Jump to content

ERCOT Urging For Energy Conservation


Vic Mackey

Recommended Posts

What did you expect? In Texas, society is merely a series of economic transactions. We’re not a collective working together to advance the human condition; we’re a network of contracts. If it’s not in the interest of whatever company we’ve outsourced to provide basic necessities to actually provide those necessities, well… everyone can just get fucked. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business. 

Bingo. And realize the next part of that: human beings in Texas are not seen as capex, but as an operating expense/consumable. There will be no investment in humans in Texas. Just use them to extract whatever value they can provide, and leave the empty husk in the ditch when you’re done and moved on to consuming the next one.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Or put the money towards moving vans and scouting for a job in states that don't shit the bed like Texas is hell-bent on doing.

What stopped me was the ~$10k for the generator, and then the additional ~$10k for installation.   I know I'm going to regret this though......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, elfenix said:

Apparently solar panels are so cheap you can install them in really suboptimal (for generation) but convenient (for farming) vertical racks


https://electrek.co/2023/12/23/us-first-vertical-agrivoltaics-system/

I'm having trouble understanding how this would at all be beneficial.  I don't care how cheap it is, with a vertical angle, the efficiency takes a massive nosedive.  We are talking like a couple hours a day of power generation, if that.  There's just no way this makes sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

I'm having trouble understanding how this would at all be beneficial.  I don't care how cheap it is, with a vertical angle, the efficiency takes a massive nosedive.  We are talking like a couple hours a day of power generation, if that.  There's just no way this makes sense.

apparently it's not that bad a hit and the electricity production better lines up with peak morning and afternoon hours compared to south facing horizontalish panels

1-s2.0-S2666955222000211-ga1_lrg.thumb.jpg.312e0d9d45854a7b6a31a6825dbf7d6f.jpg

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666955222000211

Edited by elfenix
  • Hook 'Em 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A little of both actually.  Depending on your definition, geographically, of the Panhandle...but about 2/3rds of the Panhandle is on the Western National Grid.  Ironic given all the windfarms and people bitching about green socialist energy.  And then almost all of El Paso and a couple chunks of counties just east of it.  Plus a pretty big swatch of East Texas including some formerly very O&G-rich areas.  But by population, not surface area, about 80%+ live in ERCOT territory.  

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

A little of both actually.  Depending on your definition, geographically, of the Panhandle...but about 2/3rds of the Panhandle is on the Western National Grid.  Ironic given all the windfarms and people bitching about green socialist energy.  And then almost all of El Paso and a couple chunks of counties just east of it.  Plus a pretty big swatch of East Texas including some formerly very O&G-rich areas.  But by population, not surface area, about 80%+ live in ERCOT territory.  

 

So 80%+ love freedom while the other portion loves communism.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's a viable map of the zones.  And no, I'm not joking when I say that last year they meant to update it and have it be the first hit on google when you simply type in "Map of ERCOT service", but the power went out during the upload so this is about as up-to-date as it gets (~18 months old):

https://www.lonestartransmission.com/what-we-do/ercot-load-zones.html

Obviously all the non-ERCOT load zones are socialist run counties that want to take away our SUV's and pickup trucks.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Thanks.  It looks like the Lubbock area was added, which is where most of the population out there is located, along with Amarillo.  Not much more than dirt and mesquite in those remaining gray areas, although I'm curious why the pocket just West of Lubbock wasn't included (Lamb, Hockley, etc.  Regardless, the additions covered the vast majority of the people out there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Thanks.  It looks like the Lubbock area was added, which is where most of the population out there is located, along with Amarillo.  Not much more than dirt and mesquite in those remaining gray areas, although I'm curious why the pocket just West of Lubbock wasn't included (Lamb, Hockley, etc.  Regardless, the additions covered the vast majority of the people out there.

I was curious about that too. Since you're also asking yourself, I just checked the US EIA website to see the map of electricity generation in eastern New Mexico. I figured that was likely the reason, and it might be right. The area around Hobbs has a bunch of power plants of various sorts, and that part of West Texas from Seminole/Denver City/Brownfield/Levelland looks better tied in with transmission lines from New Mexico. It might be somehow related to the fact that Hockley, Yoakum, and Gaines are legacy O&G-producing counties (like SE New Mexico) and that's just how it was set up, while Lubbock generally isn't considered part of the oil patch.

