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Texas Energy Grid OT

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bkp_duke

Well-Known Member
May 15, 2016
9,851
56,195
San Diego, CA
I think someone should call Elon and tell him to stop building the factory in Texas, cause the green energy transition is going to be halted by this politicians. Elon should be warned!

Ever actually driven through west TX? That state has far more wind energy generation deployed than any other state in the US. In fact, it has as more than the next 3 combined:
US wind energy by state: Ranking the top 10

TX - 24.899GW
IA - 8.422GW
OK - 8.072GW
CA - 5.885GW

TX also has an extremely good energy grid that is open for competition. The companies that maintain the wires/poles are not the same as the energy producers, and consumers in most parts of the state can buy energy from any producer they want (including the green ones). This makes for extremely cheap power.

Texas' unique deregulated energy market - Solar United Neighbors

The rest of the US could learn something from how TX has setup their energy production and distribution network. It's how competition should work to bring a better product to consumers.

Elon made a great choice with going for TX.
 
Ever actually driven through west TX? That state has far more wind energy generation deployed than any other state in the US. In fact, it has as more than the next 3 combined:
US wind energy by state: Ranking the top 10

TX - 24.899GW
IA - 8.422GW
OK - 8.072GW
CA - 5.885GW

TX also has an extremely good energy grid that is open for competition. The companies that maintain the wires/poles are not the same as the energy producers, and consumers in most parts of the state can buy energy from any producer they want (including the green ones). This makes for extremely cheap power.

Texas' unique deregulated energy market - Solar United Neighbors

The rest of the US could learn something from how TX has setup their energy production and distribution network. It's how competition should work to bring a better product to consumers.

Elon made a great choice with going for TX.


Thanks for the information, but you missed my “/s” and :rolleyes: at the bottom of the post. ;)
 
TX also has an extremely good energy grid that is open for competition. The companies that maintain the wires/poles are not the same as the energy producers, and consumers in most parts of the state can buy energy from any producer they want (including the green ones). This makes for extremely cheap power.

The Texas energy market is fascinating. I was reading about a utility where you pay them $10 a month plus the wholesale cost of electricity. In exchange for some price volatility, you get some very cheap energy. Not for everyone but very interesting. That provides strong incentive to reduce usage during high demand which overall improves system cost and reliability. It also allows you to install home solar and the prices you get are, I believe, 100% market based. This matters because that is a scalable solution and no need for endless fights between utility and customer over how to value the cost of electricity that your home solar system produces.
 
This matters because that is a scalable solution and no need for endless fights between utility and customer over how to value the cost of electricity that your home solar system produces.

I'm troubled by the amount of misleading info about the deregulated Texas electricity markets being presented here. This probably isn't the place for a lengthy discussion on this topic but I will say three things since Tesla is in the renewable energy business and their cars require electricity to work:

1) There are no fights between the electrical utility and customer in Texas over how to value the excess electricity produced by your rooftop solar because the citizens (customers) have no say in the matter and the amount they will pay you ranges from absolutely zero to very little.

2) Electricity in Texas SHOULD be cheap due to the amount of excess natural gas created by extensive fracking and the amount of cheap wind power. The natural gas prices have been hovering near zero and sometimes go negative. But electricity in Texas is not as cheap as it would be under a regulated system. The energy companies are making record profits. There are 15 states with cheaper residential electricity than Texas and almost all of them are fully regulated in a traditional manner. This, despite the fact that power in Texas should be cheaper, not due to de-regulation but due to abundant and cheap natural gas. Texas is sorely lacking in natural gas pipelines to export the huge volume that is a by-product of fracking so gas prices are the cheapest in the nation. It literally has nowhere to go. But the electrical consumer is not benefitting from this in the form of cheap electricity.

State by State average electrical rates:
Electricity Rates by State (November 2020) | ChooseEnergy.com®

3) Texas deregulated electricity in 1999 and by 2012 Texas was ranked the lowest in the nation for grid reliability. Do I need to say how important it is to have reliable electricity?

