A few thoughts on what the Texas deep freeze and blackouts mean for for the future of the state's power grid -- and all power grids. (If you don't feel like reading, you can listen.)
Really enjoy the content and thanks for your work. One humble recommendation I’d make is to try to bring some of the same enthusiasm, lighthearted tone, and feel that came across on your podcast with Chris Hayes. Appreciate your work and hope this is helpful.
I have been arguing that we should focus on the goal -- 100% clean energy -- by building out large-scale solar and wind plus batteries. Micro-grids seem like a distraction to me that can be put off until we've accomplished the buildout. My instinct tells me that we'll resolve some of the reliability issues via a truly national transmission grid and the addition of really large-scale battery storage. SEAMs might have prevented the Texas disaster.
Great stuff. I loved your podcast with Chris Hayes. Yet, there you say we really don't need to build more infrastructure, just make our existing stuff work better. Of course, you have also been making the case we have to build more infrastructure. I guess we chalk this up, as you say, to the both/and answer of most energy policy?!
It's going to take a bit of work to get to the right place with distributed generation. By that I mean understanding what the change to transmission will look like as we deploy batteries and buildout microgrids. That will have the effect of reducing overall grid demand, but with the need to plan for longer-term outages that would drain battery storage and lead to increased demand. None of that is easy for the planners. You're on easy street till you aren't. That might be an even tougher sell to utility customers.
The proposals I've heard about for figuring this out which interest me the most have to do with agent-based models, where what-if scenarios are used to determine what the emergence of resources at different locations would mean for both supply and demand, and for the availability of ancillary services delivered as part of that resource base.
Here's the catch: that scenario has much less to do with classic power engineering, and much more to do with statistical mechanics and computer simulation. That's a very different ballgame for the utilities. Are they ready for that?
Nice analysis -- thanks. Or maybe I should say I came to the same conclusions.
One other thought though: Texas retail was a mixture of ~ 20% 'wholesale' plans and 80% 'fixed rate' plans. The fixed rate folks had no incentive to restrain use, leading to massive supply:demand imbalance. The only incentive tool ERCOT was allowed to use was to massively increase the wholesale cap, eventually reaching $90/kWh. That intervention murdered the wholesale customers (and quite a few retailers) but was ineffective in curbing overall demand, I presume directly related to the fixed price customer base.
My conclusion is that during an extreme event the PUCT has to either:
1. Move everybody to a wholesale price model; or
2. Move everybody to a fixed price model.
Doing (1) will piss of everybody who was on a fixed rate plan but presumably the 'market' would correct the supply:demand imbalance; or
(2) will mimic CA where extreme events are handled with rolling blackouts.
Regarding Tres Amigas - the Pattern Energy Southern Cross project has already cleared ERCOT's initial hurdles for connecting it to the Southern Company and TVA grids. It appears to be stalled, though. It was supposed to go online by this year under the original schedule. https://southerncrosstransmission.com/
Dave, I'm glad you mentioned the diversion of the natural gas to home heating; it's been underlooked as a factor by those trying to explain this thing.
A question I'd like to see answered in an investigation is why ERCOT didn't make a public appeal to people to reduce consumption, and give it a chance to work out. They clearly knew the cold was coming.That self-congratulatory Tweet you reference makes it sound like all is well and is time-stamped 8:37 PM, when demand should be starting to head down.
Now that the decision timeline is out, we can see ERCOT made its call during a 10-12 minute interval about 2:30 am Monday morning, mostly based on generation dropping off. So a public appeal would not have worked at that point in crisis. But, you'd think someone might have had an inkling of what might be coming th eevening before. There have been a few curious references to a high (60%?) penetration of electric heat pumps that cycle on automatically unless turned down.
I write in my post last week about how Texas autonomy is driven largely by historic empire building. This makes them a good proxy for American empire building. Texas is an empire-state on a national level and the US is an empire-state on the international level. We need to become a nation-state. True healthy nation-states are resilient because they work together as a system. https://interplace.io/p/the-lone-star-is-in-a-frozen-state
Building resilience right is really hard both because forecasting future crises is not certain and because of heavy future discounting by, well, everyone. It's always easier to see that a problem was "obvious" in hindsight.
I live in Los Angeles where we take earthquake retrofitting somewhat seriously (if not as seriously as Tokyo). We'll probably survive all but the most horrendous earthquake okay. So I'm sensitized to the issue. When I drive around places like Missouri I think of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 (the largest earthquakes known in the lower 48), look at highway bridges and envision every single one of them collapsing if we get a repeat.
The effects of climate change may be more "predictable" than whether the New Madrid fault will erupt again, but both are shrouded in uncertainty. Should we recommend the central US retrofit and do future building like California? Man, these are hard questions: small probabilities in the near future, but breathtaking consequences otherwise.
Really enjoy the content and thanks for your work. One humble recommendation I’d make is to try to bring some of the same enthusiasm, lighthearted tone, and feel that came across on your podcast with Chris Hayes. Appreciate your work and hope this is helpful.
