Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

https://blog.gridstatus.io/a-record-setting-day-in-ercot/

by kmax12 • 2 years ago

209 142 2 years ago

blog.gridstatus.io

hmcdona12• 2 years ago

If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem to be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually end (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of usage) right around net load peak...which this is now reporting is when energy prices go through the roof.

So basically the "rush hour" program has likely been costing me more money than if I just ignored them to begin with up to this point. I do realize these programs are primarily about limiting peak gross load and not saving individuals money but maybe I won't go out of my way to abide by them now...

sunshinesnacks2• 2 years ago

Maybe this is obvious, but make sure to check your rate structure with your energy company. Just because market prices are high later in the day doesn’t mean that’s when your prices are highest.

hmcdona12• 2 years ago

While this is true for much of Texas. I happen to live in a city that still has a public operator. So we just get more generalized flatter rates. I haven't looked into the details of my plan closely in a while as a result though, so you might be right.

En masse though, it seems not ideal from a cost perspective the way things have been scheduled up until now. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it might be adjusted better in the future.

fnordfnordfnord• 2 years ago

Austin Energy? There aren't many providers that I am aware of in Texas that have variable rates.

jhayward2• 2 years ago

Austin Energy does Tiered Usage billing, not time-of-use, for residential customers.

bradknowles3• 2 years ago

See powertochoose.org for examples.

gre3• 2 years ago

My rush hour went off yesterday afternoon and the temp rise made me doze off and i woke up sweating with it set to 80 degrees. I'm in the process of canceling, it's not easy. I used the chat and someone is going to send me an email (which says it's canceled?) within 24-48 hours.

Harder to turn off than anything else in recent memory. If anyone has a pro tip on an easy way to cancel let me know.

486sx33• 2 years ago

Just connect the wires manually To turn on the fan and AC, you'd connect R and Y (or R, G, and Y on systems where the thermostat controls the fan).

bdcravens3• 2 years ago

When I had them hooked into my EV, I literally had to change my Kia password when they ignored my requests to disable the feature.

Presumably they similarly have some sort of cloud permission into your thermostat, which can be disabled by changing the password, resetting the device, or worst case scenario, get a new thermostat.

bdcravens3• 2 years ago

After giving my electricity provider access to my EV for optimal charging pretty much killed the 12v battery (they were pinging it hundreds of times an hour, meaning it never went to sleep), I'm never going to give them access to anything.

nsriv• 2 years ago

I had no idea this was a thing that could happen, I thought (naively, I suppose) that all they'd get would be the equivalent of a meter reading with a suggestion to limit load at certain hours.

rch• 2 years ago

Next day load shapes are predictable, so devices should optimize their charging accordingly.

miguelazo2• 2 years ago

Which utility was this? That reeks of gross incompetence.

danans3• 2 years ago

If I'm reading this right, my thermostat's "rush hours" seem to be scheduled for gross load peak. They then seem to usually end (and kick my AC back to a desired temp causing a ton of usage) right around net load peak

Either you are not reading it right, or there is a problem with your thermostat's demand response schedule, because the only way demand response makes money (hence rewards for users) is by reducing demand during net load peaks, because that completes with the high marginal cost of fossil spinning reserves.

ZeroGravitas2• 2 years ago

Demand response also targets gross load because (assuming the renewables are not entirely rooftop solar) that electricity still needs to be carried by wires to consumers.

Sizing transmission for the absolute yearly peak is not cost effective, so various schemes are used to reduce that peak, including efficiency improvements and demand response.

This is entirely separate from questions of renewable cost and carbon and pollution and makes economic sense even on 100% fossil grids.

infecto8• 2 years ago

In my experience these programs are terrible in Texas, which is surprising given how advanced the data and services around the grid are there.

I briefly tried out the thermostat program and it was honestly trash. It was near impossible to unsubscribe too.

nothercastle2• 2 years ago

It seems like it would be more grid efficient to use more power at 3-5pm to cool your house to temperature early while solar is still high in availability then to rush and cool from 5-6 when you get home. The current rate structure for anyone not paying spot rate does not incentivize that of course.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

What is triggering the battery discharge? I assume these are referring to decentralized battery storage in people’s homes.

mechagodzilla• 2 years ago

Texas has quite a bit of utility-scale commercial batteries now.

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

It is the largest market for utility scale storage in the US at the moment, rivaling California.

powerbroker• 2 years ago

Unfortunately it these batteries are unable to multiple gigawatts over many hours of excess wind energy. It will be at least a decade before the battery energy storage systems are close to big enough to absorb the oversupply of wind energy that happens a few times a week.

