Russ Conser’s Post

The WSJ Editorial Board writes, summer is two months away, yet the Texas power grid is already swooning. On Friday the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) asked power generators to postpone scheduled maintenance early this week “to help alleviate potential tight conditions” as temps rise into the not-so-sizzling 80s. The grid typically has excess power-generating capacity in the spring owing to mild weather. There’s also an abundance of solar and wind power. This is why plants go off-line for repairs in the spring to prepare for the summer when electricity use surges as people ramp up the air conditioning. Yet merely warm spring weather is now enough to push the Texas grid to the brink. Tuesday’s high is forecast to be 89 F in Dallas and 84 F in Houston. These temps shouldn’t force grid operators to break a sweat to keep the lights on, but they are. One culprit is skyrocketing electricity demand from population growth, new data centers and manufacturing plants. A surge in Bitcoin Inc. prices has also made cypto-mining more profitable. Many miners located servers in Texas because—get this—they can arbitrage grid crunches to get paid to reduce power usage. Data centers accounted for about 2.5% of US electricity in 2022 and are expected to make up more than 20% by 2030. Artificial intelligence is magnifying this demand. A web search uses less than one watt of power while an AI-powered search can require 100 watts. Training an AI search uses around 1,000 watts. The spring grid S.O.S. doesn’t augur well for the summer or the rest of the country. The past winter was one of the mildest on record, which eased the growing strain on the grid. Yet this summer is forecast to be one of the hottest, which means Americans will almost certainly be told to conserve power to prevent outages—i.e., don’t plan on plugging in your Tesla after getting home from work. One risk is that power-plant maintenance that is delayed or canceled will lead to more plants failing in the summer when they are needed. Better get that emergency generator while it’s still in stock. Our Take 1: Texas politicians have glibly claimed that Texas has the best of all worlds—strong economic growth, green renewables and low-cost energy. But in reality, they've aided and abetted the creation of one of the most on-the-cusp power grids in the nation. Our Take 2: Watch how power conservation by "good Texans and Texas businesses" in the form of "demand response" calls from Ercot will increasingly move to front and center in the state. Some will claim it to be a success. No, no. It should be seen for what it is—power rationing. And it stems directly from terrible energy policy in Austin and DC. ⚡⚡⚡ 😕 #ercot #texas #energy

This is a sterling take on power consumption. Not even beginning to count the strain we’d see from EV transition. Once again, for the umpteenth time, the only true renewable solution at scale is nuclear. Until then, coal, oil, and gas remain the single most stable power generation methods. Solar will be excellent for interstellar but you’ll still need steel to get up there in the first place.

Interesting to see what's happening to the Texas electricity system! Could businesses in Australia "game" a system to get paid by grid crunches to increase profitability too (happy for people in the know to answer)? Is Australia really ready for data centre and Artificial Intelligence electricity use? Some interesting snippets - "A surge in Bitcoin Inc. prices has also made cypto-mining more profitable. Many miners located servers in Texas because—get this—they can arbitrage grid crunches to get paid to reduce power usage. Data centers accounted for about 2.5% of US electricity in 2022 and are expected to make up more than 20% by 2030. Artificial intelligence is magnifying this demand. A web search uses less than one watt of power while an AI-powered search can require 100 watts. Training an AI search uses around 1,000 watts." Tim Ryan

Summer is two months away, yet the Texas power grid is already swooning. On Friday the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) asked power generators to postpone scheduled maintenance early this week “to help alleviate potential tight conditions” as temperatures rise into the not-so-sizzling 80s. The grid typically has excess power-generating capacity in the spring owing to mild weather. There’s also an abundance of solar and wind power. This is why plants go off-line for repairs in the spring to prepare for the summer when electricity use surges as people ramp up the air conditioning. Yet merely warm spring weather is now enough to push the Texas grid to the brink. Tuesday’s high is forecast to be 89 degrees in Dallas and 84 in Houston. These temperatures shouldn’t force grid operators to break a sweat to keep the lights on, but they are. One culprit is skyrocketing electricity demand from population growth, new data centers and manufacturing plants. A surge in Bitcoin prices has also made cypto-mining more profitable. Many miners located servers in Texas because—get this—they can arbitrage grid crunches to get paid to reduce power usage. Data centers accounted for about 2.5% of U.S. electricity in 2022 and are expected to make up more than 20% by 2030. Artificial intelligence is magnifying this demand. A web search uses less than one watt of power while an AI-powered search can require 100 watts. Training an AI search uses around 1,000 watts. The spring grid S.O.S. doesn’t augur well for the summer or the rest of the country. The past winter was one of the mildest on record, which eased the growing strain on the grid. Yet this summer is forecast to be one of the hottest, which means Americans will almost certainly be told to conserve power to prevent outages—i.e., don’t plan on plugging in your Tesla after getting home from work. One risk is that power-plant maintenance that is delayed or canceled will lead to more plants failing in the summer when they are needed. Better get that emergency generator while it’s still in stock.

