Wind Turbine Fail: Texas Grid Operator Begs Texans to Turn Off Appliances During Peak Hours to Avoid Rolling Blackouts Amid Heat Wave,Very Low Winds

[OK Corgi Rancher]

They have a 4-tier rate plan. Low = 7 cents per Kwhr, Standard = 11 cents, High = 24 cents and Critical = 43 cents. So the normal is 7 cents. That would be the price outside of that 2 - 11 window for residential customers. 7 cents seems like a pretty good price to me.

 

[golddigger14s]

Well if we all get electric cars that will solve the problem right?

 

[El Pablo]

Geez, I work in oil and gas and have to laugh at the wind and electric car hate.

Texas incompetence is the issue, their power grid is a train wreck as is their governance of it.

 

[Shadowrider]

They have a 4-tier rate plan. Low = 7 cents per Kwhr, Standard = 11 cents, High = 24 cents and Critical = 43 cents. So the normal is 7 cents. That would be the price outside of that 2 - 11 window for residential customers. 7 cents seems like a pretty good price to me.



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Before this year it was 3.5 cents on Smart Hours off-peak. That is why I signed up, we were getting half priced rate for 19 hours a day during the week and all day on weekends. The peak was probably the same scenario, I do recall critical being the same at 43 cents.

I can attest that when I first got on it, they were capped at a fixed number of hours they could call a critical event per year by the corporation commission and I'm sure they still are, but it seemed that every year they were calling it more often. I never tracked it but it sure seemed so. My first year on it they would call it and then a few days later just as hot they wouldn't. At the end of my participation it seemed they would call it every time it hit that magic temp no matter how often.

The 24 cent peak rate on the TOU seems new also. I don't remember that at all.

 

[dennishoddy]

We're on the OG&E "Smart Hours" plan. The idea is to use less electricity from 2pm to 7pm because the price goes up then.

It topped out at 111° here today. Our house is about 1100 sq ft. I turned the thermostat up to 80 at 2pm. The A/C shuts off for about 2 mins per hour, at most.

So, I'm thinking, if my A/C isn't gonna shut off anyway, why not leave the thermostat at a comfortable temp? There's definitely some more attic insulation in our near future. You can feel the heat on the ceiling. The walls and windows seem to be OK. I've put in a few ceiling fans and I could really feel the heat in the attic when installing them. I'm betting it was close to 150 up there today. And it's a really shallow pitch so you can't get up there with rolls. I think blown in will be the only option.

Get a couple of powered gable vents installed. Our AC wouldn't shut off on hot days until we installed them. Temperature at the ceiling in the house was almost 100 degrees. Checked in the attic and it was 130 degrees.
Once the gable vents were installed, it dramatically changed how our AC worked. It cycled like it should because it wasn't fighting the radient heat from the attic coming through the ceiling. We have 10" of blown in insulation.
Once you get them installed and stand outside where the gable vents blow the air you will see how much hot air they remove from the attic. It's amazing.

 

[dennishoddy]

Geez, I work in oil and gas and have to laugh at the wind and electric car hate.

Texas incompetence is the issue, their power grid is a train wreck as is their governance of it.

Yep. ERCOT is loaded with green deal liberals that forced untenable environmental regulations on the coal fired plants in Texas so much that they had to shutter them. Now they are reaping their just rewards.

 

[Seadog]

there is a limit to how much carbon they are allow to produce. this has put limits on generation as well as development. they have the ability to ramp up some more but if they produce to much carbon they are forced to buy a carbon credit at extra cost pay fines etc. getting permits to build or replace repair existing generation has been severely limited for a long time with the requirement to use produce purchase green energy.

That right there is the entire problem wrote up in a nut shell. It is the DOE that is preventing there from being more energy. But it’s a words game. The DOE says they are not preventing them from making more energy. Which is true. They merely de-incentivize them through financial fines of the green carbon credit BS. That sums up the problems Texas has during the ice storm. So what if the Wind turbines went down due to freezing. They could’ve ramped up electricity through their coal plants but they would’ve lost more money than they would’ve made because of the carbon credit fines. MF Democrats and their green carbon credit horse *****

 

[1shott]

LOL I can see it now, calling into work, saying you cant come in because theres little to no wind and the turbines are not generating enough electricity and you cant plug in your electric car to charge so you can come to work. LOL **** the greenies.

 

[El Pablo]

That right there is the entire problem wrote up in a nut shell. It is the DOE that is preventing there from being more energy. But it’s a words game. The DOE says they are not preventing them from making more energy. Which is true. They merely de-incentivize them through financial fines of the green carbon credit BS. That sums up the problems Texas has during the ice storm. So what if the Wind turbines went down due to freezing. They could’ve ramped up electricity through their coal plants but they would’ve lost more money than they would’ve made because of the carbon credit fines. MF Democrats and their green carbon credit horse *****

Their issue during the freeze/ice storm was natural gas, a problem we did not have as we have operators in ND too. When you don’t build out storage because you can usually produce on demand, don’t winterize almost any of your ng production, midstream, and downstream… Same thing happened in 2011, they learned nothing.

 

[Glocktogo]

The undeniable fact is that "going green" is untenable without a massive change in energy expectations. Sometimes the sun doesn't shine. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow. Sometimes the water doesn't flow.

So if they don't want to incentivize fossil fuel usage, they can either build a whole lot of nuclear plants (no new ones since 1996), or we can simply accept that when we need energy the most, there will be less energy available than needed. There is no free lunch in this game.

That's not the worst of it either. The real pink elephant in the corner of the room is HCC or Human Carrying Capacity. This whirling blue ball is going to run out of capacity well before we expend all the fossil fuels. We're doubling the global population every 50-75 years (estimated). The western United States is going to exceed water availability well before the oil and natural gas wells run dry, and where do you think they're going to come for more water when that happens?

So someone born today will experience some level of strife just trying to stay alive within their natural lifespan. Think about that.