Texas grid reliability worst in the nation (Article is from The Texas Tribune and republished by NYT):
State Ranks Last in Electrical Reliability (Published 2012)

As TSLA investors we should all be experts in misinformation and propaganda by now. Energy companies in Texas put out a lot of propaganda with regard to how great deregulation is. They wouldn't do this if it didn't allow them to take a bigger slice of the pie home. Regulated utilities are incentivized to have reliable power while in a completely deregulated system the only incentive is to sell more electricity. It may not pay to invest in the #1 most important thing, reliability.
 
I'm troubled by the amount of misleading info about the deregulated Texas electricity markets being presented here. This probably isn't the place for a lengthy discussion on this topic but I will say three things since Tesla is in the renewable energy business and their cars require electricity to work:

1) There are no fights between the electrical utility and customer in Texas over how to value the excess electricity produced by your rooftop solar because the citizens (customers) have no say in the matter and the amount they will pay you ranges from absolutely zero to very little.

2) Electricity in Texas SHOULD be cheap due to the amount of excess natural gas created by extensive fracking and the amount of cheap wind power. The natural gas prices have been hovering near zero and sometimes go negative. But electricity in Texas is not as cheap as it would be under a regulated system. The energy companies are making record profits. There are 15 states with cheaper residential electricity than Texas and almost all of them are fully regulated in a traditional manner. This, despite the fact that power in Texas should be cheaper, not due to de-regulation but due to abundant and cheap natural gas. Texas is sorely lacking in natural gas pipelines to export the huge volume that is a by-product of fracking so gas prices are the cheapest in the nation. It literally has nowhere to go. But the electrical consumer is not benefitting from this in the form of cheap electricity.

State by State average electrical rates:
Electricity Rates by State (November 2020) | ChooseEnergy.com®

3) Texas deregulated electricity in 1999 and by 2012 Texas was ranked the lowest in the nation for grid reliability. Do I need to say how important it is to have reliable electricity?

Texas grid reliability worst in the nation (Article is from The Texas Tribune and republished by NYT):
State Ranks Last in Electrical Reliability (Published 2012)

As TSLA investors we should all be experts in misinformation and propaganda by now. Energy companies in Texas put out a lot of propaganda with regard to how great deregulation is. They wouldn't do this if it didn't allow them to take a bigger slice of the pie home. Regulated utilities are incentivized to have reliable power while in a completely deregulated system the only incentive is to sell more electricity. It may not pay to invest in the #1 most important thing, reliability.

This source
State Electricity Profiles - Energy Information Administration
shows the retail electricity rates averaged over the year rather than monthly. Probably a better indicator when a mix of NG, wind and solar is involved. It shows Texas is only 11% higher than the cheapest electricity in the country (Louisiana).

As far as reliability goes, 2012 is too old a source to be accurate today. From
https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/PA/Performance Analysis DL/NERC_SOR_2020.pdf
the reliability issues are from rapidly increasing demand on the Texas grid (population and business increase).

"Texas continues to have insufficient resources to meet the Reference Margin Level but still successfully met demand throughout the 2019 summer season. Despite having set a new system-wide peak demand record of 74,666 MW on August 12, 2019, sufficient resources were available throughout the peak day to remain above reserve requirements; this was primarily due to higher than average contribution from wind generation resources and lower than average total generation outages.."
 
This source
State Electricity Profiles - Energy Information Administration
shows the retail electricity rates averaged over the year rather than monthly. Probably a better indicator when a mix of NG, wind and solar is involved. It shows Texas is only 11% higher than the cheapest electricity in the country (Louisiana).

Right. But electricity in Texas should be less than Louisiana, not more!

As far as reliability goes, 2012 is too old a source to be accurate today.

