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ERCOT Urging For Energy Conservation


Vic Mackey

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1 minute ago, TexArcher said:

Sure, some people drop the temp in their home at night.  But even if it's an average of 5 degrees per household, when it's 10 to 20 degrees colder outside, all of those systems are working considerably harder all night.

I'm pretty sure that a bunch of people taking 10-minute showers and microwaving a breakfast burrito for 2 minutes isn't taxing the grid nearly as much as several hundred thousand heaters working that much harder for several hours straight.  It's a combined effect, sure, but the morning routine stuff seems like just the cherry on top.

As much, no, but water heaters account for roughly 18% of home electricity use, so it's not an insignificant amount. Like adding another 35% of homes turning on heating systems that weren't previously on in TX (assuming a/c/heat roughly 50%)

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16 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Episode 4 Hello GIF by The Simpsons
 

TXANS Update—Jan. 14, 2024: ERCOT has issued a Conservation Appeal for Monday, Jan. 15, from 6 – 10 a.m. CT. Operating reserves are expected to be low tomorrow morning due to continued freezing temperatures, record-breaking demand, and unseasonably low wind. We request Texas businesses and residents conserve electricity use, if safe to do so. At this time, if you are experiencing an outage, it is local in nature and not related to grid reliability. Please contact your local electric provider for more info: http://bit.ly/48JZfC2. Read news release: http://bit.ly/48zuaBa

 

13 hours ago, YGIFS said:

No CR, their words...not mine.  Conservation Appeal.  Think about the root words and how fucking insane this is.  People at home, on a federal holiday between 6 and 10am.  In the most energy abundant state in human history.  

Just let it simmer.  But don't let it simmer because your stove has no power.  You fucking child.  

Just had to pray to the wind and sun Gods.

You're right, it is insane.

 

Edited by Hal Finney
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4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

You realize who you are taking to, right?  Hint: he’s new and posting heavily in the bitcoin and inflation threads.  Just needs a post in the Ukraine thread to hit the trifecta.  

I can take a pretty good guess.

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1 hour ago, Hal Finney said:

Having our grid so dependent on intermittent sources of generation is wayyy worse.

 Agree to disagree.

Cough cough... ahem... may I refer you to the cause of the 2021 power outages...

 

"Officials for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages most of Texas’ grid, said the primary cause of the outages Tuesday appeared to be the state’s natural gas providers. Many are not designed to withstand such low temperatures on equipment or during production.

By some estimates, nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures, while freezing components at natural gas-fired power plants have forced some operators to shut down.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. While he said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis — at least one nuclear power plant has partially shut down, most notably — the natural gas industry is producing significantly less power than normal."

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16 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

You realize who you are taking to, right?  Hint: he’s new and posting heavily in the bitcoin and inflation threads.  Just needs a post in the Ukraine thread to hit the trifecta.  

He uses one-off, throw-aways for the Ukraine thread, but you're right about him using the Hal account for 6th Street. I think he forgot to switch over to the Boss Hogg one that he normally posts under for DT and CR.

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4 hours ago, crash_davis said:

8AM tomorrow still showing to be an issue.

https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/supplyanddemand

image.thumb.png.14d3e7715bf905871e692ea2668317b0.png

Yeah, the guy on Space City Weather basically just said “we may see rolling blackouts for a few hours” tomorrow morning.  He isn’t an ERCOT rep, but since they are sponsored by Reliant he tends to talk pretty softly about that kind of thing.  

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1 minute ago, Liquor and Poker said:

Yeah, the guy on Space City Weather basically just said “we may see rolling blackouts for a few hours” tomorrow morning.  He isn’t an ERCOT rep, but since they are sponsored by Reliant he tends to talk pretty softly about that kind of thing.  

Last time they tried rolling blackout for the Texas grid, it didn't go so well. As long as the shit is happening while I slumber, I don't care.

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I have a gas line fireplace. Been running it non-stop for 10+ days now. Am I going to pay for it in the shorts? First winter having this set up and not sure what to expect as the family plans to run the fireplace 24/7.

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7 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

I have a gas line fireplace. Been running it non-stop for 10+ days now. Am I going to pay for it in the shorts? First winter having this set up and not sure what to expect as the family plans to run the fireplace 24/7.

