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What's stopping power companies from ramping up energy production? They know in advance there will be problems. What stopping them from just producing more? I r

What's stopping power companies from ramping up energy production? They know in advance there will be problems. What stopping them from just producing more? I realize there are some peculiarities of the Texas grid, but this is obviously a problem beyond Texas, as California and east coast has blackouts as well. I'm asking about all these cases. I imagine maybe this requires some additional infrastructure that simply doesn't exist. If so, what's the barrier to building this infrastructure?

vel0city 3y ago
When you're already running at full tilt, how are you going to ramp up energy production? You then need to build more. Building and connecting takes time. Texas has added several state's worth of energy to the grid in the past few years. The peak hit at the 2021 winter storm was 76GW, far higher than any normal time historically. This summer, just two years later, Texas is going >85GW of power demand every day. For comparison, New York's projected peak demand is only 32GW for this summer. So Texas' demand grew by an additional 1/3 of New York's entire demand in just 2 years. That's a massive amount of growth! https://dps.ny.gov/summer-energy-outlook https://dps.ny.gov/summer-energy-outlook
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  So essentially its high growth in energy demand? And probably it not making sense financially to overbuild.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The demand is there, the building is there, but if you overbuild you can get screwed very hard, so the power companies have (very complex, mind you) models that they use to determine if a plant will make sense to bring online. Those models may have been wrong, or based on assumptions about temperatures that turned out incorrect.
    - gcr 3y ago
      From the incentives, having blackouts is more financially desirable than overbuilding. This situation isn’t surprising. It sucks if you’re like, you know, a person living there, but in terms of finance incentives, it’s close to the best possible outcome, right?
      - vel0city 3y ago
        I'm a person living there, haven't had any blackouts for a few years, and pay $0.10/kWh for electricity. What part sucks again?
      - tr3ntg 3y ago
        replying to my sibling commentor, vel0city: My neighborhood has had dozens of outages over the past few years, the worst of which was nearly a week-long outage during the now-infamous freeze. So yeah, energy is cheap, but same areas are hit harder than others in terms of reliability. The energy company’s reasoning for these dozens of small blackouts is “grid upgrades” - that’d be great if true, but who really knows.
        vel0city 3y ago
        That's not a capacity issue though, that's your local delivery company having issues. Delivery companies pretty much are still the older style highly regulated utilities. Its an entirely different problem with different incentives than what the above posters were talking about. Building even 100GW of additional capacity in the state or additional transmission capacity for solar out in the middle of nowhere won't solve the problems your neighbors are facing. Complaining about ERCOT isn't solving the problem, its not ERCOT's role to handle that section. Hold your local delivery provider responsible. I'd be interested in knowing who that delivery company is if you wouldn't mind sharing.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    High growth in demand due to increasing temperatures. This summer is likely exceptional, due to El Nino, but it won't be the last one, and the base temperature will continue to rise due to climate change. So this was foreseeable, but unforeseen because they didn't wish to. And it will continue to happen, and worse.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
usefulcat 3y ago
They're already incentivized to do this because the price varies with demand. Providers that can vary their output (at least some natural gas and coal sources) already do this on a daily basis, which you can see here: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix The overnight low price is typically $20-$30/MWh. Yesterday during the shortage the price peaked at $5000/MWh, which I suspect might be an upper limit.
dmoy 3y ago
> If so, what's the barrier to building this infrastructure? Tons of money, and time? Texas grid is over 100GW, they're saying they have a 7% increase in demand? So figure like 5-10GW? They just spent $10 billion on 10GW of new power plants, and those take 5-10 years to come online. (And the estimate is it'll overrun to $18 billion)
pjc50 3y ago
Permitting and transmission lines. There's a queue of companies who want to build power plants in Texas, but can't because the lines aren't there. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-renewable-energy-wind-solar/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-renewable-ener...

vel0city 3y ago

When you're already running at full tilt, how are you going to ramp up energy production? You then need to build more. Building and connecting takes time. Texas has added several state's worth of energy to the grid in the past few years. The peak hit at the 2021 winter storm was 76GW, far higher than any normal time historically. This summer, just two years later, Texas is going >85GW of power demand every day. For comparison, New York's projected peak demand is only 32GW for this summer. So Texas' demand grew by an additional 1/3 of New York's entire demand in just 2 years. That's a massive amount of growth! https://dps.ny.gov/summer-energy-outlook https://dps.ny.gov/summer-energy-outlook

nonethewiser 3y ago
So essentially its high growth in energy demand? And probably it not making sense financially to overbuild.
- bombcar 3y ago
  The demand is there, the building is there, but if you overbuild you can get screwed very hard, so the power companies have (very complex, mind you) models that they use to determine if a plant will make sense to bring online. Those models may have been wrong, or based on assumptions about temperatures that turned out incorrect.
  - gcr 3y ago
    From the incentives, having blackouts is more financially desirable than overbuilding. This situation isn’t surprising. It sucks if you’re like, you know, a person living there, but in terms of finance incentives, it’s close to the best possible outcome, right?
    - vel0city 3y ago
      I'm a person living there, haven't had any blackouts for a few years, and pay $0.10/kWh for electricity. What part sucks again?
    - tr3ntg 3y ago
      replying to my sibling commentor, vel0city: My neighborhood has had dozens of outages over the past few years, the worst of which was nearly a week-long outage during the now-infamous freeze. So yeah, energy is cheap, but same areas are hit harder than others in terms of reliability. The energy company’s reasoning for these dozens of small blackouts is “grid upgrades” - that’d be great if true, but who really knows.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        That's not a capacity issue though, that's your local delivery company having issues. Delivery companies pretty much are still the older style highly regulated utilities. Its an entirely different problem with different incentives than what the above posters were talking about. Building even 100GW of additional capacity in the state or additional transmission capacity for solar out in the middle of nowhere won't solve the problems your neighbors are facing. Complaining about ERCOT isn't solving the problem, its not ERCOT's role to handle that section. Hold your local delivery provider responsible. I'd be interested in knowing who that delivery company is if you wouldn't mind sharing.
- jfengel 3y ago
  High growth in demand due to increasing temperatures. This summer is likely exceptional, due to El Nino, but it won't be the last one, and the base temperature will continue to rise due to climate change. So this was foreseeable, but unforeseen because they didn't wish to. And it will continue to happen, and worse.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

usefulcat 3y ago

They're already incentivized to do this because the price varies with demand. Providers that can vary their output (at least some natural gas and coal sources) already do this on a daily basis, which you can see here: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix The overnight low price is typically $20-$30/MWh. Yesterday during the shortage the price peaked at $5000/MWh, which I suspect might be an upper limit.

dmoy 3y ago

> If so, what's the barrier to building this infrastructure? Tons of money, and time? Texas grid is over 100GW, they're saying they have a 7% increase in demand? So figure like 5-10GW? They just spent $10 billion on 10GW of new power plants, and those take 5-10 years to come online. (And the estimate is it'll overrun to $18 billion)

pjc50 3y ago

Permitting and transmission lines. There's a queue of companies who want to build power plants in Texas, but can't because the lines aren't there. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-renewable-energy-wind-solar/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-renewable-ener...