Texas deregulated electricity in 1999. 13 years later they had the least reliable grid in the nation. That wasn't a coincidence. Sure, the problem is fixable (with regulations) but a fully regulated grid has huge advantages over deregulating and making it the "Wild West" when it comes to grid reliability.

Private industries always crow beautiful about deregulation. They tell you how much money you will save because "competition". But it almost never plays out that way because these companies want to maximize profits. That's why they wanted to deregulate in the first place. Trust me when I tell you these energy companies do not have the consumer's best interest in mind as they lobby for deregulation.
 
I'm troubled by the amount of misleading info about the deregulated Texas electricity markets being presented here. This probably isn't the place for a lengthy discussion on this topic but I will say three things since Tesla is in the renewable energy business and their cars require electricity to work:

1) There are no fights between the electrical utility and customer in Texas over how to value the excess electricity produced by your rooftop solar because the citizens (customers) have no say in the matter and the amount they will pay you ranges from absolutely zero to very little.

2) Electricity in Texas SHOULD be cheap due to the amount of excess natural gas created by extensive fracking and the amount of cheap wind power. The natural gas prices have been hovering near zero and sometimes go negative. But electricity in Texas is not as cheap as it would be under a regulated system. The energy companies are making record profits. There are 15 states with cheaper residential electricity than Texas and almost all of them are fully regulated in a traditional manner. This, despite the fact that power in Texas should be cheaper, not due to de-regulation but due to abundant and cheap natural gas. Texas is sorely lacking in natural gas pipelines to export the huge volume that is a by-product of fracking so gas prices are the cheapest in the nation. It literally has nowhere to go. But the electrical consumer is not benefitting from this in the form of cheap electricity.

State by State average electrical rates:
Electricity Rates by State (November 2020) | ChooseEnergy.com®

3) Texas deregulated electricity in 1999 and by 2012 Texas was ranked the lowest in the nation for grid reliability. Do I need to say how important it is to have reliable electricity?

Texas grid reliability worst in the nation (Article is from The Texas Tribune and republished by NYT):
State Ranks Last in Electrical Reliability (Published 2012)

As TSLA investors we should all be experts in misinformation and propaganda by now. Energy companies in Texas put out a lot of propaganda with regard to how great deregulation is. They wouldn't do this if it didn't allow them to take a bigger slice of the pie home. Regulated utilities are incentivized to have reliable power while in a completely deregulated system the only incentive is to sell more electricity. It may not pay to invest in the #1 most important thing, reliability.

I'm troubled by the misleading FUD here in this post.

First and foremost - the NYT article is extremely out of date. During the time period reported by that article, the reliability of the TX grid was greatly impacted by 2 major things during the period they elected to select and "report" on:
1) a rapidly growing population which put extra stress on the grid (which has now been accommodated and new growth projections put in place)
2) several MAJOR hurricanes which took out large swaths of both power generation and distribution infrastructure for weeks to months on end - Hurricanes Ike (2008) and Rita (2005). I was stuck in a hospital ICU for a week in Dallas treating patients during Rita, because the hurricane had knocked out power to Houston up through Dallas.

Additionally, the comparison is one of apples to avocadoes - TX has the smallest power grid of all "regions". There is literally less area from which to balance power generation and distribution. Compared to say the Western grid, which is a mix of 11 states and 2 Canadian provinces, covering some 15X the area of the TX ERCOT grid. If the same yardstick were applied to CA, it would have some serious power problems as well (and does still given how many rolling outage and calls for reduced usage we had in just the last year alone). In fact, until about a decade ago, CA was its own power grid (joined the Western grid in 2014), and experienced far more outages in that time. It wasn't until they reached power distribution agreements with neighboring states that they were able to improve the number of outages experienced due to power generation deficits. It's not that CA fixed their generation overnight, they just went to neighbors and started buying electricity from them.