The numbers I've seen are $0.50 to $1 per hour.  So, not terrible but perhaps a nice little kick in the nuts when you open your next bill.

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“May see rolling blackouts. . . “ doesn’t mean we will have them.  Some of you guys are chicken littles.  The last estimate shows a small surplus in capacity at 8:00 am tomorrow, otherwise it’s fine.   And this is from the ERCOT site regarding the estimates:

*Note: The 6-Day Forecast graph should only be used as a relative indication of future system conditions. Due to uncertainties associated with the longer-term nature of the forecasts used, both the Available Seasonal Capacity and Demand Forecast may adjust significantly as the Operating Day approaches.

*Note: Capacity available from demand response programs is not reflected in the Current Day and the 6-Day Forecast graphs unless these programs have been deployed.

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16 minutes ago, HouTex said:

“May see rolling blackouts. . . “ doesn’t mean we will have them.  Some of you guys are chicken littles.  The last estimate shows a small surplus in capacity at 8:00 am tomorrow, otherwise it’s fine.   And this is from the ERCOT site regarding the estimates:

*Note: The 6-Day Forecast graph should only be used as a relative indication of future system conditions. Due to uncertainties associated with the longer-term nature of the forecasts used, both the Available Seasonal Capacity and Demand Forecast may adjust significantly as the Operating Day approaches.

*Note: Capacity available from demand response programs is not reflected in the Current Day and the 6-Day Forecast graphs unless these programs have been deployed.

Everyone’s complaints are justified given the recent annual emergency clusterfucks. Forgive us for expecting lessons to be learned and a margin of safety to be built into the fucking grid that needs to increase capacity rapidly to cope with the electrification of vehicles. 

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50 minutes ago, HouTex said:

“May see rolling blackouts. . . “ doesn’t mean we will have them.  Some of you guys are chicken littles.  The last estimate shows a small surplus in capacity at 8:00 am tomorrow, otherwise it’s fine.   And this is from the ERCOT site regarding the estimates:

*Note: The 6-Day Forecast graph should only be used as a relative indication of future system conditions. Due to uncertainties associated with the longer-term nature of the forecasts used, both the Available Seasonal Capacity and Demand Forecast may adjust significantly as the Operating Day approaches.

*Note: Capacity available from demand response programs is not reflected in the Current Day and the 6-Day Forecast graphs unless these programs have been deployed.

My issue is that graph has changed back and forth over the course of the day from just barely surplus to significant shortage.  So they just don’t know.  

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19 minutes ago, Liquor and Poker said:

My issue is that graph has changed back and forth over the course of the day from just barely surplus to significant shortage.  So they just don’t know.  

Yesterday, ERCOT had a warning about this morning. The below graph shows the dotted line which was the "day ahead forecast" vs the running forecast vs the actual. So around 9AM, they expected yesterday that we would use 83.5K MW vs actual of 74.4K MW. Maybe because of the warning, whatever, we used much less than what they thought. 

 

image.thumb.png.a030b9f8eb5dd0a66f64ba6afa8b8d8b.png

Tomorrows forecast (below) has fluctuated all day. Forecast again is for 84.3K MW. Will we hit 84K MW when we didn't today? Who the fuck knows? Offices are open tomorrow. Will that equate to 10K increase in Demand? 

image.png.e0b3406309422ddcab1544de0e85855a.png

 

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Another difference besides it being a full work day tomorrow if you look at a town like say Rockport.  It was 60 for a high there yesterday, high today was 34 and it is 29 now.  Tomorrow morning will be the coldest morning top to bottom in the state.  

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9 hours ago, gmr548 said:

Beyond HVAC and water heating, anything like a coffee maker, toaster, space heater, etc uses a ton of energy. At a fundamental level, generating heat is very energy intensive, though modern heat pumps are getting really good (we as a state refuse to incentivize these).

Because heat pumps in Texas would be extremely stupid and not effective at all.