Here's a (link) screenshot:

image.thumb.png.cef2a0398e0df05cb11b0db2bd0879c0.png

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, bolverk said:

I was curious about that too. Since you're also asking yourself, I just checked the US EIA website to see the map of electricity generation in eastern New Mexico. I figured that was likely the reason, and it might be right. The area around Hobbs has a bunch of power plants of various sorts, and that part of West Texas from Seminole/Denver City/Brownfield/Levelland looks better tied in with transmission lines from New Mexico. It might be somehow related to the fact that Hockley, Yoakum, and Gaines are legacy O&G-producing counties (like SE New Mexico) and that's just how it was set up, while Lubbock generally isn't considered part of the oil patch.

Here's a (link) screenshot:

image.thumb.png.cef2a0398e0df05cb11b0db2bd0879c0.png

 

Thanks.  That makes perfect sense.  That was once my neck of the woods, but I've been gone for a long time.  Lots of family still up there.  Dad was born in Hobbs, to his great shame, while my grandparents were visiting family.  He's still unhappy to have been born outside of Texas, even though he was back on proper soil by his third day.

I remember going to Seminole for golf tournaments in high school and being jealous of that oil money.  We were lucky to get a ride to the tourney in a beater van that broke down all the time, and played in jeans and with our own sets of shitty cobbled together clubs.  Seminole kids were decked out head to toe in school purchased clothes and gear, including very nice sets of clubs (even their fucking tees and balls were branded), and of course they had their own damn golf course (to go along with their own indoor pool).  At least we routinely beat the shit of them in football and basketball, but putting our poverty on full display at those golf tournaments was uncomfortable, to say the least. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Thanks.  That makes perfect sense.  That was once my neck of the woods, but I've been gone for a long time.  Lots of family still up there.  Dad was born in Hobbs, to his great shame, while my grandparents were visiting family.  He's still unhappy to have been born outside of Texas, even though he was back on proper soil by his third day.

I remember going to Seminole for golf tournaments in high school and being jealous of that oil money.  We were lucky to get a ride to the tourney in a beater van that broke down all the time, and played in jeans and with our own sets of shitty cobbled together clubs.  Seminole kids were decked out head to toe in school purchased clothes and gear, including very nice sets of clubs (even their fucking tees and balls were branded), and of course they had their own damn golf course (to go along with their own indoor pool).  At least we routinely beat the shit of them in football and basketball, but putting our poverty on full display at those golf tournaments was uncomfortable, to say the least. 

I can relate, having graduated from Big Spring (I also lived in Seagraves through kindergarten, but my dad's mom lived in Denver City). Yeah, there's plenty of oil around Big Spring, but it's all in the fucking Forsan and Ackerly (Sands) ISD boundaries. So, we were also a poverty school too while Forsan High had wall-to-wall carpeting in its hallways (open enrollment has now made it the white flight destination of the county). Andrews, which was one of our rivals, was like Seminole with their fancy indoor pool connected to their basketball gymnasium and their Mustang Bowl football. Meanwhile, we had to use the YMCA for swimming, the city course for golf, and a rickety, erector-set football stadium.

I remember well that golf course between Seminole and Seagraves since my dad would play that course when I was little. That little park next to the golf course was where we celebrated my 5th birthday in 1976 before taking a big family vacation to the East Coast for the bicentennial.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, bolverk said:

I can relate, having graduated from Big Spring (I also lived in Seagraves through kindergarten, but my dad's mom lived in Denver City). Yeah, there's plenty of oil around Big Spring, but it's all in the fucking Forsan and Ackerly (Sands) ISD boundaries. So, we were also a poverty school too while Forsan High had wall-to-wall carpeting in its hallways (open enrollment has now made it the white flight destination of the county). Andrews, which was one of our rivals, was like Seminole with their fancy indoor pool connected to their basketball gymnasium and their Mustang Bowl football. Meanwhile, we had to use the YMCA for swimming, the city course for golf, and a rickety, erector-set football stadium.

I remember well that golf course between Seminole and Seagraves since my dad would play that course when I was little. That little park next to the golf course was where we celebrated my 5th birthday in 1976 before taking a big family vacation to the East Coast for the bicentennial.

heard about those golden pennies on TPR/Texas Standard

https://www.tpr.org/golden-pennies

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, elfenix said:

heard about those golden pennies on TPR/Texas Standard

https://www.tpr.org/golden-pennies

Interesting. I hadn't heard that term; thanks for the link. When I was in public school, it was before they implemented Robin Hood so the disparities were even wider and wilder.

