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Texas is pushing the limits on its power grid as heat settles in [1]

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Date: 2022-08-04

Texas is looking at 100+ degree heat today and for the next few days; humidity will make it seem even hotter.

Bloomberg reports the Texas Power Grid is facing a real test. Naureen S. Malik and Brian K. Sullivan says the grid is about to face a new demand record:

Intensifying Texas heat is poised to test the power grid on Thursday with demand seen topping 80 gigawatts for the first time ever. Ample winds twirling turbines are expected to bolster electricity supplies, reducing the threat or outages as homeowners and businesses crank up air conditioners across the second-largest US state, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. [ERCOT]

The wind turbines are good news because the subheading on the article features these tidbits:

Dallas day-ahead power jumps 145% to $400 a megawatt-hour

Gas, coal generators running harder are at risk of breakdowns

Climate change (and Texas energy policies) are pushing the state’s power systems hard:

During the peak-demand hour on Thursday, wind and other renewables will provide 22% of power supplies, Ercot figures showed. Day-ahead electricity prices in the Dallas area soared 145% to as much as $400 a megawatt-hour for Thursday afternoon. Despite assurances of sufficient power supplies, some industry participants are worried that aging generation plants that burn natural gas or coal are growing more vulnerable to breakdowns because they’ve been running so hard in response to Ercot’s push to maintain around-the-clock reserves.

The grid in Texas is particularly vulnerable to failures by any of the systems that make it up because it is deliberately isolated from the rest of the country. This is a feature, not a bug for the utilities involved because as this interview of Mose Buchele by Neel Dhanesha at Vox notes:

..Keeping the Texas grid disconnected from the rest of the country means it won’t fall under federal regulations, as grids that cross state lines do. But it also means Texas can’t borrow power from other states when its power infrastructure fails, as it did in February 2021 when Winter Storm Uri hit, knocking out power across the state for days. Hundreds of people died as a result.

emphasis added

The feature part is this:

In other parts of the country, a power plant, also known as a generator, gets paid to be around in case they’re needed. But in Texas, in an attempt to create this kind of perfect competitive market, they said, “No, you’re only going to make money by selling electricity at the time that it is needed, at its time of use.” So our generators only make money selling power on the market. When you take that approach and you couple it with the law of supply and demand, what you’re doing is you’re creating a system that is run on scarcity. The less electricity that is available, the more expensive it will be. So in our market, we created a system where power plant operators make their margins by relying on moments of extreme scarcity that will drive up the price of electricity. And this will be their big payday. These moments may only come a handful of times a year but this is where you make your money. Proponents of this market said that it incentivizes efficiency. Like, you cut out all the fat, and you don’t have any electricity generators that are getting paid to just sit around. They would claim that that creates an efficient market. The reality, though, is that when you need extra power on hand, you have less of it available.

emphasis added

The justification about ‘increasing efficiency’ is a smoke screen for the real motivation: maximizing profits. It’s the energy equivalent of just in time manufacturing which works great — as long as everything works. A shortfall anywhere can cascade disruption through the entire system.

As the pandemic has shown us with supply chain issues, climate change is demonstrating the need for supposedly unnecessary capacity to increase resilience against disruption. The Texas antipathy towards regulation that might impose greater safety margins is increasingly a gamble. The stakes are human lives risking death for lack of power for cooling.

So, the end result is an unregulated system in Texas where there’s no incentive to have power in reserve, and every incentive to create situations where prices for power can skyrocket. This is how people can find themselves being bankrupted by power bills while also suffering from blackouts. All this with triple-digit temperatures forecast for the next few days...

Other utilities around the country will also be facing power demand issues as heat and drought take their toll; this is what climate change looks like after all. The Texas approach is not viable for anything except utility profits. A different approach is in order. Fortunately, there is one.

The Department of Energy announced a program back in January, 2022: the Building a Better Grid Initiative.

The Department of Energy's (DOE's) “Building a Better Grid” Initiative, launched January 12, will catalyze the nationwide development of new and upgraded high-capacity electric transmission lines, as enabled by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The initiative brings together community and industry stakeholders to identify national transmission needs and support the buildout of long-distance, high-voltage transmission facilities that are critical to reaching President Biden’s goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035 and a zero-emissions economy by 2050.

emphasis added

Bojan Lepic at RIGZONE has more details:

..“Americans do not have to choose between a clean grid and a reliable one as we move forward towards our goals of a net-zero economy by 2050,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Thanks to funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, DOE is proving that transitioning to solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources can keep the lights on without service interruptions while creating good paying jobs.” The U.S. electricity grid was originally built to deliver power from just a few large fossil fuel power plants to homes and businesses, but today’s grid has a mix of traditional and renewable energy sources.

One of the goals of the initiative is to prove out how renewables can be integrated into a grid in a way that provides stability and resilience.

..The Solar and Wind Grid Services and Reliability Demonstration Program will fund up to 10 projects that demonstrate how large-scale solar, wind, and energy storage can support the power grid by automatically adjusting to changing demand and disruptions. Projects, which require testing at a plant of at least 10 megawatts in size from a mix of solar, wind, or other generation or storage technology, will also demonstrate how a clean energy grid prevents blackouts by quickly identifying and responding to faults. ...Through DOE’s new Building a Better Grid Initiative, the DOE is deploying more than $20 billion in federal financing tools, including through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s new $2.5 billion Transmission Facilitation Program, $3 billion expansion of the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, and more than $10 billion in grants for States, Tribes, and utilities to enhance grid resilience and prevent power outages, and through existing tools, including the more than $3 billion Western Area Power Administration Transmission Infrastructure Program, and several loan guarantee programs through the Loan Programs Office.

See this write up of how DOE research is showing wind turbines can contribute to grid stability. Speaking of which regarding Texas (from Vox again):

The frustrating thing for a lot of people that I talk to is that we are a wind juggernaut, and we often have more wind power than we can use. We’re also in a part of the country where that power could be pushed out to answer the energy needs of other states. And people could make a ton of money in Texas by pushing that energy out when we don’t need it. The reluctance to do that seems to transcend economics because it is a huge business opportunity for the state that we’re passing up on.

Given the peculiarities of Texas Republican politics, it’s not known if the DOE initiative will make any headway in the state, but another massive grid failure will certainly provide the survivors with an incentive to demand better.

Keep an eye on Senator Ted Cruz and his travel plans. (And yes I’ve used this meme before.)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/4/2114415/-Texas-is-pushing-the-limits-on-its-power-grid-as-heat-settles-in

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