Don't get me wrong. The BESS helps with frequency, synchronization and voltage issues. They just do very little to flatten the wind spikes without turning off 10-20% of the wind fleet.

sounds• 2 years ago

Summarizing from the article, this link [1] shows that there were more sources of generation that ERCOT didn't ask to come online. Specifically, all the capacity that could come online with 5 minutes was online except for a tiny 130 MW of generation.

[1] https://blog.gridstatus.io/content/images/2024/08/ERCOT-Reca...

Instead of calling for something that needed more than 5 minutes, ERCOT relied on all the batteries on the grid. I don't know what this quote means:

2,000 MW of extra capacity released from ECRS.

But I do know what this means:

battery discharge peaked 20% higher than the previous record, which was set only the day before.

It's referencing this graph: [2]

[2] https://blog.gridstatus.io/content/images/2024/08/ERCOT-Reca...

The graph has units of Megawatts. In other words, the thing that was record setting about the batteries was not the Megawatt-hours, or total storage in battery systems.

What set the record was the instantaneous power usage, and apparently the batteries in Texas were at their hottest ever. (No idea if anything caught on fire though!)

Here are some more assumptions I am reading into this:

* The 130 MW that didn't come online may have been rotated around. Maybe all the generation jumped in at different times, guided by supply and demand, but ERCOT regulations likely played a role in keeping the existing systems from exceeding the demand or blowing up transmission lines, etc.

* The article says "Solar and Demand Were High Throughout the Day" but I assume that simply means that over time, more and more solar will be installed and more businesses and cities are becoming aware of https://www.ercot.com/services/programs/load (Demand Response). It means they can get cheaper electricity at night for instance, so they run their power-hungry machines when the prices are low.

* Never underestimate the power of Nature. Probably the daytime temps in Texas right now drove the high solar production and high demand. High temps usually mean clear, sunny days and everyone huddling near an air con.

scrlk• 2 years ago

I don't know what this quote means:
> 2,000 MW of extra capacity released from ECRS.

ECRS = ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service.

Contingency reserve services are used to maintain system reliability during unforeseen events. Think of power plants that can quickly ramp up generation, or other assets that can quickly reduce their demand.

In this case, ERCOT tapped 2,000 MW of capacity from ECRS.

dylan6045• 2 years ago

Probably the daytime temps in Texas right now drove the high solar production and high demand.

Probably?

High temps usually mean clear, sunny days and everyone huddling near an air con.

Or all of those mandatory RTO forcing large open spaced cubicle farms to run AC in a building made of glass. Not sure of the image you have in your head being the reverse of homeless huddled around a barrel fire.

maxmcd2• 2 years ago

afaik there are no residential loads in emergency response programs in Texas

ECRS is a program run by ERCOT, they trigger the battery discharge directly, or in some situations the resources might respond to an under-frequency relay.

MBCook3• 2 years ago

So the day peaked at 85 GW of load, and they got down to only 130 MW of spare capacity. Just 0.15% from running out.

And they never asked for conservation?

Is it normal to go that close to the edge without trying to cut load?

dylan6045• 2 years ago

I was just chatting with a friend on how we haven't received the conservation emails like we have in previous years. This year has not been as extreme either as the DFW metroplex has not had the extended 100°+ days. We've just had a run of 3 or 4, but we've had 30+ consecutive days in the past.

justanorherhack• 2 years ago

Last year was brutal, this year is great.

dayjah• 2 years ago

Austin here, we’re enrolled in a conservation plan through Austin Energy whereby they control our smart thermostats (Nest in our case). These “Rush Hour” notices have been firing a lot over the past two weeks; perhaps only two days where we haven’t been asked to conserve somewhere between 3-6 hours a day.

patmorgan232• 2 years ago

Last year was an extraordinarily long and hot summer.

username135• 2 years ago

Thats how they edge in Tx

maxmcd2• 2 years ago

The 2 GW of ECRS capacity does include Demand Response resources that are reducing their load to provide the capacity.

I imagine the other ERCOT demand response programs were also dispatched.

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

This is a state that should basically be peppered with residential rooftop solar.

Of course, there's zero chance of any sort of state governmental policy to help incentivize it in deep red state land.