Some of you may be aware that it's been *hot* in Texas this week. And given the rickety state of our grid, that means that we've once again flirted with collapsing the grid just to keep people cool. In May. Now, its true that some of this is due to natural gas plants being offline for maintenance to try and survive the brutality of Summer (ask me about 110°+ July and August weeks in Austin!). And this means that electricity prices skyrocketed yesterday afternoon during the worst of it. But the grid didn't go down. Wanna know why? Batteries. Releasing large battery storage and virtual power plant energy into the grid kept the AC on yesterday. (Well, not *my* AC, which decided to literally explode, leaving us sweating through the day yesterday. Ask me about Austin's "Spring!") This New York Times piece does an excellent job at explaining the growing importance of battery storage as electricity demand grows in states like Texas. But it also explains the real differences in how battery storage is used in Texas and California, and why in California batteries are decreasing CO2 emissions, whereas in Texas, they're *increasing* CO2 emissions thanks to ERCOT market dynamics. In short, batteries are going to be increasingly important to our energy futures. But they way in which they are used as part of an overall energy strategy matters. Technology is never an escape from politics and policy. #Technology #Energy #Batteries #VirtualPowerPlants #Texas https://lnkd.in/g8qAyKd5

The interesting but unasked question here is what attackers could do with access to the control systems for 200 megawatts of distributed power generation.

“The grid” isn’t a single entity: Any given spot in the US is served by one of three regional grid systems—one of which serves only the state of Texas—though they do connect to each other on some level to distribute power to millions of customers.

The energy storage sector appears to have found an application* that makes money, is easy to understand, and thus warms the hearts of bankers, without which that growth won't happen. Bankers are instinctively cautious and it is good this is so: they are the high priests of finance and decide who gets the capital to thrive -- and who isn't worthy. My first job out of college was as a credit analyst in San Francisco, crunching numbers for multi-million dollar projects like mining and pulp & paper mills for an Australian bank. We once received an invitation to be part of a bank syndicate for a Seattle-based company called McCaw Communications, building towers across the U.S. northwest for a new-fangled thing called a "mobile phone". The projected growth of these "mobile phones" was reminiscent of the graph below: hockeystick-like but unproven growth. Our senior credit committee in Sydney pondered it at length and ultimately decided it wasn't for us: the risk was too high. McCaw succeeded massively in the end but had to tap into more expensive money reflecting its true risk profile. And it was the right thing to do. So have patience. We at #Sinovoltaics are putting together a seminar in Manhattan later this year along with our partner #MunichRe specifically to educate bankers on the risks of #solarpanels and #energystorage. It is our contribution to advancing the industry as a whole. *the simplest application is proving to be the best: storage as a way to shift electricity supply from times of low demand (buy cheap) to high demand (sell dear). Thanks to Soltage LLC for original post.

"ERCOT still doesn’t take climate change into account in its planning, so increased air conditioning load doesn’t show up in demand projections. That’s one reason the agency was caught off-guard by the 85,000 megawatt peak during last summer’s record-breaking heat, making 11 calls for uncompensated consumer demand response (aka conservation appeals) in three months. Beyond that, the state’s energy thirst is only growing. AI data centers, oil and gas operations, semiconductor manufacturing, EV fleets, Direct Air Capture machines, hydrogen electrolyzers, water desalination machines, and increased heating and air conditioning loads all promise to send Texas’ skyrocketing electricity demand even higher. To meet that demand, the state needs both increased demand flexibility and better utilization of transmission. And we need it now." Read more in my latest article and don't forget to share and subscribe! https://lnkd.in/gDt_bkw6

Which cities in the U.S. struggle the most with ensuring safe, reliable power? Data from Whisker Labs' Ting sensor network is bringing clarity to this question in a way not possible before. “The CenterPoint grid is amongst the most challenged that we see,” Marshall said, compared to other utilities in not just Texas but across the country. “Houston has the most power outages that we measure in the country, by far.” A more resilient grid requires measurement and monitoring to understand where resources are needed most. Thank you Claire Hao for helping to bring attention to the increasing challenges Texans face with the state of its power grid, and more broadly, the difficult problems facing the US grid at large. https://lnkd.in/ehQWFaVp #gridresilience #utilities #powergrid #predictandprevent #insurtech