Okay. Enough of the thread derail.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, slorch said:

White flight to Forsan.

 

Didn't have that on my crazy ass ideas bingo card.

Yeah, Forsan is only 200-250 people, but the district cuts into a part of the south side of BS and includes a bunch of ranchettes in the hills just outside of town. So, there's always been a lot of kids you'd assume would go to BS but don't. And, like I said, Forsan always had the oil money.

So when the lege made it easier for kids to transfer out-of-district a couple of decades (plus the south side of BS is the wealthier, more Anglo side of town), the exodus began. The ISD now serves about 750-800 kids, the vast majority of whom either live in BS proper and are the cream of the academic crop or the suburban ranchettes that are part of its district. The campus is only 10-15 minutes from most of BS anyway.

So, yeah, that all adds up to the classic "white flight" scenario, even in West Texas, but on a miniaturized scale by big city standards. It sounds hilarious, but it happens. Basically, it's like Canyon ISD in relation to Amarillo ISD to put it into perspective.

image.thumb.png.dac2c6bc15e3d2c2f81b19fb3c8bf069.png

Edit: NOW, back to Surly's regularly scheduled bitching about ERCOT.

 

 

Edited by bolverk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Insomnia strikes, and I started looking up numbers on @bolverk and the Forsan/ Big Spring thing.  Both Forsan and Big Spring have almost identical white populations in the towns, with 39.4% and 39.5% respectively. Then the holy shit/ LMAO moment, when looking at actual school district demos, Forsan is 66% white, which is very unusually high for West Texas. Big Spring is 42% white.  That's crazy.

 

Edited by slorch
Link to comment
Share on other sites

State is turning commie!!!!!!

In all seriousness, this is a good thing for Texas. More diversity and hopefully better reliability.

 

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/investigations/defenders/connect-texas-power-grid-nationally-plan-ercot/269-2918ca91-8e6a-43d3-9fa1-ee2af138e487

AUSTIN, Texas — Southern Spirit Transmission, LLC (SST) has federal and Texas approval to build a transmission line connecting the Texas power grid to the southeastern U.S. power grid.

The power line would flow more electricity than the other four grid interconnections combined. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the power grid for the majority of the state.  

Two direct current (DC) ties flow a combined 400 megawatts of power between ERCOT and Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) in Mexico. Two other DC ties flow a combined 820 megawatts between ERCOT and Southwest Power Pool (SPP) in the middle portion of the U.S. power grid.

In May 2014, Southern Spirit (formally Southern Cross) received federal clearance and preserved ERCOT’s independence from federal regulation. In 2017, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) issued a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity (CCN) and directed ERCOT to perform more than a dozen tasks to accommodate the DC tie.

In Sept. 2022, PUC approved ERCOT’s work. The company must still get easements from various landowners.

Typically, the cost to build transmission lines inside the ERCOT grid are directly passed to ratepayers as a line item on their power bill. However, the $2.6 billion Southern Spirit project is paid for privately by Pattern Energy.

In addition to transmission lines, Pattern Energy develops, builds and operates wind and solar projects in Texas and around the country.  The company’s Texas portfolio includes a solar farm in Fannin County and wind farms in Kenedy County, Carson County and Comanche County. 

In April 2023, Rainbow Energy Marketing Corporation (REMC) filed a request to ERCOT to revise the Planning Guide to treat DC ties as it does power plants for reliability planning. REMC is tied to oil and gas production as well as the wholesale buying and selling of natural gas and electricity.

In an ERCOT subcommittee meeting, commenters asked if the REMC request would impact the resolved directives concerning Southern Spirit. ERCOT filed a request to PUC asking for input. A Nov. 2023 filing by PUC staff raised concerns, such as the project could cost Texas ratepayers.

“Significant transmission upgrades may be required to support the full import deliverability capabilities of the proposed DC ties, and all other DC ties that are in existence today in the ERCOT system. Additionally, imports over DC ties may have the potential to divert generation from existing dispatchable generation within the ERCOT region, resulting in reduced incremental reliability benefits,” the filing shows.

Southern Spirit Transmission filed a response showing disagreement.

