Texas, ERCOT, PUC and the severe winter storm

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Marktm

Well-known member
Leaf Supporting Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2016
Messages
854
Location
Houston, TX
It was recommended by ripple4 that I post my experience during this severe weather event as a new topic. Note that these are my observations and calcs from data available from both ERCOT and Griddy's pricing/timing during the event, but have not done extensive research on ERCOT/PUC's "cash flow" that was certainly in the billions $$s.

Comments from my experience in Houston, TX using Griddy - a retail provider - during the Texas storm:
- My contract with Griddy is basically a subscription fee of $10/month - and pay whatever energy cost is set by ERCOT/TX PUC over 15 min interval (may be 5 min average - would have made little difference during this event).
- There were several days of continuous $9/kWH pricing (yes, 900 cent/kWH). Not being at home and having gas heating, my consumption was only 20-30 kWH per day. Even with this low usage, my electrical bill during this extreme event was over $1000 - anecdotally that some where over $10,000.
- If the entire energy consumption listed by ERCOT during this several day event was priced at the level, my grosso-modo calcs indicate that the providers took in about $45 billion during the storm as every kWH was charged at this level, not just the high cost/marginal providers.
- As a result, Griddy folded and is being sued for millions $$ for gouging practices (IMO, a disgrace as in reality, the gouging is the ERCOT/PUC pricing structure).
- Millions of households statewide were left without power (heat) for several days as ERCOT shut down massive areas of the grid (temperatures in the teens and below freezing for extended days).
- It appears to me that large generator/retailers like NRG did not suffer so much because for them it was a "wash" (although ERCOT has a "Ancilliary" fee of about 10-15% that I guess they pocket - in this case billions $$s).
- Many ERCOT resignations resulted!
- I'm sure my analysis may overstate what ERCOT/providers "took in", as I saw reports that it was in the 10 - 20 billion $$, but regardless, the $9/kWH is so extreme that (IMO), the pricing system needs a complete overhaul. Marginal providers at 2 or 3 times the average rate would be more realistic?
- Bottom line, a real fiasco!
 
Marktm said:
- Bottom line, a real fiasco!
No s*it! TX's problem became ours when our natural gas cost went through the ROOF! Basically every gas supplier in MN, probably even ones who don't get their natural gas from TX :evil: are telling us that basically everyone in MN will need to pay $200-$400 in added natural gas prices for this event, businesses much more! Personally I don't think this is fair in the least as our gas meters are only read on a monthly basis so what they are going is taking our monthly gas usage and dividing it by now many days/hours? natural gas prices were through the roof, even if you used 0 gas during the event, you have no way of proving it as were billed monthly and everything will be averaged out that way :( Of course electricity won't be effected as TX is apparently an island to itself, wish natural gas was the same way!
Agree, a real fiasco.
 
We in Colorado on Xcel also have to pay: "Xcel customers could be charged extra $264 over 2 years following February cold snap." They are probably adding the monthly fee over 2 years to everyone connected to natural gas it does not matter if you actually were there or used energy. Last I heard it looked to be approved.
 
Yes we have Xcel also but I don't believe the huge natural gas price increase was limited to Xcel.
 
I'd seen https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2021-02-24/texas-power-grid-was-4-minutes-and-37-seconds-away-from-collapsing-heres-how-it-happened awhile back.
 
Thanks, interesting article. I'm not a power guy and I don't understand why the frequency of the grid would drop if it was over-loaded. The voltage - yes, that happens all the time - but I thought the frequency was always 60.0 no matter what. Maybe it's due to the fact that it was so very close to just failing completely. Pretty scary unless TX gets it's act together and updates its power systems.
 
I think the 2021 texas power outage was one more fork in the road, some people said it was proof that they need more fossil power, others that more renewable was needed. And there are examples of individuals reacting in both ways for each camp to point to, some people with the new ford F150 with powerboost hybrid served them well running the flat screen and coffee pot on 1/4 tank of gasoline, others lived in their Teslas or had power walls. both solutions out of the reach of a lot of people due to the cost.

Being that part of the problem was that gas well heads and pumping stations froze, and the power outage knocked off so many petrochemical plants. which then in turn raised prices for NG in the network that Texas distributes to, and now gasoline and plastics prices are up for everybody. But that the rest of the county is depending on, and pumping money into this situation in normal times, that is really the background problem. Texas seems to have a few calamities a year, why do we put up with this? my casual observation is that every hurricane that could hit the gulf sends oil traders into a frenzy and the speculation drives prices up.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-week-texas-freeze-seen-triggering-monthslong-plastics-shortage-11615973401
With WSJ if you cannot read it, try stop loading the page before the banner comes up, or click F12 and point select then delete the html code that is active for the banner to read the text.



