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ERCOT Urging For Energy Conservation


Vic Mackey

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On 8/24/2023 at 6:43 PM, YGIFS said:

If it's renewables fault, and I know we have abundant natural gas, remind who put a gun to ERCOT's head and made them make renewables such a large part of their blend?  I know it's not that simple, and we're dumb, but we're not that dumb.

As a populace, yes, we (the Royal "we") are, that dumb. 

20 years ago, the domestic oil & gas industry was in its twilight (assisted living) and Deep Water Gulf of Mexico exploration and Canadian Tar Sands development was it. The US started building LNG import facilities to balance the energy needs of the US, and everybody made a concerted move towards renewables.

Texas ramped up installation of new gas fire power generation, and with higher gas prices and a favorable regulatory climate, renewables ramped up. (Raw data from Wikipedia.)

image.png.82ac3203f0e5bb9f91bc2b7485aaa8b4.png 

The Shale Revolution turned it all upside down.  Ten years later, LNG imports stopped within a year of starting. Long haul gas transmission lines from the Gulf Coast to the northeast were bifurcated, sending Appalachia shale gas north towards the East Coast, and south, to the new LNG export facilities on the coast.  The Eagle Ford Shale development accelerated the growth of new gas fired power generation and LNG Export facilities.

The Shale impact on Permian development is off the charts, coupling world class reserves with world class export infrastructure, under the umbrella of a favorable regulatory climate.  Texas is swimming in gas, industry is building new pipelines to Mexico, and the US has surpassed Qatar as the largest exporter of LNG in the world. 

The Roller Coaster of gas prices is indicative of making long term decisions based on the facts at a specific point in time, knowing there is little correlation to the facts that exist when the effects of those prior decisions actually happen.

  image.png.0f736c438de0b2dd4880dc859f24f8e0.png

If you thank arm chair quarterbacking is fun with football, try doing it with commodity prices. Every few years, a once in a lifetime event occurs; Enron, Katrina & Rita, $150 oil, economic meltdown, unconventional shale boom, $30 oil collapse, economic boom, Permian shale boom, climate change, Covid, Ukraine, etc. 

Renewable energy looks a lot different in a $2.50 natural gas price environment, particularly when rolling blackouts routinely enter the conversation. 

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Blackouts might be the only possible way they are forced to put citizens over corporations.

This theory has been tested and is not accurate.

I try to do my part, because regardless if the root issue I’d order people not lose power, but between the fact that the AC is going to run for most of the peak demand period even when it’s set at 76-78, and my wife’s apparent mission to continue as much energy and pay as high of an electric bill as possible, I don’t know that there’s much impact at the household level.
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I also like the "We did not fully anticipate the higher temperatures and are readjusting our reserves."

9-figure facility, nobody just thought to put one of those digital thermometers from Brookstone outside the ERCOT HQ.  Then you could look out at it and say, "Hey, look like it's already over 100 degrees at just 10:00am, maybe we should take that into account."  But no, Jerry from HR fucking broke the digital weather station so now we're all fucked.  Thanks a lot Jerry!  

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12 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

I also like the "We did not fully anticipate the higher temperatures and are readjusting our reserves."

9-figure facility, nobody just thought to put one of those digital thermometers from Brookstone outside the ERCOT HQ.  Then you could look out at it and say, "Hey, look like it's already over 100 degrees at just 10:00am, maybe we should take that into account."  But no, Jerry from HR fucking broke the digital weather station so now we're all fucked.  Thanks a lot Jerry!  

Only so much ERCOT can do with day-to-day operations when we run as thin as we do on available capacity vs demand. We just need more capacity (and some efficiency improvements). Probably would help to not have our plan be to pay people to bring energy intensive business to Texas without, I don't know, actually building additional capacity in advance. 

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Agree about business intelligence and planning, and I would add get them to control their AC. Lowes does not need to be in the 70's. Movie theaters same. I freeze my ass off when I go to them. How many office buildings, on a Sunday, have lights on and AC at full tilt? 

