https://fortune.com/2024/05/18/texas-power-prices-1600-percent-heat-wave-record-energy-demand-electric-grid/
For about one hour late Friday, day-ahead prices on ERCOT's website jumped as high as $688 per MWh.
They did change one thing. You used to be able to get electricity at wholesale prices from certain providers. When the rates went crazy during the 2021 storm and people's crazy bills for turning on the lamp blew up on the news, they shut down that option.
These rate surges do hurt customers, but now it's in the form of rate increases when their contract expires.
Rationality is out of the window. Ideology is the new religion. They don't want to become "socialists" even though they don't know what it truly means.
It's almost scary to think of how bad it would have to get in order for voters to tick the boxes for Greens or Libertarians.
Like, how badly do these fuckers have to fail before you're willing to shed your partisan jersey and vote to your own benefit?
Instead of requiring weatherization, they allowed power plants to opt out.
Lawmakers on the Senate Business and Commerce Committee were frustrated that the new law allows natural gas companies to opt out of weatherization requirements if they don’t voluntarily declare themselves to be “critical infrastructure” with the state.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/28/texas-power-grid-loophole/
Not only did they re-elect them, deregulating the power grid even more was an explicit part of the Republican platform
It’s absolutely wild. The last time around, people died, and a lot more were put into financial hardship due to the shitty, hypercapitalist energy infrastructure. People were rightly ripshit angry about it.
And then nothing was done about any of it.
And then people keep voting for the politicians who created and perpetuated the situation.
It’s really hard to keep giving a shit about people who actively work and vote to make their own lives worse.
well we did learn that when shit hits the fan Rafael Edward Cruz likes taking vacay down south of de border way
they almost learned nothing. The grid almost shutdown this time, instead of shutting down...
Welcome to your deregulated "free market", Texas. Don't want to be tied to government regulation? Guess you get to pay more or cook...or freeze. Your choice by season.
This is Enron-scale manipulation. Someone's ripping off the public and making a mint with the help of the regulators.
Jerry Jones, yeah same one that owns the Cowboys, made almost $1B off the price hikes durning the big freeze that almost crippled the grid.
The vast majority of Texans are on contracted plans and pay a consistent price per kilowatt.
That doesn’t mean prices won’t skyrocket when that contract renews though
It's not a coincidence that Texas is a hotbed of development for "microgrid" systems to cover for when ERCOT shits the bed -- and of course all those systems are made up of diesel and natural gas generator farms, because Texans don't want any of that communist solar power!
I've got family in Texas who love it there for some reason, but there's almost no amount of money you could pay me to move there. Bad enough when I have to work on projects in the state -- contrary to the popular narrative, in my personal opinion it's a worse place than California to try and build something, and that's entirely to do with the personalities that seem to gravitate to positions of power there. I'd much rather slog through the bureaucracy in Cali than tiptoe around a tinpot dictator in the planning department.
Not to mention their Governor, who seems to be in a race with FL's Governor for the "evil monster of the century award."
I am a power grid engineer and we are quoting multiple solar systems with BESS capabilities a month for Texas. It’s not all diesel.
I exaggerate -- but Magic Rock is doing booming business installing strings of natural gas generators at Buc-ee's across the state, and I'm currently dealing with an institutional client who wanted to provide backup power for a satellite campus, and didn't even stop to consider battery-backed PV on the way to asking for a natural gas generator farm.
At least we're trying to make reforms to our bureaucracy here in California, the problems mostly originate on the county and city levels. As for why the state is/was rather decentralized relatively speaking, well its cause we roughly the size of Great Britain (the island not the empire) and half the state is mountainous to some degree.
"Last year, Texas overtook California in large-scale solar power capacity. When huge amounts of solar power rush onto the grid, batteries tend to follow. Now, Texas is building more grid batteries than California, the longtime undisputed leader in clean energy storage."
You didn't answer their question though. You gave an example of how power companies are doing, not how texans are doing.
Also, if Texas is having record solar installations, why is power so expensive?
While I don't think the way Texas has the regulations setup is a good idea, one has to look more at the 'whole picture' and do the math. Is the low cost periods low enough that when you get 'gouged' by the spikes, what was the total average cost? If the spikes are taken as a average over time, then maybe it works out in the consumer's favor or at worst break even, then it might be worth it. Or maybe it doesn't But I honestly don't know. I don't have the numbers in front of me to do the math, I'm a 1000+ miles away from Texas.