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3 minutes ago, hornian said:

Jennifer Lawrence Reaction GIF

You don't have to believe me.  The last place I lived in Seattle we had a brand new heat pump installed because govt incentives.  It worked great for Seattle weather, but when that heat dome hit. (Temps 99 and above for 8 days). That thing was pretty much useless.  The heat pumps are great for maintaining temperature but bringing temperature down was almost impossible.  Hit that 31 days of heat y'all had last year and you'll bitch about the heat pump just the same way people in Eastern Washington do.

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2 hours ago, Liquor and Poker said:

My issue is that graph has changed back and forth over the course of the day from just barely surplus to significant shortage.  So they just don’t know.  

How they can be expected to know?  It's not like they have this large control room with a constant stream of data from all over the state with real time information.  

csb/ I took a tour with a PUC team one time to ERCOT HQ.  And the technology in that room was really impressive.  It was mostly lost on me since I had no clue, even with some professional O&G background, what I was looking at.  But I stopped listening to the guys I was with and started eavesdropping to the employees and techs.  And it became clear even to my dumbass over the course of 5-10 minutes that almost none of the people there had any idea what the fuck they were looking at.  I think the information was solid but it was like showing Rorschach ink blots to a Mongoose.  

We now go live to Director Murdoch at ERCOT headquarters in anticipation of another night of freezing as he monitors the data displays:

 

Edited by YGIFS
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The problem was not the heat pump. The problem is how they sized it. They didn’t expect a load of that size. Read your contract with your HVAC company. They generally guarantee a 20 degree delta from the normal exterior temp. That’s it. In Texas they oversize ACs because they don’t want a callback cause your wife can’t see icicles on the countertop in July. The entire world uses heat pumps. The Pacific Northwest is not some special climate where the technology fails. 

13 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

You don't have to believe me.  The last place I lived in Seattle we had a brand new heat pump installed because govt incentives.  It worked great for Seattle weather, but when that heat dome hit. (Temps 99 and above for 8 days). That thing was pretty much useless.  The heat pumps are great for maintaining temperature but bringing temperature down was almost impossible.  Hit that 31 days of heat y'all had last year and you'll bitch about the heat pump just the same way people in Eastern Washington do.

 

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3 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

How they can be expected to know?  It's like they have this large control room with a constant stream of data from all over the state with real time information.  

csb/ I took a tour with a PUC team one time to ERCOT HQ.  And the technology in that room was really impressive.  It was mostly lost on me since I had no clue, even with some professional O&G background, what I was looking at.  But I stopped listening to the guys I was with and started eavesdropping to the employees and techs.  And it became clear even to my dumbass over the course of 5-10 minutes that almost none of the people there had any idea what the fuck they were looking at.  I think the information was solid but it was like showing Rorschach ink blots to a Mongoose.  

We now go live to Director Shatner at ERCOT headquarters in anticipation of another night of freezing as he monitors the data displays:

 

You were probably looking at the trading floor.  They have everyone producing and every sector using.  This morning a plant or two in Houston dropped out because of a blown transformer.  One of those big boys.  The wind is also lower than expected and 6-10 AM cloud coverage puts solar on the sideline for minute

 

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3 minutes ago, drt said:

The problem was not the heat pump. The problem is how they sized it. They didn’t expect a load of that size. Read your contract with your HVAC company. They generally guarantee a 20 degree delta from the normal exterior temp. That’s it. In Texas they oversize ACs because they don’t want a callback cause your wife can’t see icicles on the countertop in July. The entire world uses heat pumps. The Pacific Northwest is not some special climate where the technology fails. 

 

They size it for the 20 degree delta because thats where it is most efficient.  You over size it then you're wasting efficiency and it's gonna use just as much energy as your typical HVAC.

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1 hour ago, FartingMonk said:

You don't have to believe me.  The last place I lived in Seattle we had a brand new heat pump installed because govt incentives.  It worked great for Seattle weather, but when that heat dome hit. (Temps 99 and above for 8 days). That thing was pretty much useless.  The heat pumps are great for maintaining temperature but bringing temperature down was almost impossible.  Hit that 31 days of heat y'all had last year and you'll bitch about the heat pump just the same way people in Eastern Washington do.

I had a new heat pump installed in my last house back in 2019. It worked great in the Texas summer. 

 

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