But if recent history has shown anything, I would consider it a primary feature of any home in Texas to be relatively grid independent with its own generating capacity and storage.

strivingtobe3• 2 years ago

Texas has a lot of incentives for residential solar. I'm not sure where you live, but in my DFW suburb, my neighborhood _is_ peppered in rooftop solar.

https://www.gosolartexas.org/available-incentives

A lot of the incentives are from local power companies like Oncor, but one notable state-wide incentive is that solar installations are exempt from property tax by state law.

I dunno why people act like Texas is staunchly anti-renewable. TX state politicians have said some goofy stuff about "windmills freezing over", but overall Texans are extremely pro-wind and pro-solar. It's a huge economic driver for a large part of the state, and it's seen as an overall part of Texas's strong energy industry, complimentary to oil rather than as a competitor to it. George Bush and Rick Perry were both Republican governors but both were _very_ pro-renewable and oversaw massive booms in wind energy especially. In 2005 Texas (including Perry at the time) passed a law to invest billions of state dollars into building transmission lines specifically to make it feasible for renewable energy generation in west Texas to bring power to the populated areas in the east, which is attributed to the massive wind boom. Abbot, on the other hand, has sadly not been very pro-renewable, but much of the state still is.

internet101010• 2 years ago

I don't know anything about durability of solar panels but it should be known that in Texas there is always expectation of annual hail damage to roofs.

infecto8• 2 years ago

Please don't bring red or blue into the argument. Texas is indeed peppered with residential solar, it can make real economic sense for the homeowner. Of course you probably won't see the inflated solar programs that California created back in the day but they also have largely pulled back on those as they don't help the grid and can become quite costly to buy back at inflated rates. In my experience the best you will get in Texas is close to ercot market rates, so not much. On the other hand that can make on-site storage more economically attractive.

asciimov• 2 years ago

Here in San Antonio (CPS is our sole provider) we get emails asking us to reduce our use during peak hours on high demand days like today.

Not sure how well it works, but they send out another email letting us know how we did compared to similarly sized houses in my area.

If demand goes over the edge, they will start doing rolling black outs.

unethical_ban• 2 years ago

"A message from CPS Energy"

I haven't paid much attention to them. Perhaps they should put a threat level code in the subject line.

Green = Go about your day

Yellow = Don't use your big appliances or hot water as much

Orange = Yellow, plus turn the thermostat to 80 and keep the doors closed

Red = Bitcoin mines offline. All buildings shut down ancillary consumption. A/C in common spaces set to 85. Prepare to roll blackouts.

strivingtobe3• 2 years ago

No. The 130 MW remaining capacity was the amount available "in SCED within 5 minutes", which in super simplified terms means "the amount of energy available quickly and economically".

The grid actually had ~4 GW spare capacity (according to the graph) if it was needed, but it wasn't part of SCED.

MBCook3• 2 years ago

But if you can't get more in under 5m, then if the demand goes up that much in under 5m you hit the point of load shedding to protect the grid right?

The graph showed it increasing fast just before. Is it so unthinkable it could jump again?

Or is that they could get more (non-SCED) in time, it would just cost a ton so it's avoided if at all possible?

esaym• 2 years ago

Not sure where they are getting all the numbers, but 85GW is no where near the "max": https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/supplyanddemand

miguelazo2• 2 years ago

If they ask their customers to conserve, they can’t rant about California “running out of electricity because EVs” anymore.

danans3• 2 years ago

And they never asked for conservation?

Uncompensated demand curtailment is such a scam. Just pay people to curtail demand.

baldeagle• 2 years ago

What I want to know is how much we spent kicking crypto miners off the grid for a couple hours.

pstrateman• 2 years ago

Paying people to stop consuming is just an accounting replacement for interruptible power.

The net effect is more power generation available, not less.

Quindecillion• 2 years ago

They provide a legitimate demand response service i.e. when the grid is generating excess energy that there's no other demand for, Bitcoin miners buy what no one else wants/needs.

Buyers of first and last resort.

Salgat5• 2 years ago

Texas has a lot of gas plants (51%) that we want to idle when possible. Just because it's cheaper power doesn't mean we should be generating it when the only customer is cryptocoins.

xwolfi• 2 years ago

Thank God Texas generates power from unlimited resources. In my place, the more we generate and consume, the less we have left for the future. In Texas, the plants have to generate as much as possible for some reason !

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 2 years ago

Do miners run in Texas?

Nursie• 2 years ago

Yes, and there's a fair amount of controversy over it, particularly the noise levels - https://time.com/6982015/bitcoin-mining-texas-health/

And the fact that in some time periods it seems the miners made more money from downscaling energy demand during peak loads than they did from mining activities.

