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Texas power prices soar 20,000% as brutal heat wave sets off emergency (markets.businessinsider.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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  • Texas power prices soared 20,000% Wednesday evening amid another brutal heat wave.

  • Spot electricity prices topped $5,000 per megawatt-hour, up more than 200 times from Wednesday morning.

  • The state's grid operator issued its second-highest energy emergency, then later said conditions returned to normal.

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[–] 216 points 2 years ago (7 children)

As a lib, I feel so owned.

I'm glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.

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  • [–] 129 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You are kind of owned, since these red states fucking up just means that more of your tax money will go to saving these idiots from themselves through federal aid

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  • [–] 89 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    As another fellow Washingtonian, I'm getting pretty tired of subsidizing willful stupidity.

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Red states are a luxury we can't afford anymore. They need to pull themselves up by their freedom bootstraps and start turning a profit, or the spigot turns off.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    honestly it's not willful for a lot of residents there because of gerrymandering instead of redistricting.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Never should have let the southern states back in like we did.

    We should have hanged every last confederate.

    It's not too late though.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Texas actually does better in the renewable energy front than you may expect.

    A quarter of the state's energy is produced through wind and solar. The biggest bottleneck preventing more wind adoption is the capacity of transmission lines up and the lack of energy storage.

    The advantage of natural gas is that it can be dry up pretty much anywhere and isn't dependent on weather.

    The biggest problem Texas has right now regarding energy (and housing costs, and inflation, and municipal planning, and traffic, etc) is its extremely rapid population growth.

    Yes, the heat wave is historic and ERCOT is awful, but even in perfect weather the grid is being stressed from the sheer number of people and businesses moving here

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Don’t forget natural gas lines can freeze. Remember Ted Cruz going to Cancun? Pepperidge farm remembers.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    While a lot of shitty things happened regarding ERCOT and that freeze (and ESPECIALLY the lack of response to prevent the next 2 freeze emergencies), Snovid was a perfect storm. And again a lot of the issues were from transmission problems when lines iced over and tress took out transmission lines.

    We're lucky the 2023 freeze was as short as it was, because it's impact on the grid was almost as severe even though it was shorter and not nearly as cold. It was an ice event instead of snow, and had a much larger impact on trees and therefore transmission lines. Some people were without power for 3-4 times as long as with the 2021 storm despite it being a much milder event.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    As an engineer, critical infrastructure should very much be designed with redundancy and failsafes to prevent failure from any reasonable risk. Cold weather impacting natural gas supply is reasonable risk that can have a catastrophic impact on people's ability to heat their homes and it's mind blowing how those failures have happened more than once in recent years. Utilities should be held to much higher standards and immediate action taken after failures to prevent the same from happening again.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Completely agree. But Snovid was a case of multiple system failures. It wasn't just gas lines freezing,. It was increased demand, frozen equipment, inoperable windmills and solar panels, trees on transmission lines, road inaccessibility for repair crews, and informational gaps.

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  • [+] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Texas has plenty of power. Their problem is the delivery network. Their prices surge because power can't be delivered to everybody, not because there isn't enough for everybody.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I need you to explain this further? The price goes up because the demand on the grid goes up, and as the price goes up, typically additional generation comes online to take advantage of higher rates. I'm not saying it's a good system by any means, but I don't understand what you mean saying "power can't be delivered to everybody"

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Transmission lines have maximums and the Texas power grid is a shambles.

    Here's a recent article that explains a little more: https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2023-09-08/ercot-texas-electric-grid-congestion-at-risk-energy-emergency

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  • [+] -10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm abreast of this specific grid situation, and there're absolutely improvements that need to be made, and also no, it's not "a shambles." Yes, there was a bottleneck this time, but also everyone's power stayed on just fine

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Oh cool, so nobody died this time.

    Give it a few months when they start dying of exposure. At least once a year I see stories about Texas' power grid shitting the bed and people dying as a result.

    How's all that freedom going?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    But Texas also has plenty of space and sunlight for other renewables.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    apperently not on peoples roofs though.

    Especually for ACs having your own solar panels is perfect. The demand and supply are always highest at the same time.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    The problem hasn't been during the day. The supply and demand has a lag (sun comes out and its still cool and sun goes down and its still hot). The hottest part of the day has been about 6pm and then solar power starts declining before power use. That's been when the shortages have been.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    If you had the same amount of heat, you'd have more sunlight hours and thus better conditions for solar power. If you had more wind, wind power etc.

    There's no scenario anywhere in the world where the entire energy consumption and more can't be supplied via renewable sources. All that's missing is the political will to go against the fossil fuel industry.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Heard a piece of NPR about how our green grid is actually having a lot of trouble keeping up because climate change is fucking up our rainfall, and hence our hydro electric. Even if you do it right, you end up paying for the greed of everyone else.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I’m glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.

    Texas has more renewable energy production than you do. In Q1 of 2022 Washington State generated 25 Million Megawatt hours of renewal energy and Texas generated 34.

    In fact Texas generates more renewable energy than anyone else. So much more that, excluding Washington, you'd need to combine at least three other states to surpass them.

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