Edit to add: I don't know just how much extra electricity Texas will need to buy, but I would assume they will be buying a noticeable amount. And the cost of electricity is VERY expensive in the spot market. It's why my co-op is doing major upgrades to the hydro-electric dam. To increase the efficiency and reduce the need to buy expensive spot market power.
And without a good way to store the excess power generated, solar and wind aren't very good for peak loads. You can't merely flip a switch and spool up more power than a solar panel or wind generator can produce. Clouds reduce efficiency, insufficient or too much winds shut down wind generators. And despite having more alternative generation than everyone's hero - California, it still not enough to carry the whole load. Consumers are raising demand far faster than enough infrastructure can be built out to supply that demand. So for peak loads, natural gas generators are used because they can be turned on and off quickly as needed. This adds excess cost.
The installation of storage batteries farms is fantastic. But it will take time and it will add cost to consumers electric bill.
And despite some tankie's beliefs, nothing is free - it all costs something. I'm a member of a tiny rural electric co-op. The co-op needs to make a profit to afford maintenance and upgrades to our tiny grid. Our power is generated by a hydro-electric dam and my rates have gone up this year to to cover the costs of some major maintenance on the dam and the addition of 3 new linemen to keep the electricity flowing to my heat pump that the co-op incentivizes and highly encourages.
Its wholesale prices, it's what they do. Same in Europe same in Australia.
Texas looks fairly middle of the pack with decreasing prices. Compare it to another state with high levels of renewable and California is second highest after some islands and has increasing prices.
https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/electricity-rates-by-state/
So, this is definitely good from an infrastructure perspective. But because the infrastructure is all privately owned and operated in pursuit of profit, the cost problem isn't solved by the new capital.
Much like with all the new natural gas electric plants, these battery centers simply exist to exploit the short periods of time in which Texas electricity prices jump from $25 Mwh to $3000 Mwh. As the cartels sink their claws deeper into the retail market, the possibility of enormous price spikes increase, with base loads falling and surge pricing becoming much more common.
It's not a cartel risk. It's a supply and demand equation. More supply means lower prices.
It's just market prices.
It’s not a cartel risk. It’s a supply and demand equation.
Cartels love industries with inelastic demand.
It’s just market prices.
Markets aren't magic. Prices are a consequence of human decisions. And if you can withhold electricity from the grid to maximize returns (by forming a cartel with other producers) you can drive those prices up when people can least afford to reduce consumption.
Isn't it tonnes of different people, farmers and such. Too many for a cartel to form. Reducing supply is just going to mean to make less money.
Batteries are making the grid a lot more elastic.
Isn’t it tonnes of different people, farmers and such.
Farmers and such are not selling power on the Texas wholesale electric grid, no.
Reducing supply is just going to mean to make less money.
Because fossil fuel supplies are limited, you can often make more money selling a small amount onto the market at a high price than a large amount onto the market at a low price.
So weird that other states are able to avoid such ridiculous price swings and are able to mitigate most of the downtime caused by extreme weather disruptions than Texas is unable to handle.
why? what mechanism forces them to lower prices? the same that keep corporate profits at record highs year after year? we recently saw just how silly the idea of competition making anything cheaper is when every, even tho, there was no reason for doing so, started upping the prices of groceries, because they could.
what kind of woke liberal socialism is this?
don't they know those solar power panels will use up all the sun! What will happen when we run out of sun?! /s
Probably the same thing that will happen to all the athletes once they run out of their finite lifetime supply of energy :(
Its just free market capitalism.
They also have more than double the wind power of any other state.
Thats not capitalism. Capitalism doesnt involve that evil demonrat satan technology like wind and solar! /s
Just because people in Texas are wrong about what capitalism is doesn't mean people on this website can't also be wrong, quite often even more so.
Only when it's really well organised fun.
But this website has the lowest economic literacy I have ever seen. It's really dangerous that people might think the majority know what they are talking about.
This does bring up kind of an interesting question for me at least.
I would expect that a significant contributor to the surge prices is from HVAC units and similar needing to work harder/etc. My brain also feels like solar panels are likely to work better when it's warmer, but I realize that I don't have any proof of that or know how that would work beyond 'when hot, feels like more sun rays, more sun rays good for solar?'.
On to the question, do solar panels work better in warmer temperatures and does output of solar panels scale anywhere close to comparatively with ambient temperature and/or need for HVAC and similar systems?
I would expect that a significant contributor to the surge prices is from HVAC units and similar needing to work harder/etc.
