TEXAS FOLKS - Time to react.

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Dana

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I would love to see a source to back up the 50% loss of power claim as well.

It's utter BS, of course. Total losses from the primary windings of the first transformer at the wind generator in west Texas to the load at a customer site on the gulf coast is under 10%.

But power has to come from somewhere and we can't burn our way out of the problem. wind and hydroelectric will always play a role but as with all renewable sources they aren't constantly available everywhere. Barring someone figuring out how to do fusion, it is likely solar with storage is the way out. the storage part of that is what has to get worked out along with increased efficiency of solar panels (which have come a long way with a lot of room to grow).

Even with BATTERY storage, at the well financial "learning curves" of solar, wind, and batteries, overbuilding the wind & solar by 3x-4x produces enough energy to get by with only 1-4 days worth of battery storage, and by 2030 would be cheaper on a lifecycle basis than all thermal power generation (gas, coal, nuclear), even cheaper than the operational costs of existing powerplants. (Solar + 4 hours of battery is already cheaper than simply maintaining & running a gas peaker in Texas or California.)


Screen-Shot-2020-11-23-at-7.21.35-PM.png


Traditional thermal electricity sources are a slowly evolving infrastructure, with very low (if any) learning curves due to the low numbers of build-out. Solar wind & batteries are all technology, scalable, with very rapid learning curves as manufacturing volumes scale. Any real technology breakthroughs (more likely in battery & solar than wind) would change the mix, and shorten the time horizon. Small modular nuclear might have had a shot at being competitive if it were in it's current state of readiness back in 1990, but it's unlikely to be competitive against wind/solar/battery by the time the first units are going on line.

The optimal wind/solar/battery mix would vary by location, but Tony Seba's group has modeled it for California, Texas, and New England looking at 40 years of weather data, modeling it with conservative learning curves. and it works even in less-sunny not so windy (on shore, anyway) New England to come up with the above graphic.

The other nice thing about Seba's wind/solar/battery model is the fact that for only ~20% more capital up front something like 300% more "extra output" than is needed for current energy uses gets created at effectively zero marginal cost. This nearly-free and gia-normous energy output means the entire energy market (all types and uses) is going to be severely disrupted well before 2050, and that is going to happen independent of government policies, subsidies, etc. The sheer economics of it will be the driver.

Most people, including policy planners or corporate CEOs have a hard time intuiting exponential growth curves and tend to think linearly, but learning curves are real, and quite non-linear. As markets saturate it becomes a logistic curve, but we're currently at the rapidly thickening wedge a the thin edge of the curve on batteries solar & wind, where it's more similar to an exponential curve:

LogisticExponentialComparison.png


With every doubling of solar production volume the cost drops by about 20%. With wind power it's maybe half that, but with batteries it's even faster. Even in dirty-air lousy pollution controls China the lifecycle cost of wind & solar are already at parity with dirty-coal (without factoring in the health care or climate cost externalities of dirty coal.)

chinalcoe_1527_1094_80.jpg


The investment banker analysts at Lazard for the past decade or so have produced annual updates on the levelized cost of new electricity generation sources in the US, and now the levelized cost of storage looking at different use cases, and testing for sensitivity to subsidy, etc. It's important for those in the energy industry to keep track of that stuff when deciding whether to fix or rebuild damaged/aging powerplants or pipelines.

Spending a lot of money for new infrastructure, be it pipelines or powerplants that will take 25+ years to break even is VERY risky in the face of the technology learning curves of wind & solar & batteries. Ratepayers in GA may rue the day they fuel up the shiny-new Vogtle nukes, since they'll be stuck with the decommissioning costs on a plant that will never even be able to pay off the costs of construction. SC did the right thing by halting the construction of Vogtle's sister plants for SCANA.

In free-market ERCOT territory this disruption may happen even sooner than in the more regulated parts of the US.
 

TJanak

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Here's the document in entirety that I posted page 4 of the other day. I have a few concerns:

The DOE authorized increased generation that may exceed their environmental standards "...only as needed to maintain the reliability of the power grid..." Does reliability mean satisfying the entire load or keeping the grid from shutting down completely?

additionally,

(Paraphrasing): When a unit would need to go offline to comply with their federal environmental permit, but instead would continue to generate power for ERCOT during this emergency: "This incremental amount of restricted capacity would be offered at a price no lower than $1,500/MWh."