I understand Supermarkets, but there is more they could do. Not have meat in open cool boxes, etc. If Apu at the QuickieMart can keep his sandwich meat behind a glass door so can HEB (when it's open.) 

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1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

Only so much ERCOT can do with day-to-day operations when we run as thin as we do on available capacity vs demand. We just need more capacity (and some efficiency improvements). Probably would help to not have our plan be to pay people to bring energy intensive business to Texas without, I don't know, actually building additional capacity in advance. 

I don't think you fully appreciate the 'Texas Miracle.'  Sure we lack adequate roads, infrastructure, electrical capacity, sustainable water models, decently performing schools, and health care.  We don't have a state income tax and own our own power grid, so all the companies be heading here and whatnot.  Don't you fucking get it?  If you'll excuse me, Sept. 1st is when I have to start figuring out how to come up with the scratch to pay for my property taxes.  

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Looks like a multi-billion dollar, beyond absolutely corrupt, state agency of political ineptitude updated their weather.com app and got some rough news that it may be hot in Texas this evening!  Well done, fellas!  You're almost doing your job.  Almost.  

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35 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

state agency of political ineptitude

See, this is where you are wrong.

Seems that most people think that our electric market design was created by the legislature to "provide reliable electric power to the people of Texas."

Not only was it not designed to do so, they trashed a market with that design purpose in order to substitute an alternate design, with an alternate purpose: "use the captive, entirely intrastate electric market to - free of federal government oversight or interference - maximize the transfer of dollars from the pockets of the populace into the pockets of the rich donor class."  It's not as catchy as the slogan for the purpose we WISH was the case, but it's accurate.

TLDR; the Texas market wasn't designed to provide electric power, it was designed to maximize private profits from selling that power.  It is functioning EXACTLY as designed.

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I was in Nola for their hottest day ever this weekend.  Nary a word about conserving energy to make sure the grid didn't go down.  This is New Orleans.  Half their infrastructure is held together with pipe cleaners, old hand grenade cups, and used needles.  The AC was great.  

Meanwhile, here in Austin, where the high is ONLY 99 today, I'm worried about using my dryer at 4:30pm because I might cause a blackout.  

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2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

I was in Nola for their hottest day ever this weekend.  Nary a word about conserving energy to make sure the grid didn't go down.  This is New Orleans.  Half their infrastructure is held together with pipe cleaners, old hand grenade cups, and used needles.  The AC was great.  

Meanwhile, here in Austin, where the high is ONLY 99 today, I'm worried about using my dryer at 4:30pm because I might cause a blackout.  

Nola is on the commie communal Eastern grid. We don't do commie in Texas. Better to not have electricity than to have a shared sustainable grid.

Texas O&G dudes: 

giphy.gif

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14 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Read this thread if you would like to read geniuses tie their brains into shibari knots to make unplanned thermal outages a wind problem

https://x.com/douglewinenergy/status/1696528443507359994?s=46&t=WQWp8jCL9d3WDAPBWICDFQ

 

This is my favorite:

 

You know, there's a super-easy way to get more thermal (nat gas) generation built in ERCOT.  Literally every other ISO in the country does something like it: create a capacity component in the market.

When you build a system that 1) is to provide a literal public utility, but 2) is built for and motivated solely by profit....then the current outcome is inevitable.  "See, the problem is, the reason we can't have more generation is that prices [read: the thing that provides profit to private parties] are too low, because we have too much other generation."  The solution?  SCARCITY!  We all studied supply-demand, and we know that more people will enter the market to try to make money if prices go high enough, and the biggest driver of higher prices is tighter supply.  Duh!

So, see, if we want to have more generation, we need to first create a SCARCITY of that generation, which will drive up prices, which will incentivize more generation, which will lower scarcity and thus lower prices.

FFS.  When you created a profit-motivated "energy only" market, you GUARANTEED the rational economic behavior of generators attempting to provide JUST enough generation to meet peak demands (making huge dollars when the margins get tight....which they do, the closer you cut it)....leaving no margin for error/safety.  That's the economically RATIONAL choice for generators.  The market is functioning EXACTLY as designed.  For wind, solar, gas, all of it.

