Thanks. Based on Supply and Demand forecast, we’re going to be looking at as low as 600MW operating reserves between 7:45-8-15. That may trigger Level 3
Power generation comes in two classes, baseline and peaker. Baseline units are on 24/7. They are typically very efficient, but can take days or weeks to start. Peakers can turn on in minutes of notice and are usually better at following demand.
Power demand follows daily sinusoidal cycles. By having an economical consumer of electricity that can choose operation times, you can have them use power at night in order to flatten your sinusoidal demand, thus allowing a higher percentage of efficient baseline units to run instead of peakers.
There are already many energy storage systems in place and many more being installed even now. The problem is that energy storage and recovery is a hard problem. Anyone who solves it will be rich overnight.
AIUI, turning on a dormant power plant is an expensive process, but utilities need to be careful to balance the amount of power they put into the network is close to the amount of power being consumed or "bad things will happen™"
If the power draw is fluctuating around a level where one more power plant needs to be on during the high demand, but is is low enough during low demand for it to be dangerous to keep the plant running, it can be cheaper to just "soak up the extra" than to cycle the whole plant on and off.
Since when do the feds have anything to do with Texas peaker plants? Texas was unable to fire their gas peaker plants because they didn't bother winterizing them and the equipment froze. That's one of the reason Texas maintains a separate grid. They didn't want to follow fed recommendations for winterizing their power production. This is entirely on Texas.
> Freeze-offs, or when natural gas wellheads and pipelines freeze, reduced the supply and rate of supply of natural gas and forced large numbers of the gas plants offline due to lack of access to the fuel source. Often times home heating systems, including common natural gas-powered furnaces, require electricity to run, so even residents that may have been lucky enough to have gas supply could not heat their homes. In many cases, residents were unable to stay warm, cook food, or boil water.
> The conditions compromised every power source. Coal plants that shut down likely struggled with frozen coal piles where operators could not feed the coal into the plant or access unfrozen water for cooling. One of the state’s four nuclear reactors went offline for about 36 hours due to a frozen sensor on a water feed line.
The freeze was a crisis entirely of Texa's own making because they're refusing to winterize their plants as freezes become increasingly common and more dangerous. The fact that you want to blame the feds for Texas complete ineptitude is disgusting as someone that had to deal with the freeze in 2021.
I was there for the freeze in 2021. Thankfully we had power periodically for an hour or two a couple times a day, so we were able to run the heater and keep the home livable (although it was in the low 50s at times inside). Dumped a lot of water out of the outside spigots (also not winterized) to keep the exposed PVC pipes from freezing outside. Neighbor didn’t do the same and his garage flooded because of all the burst pipes. It was a nightmare, and we had it better than a lot of other people did. Sad to hear this is happening again. It’s 100% on Texas.
It can though. Texas still has to get approval from the feds to run the plants in a manner that will increase emission levels beyond EPA limits. Here's the letter [1] ERCOT sent asking for permission.
This is how energy contracts work. If a utility opts to break a contract made prior to ensure grid stability and to mitigate risk to more residential customers terms sometimes dictate that the settlement will be made in dollars or energy credits...
I'm not a fan of bitcoin mining but this is just business. No reason to trounce maniacally on Texas...
Yes, it is a reason to trounce on Texas. Texas wouldn't have to go around paying bitcoin miners not to mine if it was integrated into the rest of the power grid(s). But Texas is gonna Texas. Lifelong Texan here.
> If a utility opts to break a contract made prior to ensure grid stability
I think what you meant to say is: the utility should not be allowed to EVER sign a contract that allows something as silly as bitcoin to preempt providing power to citizens and vital businesses. Energy isn't a commodity, it's a necessity in 2023 and should be treated as such.
Bitcoin advocates talk about the cash flows sponsoring new generation capacity, but everyone ignores the fact that bitcoin plants are being built in areas with low power prices, so they are necessarily less valuable to the grid than next-to-regular-load. Almost all Bitcoin plants in Texas (except Riot) are in West Texas, next to solar farms that are transmission line limited.
