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Texas power prices soared 20,000% Wednesday evening amid another brutal heat wave.
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Spot electricity prices topped $5,000 per megawatt-hour, up more than 200 times from Wednesday morning.
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The state’s grid operator issued its second-highest energy emergency, then later said conditions returned to normal.
Hey little buddy, how’s the independent grid working out for you?
Jesus Christ.
People will soon be living in Texas no power year around when they throttle you and charge you thousands for power every month of the year because either A) ITsSS TWOooh HAaAWwTT or B) TtThEEee GGRiiIdD IIsSSnnTT Winterized. What a joke
If Texas is anything like Mississippi, you’re not allowed to live without electricity. You’ll be evicted, AKA homeless…
As a lib, I feel so owned.
I’m glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.
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.
Texas is also the second biggest state and 3 times larger by land mass than Washington state.
while it’s true that the majority of the electricity generated in WA is hydroelectric, we also dont get much in the way of heat. I used my AC for about 4 weeks this year. if we had the same levels of heat as some parts of TX, our electricity would not be as cheap as it is now.
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.
But Texas also has plenty of space and sunlight for other renewables.
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.
Eat the rich.
They have an excess of energy (too much sun) but the grid is close to collapsing (too much cooling). Maybe install more solar power?
Many Texas leaders (and other Taxans) see any energy source that’s not oil and gas based as “part of the radical liberal agenda.”
Sure they do, then they get run the fuck over by the big money Capitalists who are building it anyway. Texas is #1 in renewable energy production for a reason.
Well yeah, being a manly man means being inconsiderate and destructive to the environment.
Oh, you care about nature? You want to be a steward of the Earth? Sounds gay. And gay men get beat to death and sent to hell.
Aaahhh, the free market economy at work without limits, without government planning, regulations, or interference.
Government regulations bad! It means we can’t squeeze our customers, we can’t fuck up on an hourly basis, we can’t be dicks!
And in before the commies start… No. Bad dog! Get out with your “we need to become Communist hippie communes!” comments, please
We need to put reasonable rules and limits to a capitalist system. Regulate big companies, regulate infrastructure, tax the rich, use the money for social platforms
I remember my parents planning to retire to Texas about 10 years ago, I told 'em “that state’s going to be unlivable b/c of climate change pretty soon, don’t buy land there”.
They’re Republicans so pish-tosh. They have spent weeks this summer essentially unable to be outside anywhere.
Retiring somewhere where you can be burned by the pavement if you fall over? That’s an interesting choice.
Mmm, pan seared grandma
Wasn’t the whole point in investing in oil in Texas to keep the energy prices low?
How is that working out for em?
If only there was some kind of energy source that worked best during intense sunlight.
Solar is only half the battle though. There can often be a severe electricity shortage in the evening when solar power shuts off but temperates are still high. This issue is greatest in the late summer and fall because it’s still very hot but the sun sets earlier.
There are solutions to this issue but they are fairly early in development and sometimes expensive. California is struggling with this issue currently. We’ve installed a huge amount of battery power over the last few years which has prevented several catastrophes so far but heat continues to get more severe, increasing energy needs as we are trying to shut down the state’s remaining gas peaker plants.
recently learned that if we went with nuclear decades ago this whole problem wouldn’t even exist. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nuclear-power-isnt-perfect-is-it-good-enough/
Solar is only half the battle though. There can often be a severe electricity shortage in the evening when solar power shuts off but temperates are still high
That’s true of household panels (which are great for offsetting your daytime usage, which is usually your highest usage), but that is generally not true of large solar installations that heat up a huge mass of salt until it’s molten and then produce power from that source 24/7. Example: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16012018/csp-concentrated-solar-molten-salt-storage-24-hour-renewable-energy-crescent-dunes-nevada/
TL/DR: large solar installations produce power 24/7 (yes, even when it’s dark)
Solar thermal isn’t really what we mean when we say solar power. The vast majority, even at utility scale, is PV panels just like the ones on your roof. Historically, solar thermal was too expensive and PV panels are still far cheaper.
That said, for areas like CA that may soon approach maximum solar penetration it may deserve a second look because of its more consistent energy output. It will mainly be competing with batteries, pumped hydro, and new generations of geothermal technology. All of these are new and fairly unproven at scale so we’ll have to learn as we go which is the best option for the later stages of decarbonizing the electrical grid.
My Texan ass was confused because the last week has been the most pleasant weather we’ve had in months. The I looked at the article and saw it’s from 2017. Don’t get me wrong our state is fucking dumb all of the time, but I assure you we are not experiencing a heat wave. It’s been unseasonably cool.
The article was from September 8th. The wind turbine image is from 2017.
I stand corrected. But it’s not so hot now. Also it wasn’t a heat wave, it’s just Texas summer. Which is why there’s no excuse for ercot to be so fucking unprepared.
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Maybe stop electing Republican orcs and your state will improve.
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In first world states these kinds of price spikes and lengthy outages due to temperatures don’t happen instead of happening every 6 months.
Sure, hurricanes and other natural disasters, but not simple temperature changes.
This wasn’t a “simple temperature change,” this was a record-breaking heatwave. It hit 108° in Austin that day, which was one of the hottest highs of the entire summer. Ultimately this article is bullshit though, because the “emergency” consisted of ERCOT asking for voluntary energy conservation for one evening and then everything returning to normal.