For anyone that REALLY wants to get deep in the weeds on this one, and not go by some cherry-picked NYT article (they hate pretty much everything TX with a passion), go to the source for the latest NERC report from 2019, here:
https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/PA/Performance Analysis DL/NERC_SOR_2019.pdf

For those wanting the TL;DR version, the Executive Summary Key Findings pages summarize things nicely:
"Key Finding 3
In Texas, there is still reliability risk in 2019 due to the projected capacity deficit, but better than expected performance from the generation fleet helped meet 2018 summer peak demand. Texas continues to have insufficient resources to meet the Reference Margin Level, but still successfully met demand throughout the 2018 summer season. Despite having set a new system-wide peak demand record of 73,308 MW on July 19, 2018, higher than average peak availability from both wind and conventional generation (along with the use of demand response resources) helped serve peak demand and emergency operating procedures, such as firm load shedding, was not needed. For more detailed information, refer to Chapter 3: Reliability Indicators.
"

Rapid population and business growth continues to be the driving factor in TX for not meeting demand through normal generation, although this has GREATLY improved and there was no need to call for reduced usage days or rolling blackouts (CA sure cannot say that).


The TX grid is comparable in reliability to any other grid in the US (and better when you factor out outages due to natural disasters, which TX has to deal with at least as much as other parts of the country - hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, high wind storms). Furthermore, the TX grid has done this with good old fashioned American competition. Bringing better rates to their clients, while still maintaining comparable reliability to grids that are 5-15 times the size.
 
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Right. But electricity in Texas should be less than Louisiana, not more!



Texas deregulated electricity in 1999. 13 years later they had the least reliable grid in the nation. That wasn't a coincidence. Sure, the problem is fixable (with regulations) but a fully regulated grid has huge advantages over deregulating and making it the "Wild West" when it comes to grid reliability.

Private industries always crow beautiful about deregulation. They tell you how much money you will save because "competition". But it almost never plays out that way because these companies want to maximize profits. That's why they wanted to deregulate in the first place. Trust me when I tell you these energy companies do not have the consumer's best interest in mind as they lobby for deregulation.

This is an over simplistic view, and here is why:
LA is NOT growing in any appreciable amount of either population or businesses.

TX is one of the fastest growing (if not the fastest) growing states in the nation for both population and business. This means the CapEx expenditures in TX per capita for the power grid are enormous compared to LA.
 
I'm troubled by the misleading FUD here in this post....
The TX grid is comparable in reliability to any other grid in the US (and better when you factor out outages due to natural disasters, which TX has to deal with at least as much as other parts of the country - hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, high wind storms). Furthermore, the TX grid has done this with good old fashioned American competition. Bringing better rates to their clients, while still maintaining comparable reliability to grids that are 5-15 times the size.

You're probably understating the Texas grid accomplishments. Perhaps the most reliable and lowest cost grids on earth, more so if adjusting for the weather extremes, generally high growth rate in new industrial and consumer customers and population.

Only China might be considered to have health with this sort fo challenge successfully. China, though, has a robust governmental power. Texas has achieved this while having a very light regulatory touch. There are legitimate criticisms of the Texas grid management process, but they pale to insignificance compared to their achievements.

Then add that Texas wind power is the largest in the US and compares in scale and success only with North Sea border nations, none of which come near to the growth rate in demand and weather extremes that Texas faces.

For anybody who thinks this is wrong in any way, just study the facts.

Texas is not in any way monolithic, but it attracts stereotyping in the way that Russia, China and a few other countries do. It is sad that ignorance yields prejudice so easily.
I apologize if I am too strident. I admit my blood begins to boil when the Texas grid is so easily dismissed. Just compare any other North America region. Only Quebec/Ontario come close, and they treat their dependable resource is a major export industry. Texas is about to do the same, gradually converting itself from Fossil Fuel dominant exporting to renewable export dominant. That will take less time than did the former, and it's all happening by pure economic logic.
 
