than the rest of the state, in fact the Houston hub can sometimes be way more expensive than West because of difficulties delivering power from West to Houston. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/02/texas-high-plains-wind-energy/ https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/02/texas-high-plains-wi... Its harder to find a lot of details of projects to expand transmission lines, but it is happening. > the industry will spend $3.4 billion this year on building 470 miles of new transmission lines and upgrading 808 existing miles, according to data from ERCOT. About $11.6 billion worth of transmission projects are in the planning stages or under construction. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072023/texas-power-grid-transmission-lines-renewable-energy/ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072023/texas-power-grid... Ultimately though its still usually easier standing up a few wind turbines or wiring up a field with solar panels than massively upgrading a lot of the transmission infrastructure without causing interruption to existing service. People paint the Texas grid with a lot of doom and gloom, and its definitely facing a lot of challenges. But ultimately its expanding renewables faster than pretty much any other state and faces challenges most other states don't have. Pretty much no other state has expanded its energy needs as much as Texas has in the last decade or so. A lot of these challenges Texas is facing are growing pains from massive industrial and residential growth, coupled with climate change and a push to radically redesign our energy mix. People see articles like this with "6k%" price increases and think that's what people are actually paying. But in reality I'm paying for 100% renewable energy at $0.10/kWh including delivery costs, taxes, and fees while being ultimately pretty reliable. Outside of places with massive hydro available, that's pretty cheap and pretty rare for a 100% renewable mix.

jcranmer 3y ago

Power companies are still required to do that. However, there are few things that make electricity less reliable in Texas: 1. Texas refuses to interconnect to the big synchronous grids for silly political reasons. 2. I suspect that Texan "worst-case scenario" planning assumes situations less extreme than are actually happening.

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
> for silly political reasons An interesting side-effect of this is that the texas power providers make out like bandits during these surge-price situations. Much more than they would if they were connected to the national grid and were able to draw on it to ease peak demand. The incentives all line up for them to remain disconnected and to keep power-generating supply minimal to reap the profits that come with surge pricing.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Another interesting side-effect of this deregulation style is it splits up power producers from the actual utility providers managing the lines which (can) allow for more competition in generation. Those big spikes in prices are a signal there's money to be made building battery systems or more PV systems. Unlike places where there's a government-granted monopoly on generation construction, pretty much anyone can put solar panels in a field and start being a producer, you don't need to get the government's permission as long as you meet the requirements to hook up to the grid. Your idea is based around the concept that only a few orgs can participate in generation. Its just not true in the end, there's a pretty competitive market in generation. Its why Texas has added grid-sale solar and wind faster than the majority of other states; it doesn't take some entrenched interest to decide to build. Texas hasn't been experiencing these spikes because of some kind of captive industry pulling the strings and driving artificial shortages a la Enron. Its been having these spikes because we're consistently demanding more electricity than any state in the US has ever demanded at once, practically every day. Power demand and generation records pretty much keep getting smashed. Despite the fact its generally pretty easy to get new plants online compared to other places we're still having challenges building fast enough to meet demand.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    How many plants are currently under construction or in advanced planning stages?
    - vel0city 3y ago
      There should be another 7.7GW of solar coming online in Texas this year with another 36GW installed over the next 5. https://www.reuters.com/default/texas-solar-boom-turns-battery-dash-grid-pain-looms-2023-03-15/ https://www.reuters.com/default/texas-solar-boom-turns-batte... > Texas will continue to lead U.S. solar growth in the coming years as tax incentives in President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act accelerate activity nationwide. > At the start of 2022, only 27% of all solar projects in the Texas grid connection queue were coupled with storage and by the end of the year this had risen to 42%, according to preliminary data from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley lab) > Demand for solar and storage in Texas is soaring but many developers are also building separate storage facilities in Texas to take advantage of new tax credits for stand-alone storage in the inflation reduction act. Total planned storage capacity is estimated at 28.5 GW, twice as large as California, S&P Global Market Intelligence said last month. > Texas developers have benefited from a more streamlined grid approval process than other markets, with waiting times lower than the national average at around two years, but rising activity is increasing the pressure on power authorities. > Around 110 GW of solar and storage capacity was in the interconnection queue at the end of 2021 and initial data shows this rose by over 50% last year, according to the Berkeley Lab. And all of that is just solar and storage. There's many GW of gas peaker plants being planned as well.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        The article you linked to cites as a major problem lack of transmission infrastructure, which is going to make a lot of this incoming generation either localized or 'in queue'. Is there a plan for this?
        vel0city 3y ago
        The imbalance of lots of renewable generation happening in the further reaches of the State often far away from the major population centers is definitely a challenge. That real estate is the cheapest to build on and is some of the most prime wind and solar generation areas. The boom of construction of these alternative energy sources has definitely been lagged by the transmission utility corporations, which don't move as fast as their deregulated counterparts. There's definitely plans to expand and improve those lines, but those changes often move slower due to the entrenched utility interests. Here's an article from 2022 talking about these challenges. Many of these challenges still exist today, and can be seen with some of these price spikes. The prices of electricity in the West Hub will often be less than the rest of the state, in fact the Houston hub can sometimes be way more expensive than West because of difficulties delivering power from West to Houston. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/02/texas-high-plains-wind-energy/ https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/02/texas-high-plains-wi... Its harder to find a lot of details of projects to expand transmission lines, but it is happening. > the industry will spend $3.4 billion this year on building 470 miles of new transmission lines and upgrading 808 existing miles, according to data from ERCOT. About $11.6 billion worth of transmission projects are in the planning stages or under construction. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072023/texas-power-grid-transmission-lines-renewable-energy/ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072023/texas-power-grid... Ultimately though its still usually easier standing up a few wind turbines or wiring up a field with solar panels than massively upgrading a lot of the transmission infrastructure without causing interruption to existing service. People paint the Texas grid with a lot of doom and gloom, and its definitely facing a lot of challenges. But ultimately its expanding renewables faster than pretty much any other state and faces challenges most other states don't have. Pretty much no other state has expanded its energy needs as much as Texas has in the last decade or so. A lot of these challenges Texas is facing are growing pains from massive industrial and residential growth, coupled with climate change and a push to radically redesign our energy mix. People see articles like this with "6k%" price increases and think that's what people are actually paying. But in reality I'm paying for 100% renewable energy at $0.10/kWh including delivery costs, taxes, and fees while being ultimately pretty reliable. Outside of places with massive hydro available, that's pretty cheap and pretty rare for a 100% renewable mix.