Plus residents in some areas are up in arms that these companies got a variety of tax exemptions and sweetheart deals, jobs never materialised (because how many people do you need?), and what they seem to get in return is more expensive power bills.

shagie• 2 years ago

They were. https://earthjustice.org/feature/cryptocurrency-mining-texas

Though the data centers are pivoting to AI. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/18/bye-bye-bitcoin-hello-ai-tex...

Though it's still significant. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/10/texas-bitcoin-mine-n...

The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-e... ( Published April 9, 2023; Updated Jan. 3, 2024 ). It's a well done presentation.

And they are shocked that this is driving up electrical prices. https://x.com/LtGovTX/status/1800968003636408657 (June 12th, 2024)

ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas and others gave shocking testimony today in the Senate Committee on Business & Commerce that within only six years (that’s only three legislative sessions), our power grid needs will grow from about 85,000 to 150,000 megawatts. That is much higher than the 110,000 megawatts they previously projected. The 110,000 megawatts was already a big increase, which is why the Senate pushed our incentive plan to build more dispatchable power last session. 150,000 megawatts is almost double the megawatts we now have on the grid.
Later testimony said the growth is due to the increases in population, normal business growth, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, crypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth. We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid. Crypto mining may actually make more money selling electricity back to the grid than from their crypto mining operations.
Texans will ultimately pay the price. I’m more interested in building the grid to service customers in their homes, apartments, and normal businesses and keeping costs as low as possible for them instead of for very niche industries that have massive power demands and produce few jobs. We want data centers, but it can’t be the Wild Wild West of data centers and crypto miners crashing our grid and turning the lights off.
The Senators asked why this had not been disclosed before today. #txlege

---

The theory is/was that Texas grid works "best" (the market runs most efficiently) when its running at the most capacity (everyone with something that can generate power is making money - this is better than conserving and asking polluting or less efficent sources to spin down when the demand isn't there ... in theory) with the ability to have things that can't pay for the increased price (in theory, that was supposed to be crypto) scale back their use when other demand goes up.

mjevans• 2 years ago

They should 'ask'.

After background thought for an hour, they should ask. Their load projections and needs should be fed out to the network somehow, and it should be opt in for the customer to help support the projected load shaping IF they desire and can. It should never be forced upon the customers.

The incentives and potential for abuse of the billing provider to provide data that negatively shapes the customer's use into more expensive use is an issue that should be avoided.

WillPostForFood2• 2 years ago

Isn't that pretty much how it works? Projections and needs are shared, when it starts to get tight, requests for conservation go out which are opt-in.

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

thesis• 2 years ago

Texas has these free electricity nights. Anyone know of a battery system that can fill the batteries at night (from the grid) and use them during the day? And then recharge at night again. Due to location solar isn’t an option but still interested in batteries due to free nights.

bboygravity7• 2 years ago

Tesla power wall?

No batteries I know of will make economical sense though. Batteries are expensive, wear down and/or require maintenance. After x years / cycles your batteries will be dead and will need to be replaced.

Storing your "free" energy in a battery will end up costing more than just buying the energy when you need it.

Expensive energy storage is a big part of the reason why "green" energy countries like Germany have some of the highest energy prices in the world. And also some of the highest CO2 emissions per kWh in the EU (they need coal and gas powered plants as backups for when there's no wind and solar, because batteries don't make economical sense).

ziga• 2 years ago

I agree about home batteries being too expensive, hopefully prices will come down with scale.

But the part about battery degradation is not true. Tesla Powerwall has a 10 year warranty[1] with 70% capacity retention. This means that Tesla has data showing that the battery will have higher capacity than 70% after those years. That's a lot of cycles and a lot of renewable energy that the battery will provide in its lifetime.

[1] https://energylibrary.tesla.com/docs/Public/EnergyStorage/Po...

geysersam• 2 years ago

"green" energy countries like Germany

Not sure why you consider them to be "green" given the facts you brought up. Germany has never been particularly green energy wise. It's a big population and lots of heavy industry with relatively little energy resources like hydro.

The are building solar and wind quickly now. Maybe that's why you got the impression that they are "green".

guerby4• 2 years ago

LFP cells prices for direct sale to consumer are about 70 EUR/kWh right now. With 5000 cycles that's 1.4 EUR cent per kWh cycled out of the battery, so it fully makes economical sense in all electricity markets.