Why is the DOE setting electricity rates?

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upload_2021-2-20_20-12-47.jpeg
 

Dana

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Here's the document in entirety that I posted page 4 of the other day. I have a few concerns:

The DOE authorized increased generation that may exceed their environmental standards "...only as needed to maintain the reliability of the power grid..." Does reliability mean satisfying the entire load or keeping the grid from shutting down completely?


Neither. It means satisfying enough of the load to keep the system stable from a frequency & voltage within margin to avoid other generators & grid control systems from shutting down, increasing the instability. If allowed to run wild that instability could (and would) create a complete grid down, but it's important for overall reliability to avoid large scale sudden intermittencies on any part of the grid that would affect other parts of the grid.

(Paraphrasing): When a unit would need to go offline to comply with their federal environmental permit, but instead would continue to generate power for ERCOT during this emergency: "This incremental amount of restricted capacity would be offered at a price no lower than $1,500/MWh."

Why is the DOE setting electricity rates?

When the feds step in to cover an emergency situation they get to call the spec what's necessary/allowed to allow the generator to operate in a mode that would otherwise violate the operator's federally mandated environmental limits.

My best guess for their rationale for a price floor: Setting the price floor at a sky-high $1,500/MWh ensures that that the utilities & system operators run in the generators in "dirty" mode only when it's absolutely necessary, and not simply to allow the plant to run in that mode at the slightest grid glitch.

Basically they're saying:

"You can operate beyond the federal environmental limits if you absolutely have to, but it's going to cost you when you do. Rather than levy fines for violations under those dire circumstance, we set a minimum price to be sure that privilege doesn't get abused."
 

TJanak

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Neither. It means satisfying enough of the load to keep the system stable from a frequency & voltage within margin to avoid other generators & grid control systems from shutting down, increasing the instability. If allowed to run wild that instability could (and would) create a complete grid down, but it's important for overall reliability to avoid large scale sudden intermittencies on any part of the grid that would affect other parts of the grid."

I understand and that is essentially what I meant. But that also says to me that according to the federal government, abiding by federal environmental pollution limits is more deemed more important than 4.5 million (peak) people having electricity during record cold weather.

When the feds step in to cover an emergency situation they get to call the spec what's necessary/allowed to allow the generator to operate in a mode that would otherwise violate the operator's federally mandated environmental limits.

My best guess for their rationale for a price floor: Setting the price floor at a sky-high $1,500/MWh ensures that that the utilities & system operators run in the generators in "dirty" mode only when it's absolutely necessary, and not simply to allow the plant to run in that mode at the slightest grid glitch.

Basically they're saying:

"You can operate beyond the federal environmental limits if you absolutely have to, but it's going to cost you when you do. Rather than levy fines for violations under those dire circumstance, we set a minimum price to be sure that privilege doesn't get abused."

The cost will ultimately get passed on to the consumer. The consumer will be in a tough economic situation. FEMA assistance has already been approved for many TX counties for this event. FEMA will end up helping those who cannot cope with the high costs. I'm seeing dollars moving in a circular fashion with the government taking their cut.

So much for Texas' "separate" grid allowing less regulation from the feds...
 

Reach4

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The cost will ultimately get passed on to the consumer. The consumer will be in a tough economic situation. FEMA assistance has already been approved for many TX counties for this event. FEMA will end up helping those who cannot cope with the high costs. I'm seeing dollars moving in a circular fashion with the government taking their cut.

So much for Texas' "separate" grid allowing less regulation from the feds...
I expect the intrastate standards will tighten to prevent this from happening again.
 

Valveman

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I was told 50% loss in transmission lines many decades ago before the Internet. Now being able to research that I see the 10% number is more correct, but still a considerable loss.

Even if you are right about the learning curve for wind and solar, and them being as affordable as other means of producing electricity soon, I still like to look at the root cause of all the problems. We would not be having an energy issue, a pollution issue, or any of these problems if it were not for over-population.

I do not know how to solve that problem. David Atenborough says free health care and free education like they have in Japan would decrease the population. I would be willing to try anything that would decrease the world population. However, I think the first thing is to stop paying people to have more babies. Children should be expensive through taxes as well as just paying for their raising. No more government assistance for having children. No extra unearned tax credit for having children. No one should be able to make a living off the government for just pumping out more babies. But I think education and free birth control is the best we could do to help other countries.

