Posted on 02/15/2021 11:50:33 AM PST by george76
The spot price of wholesale electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000% on Monday amid a deep freeze across the state and rolling outages among power producers, according to data on the grid operator’s website.
Real-time wholesale market prices on the power grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) were more than $9,000 per megawatt hour late Monday morning, compared with pre-storm prices of less than $50 per megawatt hour, according to ERCOT data..
The surge reflects the real-time megawatt hour price of electricity and the cost of congestion and losses at different points across the grid. Early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions forced many power generating units off the grid, upending the supply of electricity.
ERCOT did not respond to an email message about the spike in wholesale electricity prices.
On Feb. 10, well before inclement weather hit Texas, spot wholesale prices on ERCOT settled around $30 per megawatt hour at the end of the day, ERCOT data show. But on Sunday, the price per megawatt hour surged past $9,000 on the grid.
ERCOT can be more susceptible to wholesale price spikes because it does not have a capacity market, which pays power plants to be on standby during peak demand and weather emergencies, for example. ERCOT’s model means consumers are not paying for generation that may never be called into action.
But early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions caused many generating units – across all fuel types – to trip offline and become unavailable. That forced more than 30,000 megawatts of power generation off the grid, ERCOT said in a news release.
The only time I had a power company reneg on me was NewPower. NewPower was a subsidiary of Enron, and when Enron folded, so did NewPower. I just hired a new electric provider at basically the same price. Several months later I got a $15 check from NewPower from a class action lawsuit. NewPower had promised “Free Decembers”, and this was compensation for NewPower reneging on the contract.
Nukes and gas-fired steam turbines - frozen cooling towers.
Gas-fired turbines - probably no problems.
Their bills will not be 100x.
The actual effect will be based on the proportion of electricity their supplier buys on the spot market at those prices and the proportion they get via long-term contract.
Comes down to a question of reliablility.
For reliablity nothing, but NOTHING, beats an atomic pile-driven generation plant. The fault lies with dependence built up on older uranium-fueled light water plants. As these were withdrawn from service, because of obsolescence and escalating maintenance costs, they were not replaced by newer designs. Instead, the decision was made to pretend that wind and solar could fill the gap, but they cannot provide a baseline power output, or be depended upon to be available for surge demand, because of the vagaries of both weather and daylight.
Natural gas-fired plants have the advantage of being able to come online within literally seconds, spooling up quickly from start to full output as fast as the turbine can be brought up after firing. More conventional boiler plants, usually coal-fired, have to depend on the circulating water to reach working temperature before they can feed into the grid. Diesel fueled plants are a little slower than the natural gas plants, but still a lot faster than the coal-fired plant.
There is an alternative to all these, a replacement for the uranium-fueled light water reactor, and that is the Thorium-fueled molten salt reactor. With far fewer hazards than the uranium LWR plants, this design can be run flat-out 24/7/365 and provide a true baseline power supply. The designs have been engineered and have proved successful in the test runs, but these Thorium-powered plants have not been widely adopted yet, mostly because of lingering superstitious fears based on things like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, uranium powered plants that went a little awry. Or Fukushima, that went a LOT off the rails after a natural disaster.
If a REP invoked that kind of out, the company would be writing its own death warrant. Imagine the customers of a retail electricity provider getting a surprise $1,000 bill over this. That company would lose all its customers and no one would ever hire it again.
across all fuel types is more PC, liberal wording garbage. .. reality is the wind mills and solar panels are frozen, covered in snow & ice / dead.
Personally, I’m loving this. I feel for my fellow conservative Texans BUT having a husband that works at one of the largest coal fired power plants in the country and it is being gutted and possibly shut down totally in 2028.... i hope the morons who have caused this freeze their rear ends off
I was in the energy business in the early 2000’s.
Markets for electricity today are more line a market for oil. Which it is not the same (I can’t store electricity).
But all that doesn’t matter in a massive dive like this. I am shocked how weak the TX grid is.
It doesn’t get to -3 in Texas.
Till it does.
When it does, you have a lot of energy contracted somewhere else you have to go get.
I am in Iowa, and our gas supplier has put us on restriction for Texas demand.
If the power utilities generation capacity is maxed out they have to go out in the market to buy enough power to supply their customers. Since a power utility cant store electricity, it made as it is used basically.
A lot of the utilities are going natural gas but the units are not as big as you can make with coal fired that I know of.
You typically don’t get to pick your electric utility.
There are a very few cases were you can, but utilities are government sanctioned monopiles.
What I expect they will do is apply for a .gov bail out in a few months and raise rates next time they legally can. Which can be months or years.
The big hit will be commercial and industrial users. One of my old plants is south of Dallas. They CAN’T shut down. So the price they are going to pay will be massive.
“ Moar Windmills and Solar panels.”
*************
Yeh, it wasn’t very long ago that the Texas grid had plenty of excess capacity. In fact, Texas used to sell it to California when they were having their summer time rolling blackouts. But sadly, now it appears the emphasis is on solar and wind capacity which obviously ain’t cutting it.
Way to go Jao.
You’re winning more friends. Take it from me, you are... /s
Largest fossil-fuel generating station in the country is natural gas powered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations_in_the_United_States
Filling up that Tesla is going to get real expensive.
The Texas retail electricity market has been deregulated for decades. Click here to review retail electric providers and their various plan structures. Use ZIP Code 77002 for Houston.
Lost power last night (SE Wisconsin). Don’t know why or if it’s related to this. We’ve had this weather for over a week and a half. It’s going to continue to the weekend.
[[Who buys electricity in the spot market?]]
Can you spot me 30 KW’s?
Yep. Another complicating factor is that unreliable electricity generation sources like wind aren't producing today. Those wind farms sold what they expected to be their baseline generation. When the windmills froze, the wind farms couldn't produce the electricity they had already sold. They had to go buy electricity in the spot market.
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