Re:What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
by epistasis on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @09:24PM
(#26161883)
The economics are changing quickly, and storage is replacing gas plants. There are now more GW of battery backup in the pipeline than gas plants, and many multiples of solar and wind GW for each new gas GW.
https://rmi.org/clean-energy-is-canceling-gas-plants/
Texas is experiencing the interchange first because it's one off one of the few places where independent operators can connect and undercut those who have made bad long term capital investments.
Re:What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
by StillBored on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @10:24PM
(#26162264)
So, remind me again how much storage it takes to keep a grid going for a week? And please don't confuse GW for GWh.
Re:What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
by epistasis on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @03:49PM
(#26171553)
There is nobody who is saying "let's fix the grid and design a system that will be reliable" in Texas. It's just people raising money to build projects that they think can make money.
Right now, there's more and more people thinking they can make money with batteries, and fewer and fewer people thinking that gas can make money on the grid.
Which, if we are to believe the hypothesis that markets make good capital allocations decisions, says that they future of the grid is battery backup, and no more gas backup.
This is a process of transition, so pointing at the current amount and saying "that's not enough" is going to be obvious.
At least part of the problem here seems to be the fact that the NG plants can't start due to lack of gas because the supply is frozen.
The other problem is of course that backing up wind with NG means that its not actually "green" anymore. Its reduced the carbon footprint, but at the growth rates in TX its only slowed the increase in CO2 output, not decreased it.