No one wants to even discuss over-population. If we don’t at least start discussing it and figure out a way to control it, nothing else will matter. Any discussion about energy, food, water, air, etc,, is a moot point if we don’t check the population first. The earth is just not equipped to handle so many humans.
 

Valveman

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See what I mean. This was a heated discussion about wind turbines and other forms of energy until I mentioned over-population as the root cause of all the problems. Then "crickets". Even if you do not reply to this thread at least start discussing this issue with those around you. If we don't at least start discussing over-population and start doing something about it we are all doomed in short order.
 

WorthFlorida

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Live and learn is the standard motto. Texas just went through what happened in the Northeast in 1965. I remember it well, fortunately it was in November so there was no weather related threats. What was learned from it caused most of the national electrical grid to be redesigned, harden and greatly improved reliability though it took decades to upgrade. The engineers back then that made the fixes are all probably retired now and the knowledge gets lost. When Texas came up with their scheme, no one was asked is it really a good system and the lot of other questions on the "what if" scenarios.
It was one way I wrote test scenarios for business phone systems that I worked on. Designers (software) are great at writing software according to the specifications. I always found the "what if's" would trip up most of the younger ones. You ask what is so important about a phone system? When they are in hospitals and the doctors need to make a emergency phone call from the operating or ER room, that is important. All this well before cell phones but the bottom line is reliability.
 

Valveman

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Live and learn is the standard motto. Texas just went through what happened in the Northeast in 1965. I remember it well, fortunately it was in November so there was no weather related threats. What was learned from it caused most of the national electrical grid to be redesigned, harden and greatly improved reliability though it took decades to upgrade. The engineers back then that made the fixes are all probably retired now and the knowledge gets lost. When Texas came up with their scheme, no one was asked is it really a good system and the lot of other questions on the "what if" scenarios.
It was one way I wrote test scenarios for business phone systems that I worked on. Designers (software) are great at writing software according to the specifications. I always found the "what if's" would trip up most of the younger ones. You ask what is so important about a phone system? When they are in hospitals and the doctors need to make a emergency phone call from the operating or ER room, that is important. All this well before cell phones but the bottom line is reliability.

I agree with you. Doesn't that mean the Northeast was over-populated by 1965 and Texas is just now seeing the same problem? :)
 

Dana

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I expect the intrastate standards will tighten to prevent this from happening again.

You're more optimistic than somewhat recent history would indicate is warranted. This is the third time in the past 32 years that ERCOT nearly collapsed due to the cold. The necessity of winterized equipment was as glaringly obvious in 1989 and 2011 as it is right now, but nothing was done about it (other than even more de-regulation over time.)

Some of the variable rate customers stuck with $10K USD power bills for this most recent incident would have been better off spending the money on a big home-battery and programming the controls to disconnect from the grid when localized marginal prices were going into low earth orbit. (Ratepayers currently have no way of getting the LMP in real time, SFAIK, but they should be allowed access to that information.)
 

Terry

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I saw a lot of wind mills on the skiing trip to Mt. Bachelor in Oregon this week.

windmills-02.jpg


I-90 heading East toward Vantage to pick up my Nephew from Spokane so that we can car pool. They all seemed to be spinning though.

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The Columbia River between Washington and Oregon.

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Oregon again.

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Mt. Hood

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Mt Bachelor
 
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Valveman

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I have been telling engineers at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for 26 years that water towers were not a reliable source of water during an emergency. I even testified at the state house to have the rules changed. Government engineers at TCEQ have dug in their heels and refused to look at alternatives, even after being ordered to do so by the legislators. I guess I shouldn't let a crisis go to waste and mention that they were wrong.

The city of Lubbock realized during a power brownout in 2005 that water towers would be empty in 45 minutes, even without a fire at the time. So, they purchased enough diesel powered generators to keep the water plants running. When everyone else was out of power, and therefore also out of water, Lubbock was not. They switched the pumps over to the emergency generators and we had water the entire time. Not only did Lubbock have water, but powering the pumps with emergency generators reduced the power demand on the grid by 3 Megawatts.

After 26 years and not being able to get anything changed, I am very jaded about government engineers. I do not believe most of them have the education, experience, or skills needed to get the job done. Not making any changes until they get to retirement age seems to be the most important thing to them. We taxpayers and citizens are paying the price for their incompetency in all kinds of systems.