“... the SST project has been upgraded and reconfigured to meet new technical standards developed in response to other SST Directives and these project enhancements are expected to mitigate some of the issues identified in the study referenced by Staff,” the response shows.

In a PUC open meeting on Nov. 30, 2023, Commissioner Jimmy Glotfelty said if the Southern Spirit line was in place when ERCOT issued an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) this year, then hypothetically there may not have been a need for the alert.

“Would we have had prices go through the roof? Probably not, because we would have had more generation in the north. It gives you options. It gives you flexibility, which is what we need,” Glotfelty said.

“Whatever the cost of such transmission upgrades might be, it will likely pale in comparison to the cost of another Uri-like event,” the company's response filing shows.  

A Feb. 2021 deadly winter storm was named Winter Storm Uri by the Weather Channel. However, the National Weather Service does not recognize names for winter storms.  The storm caused widespread power outages for days while temperatures remained in single digits.  Hundreds of people died. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

“Would we have had prices go through the roof? Probably not, because we would have had more generation in the north. It gives you options. It gives you flexibility, which is what we need,” Glotfelty said.

I'm surprised that a measure to reduce prices to consumers actually made it through - how are they going to justify adding arbitrary fees to my bill each month if there's stability in the power supply??

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I'm surprised that a measure to reduce prices to consumers actually made it through - how are they going to justify adding arbitrary fees to my bill each month if there's stability in the power supply??

The market still incentives assholes to crash the system so that they can still get their $5000/MWh.

I keed, sort of.

Edited by crash_davis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/3/2024 at 6:33 PM, bolverk said:

I was curious about that too. Since you're also asking yourself, I just checked the US EIA website to see the map of electricity generation in eastern New Mexico. I figured that was likely the reason, and it might be right. The area around Hobbs has a bunch of power plants of various sorts, and that part of West Texas from Seminole/Denver City/Brownfield/Levelland looks better tied in with transmission lines from New Mexico. It might be somehow related to the fact that Hockley, Yoakum, and Gaines are legacy O&G-producing counties (like SE New Mexico) and that's just how it was set up, while Lubbock generally isn't considered part of the oil patch.

Here's a (link) screenshot:

image.thumb.png.cef2a0398e0df05cb11b0db2bd0879c0.png

 

A lot of these Permian Basin, West Texas/New Mexico towns, "grew up" around the remote oil & gas discoveries.

Notrees, Texas was a barren plain until Shell Oil built a Gas Processing Plant and a labor "camp", including planting trees, for the employees who worked there.  Companies drilled for oil, and any associated gas production was flared at the individual wells. With increasing oil production, the volumes of flared gas reached a point where the flared gas was captured and sent to centralized processing facilities that removed the impurities (water, CO2, H2S (hydrogen sulfide), etc. and the higher valued Natural Gas Liquids, from the gas stream, ending up with a salable product, natural gas, that didn't smell or smoke.  Out of necessity, these gas plants included power generation facilities.  

As production increased, more clean processed gas became available, and commercial power plants were constructed, to satisfy the growing demand.

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, PTINS said:

A lot of these Permian Basin, West Texas/New Mexico towns, "grew up" around the remote oil & gas discoveries.

Notrees, Texas was a barren plain until Shell Oil built a Gas Processing Plant and a labor "camp", including planting trees, for the employees who worked there.  Companies drilled for oil, and any associated gas production was flared at the individual wells. With increasing oil production, the volumes of flared gas reached a point where the flared gas was captured and sent to centralized processing facilities that removed the impurities (water, CO2, H2S (hydrogen sulfide), etc. and the higher valued Natural Gas Liquids, from the gas stream, ending up with a salable product, natural gas, that didn't smell or smoke.  Out of necessity, these gas plants included power generation facilities.  

As production increased, more clean processed gas became available, and commercial power plants were constructed, to satisfy the growing demand.

All true and understood. You drive out there now, and they seem to have given up any attempt to capture that excess gas. As far as the eye can see, it's just flares everywhere now.

  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/3/2024 at 6:11 PM, Samson's Wig said:

Thanks.  It looks like the Lubbock area was added, which is where most of the population out there is located, along with Amarillo.  Not much more than dirt and mesquite in those remaining gray areas, although I'm curious why the pocket just West of Lubbock wasn't included (Lamb, Hockley, etc.  Regardless, the additions covered the vast majority of the people out there.

That map shows all of Montgomery County as being part of ERCOT which is false (thank goodness).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...