I have been arguing that we should focus on the goal -- 100% clean energy -- by building out large-scale solar and wind plus batteries. Micro-grids seem like a distraction to me that can be put off until we've accomplished the buildout. My instinct tells me that we'll resolve some of the reliability issues via a truly national transmission grid and the addition of really large-scale battery storage. SEAMs might have prevented the Texas disaster.
Great stuff. I loved your podcast with Chris Hayes. Yet, there you say we really don't need to build more infrastructure, just make our existing stuff work better. Of course, you have also been making the case we have to build more infrastructure. I guess we chalk this up, as you say, to the both/and answer of most energy policy?!
Yeah, that was a bit of rhetorical overreach -- we do need new infrastructure! But we also need to ruggedize what we've got. Both/and, as you say.
Thank you for another outstanding overview.
It's going to take a bit of work to get to the right place with distributed generation. By that I mean understanding what the change to transmission will look like as we deploy batteries and buildout microgrids. That will have the effect of reducing overall grid demand, but with the need to plan for longer-term outages that would drain battery storage and lead to increased demand. None of that is easy for the planners. You're on easy street till you aren't. That might be an even tougher sell to utility customers.
The proposals I've heard about for figuring this out which interest me the most have to do with agent-based models, where what-if scenarios are used to determine what the emergence of resources at different locations would mean for both supply and demand, and for the availability of ancillary services delivered as part of that resource base.
Here's the catch: that scenario has much less to do with classic power engineering, and much more to do with statistical mechanics and computer simulation. That's a very different ballgame for the utilities. Are they ready for that?
http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/ace.htm
Nice analysis -- thanks. Or maybe I should say I came to the same conclusions.
One other thought though: Texas retail was a mixture of ~ 20% 'wholesale' plans and 80% 'fixed rate' plans. The fixed rate folks had no incentive to restrain use, leading to massive supply:demand imbalance. The only incentive tool ERCOT was allowed to use was to massively increase the wholesale cap, eventually reaching $90/kWh. That intervention murdered the wholesale customers (and quite a few retailers) but was ineffective in curbing overall demand, I presume directly related to the fixed price customer base.
My conclusion is that during an extreme event the PUCT has to either:
1. Move everybody to a wholesale price model; or
2. Move everybody to a fixed price model.
Doing (1) will piss of everybody who was on a fixed rate plan but presumably the 'market' would correct the supply:demand imbalance; or
(2) will mimic CA where extreme events are handled with rolling blackouts.
Cheers,
Eric
Regarding Tres Amigas - the Pattern Energy Southern Cross project has already cleared ERCOT's initial hurdles for connecting it to the Southern Company and TVA grids. It appears to be stalled, though. It was supposed to go online by this year under the original schedule. https://southerncrosstransmission.com/
I said my piece here:
https://will-bates.medium.com/electric-power-deregulation-in-texas-the-history-of-a-bad-idea-bbe001f5b644
Dave, I'm glad you mentioned the diversion of the natural gas to home heating; it's been underlooked as a factor by those trying to explain this thing.
A question I'd like to see answered in an investigation is why ERCOT didn't make a public appeal to people to reduce consumption, and give it a chance to work out. They clearly knew the cold was coming.That self-congratulatory Tweet you reference makes it sound like all is well and is time-stamped 8:37 PM, when demand should be starting to head down.
I read an appeal by the head of ERCOT to *please* reduce thermostats to 68F
Now that the decision timeline is out, we can see ERCOT made its call during a 10-12 minute interval about 2:30 am Monday morning, mostly based on generation dropping off. So a public appeal would not have worked at that point in crisis. But, you'd think someone might have had an inkling of what might be coming th eevening before. There have been a few curious references to a high (60%?) penetration of electric heat pumps that cycle on automatically unless turned down.
I write in my post last week about how Texas autonomy is driven largely by historic empire building. This makes them a good proxy for American empire building. Texas is an empire-state on a national level and the US is an empire-state on the international level. We need to become a nation-state. True healthy nation-states are resilient because they work together as a system. https://interplace.io/p/the-lone-star-is-in-a-frozen-state
Great post!
Building resilience right is really hard both because forecasting future crises is not certain and because of heavy future discounting by, well, everyone. It's always easier to see that a problem was "obvious" in hindsight.
I live in Los Angeles where we take earthquake retrofitting somewhat seriously (if not as seriously as Tokyo). We'll probably survive all but the most horrendous earthquake okay. So I'm sensitized to the issue. When I drive around places like Missouri I think of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 (the largest earthquakes known in the lower 48), look at highway bridges and envision every single one of them collapsing if we get a repeat.
The effects of climate change may be more "predictable" than whether the New Madrid fault will erupt again, but both are shrouded in uncertainty. Should we recommend the central US retrofit and do future building like California? Man, these are hard questions: small probabilities in the near future, but breathtaking consequences otherwise.