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  Is ERCOT actively trying to fuck us?.  Yes.  
 
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Is ERCOT attempting to "eighty-six" batteries?

A controversial proposal that would harm batteries will be considered by the ERCOT Board on Thursday

 

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Is ERCOT attempting to "eighty-six" batteries?

A controversial proposal that would harm batteries will be considered by the ERCOT Board on Thursday

AUG 30
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Photo credit: ERCOT

It was a white knuckle night in the ERCOT control room. On Thursday, August 17th, reserves on the ERCOT grid dropped below 3,000 megawatts — less than 4% of the total system demand at that point — and got close to the 2,300 megawatts that would require ERCOT to declare emergency conditions.

The same night, industrial-size batteries put 1,800 megawatts of power — more than double the previous record — onto the grid when reserves reached their lowest point. Without batteries, ERCOT probably would’ve declared an emergency that night. We were very close to the edge.

The same thing happened four times over the next week or so: storage put between 1,100 and 1,325 megawatts of power onto the grid between 7:15 - 8:30 p.m., right as reserves reached their nadir on August 20, 23, 24, 25, and 29 — all days when ERCOT issued conservation calls.

These hot summer nights show the vital role that storage should play on the grid, filling the gaps in those moments when demand threatens to overtake supply. The amount of storage on the grid has mushroomed in recent years — and much, much more is on the way.

So is ERCOT opposing its expansion in a key ancillary service market?

Why We Use Ancillary Services

Ancillary services are basically backup electricity reserves. They’re the resources that keep the system in balance and functioning when transmission lines fail, power plants trip off, or renewable output drops. 

ERCOT (and all other power grid operators) spends a lot of money on ancillary services for exactly the reason storage exists: to provide bursts of backup power when we need it. The newest of these, the ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service (or ECRS), is quite lucrative; gas plants have collected more than 85% of the $150 million spent on this new reserve in its first month-and-a-half of existence, according to data that will be presented to the ERCOT Board Thursday (see the purple bars in the graph below). 

Now ERCOT wants to change the rules. A proposal recently rushed through the stakeholder process with urgent status, known as Nodal Protocol Revision Request (NPRR) 1186, would drive storage out of ECRS. That will force Texans to pay more money for a less reliable system. 

The ERCOT Board will either vote on the proposal Thursday or remand it back to the stakeholder process for further consideration. Either way, ERCOT has made very clear it intends to banish storage resources from this market, even though batteries are well suited to provide the intended backup service.

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Many Services, Zero Plans

ERCOT now has four ancillary services (Regulation (or Reg-Up and Reg-Down), Responsive Reserve (or RRS), Non-Spin (or NSRS), and the new ECRS). The grid manager is required by the legislature to create a fifth one — the Dispatchable Reliability Reserve Service, or DRRS — by December 2024. (For more on ECRS and ancillary services, see this ESIG webinar and presentation.)

After Winter Storm Uri blacked out much of the state and claimed hundreds of lives in February 2021, the legislature passed Senate Bill 3. It required, among many other things, that the PUC conduct a comprehensive review of ancillary services. 

  https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama  

That bill was signed into law in June 2021. The PUC has yet to meet this obligation Yet ERCOT has implemented a new ancillary service since the bill passed and is in the process of designing another one.

It’s one thing to fly blind. It’s quite another to insist on it after your boss orders you to get your eyes fixed.

The PUC needs to clearly define and communicate the functions and purpose of each of the state’s various ancillary services. Doing so would help ensure the highest level of competition within each ancillary service market. 

It would also protect consumers and fortify the grid. That’s why the PUC, not ERCOT, should be setting out roles and responsibilities for ancillary service products.

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A Clear Role for Storage

Ancillary services fall into two main buckets: fast responding/short duration resources, and slow responding/longer duration reserves. The former maintain system frequency and respond to emergencies, such as when a large power plant or transmission line drops offline. The latter can feed power into the grid when supply gets tight and replenish the shorter duration reserves when they are depleted. 