Fun fact: power prices can and frequently do go negative, since electricity can't be stored (cheaply and at scale) and the plants cost more to shut down and restart.
I know you'll all call me crazy, but this is the system working at its finest
Riot, by simply existing and pursuing their mission to mine bitcoin, provides a valuable service by discovering the real price a kWh should cost. Since Riot will never overpay for electricity, (they'll simply scale back their use) and they'll happily gobble up as much as they can when electricity is "too cheap" they ensure that the amount of generation is constantly matched to the demand, adjusting for every conceivable variable in an economy in real-time. ERCOT and the consumers of the Texas grid also benefit from this hyper-efficient cost discovery system, every single second of every single day.
It's not just better than the stock market, it's capitalistic principles working exactly they way they've always dreamt of.
by setting a floor on the price, and minimum for demand, they guarantee predictable revenues to those seeking to invest in or expand their power generating capabilities
it seems to me that "those seeking to invest in or expand their power generating capabilities" falls into the category of "power companies".
Perhaps you mean to include also individuals with solar panels on their roof or whatever but thats a vanishingly small portion of both companies and individuals.
But they are increasing demand, not supply. You are theorizing that somewhere someone will build more supply because the increased demand is increasing the price to consumers, which is not what I would call a consumer benefit while they wait for that someone to get their giant power plant built to offset the completely useless bitcoin mining.
How is this a “hyper-efficient” system if the electricity is just wasted? Note that there is a massive negative externality (climate change!) to generating electricity, depending on the generation method of course.
You may as well just have the government set a price floor.
I feel like I could make a pretty good analogy about an arsonist burning down houses and how that would be a great way to create a hyper-efficient market that would tell us the true cost of housing, insurance, construction supplies and labor, etc. ie, your opinion sounds a lot like the the broken window fallacy.
But I don't worship the market above all, and I'm of the opinion that any type of system (capitalism, socialism, whatever) exists to serve the needs of a society, not to be a system in it's own right to serve it's own "needs" (whatever those may be.) But I also think there's a strong argument to be made that mining bitcoin is not a net benefit for society.
I have a different definition of healthy capitalism, a system that enables people to fulfill their needs/wants while maximizing collective happiness. Wantonly consuming electricity for the purpose of price discovery amidst the back drop of global warming may not be (completely) insane, but it does appear to be a textbook externality, and it’s hardly a slam dunk for capitalism.
I'd guess "huge space heater" would certainly have to exceed 250 MW (that's at least 100,000 kettles).
IIRC that'd equal vaporizing water at 125 kg/s, doable but that's 10,800 m³ water per day.
Aaaand, in order to get the kind of contract from a power utility where they pay you to turn off, you'd probably need to operate a decent fraction of the day, say 25 %.
So you'd first need to build this thing and then you'd need to draw 1.5 GWh of electricity per day.
At 50 USD/MWh, you'd pay USD 27 million a year for the electricity to operate.
It doesn't, proof of work is what makes Bitcoin unique.
(1) Having to spend physical resources better aligns incentives
(2) Proof of work is decentralized and fair
Proof of work explicitly gives those with more resources more power. How is that "fair"? Bitcoiners complain that staking systems are somehow worse, but it's the exact same dynamic, just one uses less electricity.
BTC doesn't purport to fix "dog-eat-dog" or "might is right" in human society, but does "fix" governments being able to manipulate the value, supply etc of money.
Any amount of money, as long as it is sufficiently divisible, is capable of facilitating trade within an economy. The idea that somehow money has to increase over time is one of the most non-sensical idea.
"Thus inflation becomes the most important psychological resource of any economic policy whose consequences have to be concealed; and so in this sense it can be called an instrument of unpopular, i.e. of anti-democratic, policy, since by misleading public opinion it makes possible the continued existence of a system of government that would have no hope of the consent of the people if the circumstances were clearly laid before them."
Same is expected for tonight.