And, the feeding frenzy is set to begin:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/as...cid=entnewsntp
And, the feeding frenzy is set to begin:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/as...cid=entnewsntp
"Rich," the Old Man said dreamily, "is a little whiskey to drink and some food to eat and a roof over your head and a fish pole and a boat and a gun and a dollar for a box of shells." Robert Ruark
I could see the smoke and flames from my neighborhood. That got hot really fast. Those apartments are a fairly new build as well.Originally Posted by HCM
Located across the street from the JW Marriott that hosts the Valero Texas Open PGA event.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
AKA: SkyLine1
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
The freeze is over, at least where I live. Much of the snow and ice melted yesterday. A high of 46 is predicted for today, and that sounds downright balmy after the past week.
Except for McDonalds, Burger King and one 7-11, my area of Dallas was a ghost town earlier this week. Yesterday afternoon Dallas looked normal. Grocery stores were busy and all but a few businesses appeared to be open.
I read an absolute horror story yesterday that some could expect electricity bills of 5,000 to 10,000. No, that is not an exaggeration. That just can't be true, but the thought of the next bill made me wince. If gouging occurs on a widespread basis, Texas' grid may end up less unregulated than it is.
"Rich," the Old Man said dreamily, "is a little whiskey to drink and some food to eat and a roof over your head and a fish pole and a boat and a gun and a dollar for a box of shells." Robert Ruark
Folks using Griddy to play the electric market were paying double and, I'm hearing, triple digits per kWh this week. Sometimes when you roll the dice it comes up snake eyes.
I needed a burger last night. Not wanted, needed. Grabbed a pound of Angus 80/20, fired up the grill/flat top and made half pound bacon, cheese, onion, Anaheim burgers that even Whataburger would have been proud of.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
Short version is some grid equipment doesn’t take well to balls-to-the-wall to zero failures. The most significant issue immediately is turbine shaft warping... basically coal and natural gas plants turbines are really hot and then when the whole grid goes down, they are so hot they bend out of true whilst cooling down. Great way to make a four-six month problem that has $30-50m in direct costs and potentially the same in lost production costs, all while corporate bonds need to be paid at each plant. Multiply that times 50 and Texas has a problem that handicaps the entire nation.
Other stuff can happen too, but this stuff really never happens, as the grid reliability management keeps the scenarios from developing.
Well... Everywhere but the Texas. As clearly elucidated, these things only happen in Texas.
The grid is more fragile than many realize.
I am no expert but I have some customers that operate hydro dams which generate electricity. They try to keep everything as balanced as possible. It's kind of like a freight train, it takes a while to get that long train rolling and once everything is moving, adding or removing a little power is pretty easy. Introduce a big disruption and breakers start tripping and it takes a bit to bring things back online.
The other issue is the generators have a field that is basically an electromagnet. If the generator stops, the field has to be re-energized by an external power source.
These aren't your 2KW Honda generators with a 5HP motor, more like a 5,000 HP turbine that takes a bit to get running. Once it is running they will use power off the grid to energize the field and start generating electricity. The problem is that if the other generator miles away goes down or you lose the connection to it, you have no way to energize the field.
In order to keep balance among all the generators on the grid, they have to run in synch to the same frequency, 60Hz. Usually the biggest generator on the grid is the leader and the rest follow.
-Seconds Count. Misses Don't-
Snow completely melted here. It's amazing. Aunt is still without water. The old wiener dog was not happy to get dragged out of his blanket cacoon and go for a walk after two weeks.
Is the power utility in TX privately owned? How can they charge someone that much for power? I don't think that could happen here because utility rates are based on the cost of service. PUDs here are nonprofit utilities owned by the public, not by stockholders. They are in business solely to provide service at cost and regulated by statute.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
It seems weird, but in some places you can buy power from the electricity vendor of your choice, for whatever price you negotiate. IIRC a few years ago we had the option of buying 'green' electricity for a higher price, guaranteed to come from wind/solar/whatever. I suppose the power company gets a fee for maintaining the poles etc, I dunno.
Anyway, you could do that in Texas. One provider ('griddy' if you want to google) had a plan where you paid $9.99 a month, plus the wholesale price per kilowatt-hour at the instant you used it. You can find posts by customers from before the storm who are elated to be paying 3 cents a kwh or whatever. But there wasn't any price ceiling in the contract. If rates spiked, you either stopped using electricity, or paid Griddy whatever it was costing Griddy to buy those electrons at that instant.
Prices per kwh spiked to something like $9 during the storm. If that was more than you wanted to pay, you could turn off your main breaker. If not, you were kind of telling Griddy that you wanted them to buy that $9 kwh and send it to you.
FWIW, apparently Griddy saw this coming and was telling people to switch to a more conventional provider, but not everyone got the word or was able to in time.
I dunno what will happen. It might not be smart to allow contracts like that. People didn't think things through. I don't think it's fair to accuse Griddy of gouging; they were pretty open about the implications of their business model. If you're going to be a buy you power like that, you should probably have a generator so you can go off grid if/when the price spikes like that.
Reply With Quote