In time, storage resources should take over that first bucket; it already mostly has for RRS. Batteries have quicker response times than other resources. Batteries in ancillary service markets are good for consumers, since prices for storage have plummeted, but prices for gas plants have not. 

But ERCOT is erecting roadblocks. NPRR 1186 proposes that storage resources maintain a 2-hour state of charge basically at all times. Imagine power sources having to hold onto so much electricity in the midst of rolling outages across the state. That's not what’s supposed to happen. It’s very much like with your phone battery — you let it run down when you need it, and you replenish it when you can. 

Commissioner Glotfelty put it well at the PUC meeting last Thursday telling ERCOT CEO Pabo Vegas that ERCOT is “trying to make a battery like a coal plant.” He went on:

I think we, historically in this system, driven by regulators and utilities, force everything that's new to act like an old piece of equipment. And I do not believe that we are going to get the benefit of batteries by doing that… why should they have an hour left over at the end of the end of the charge in accordance with your rules? It's increasing the prices and we are creating problems for consumers here. I encourage you all to take this, not pass it at the next Board meeting. Go back to the drawing board and think about it. It has to be done either in your process or in ours.

Glotfelty also acknowledged that the PUC has yet to perform the review of ancillary services required in SB 3.

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NPRR 1186 should not pass in its current form. More than that, ERCOT should not restrict batteries from competing to provide reliability services at a lower cost. Nor should major decisions about the DRRS be made until the PUC has clearly defined the functions of each ancillary service. 

Let’s get some clarity; then we can create new rules and programs.

NPRR 1186 should be eighty-sixed, not the batteries Texas needs.

 

Edited by Post Oak
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18 minutes ago, Post Oak said:
  Is ERCOT actively trying to fuck us?.  Yes.  
 
View in browser

Is ERCOT attempting to "eighty-six" batteries?

A controversial proposal that would harm batteries will be considered by the ERCOT Board on Thursday

 

  Hide contents
     
 
View in browser

Is ERCOT attempting to "eighty-six" batteries?

A controversial proposal that would harm batteries will be considered by the ERCOT Board on Thursday

AUG 30
https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F28a5122b-419c-46ad-a79f-3a1e667eb982_267x400.jpeg
 
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READ IN APPhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack.com%2Ficon%2FLuci
 
  https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama  
Photo credit: ERCOT

It was a white knuckle night in the ERCOT control room. On Thursday, August 17th, reserves on the ERCOT grid dropped below 3,000 megawatts — less than 4% of the total system demand at that point — and got close to the 2,300 megawatts that would require ERCOT to declare emergency conditions.

The same night, industrial-size batteries put 1,800 megawatts of power — more than double the previous record — onto the grid when reserves reached their lowest point. Without batteries, ERCOT probably would’ve declared an emergency that night. We were very close to the edge.

The same thing happened four times over the next week or so: storage put between 1,100 and 1,325 megawatts of power onto the grid between 7:15 - 8:30 p.m., right as reserves reached their nadir on August 20, 23, 24, 25, and 29 — all days when ERCOT issued conservation calls.

These hot summer nights show the vital role that storage should play on the grid, filling the gaps in those moments when demand threatens to overtake supply. The amount of storage on the grid has mushroomed in recent years — and much, much more is on the way.

So is ERCOT opposing its expansion in a key ancillary service market?

Why We Use Ancillary Services

Ancillary services are basically backup electricity reserves. They’re the resources that keep the system in balance and functioning when transmission lines fail, power plants trip off, or renewable output drops. 

ERCOT (and all other power grid operators) spends a lot of money on ancillary services for exactly the reason storage exists: to provide bursts of backup power when we need it. The newest of these, the ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service (or ECRS), is quite lucrative; gas plants have collected more than 85% of the $150 million spent on this new reserve in its first month-and-a-half of existence, according to data that will be presented to the ERCOT Board Thursday (see the purple bars in the graph below). 

