Posted on 08/20/2023 12:03:25 PM PDT by george76
Earlier this week Texas grid operator ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) asked residents to reduce energy usage amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid rolling blackouts.
ERCOT manages electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers and represents 90% of the state’s electric load, according to the company.
Temperatures soared to 115+ degrees with the heat index in parts of Texas on Thursday amid an excessive heat warning.
ERCOT issued the voluntary conservation notice due to extreme temperatures, forecasted high demand and lower reserves due to low wind generation.
...
The wind turbines aren’t producing enough energy.
Texas electricity prices surged 6,000% and are climbing toward the $5,000 price cap, according to data from ERCOT.
...
Spot electricity prices jumped to $4,750 per megawatt-hour Thursday afternoon from the average of $75 on Wednesday afternoon, according to data from grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
...
ERCOT asked customers to take the following steps to cut electricity use:
Raise thermostats by a degree or two.
Avoid using large appliances i.e., washer/dryer etc.
Turn off and unplug non-essential lights and appliances.
Set pool pumps to run early morning or overnight; shut off during peak hours.
Commercial Businesses: Turn off any lights an office equipment when space not in use.
Commercial Businesses: Turn off air-conditioning outside of business hours
What happened to “don’t mess with texas”?
Tell the feds to pound sand
“Tell the feds to pound sand”
Twenty states have essentially done that. See the map in my Post #58.
I believe that could be said for many states all the way from South Carolina to Texas in other words the whole of the southern states.
Bell weather years of transition in the South like 1994 pointing the to the finger in the wind folks.
Whether you want green or just power Nuclear is expensive but the best option for reliable power. I have been impressed with Solar and how well it is doing but as I said it is only as good as the sun is. I don’t know how expensive Natural Gas Power Generation is but if you want them to be on standby then you have to pay them something to just set idle.
Thanks T. Boone Pickens. Thanks Govs Perry and Abbott. Thanks GOP.
You cashed in on “green tax credits”, closed all the coal plants, and created ERCOT (Enron clone).
By the way, ERCOT is the “Energy Reliability Council of Texas”. Texas never had blackouts or shortages or 6000% price increases before the “Reliability Council”. Never unless a storm or flood dropped the power lines.
It’s utterly shameful for Texas to have crappy energy.
Real-Time Data
Actual System Demand 84973
Total System Capacity 89362
Total Wind Output 11574
Total PVGR Output 12256
It depends on their contract if they went with an alternative power provider.
Normally the cost is fixed at a low rate for a given period. After that if the provider has to buy power in the open market, it’s Ben Dover pricing.
The One and Only Texas Wind Boom (2016)
Wind power has transformed the heart of fossil-fuel country. Can the rest of the United States follow suit?
Rolan Petty stabbed at the dirt with a boot toe and looked up at the broiling west Texas sun. “I call it farming on faith,” he said of his unirrigated cotton farm. “You just have faith that the rain is gonna come.”
If it doesn’t come, Petty has a backup income stream: leasing fees. All around us, towering 150 feet over Petty’s combine and the scrubby-looking cotton plants in neat rows, stood a forest of wind turbines that stretched to the horizon. Petty’s land on the arid plain of west Texas lies on the edge of the vast Horse Hollow wind farm, with 430 turbines spread over 73 square miles. It was the largest wind farm in the world when it was completed, in 2006. Petty’s family leases land to Horse Hollow and another wind farm in the area, making about $7,500 a year on each of the several dozen turbines on their property. Wind power has become a big windfall for the Pettys, as it has for many landowners in Texas—allowing Rolan and his parents and three brothers to make hundreds of thousands of dollars every year whether the rains come or not. And the Petty farm is just a small player in the largest renewable-energy boom the United States has ever seen.
Wind power has brought prosperity to towns that were literally drying up less than a generation ago. “In the 2011 drought a lot of people around here would have filed for bankruptcy if not for the turbines,” said Russ Petty, one of Rolan’s brothers, who was giving me a driving tour of the property. “What it’s done is helped keep this land in the family.”
https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/10/03/157226/the-one-and-only-texas-wind-boom/
I guess this is what Texas voted for.I remember when everyone thought Texas' deregulation plan was so brilliant.
Texas is still feeling the fallout of that scam.
It’s not. Too many scumbags moved in.
Sad, because Texas is LOADED with those monstrosity eyesores.
“Texas is 20,000 sq miles larger than the nation of France.
France has 56 operable nuclear reactors totaling 61,370 MWe. Texas has TWO.”
Excellent synopsis.
F’in morons~~~
HE.SHE don’t know.........
"They" will...but it will be industry that will do it. Dow Chemical plans to install its first small modular nuclear reactor at the Lake Jackson, TX location. I believe that the type of reactor will be a gas-cooled carbon moderated (aka "pebble bed") type.
And how is that workin' out?
Texas has two nuclear power plants each with two reactors. Comanche peak 60 miles sw of dfw. The south texas nuclear project down on the coast near Houston.
Also someone mentioned the new reactors in Georgia.the first two units at voglte started building in the 70s and came online in the 80s. There were only two reactors initially although the site was licensed for four reactors. A decision was made to place two of the reactors at plant hatch, also in Georgia. The fact the vogtle had already received approval for four reactors made it easier to get the two new reactors installed.
It’s an historic heatwave. This too shall pass. Too many illegals on the grid anyway.
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