Right. But electricity in Texas should be less than Louisiana, not more!



Texas deregulated electricity in 1999. 13 years later they had the least reliable grid in the nation. That wasn't a coincidence. Sure, the problem is fixable (with regulations) but a fully regulated grid has huge advantages over deregulating and making it the "Wild West" when it comes to grid reliability.

Private industries always crow beautiful about deregulation. They tell you how much money you will save because "competition". But it almost never plays out that way because these companies want to maximize profits. That's why they wanted to deregulate in the first place. Trust me when I tell you these energy companies do not have the consumer's best interest in mind as they lobby for deregulation.
Having worked on the implementation of the customer information/billing system for Oncore (the distribution component of the grid in TX) I tend to agree. There are some benefits to deregulation but the functionality we provided was basically the same as any other utility. The retail side just seemed to add a middle man layer (with admin costs and profits). I’m really a “free market is the best option usually, but not always practical” guy.
 
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Even Renewables Are Bigger In Texas

"The grid operator’s latest figures indicate that they expect, by the end of the year to have 31,069 MW of wind and 6,035 MW of solar on the system, up from 23,860 and 2,281 MW of wind and solar at the end of 2019."

"The total capacity of energy storage projects is up over 400% from August 2019 and, as recently as Spring 2020, surpassed the capacity of natural gas projects in the queue to take the third spot behind solar and wind."

The changing mix of the Texas electrical grid is quite interesting considering they aren't exactly pushing renewables there. They just let it compete on costs. And they don't really make any attempt to consider the externalities of burning fossil fuel, which gives fossil fuel an unfair advantage in that type of system. The growing storage market in Texas hints at the massive potential for Tesla Energy.
 
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Ironically enough . . . the reason our family deployed Solar + PWs (with more solar coming in about a month) was because of:
1) INSANE costs for grid power in San Diego (starts at 28c/kwh and goes up to the 50s, depending upon your usage)
2) Concern for prolonged power outage due to either wildfires or a large earthquake

If we were still in Dallas, Solar + PWs would not make sense, even is Tesla's very attractive pricing on solar.
 
Forecasted lows for wholesale Texas electricity generation is below 1.5¢/kWh tonight. When you add the transmission costs of 3.9¢, it works out to 5.4¢/kWh. This pattern has been playing out for years, because wind generation peaks sometime around 3AM, right about the time demand is lowest. Its really hard to beat the competitive Texas market -- but is worth noting, that there are significant government subsidies at work to make these prices so low.

First, the federal government Production Tax Credit (PTC), which, under the right circumstances, makes the price paid by consumers for the generation negative (transmission costs always pull the total back positive).

Second, the state of Texas has all consumers pay for the last 10 years of transmission upgrades needed to transport the wind energy from the panhandle down to the population centers -- to the benefit of those who can shift their power consumption during the windy hours of 2-5AM.

The outcome, is that, those, who use an electricity plan from giddy.com, get ridiculously cheap electricity charging overnight. For anyone who wants to see the hourly dynamic of wind fluctuations, see ERCOT.
 
Installed wind capacity for Texas, this year, is as follows. Most of these numbers come from ERCOT, itself. Numbers for November and December are estimates:
01: 28,000
02: 28,250
03: 28,500
04: 28,750
05: 28,171
06: 28,351
07: 28,368
08: 28,816
09: 28,816
10: 29,341
11: 31,859
12: 33,000 MW
Expect diminished growth in 2021, since provisions of the Production Tax Credit expire. Annually, the capacity factors for wind are around 35-38%, but skew higher in the spring and during the 2-5AM hours. For example, last night, wind generation contributed 49% as compared to the load on the Texas-only grid. At 3:00AM, the capacity factor on the wind turbines was 52% -- which is not unusual for these early AM hours.

For comparison, the 16,500 MW peak generation from wind, last night, on the ERCOT grid is almost half of the available capacity for California, today, November 6
 
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