Now ERCOT wants to change the rules. A proposal recently rushed through the stakeholder process with urgent status, known as Nodal Protocol Revision Request (NPRR) 1186, would drive storage out of ECRS. That will force Texans to pay more money for a less reliable system. 

The ERCOT Board will either vote on the proposal Thursday or remand it back to the stakeholder process for further consideration. Either way, ERCOT has made very clear it intends to banish storage resources from this market, even though batteries are well suited to provide the intended backup service.

  https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama  

Many Services, Zero Plans

ERCOT now has four ancillary services (Regulation (or Reg-Up and Reg-Down), Responsive Reserve (or RRS), Non-Spin (or NSRS), and the new ECRS). The grid manager is required by the legislature to create a fifth one — the Dispatchable Reliability Reserve Service, or DRRS — by December 2024. (For more on ECRS and ancillary services, see this ESIG webinar and presentation.)

After Winter Storm Uri blacked out much of the state and claimed hundreds of lives in February 2021, the legislature passed Senate Bill 3. It required, among many other things, that the PUC conduct a comprehensive review of ancillary services. 

  https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama  

That bill was signed into law in June 2021. The PUC has yet to meet this obligation Yet ERCOT has implemented a new ancillary service since the bill passed and is in the process of designing another one.

It’s one thing to fly blind. It’s quite another to insist on it after your boss orders you to get your eyes fixed.

The PUC needs to clearly define and communicate the functions and purpose of each of the state’s various ancillary services. Doing so would help ensure the highest level of competition within each ancillary service market. 

It would also protect consumers and fortify the grid. That’s why the PUC, not ERCOT, should be setting out roles and responsibilities for ancillary service products.

Share

A Clear Role for Storage

Ancillary services fall into two main buckets: fast responding/short duration resources, and slow responding/longer duration reserves. The former maintain system frequency and respond to emergencies, such as when a large power plant or transmission line drops offline. The latter can feed power into the grid when supply gets tight and replenish the shorter duration reserves when they are depleted. 

In time, storage resources should take over that first bucket; it already mostly has for RRS. Batteries have quicker response times than other resources. Batteries in ancillary service markets are good for consumers, since prices for storage have plummeted, but prices for gas plants have not. 

But ERCOT is erecting roadblocks. NPRR 1186 proposes that storage resources maintain a 2-hour state of charge basically at all times. Imagine power sources having to hold onto so much electricity in the midst of rolling outages across the state. That's not what’s supposed to happen. It’s very much like with your phone battery — you let it run down when you need it, and you replenish it when you can. 

Commissioner Glotfelty put it well at the PUC meeting last Thursday telling ERCOT CEO Pabo Vegas that ERCOT is “trying to make a battery like a coal plant.” He went on:

I think we, historically in this system, driven by regulators and utilities, force everything that's new to act like an old piece of equipment. And I do not believe that we are going to get the benefit of batteries by doing that… why should they have an hour left over at the end of the end of the charge in accordance with your rules? It's increasing the prices and we are creating problems for consumers here. I encourage you all to take this, not pass it at the next Board meeting. Go back to the drawing board and think about it. It has to be done either in your process or in ours.

Glotfelty also acknowledged that the PUC has yet to perform the review of ancillary services required in SB 3.

Share The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter

The Better Way

NPRR 1186 should not pass in its current form. More than that, ERCOT should not restrict batteries from competing to provide reliability services at a lower cost. Nor should major decisions about the DRRS be made until the PUC has clearly defined the functions of each ancillary service. 

Let’s get some clarity; then we can create new rules and programs.

NPRR 1186 should be eighty-sixed, not the batteries Texas needs.

 

There's an underlying issue there that IS correct: as an "emergency" type resource, batteries are different than, say, a gas-fired plant, because they are finite.  That is, if we hit tight conditions and ERCOT calls on Battery Plant, that plant can only provide as much energy as it has saved/charged on its batteries; if the call for power goes on long enough, Battery Plant will run out of power and will no longer be able to put power on the grid.  Whereas Natural Gas Plant can generate, and keep generating for the entire duration of the call for power.

