Texas' refusal to upgrade its grid is causing generated solar and wind power to go to waste
Texas' refusal to upgrade its grid is causing generated solar and wind power to go to waste
Texas solar and wind are going to double by 2035, but if the state's grid isn't upgraded, then all that power is going to go to waste.
Texas is a degenerate state
- Can't fix their energy system
- Doesn't allow water breaks
33I think the list is longer
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I recently watched a documentary about the USA power grid and was surprised to find we have three, East, West, and Texas. How weird is that.
Anyway Texas set out to be independent early 20th century because they did not want to be subject to federal regulations. Unfortunately that leaves them vulnerable. They can't tap into the national grid if there's a deficit, which has happened several times due to extreme weather. Texans just have to go without power and it's always at the worst time. They know they have this vulnerability and are not dealing with it for whatever reason.
Also they can't sell surplus to the national grid because they're not connected to it. I mean nobody can force them to hook up, but if I was a Texan I'd want my state to suck it up for the sake of having redundancy in the system and sparing the catastrophe.
29It's happened hasn't it? They had a power outage and poor Texans had to deal with the aftermath. Well at least the Texans that chose not to vote for idiots.
9In February 2021 Texas severely failed to meet power demand in subzero temperatures that lasted around two weeks. Many power stations across the state became inoperable due to these extreme temperatures. Major cities were almost completely blacked out for extended periods. People were burning furniture to stay warm and a good number of people froze to death.
When that happens on the East or West grid, they just grab power from unaffected regions. In Texas all they can do is rolling blackouts. They know this is a vulnerability in their grid because it happened in 2011 as well.
For some reason they won't harden their stations against the cold, but they wouldn't have to if they just got on the East or West grid. So basically they'd rather risk the lives of Texans than either spend the money to harden stations or suck up to the Feds and get on the national grid. Seems pretty stupid to me, but you know a person can be stupid, but it takes a government to be really stupid.
20Multiple times in the last few years
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I get downvoted every time I say I just wish Texas would just succeed already.
6You might want to use secede instead.
43Maybe because you're wishing them success?
24They are succeeding at failure
8
Solar or wind power curtailments isn't necessary a problem. It likely makes sense to overbuild anyway to enough during other times. The political issue is that often incentive for renewable power can be tied to generation and it's ot always about offering carbon emissions i.e. incentivising solar or wind to be built where it is relatively useless.
4test
1Author probably should've googled "texas power grid upgrades" before writing.
-18What does this mean?
The author is simply sharing a report from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) about inefficiencies in the Texas grid and how it’s structured.
Texas has their own plan to rely more on oil and older technologies, so if anyone needs to see this, it’s Texas.
This report may be meaningless to certain Texas politicians, but it’s certainly not worthless in general.
29Why? What should people know about Texas power grid upgrades?
Best I can see right now is ERCOT and others saying lots of upgrades have been made, but not specifics. I can see ERCOT and the legislature going back and forth on a "market overhaul" that no one can quite agree on yet and which favors more on-demand sources (natural gas and such). Can you point to where people should read about upgrades?
I think there is a bad title here, but that's not the title at the link. I don't know where this title came from. OP? The link is a pretty straight forward reporting of this recently released EIA report and doesn't seem to contain much of the author's opinion (apart from being on a renewable biased website).
12What upgrades have they made?
6
I dont think whoever wrote this understands how power generation works. You don't make more power than what is being consumed. On days when wind and solar a putting out good amounts of power, they idle down the gas a coal plants to a lower load.
They can't make excess power, so none of it goes to waste.
Also, I work in the industry in plants around this area... They have been upgrading a lot of shit. And my base plant is actually part of a pilot program to fix a lot of the winter issues they had.
One of the plants I worked in down in that area is relatively new, and it was only engineered for temps at 15 degrees F. It got down to -15 and was fine, thankfully.
-28Bro did you read the article?
One of the first things they mention is the need for large battery banks to store the generated power in for later when you need it.
And of course you can make “excess” power in the context of power being generated more than is being consumed and/or lost due to inefficiencies in your system.
It’s neat you “work in the industry”, though, explains a lot.
35Did you read more than the headline? The problem is explained in a very straightforward quote, below. The grid isn’t always capable of transmitting as much energy as the wind and solar generators can produce at peak, so there have been times when they have not been able to deliver power to meet demand despite having the generation capacity to produce it. So no, electrical current isn’t being yeeted into deep space but generation capacity that’s already been invested in is sitting idle even as demand goes unmet, and that is a waste.
Our analysis shows that on days with more wind and solar generation and strong system electricity demand, limited transmission line capacity restricted wind and solar generation flows, and curtailments occurred. These types of curtailments account for 36% of the projected curtailments in 2035, which could be reduced by upgrading the transmission system.
22The author of the article doesn't say anything about "surplus generation", that's a quote from the report.
You don't think the US Energy Information Administration knows what it's talking about? Bold stance.
16You absolutely always make more power than what is being consumed. You need to have overage.
9Oh. Also, the company I work for has estimated that demand will grow 50% over the next 10 years, some of it due to demand from electric vehicles. They're building new plants and wind farms non-stop, and also upgrading transmissions because they make a lot of easy money by letting other companies use their lines
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