That's one end of the equation. But the other end is in how we're replacing coal plants with natural gas plants.
Coal plants are significantly slower to respond to market demand (on the scale of hours to increase/decrease supply), so they need to be run at a higher output on a longer time frame as electricity demands rise. Because ERCOT auctions electricity demand in 15 minute intervals, coal plants can't meet a short spike in demand before its come and gone. Natural gas plants don't have this problem. They can sit on their reserve fuel until the prices peak and then flood the grid with electricity on short notice.
As coal plant profitability sinks relative to gas plant cartels, the volume of electricity we produce becomes more and more easy to rig within the ERCOT auction markets. HVACs going into overdrive in the evening (typically between 3-7pm) signal a potential spike in demand. But gas plant operators get to wait until the electricity auction realizes those high prices, rather than producing electricity in advance and hoping you get to ride a wave through sunset.
do solar panels work better in warmer temperatures and does output of solar panels scale anywhere close to comparatively with ambient temperature and/or need for HVAC and similar systems?
A lot of the heat in cities like Houston comes from the humidity combined with the sun, so a bit of breeze can drastically impact the gross demand for electricity. Meanwhile, electric components of all sorts (photovoltaics included) perform worse in the heat. Breeze can also impact electricity available from wind turbines, which further shift prices.
Batteries can help renewable energy companies hedge against peak production relative to peak consumption. But, again, a private market maker still wants to chase the highest returns. So putting a bunch of quick-to-discharge batteries on a grid alongside quick-to-ramp-up natural gas turbines means... more cartel price fixing.
Seems good for industry and bad for the actual populous, considering things like this can still happen lol.
I live in Texas and have already received 2 notices this spring to conserve electricity. It has barely hit 90, and they aren't able to keep up with demand. They get the same weather reports we have access to, up to 14-21 days, yet they can't/won't anticipate demand?
It's almost like they have a financial incentive to pull this shit.
In 2000/2001 this same shit was being done in California, leading to rolling blackouts and record-high energy prices. One company was buying all the plants and shutting them down for "maintenance" specifically to increase energy prices.
There were going to be congressional hearings over it in early 2022, but that company was Enron, and at the end of 2001 they collapsed due to other bullshit they were pulling.
worse in CA was PG&e causing devastating forest fires because they refused to shut of the power and had insufficient line maintenance
Fun fact, in case you weren't aware; Texas pays bitcoin mining companies to shut off their rigs during peak demand.
Miners love this; in effect they can just threaten to mine bitcoin and get paid as much as they would have made actually mining bitcoin, but without the wear and tear on their expensive hardware. It's a legalized extortion racket being enacted on the public purse.
Apologies if I just gave you even more reason to be angry.
Bookmarking this for the next time white supremacists here in good ole' South Africa peddles the "privatisation is the only thing that will fix our electricity problems!" bullcrap.
Thanks, Texas!
Privatisation can only work if the end consumers have genuine choice.
In the UK electricity is privatised and I can pick from dozens of companies. This honestly works pretty well, and you can pick the cheapest depending on when you use electricity and how much. It's the same infrastructure no matter who you pick, but that seems handled fairly well. Same with internet providers.
We also privatised water, and we just get given a company to rule over each area of the country. Unsurprisingly, given the consumer has no recourse other than "have no water" this is an absolute fucking shit-show. They've not invested in enough reservoirs, nor sewage handling, and instead lobby the government to make it legal to just put it in the rivers instead. It's the same story with trains.
Funny, I was thinking the same of the New Yorkers who moved to Texas. I live in New York (not the City) and yah the state has problems, but you couldn't pay me to move to a Southern state...
IDK, coming from NYC to TX is probably a net upgrade in a lot of ways, especially if you're a small business owner or work for one. The laws in NYC are just so bonkers.
Then again, I'm uninterested in moving to TX either. I'm pretty happy here in Utah, and I may move back home to Seattle, WA at some point, or maybe we'll move to NC. But I'm not moving anywhere further south than NC.
Yah the taxes in NYS (not NYC) are one of the problems I mentioned, but on the other hand I've seen what they paid for. As an Upstate NY resident I have a love/hate relationship with NYC. On one hand it causes a lot of funky laws to be passed at the state level. On the other hand it brings in a FUCK TON of tax revenue that Upstate benefits from
Honestly Louis Rossmans experience as a small business owner living the real life Kafka novel in new Yorks legal system made me never want to live there.
