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- cross-posted to:
- technology
- [email protected]
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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.
This is solar’s half of the battle, high energy demand during bright sunlight.
The Texas grid issues have been right after solar drops off (evening, not day) because Texas does rely on solar for a small, but necessary, part of it energy. The second half is energy storage, and Texas lacks that which is why its been having many close calls this summer and has resorted to paying cryptominers to not mine to narrowly scrape by after solar power drops off.
Texas has 3000Mw of battery storage with 10000Mw on the way.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-battery-rush-oil-states-power-woes-fuel-energy-storage-boom-2023-05-31/#:~:text=The Electric Reliability Council of,according to its own data.
Texas can use up to 100GW of power and was basically always over 60GW during that time of day this summer. The 3GW was used on a few days to bridge the gap, but wasn’t quite enough on its own on other days. 10GW more would have covered this summer though. Hopefully next summer isn’t worse though (seems like expectations is next year is supposed to be hotter). Population also continues to grow and electrification continues. And NG makes up the bulk of the power still. Hopefully wind and solar installations grow significantly in the next year as well.