BUT....there are plenty of better/alternative ways to address the concern than this nodal protocol revision would do (it also has a "re-charge" obligation that might obligate the battery plants to take power off the grid to charge their batteries at the most expensive intervals, which makes zero economic sense; if you wanted to write a plan to DISCOURAGE energy storage in Texas, this component would be exactly how you'd do that).

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1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

There's an underlying issue there that IS correct: as an "emergency" type resource, batteries are different than, say, a gas-fired plant, because they are finite.  That is, if we hit tight conditions and ERCOT calls on Battery Plant, that plant can only provide as much energy as it has saved/charged on its batteries; if the call for power goes on long enough, Battery Plant will run out of power and will no longer be able to put power on the grid.  Whereas Natural Gas Plant can generate, and keep generating for the entire duration of the call for power.

BUT....there are plenty of better/alternative ways to address the concern than this nodal protocol revision would do (it also has a "re-charge" obligation that might obligate the battery plants to take power off the grid to charge their batteries at the most expensive intervals, which makes zero economic sense; if you wanted to write a plan to DISCOURAGE energy storage in Texas, this component would be exactly how you'd do that).

As is inflected in that piece, it seems like the ERCOT powers-that-be are just lazily copy-pasting their rules and parameters for thermal power to power storage. It's against the operating principle of a battery to require them to ALWAYS have two hours of charge available. If the batteries are being drawn down on, they're going to necessarily have less than 2hrs of power until they can recharge once out of the surge period.

It's unclear if it's malice, incompetence, or just plain 'ol stupidity, but it's hurting Texans and making us less ready for extreme weather conditions.

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4 minutes ago, Captainant said:

As is inflected in that piece, it seems like the ERCOT powers-that-be are just lazily copy-pasting their rules and parameters for thermal power to power storage. It's against the operating principle of a battery to require them to ALWAYS have two hours of charge available. If the batteries are being drawn down on, they're going to necessarily have less than 2hrs of power until they can recharge once out of the surge period.

It's unclear if it's malice, incompetence, or just plain 'ol stupidity, but it's hurting Texans and making us less ready for extreme weather conditions.

It is particularly nonsensical since the industry standard for battery storage based on current technology is 4-hours of storage at max output. 2-hours is literally cutting available storage in half.  

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Already discussed on this thread...

Texas leadership is committed to making sure their O&G buddies make as much money as possible. More money they make, the more money they can buy off, I mean contribute to the Representatives' re-election campaigns. 

 

https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2023-08-30/gas-and-coal-outages-behind-ercots-constant-calls-for-conservation/

Solar power has been helping ERCOT avoid rolling blackouts, but thermal energy (gas, coal, and nuclear) has been lacking and was behind the call for conservation Tuesday night. On Aug. 29, thermal outages were beyond what ERCOT defines as “extreme,” at 4+ GW above the 30-day average, energy researchers pointed out – about 120% more generation offline than ERCOT defines as typical. So far, ERCOT has not explained why thermal generation dropped so significantly on Tuesday.

To make up for these outages and reduce demand, advocates have been pushing energy efficiency programs. Though the Public Utility Commission (PUC) received recommendations for improving efficiency from the Energy Efficiency Implementation Project earlier this year, they have yet to implement them. Advocates also wonder why there is no demand response program – or why we aren’t getting paid for the voluntary conservation we’re doing. ERCOT already pays bitcoin miners and other major manufacturers that use a lot of energy for their conservation, but the only way for Austin residents to get compensation is to enroll in Austin Energy’s bill credit program for installing a smart thermostat.

In an even more puzzling move, ERCOT may vote Thursday to drive battery storage out of their ancillary services reserves – the batteries that provide backup power when the grid fails. In his Energy and Power newsletter, energy consultant Doug Lewin says, “ERCOT has made very clear it intends to banish storage resources from this market,” driving up costs for consumers.

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