Some, but there are a lot of people here who recognize the hypocrisy and trash policies put into place in the state by politicians who do not wish to govern, only consolidate power.
They do, but Texas is one of the most difficult states to register to vote. Voter suppression is real and by design.
This explains it well: Texas’s Voter-Registration Laws Are Straight Out of the Jim Crow Playbook
and Analysis: It's harder to vote in Texas than in any other state
Where I live you just get a letter some weeks before the election. With that letter you can vote at the place that is named in the letter (or anywhere in the same city). If you lose the letter you can still vote with your id-card, but only at the place that was named in the letter.
Easy, isn't it?
It make sense if it were like the TSA to be honest, bring everything you need to vote or preregister for a faster experience. Would also help if was voting month(s) instead of day so people could comfortably vote.
That's really dumb. Here in Utah, you sign up online, and you can get a mail ballot online too. I have never actually voted in person, I just fill out my ballot and drop it in one of the collection bins a few days before the election. We can even track our ballot to ensure it gets processed.
Why overcomplicate it? I don't need to take time off to vote, and I can take my time researching the candidates. Voting should be easy.
I wish it was possible to vote strongly enough for gerrymandering to be irrelevant.
Another 51% win for Biden will certainly trigger another violent inssurection attempt and another 4 years of inaction.
The best outcome would be a landslide victory if only to show the republican voters that their ideas are not supported by the general public.
I bet those businesses who relocated from Cali to Texas are loving those power prices.
Oh yeah, they already left Texas.
Besides that one time power goes out more often in California. In Texas you just have a temporary price surge you could treat like a blackout if you wanted to. The difference is it's less often and you have a choice.
I haven’t had a power outage in about ten years, between SDG&E, PG&E, and SoCal Edison. Meanwhile, Texas has regular power outages. So just what are you on about?
Like the time people were freezing to death during a power outage while the governor took a vacation to Cancún?
Yeah, if you want a governor abandoning his people, look to Kevin Stitt (Oklahoma) last year when Tulsa was without power for about a week. Lieutenant Governor was out too, literally no one had any idea who was in charge of the state.
Maybe power is more reliable in central Texas, my family still has no electricity from the derecho that hit Houston. And they lose power frequently from all the heavy storms or hurricanes that pummel the gulf coast.
Oh, Texas. Your power grid is an endless source of amusement (for people who don’t have to rely on it, of course).
Losing power for three days, but knowing my energy bill will be twice as high as last months is always a cool feeling.
I mean, I work in the O&G industry. Y'all have every right to be as smartass as you please.
so what's the reason they're the only state independent from the national grid?
they just know better?
guess that's why they call it the lone star state
so what’s the reason they’re the only state independent from the national grid?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
There's a whole article on it in Wikipedia, but the TL;DR; boils down to "If we're not connected nationally then we don't have to abide by national regulations".
That's ostensibly a cost-saving, assuming you don't think too hard about what's being regulated. But its also a great opportunity to price gouge consumers.
We're free to do all the great, innovative things we could want! But mostly the sneakiest, underhanded, previously illegal shit we want...
The reason Texans hate government so much is because they have no idea what it looks like when it's run correctly.
I don't know but it started making international news during the pandemic, so at least 5th.
Greed and incompetience. No wonder Texas has been resistant to federal regulation and interconnect its power network with the rest of the country.
So I assume that ted cruz flees to ski somewhere this time? And does he still blame his daughters, or does that change as well?
Maybe he's not fleeing the states crumbling infrastructure, maybe he's taking his wife and/or daughter(s) for out of state abortions.
Better Sue him to be on the safe side.
Texas indeed has been blessed with much sunlight to make solar energy quite viable. This includes solar hot water heaters, and many trees to grow with vigour and bio-filtrate.
and many trees to grow with vigour
Not so vigorous when climate change causes a massive drought.
They have 591 km of coastline.
lots of salt water + lots of solar energy = lots of desalinated water
Presumably it's toxic mostly because of the concentration of salt.
If it can't be used—and up north salt is used in winter for roads—it can be cleaned a bit, diluted with more seawater and discharged back into the ocean.
((the brine of 1 mass unit of seawater that's been desalinated) + 20 units of regular seawater) ÷ 20 = 20 units of 5% saltier seawater discharged
You make it sound so safe and easy. It isn't.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/desalination-pours-more-toxic-brine-ocean-previously-thought
It's nice that you think you, without any experience in the matter, can solve problems with desalination that engineers in the field can't, but I doubt you are actually able to.