Here is how much good a water tower was in Texas last week.

water tower frozen.jpg
 

Dana

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I saw a lot of wind mills on the skiing trip to Mt. Bachelor in Oregon this week.

windmills-02.jpg


I-90 heading East toward Vantage to pick up my Nephew from Spokane so that we can car pool. They all seemed to be spinning though.

windmills-columbia-01.jpg


The Columbia River between Washington and Oregon.

windmills-01.jpg


Oregon again.

bachelor-trip-2021-33.jpg


Mt. Hood

bachelor-trip-2021-20.jpg


Mt Bachelor

OK, I'm getting a serious case of snow-envy now. Tonight I was racing on the rained-on & re-frozen hard stuff.

Thanks Terry!
 

Valveman

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I took this picture of a beautiful sunset with wind turbines as far as the eye could see. The picture doesn't do it justice because there are wind turbines as far as the eye can see. Now I realize this is the middle of Texas and there are wind turbines AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE. At night there are red flashing lights AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE. I wouldn't mind if I thought they were practical. But I still think these big, expensive machines have lots of moving and wearable parts and won't last long enough to pay for themselves.

P4080045.JPG
 

Valveman

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Average cost to install a wind turbine is 1.3M per MW plus 45K a year maintenance. In 20 years a 4MW turbine will have cost $6.1M. Using the chart below if the turbine averages 35% capacity it will produce $245,280.oo worth of electricity every year. That would mean it would take 24.8 years to get a return on the investment. It would still take 17.4 years to pay off the investment if the turbine was able to produce at 50% capacity. The average life of a wind turbine is 20 years, which is about what I have seen with my own eyes. This makes me believe that just like Ethanol, wind turbines are energy negative.

how-much-money-does-a-wind-turbine-make.jpg
 

Dana

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Lazard's analysts aren't idiots and have come to a different conclusion about the unsubsidized levelized lifecycle cost of any new generation, based on real-world costs & lifespans. See page 3.
 

Gsmith22

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I took this picture of a beautiful sunset with wind turbines as far as the eye could see. The picture doesn't do it justice because there are wind turbines as far as the eye can see. Now I realize this is the middle of Texas and there are wind turbines AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE. At night there are red flashing lights AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE. I wouldn't mind if I thought they were practical. But I still think these big, expensive machines have lots of moving and wearable parts and won't last long enough to pay for themselves.

View attachment 71501

Every picture I see of West Texas has pumpjacks and fracking rig towers as far as the eye can see. Those okay or eyesore too?:)
 

Dana

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Every picture I see of West Texas has pumpjacks and fracking rig towers as far as the eye can see. Those okay or eyesore too?:)

EVERY picture of West Texas? You mean like this one?

energy-wind-oil.jpg


(I think they make a great couple! ;))

Or how about this one:

texas-wind.jpg
 
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Valveman

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I use to think the pumpjacks were and eyesore. Those pictures are taken like trying to make a fish look bigger by holding it close to the camera. Back off a mile or two and you won't see the little 20' tall pumpjacks in the midst of all those huge generators. Even those big drilling rigs look small in comparison. However, you are lucky to see even one drilling rig on any road trip through Texas anymore.

I have read that report from Lazard before. Because they cost so much, have so much maintenance, and only last 2o years, I just can't make the math add up for wind turbines even paying themselves off. Page 2, 4, and all the rest also show a comparison to "Gas Combined Cycle" that matches even what they say about wind except for the carbon neutral part. Even then I don't think they are considering the carbon (fossil energy) needed to mine, manufacture, transport, maintain, and recycle all the parts for a wind turbine. Kind of like the electric car that has to be driven 50K miles without any fossil fuels, to make up for the fossil fuels it took to make the car. A wind turbine probably has to run for 10 years or so on wind energy to make up for the fossil fuels used to make the wind turbine.
 

wwhitney

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Kind of like the electric car that has to be driven 50K miles without any fossil fuels, to make up for the fossil fuels it took to make the car. A wind turbine probably has to run for 10 years or so on wind energy to make up for the fossil fuels used to make the wind turbine.
Do you have a reference for your numbers?

I think you're referring to the wrong equivalencies. The question is whether an EV requires more fossil fuels to make than an ICE car; and if so, how far you would have to drive an EV to break even.

Cheers, Wayne
 
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