Fully integrated consumer battery prices haven't (yet) followed the decline in cell price, probably because there's lot of demand for this kind of product.

te_chris• 2 years ago

There’s loads. Search for home battery storage. You don’t need Tesla.

standeven• 2 years ago

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is available in more and more EVs and will allow for this.

ZeroGravitas2• 2 years ago

This is a bit like the joke about economists seeing money on the ground and not picking it up because if it was there someone would have already taken it, but:

Note how ridiculously fast the battery rollout in Texas and California has been recently.

If you've not got some local regulation that stops early adoptors from being left high and dry when the market changes, then you're in head to head competition for that cheap nighttime energy with big corporations building out grid scale batteries.

baking• 2 years ago

You would have to be able to store a significant portion of your daily usage to make it worthwhile and that's before you even consider the price of the batteries.

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

Pretty interesting to see how this stuff is holding up. The market is evolving rapidly currently with absolutely massive amounts of wind, solar, and battery being deployed everywhere.

What's odd in Texas is that they are resisting the notion of connecting to the rest of the US grid. This would allow them to import power cheaply when they need to and export power when they have too much of it. My guess is that they actually curtail a lot of energy at this point because there's simply too much of it most of the time.

A quick glance at the main page of gridstatus.io shows that right now California and Texas are burning a lot of gas while there is negative pricing due to wind delivering over capacity in the states in between. They are literally paying people to consume more power there while they are paying for huge amounts of gas to be burnt in California and Texas. It's night time there of course so, solar is out.

What's preventing states from doing the obvious thing here? The mid west could be exporting power at a profit right now and instead it has negative power. And California could not be burning many tons of gas right now because there's a surplus of power right next to it.

actionfromafar3• 2 years ago

Connecting Texas to the rest of the grid would make the Texas grid subject to federal grid regulations. Texans don't like that.

guerby4• 2 years ago

They could do it with HVDC to "isolate" the two grids.

bradknowles3• 2 years ago

Correction, the fat cats who own ERCOT don’t like that.

Your regular run of the mill Texan may not care one way or the other, most times. But if they get into a crunch where their electric bills are much higher, I assure you that they will care.

infecto8• 2 years ago

I don't believe grid connections are the obvious and easy answer. That would assume those other grids do not have base loads plants themself. There is a massive cost to starting and stopping gas plants that you are also not accounting for. So while yes, there are periods of negative prices, the cost to run that plant 24/7 may be cheaper than turning it on and off and not just cheaper in $ but cheaper in less resources being used.

Negative pricing and "burning a lot of gas" are maybe not as bad as you think. As more wind/solar get added to the generation mix, there will be more peak times where prices may become negative. The lens I have is this means there is incentive for more storage to come on the grid to soak up those events and then offload at peak demand times.

shawabawa3• 2 years ago

There is a massive cost to starting and stopping gas plants that you are also not accounting for

It's my understanding that basically the entire point of gas power plants is that they are very cheap to stop and start (as opposed to e.g. coal or nuclear), at least, that's the case in the UK - are these plants different in the US?

boringg3• 2 years ago

Connecting your grid to other markets for the premise of cheaper energy also puts you in a situation where you no longer control your own destiny. My expectation is that the presumed gains of some cheaper power don't balance the risk on reliability and control.

I don't necessarily buy the argument but I am fairly certain that a big chunk of it.

felbane• 2 years ago

As someone who very nearly lost a family member due to the state's complete inability to implement and enforce preparedness regulations, and due to ERCOT's herculean effort to do just barely not enough to keep the grid online... respectfully, fuck that argument.

We live in a time where functional electric service is a necessity for life. We also live in a time where extreme weather patterns are getting more frequent and more intense.

The very least Texas could do is implement the equipment and procedures necessary to enable importing power from the national grid in an emergency. The cost to implement interconnects at key locations is infinitesimal compared to the costs incurred when there are systemic outages.

The "we can do it better ourselves" argument only works when you don't repeatedly catastrophically fail at "doing it better."

Rastonbury• 2 years ago

Forgive my ignorance but doesn't connecting to other grid allow them to buy energy when prices are low and still allow them to generate their own when the national grid prices are high? It would also allow them to sell excess no?

wiredfool• 2 years ago

I recall from reading the blog, there are definitely issues in Texas with grid capacity between the west where the bulk of the solar is and the east where there is load, and people and other grids. So grid interconnects to other grids wouldn’t necessarily be enough, you have to get the power to the interconnect as well.

bilekas• 2 years ago

I have to say, I don't understand very well these graphs, but this sounds like a good thing, but is there any information relative to other energy sources in TX ?

Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

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