Here is weather station data from Houston and it has good sun for 3 out of the 4 days. In my experience a few hours over 300w/m2 will put a meaningful amount of power in an off-grid battery. Texas had 4 hours of good sun on the 15th and 16th, the 17th was bad, and then the 18th was about 2 hours worth. A Tesla solar + powerwall customer or solar off-grider would have been well taken care of. When the storm they call "Uri" came though Ohio we had single day record setting snow at 14" while we didn't get the sun Texas did, I charged up my home battery and car the evening before just in case we had an outage. That didn't happen, and i simply used that power up with only a small loss from putting the energy in and out of the battery. I also have a propane generator that can charge my battery if i could not have used the grid.


I made a video that showed this power outage roughly every 6 hours or so made from screen captures on poweroutage.us. Its cool that I can see the waves of storms not in radar, but reported outages. https://youtu.be/vO-bMLIUrdc
 
Just saw this news article that the Texas legislator has bundled winterization goals, which are good, to fees on renewables. thoughts?

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-Senate-passes-bill-aiming-to-counter-16062267.php

"State Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, said while wind and solar have expanded in Texas, those are “unreliable” sources of energy because they cannot be called up at a moment’s notice during an emergency like the freeze in February.

To correct that, Schwertner said his bill will give the state’s grid monitor authority to create fees for solar and wind. As it stands now, he said billions of dollars in federal subsidies to wind and solar companies have “tilted” the market too much to benefit those sources of energy, and he aims to re-balance it."
 
ripple4 said:
Just saw this news article that the Texas legislator has bundled winterization goals, which are good, to fees on renewables. thoughts?

Appears that "winterization" might have helped the unusual situation:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politi...ring-the-great-texas-storm-yep-twice-n1426904
I don't have a good reading on subsidies, fees, tax incentives, etc. and how they affect the choices of building back a robust grid system regulated by ERCOT. What I do know is that charging $9 per kWH is a form of gouging that obviously does little to improve the ERCOT based grid. LIkely they pocketed most these windfalls for their own use.
IMO, if Fed/State Governments are ever going to keep the "politics" to a minimum and base decisions consistently two major issues must be resolved:
1. Some type of carbon tax or incentive is likely required that is consistent and has some "scientific" basis (good luck!)
2. Highly detailed life cycle costs must be considered for each decision of a new energy producer (obviously including the cost of "winterization" in parts of TX wind was needed). This must include some type of "carbon" cost.

Again (IMO), the solutions to such future crises is addressing each new generation installation based on their own particular issues which is quite different area by area. Getting the money/power grab out of this is probably the most difficult.
 
ripple4 said:
Here is weather station data from Houston and it has good sun for 3 out of the 4 days. In my experience a few hours over 300w/m2 will put a meaningful amount of power in an off-grid battery. Texas had 4 hours of good sun on the 15th and 16th, the 17th was bad, and then the 18th was about 2 hours worth. A Tesla solar + powerwall customer or solar off-grider would have been well taken care of.


I used my actual usages during those four days and the actual average daily cost per kWH (3 days were $9/kWH). I then integrated the days solar wattages from the weather data (grosso-modo for sure!) and made some assumptions about efficiencies. A sweet spot for me would be a 9-10kW array with a V2X enabled Leaf plus - that would be sitting in the garage anyway - as roads were impassable. If we had lost power, then we would have had enough battery energy to keep the gas furnace and fridges going the entire time and saved around $800 of charges for the entire event. Since we did not ever lose power, and we were not at home the entire time, the result would have been making a little money by selling back overall and saving over $650 in energy costs for the 4 days. This would require the proper "smarts" for energy management and/or internet based controls with a small UPS backup for the router.
 
I'm not sure vehicle to grid is ever going to take off. The industry has had lots of time to think about it and make a business case, and nobody's done it commercially in the USA. I think the reason is that electricity in a vehicle battery is much more valuable than it may seem, its priced in gasolines' value, where home power is priced at a much lower cost. Maybe, from the end users perspective, home batteries are cheaper than EV batteries.

you talk about the smart home brain, this video shows how one guy did it, only selling back at the highest price. he must have had a power plan that is like the griddy plan, with the unfiltered wholesale price available to him. with all that custom development, i doubt it will ever pay off, but he is on TV so maybe that's what he wanted. if that approach was in widespread used, where home batteries were dispatchable, that would be a good outcome. Taken as a whole they call that a virtual power plant, but these are not grass roots things, they are top-down at this point.

https://youtu.be/yxABosWfuus?t=724

I'm not a fan of the pajamas media website that is linked here, they rebranded it 'PJmedia' now i see. on the wikipedia site, most of the space is used listing how they have been caught making false claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJ_Media
 
I think that V2Home will be a fairly small niche market, and that's about it. Give me a 5+kw unit for no more than $3k, and I'll buy one. I'm tired of dealing with generators, and it's now too hard for me, even with the gen now residing in an enclosure near the connection port.
 
Marktm said:
Comments from my experience in Houston, TX using Griddy - a retail provider - during the Texas storm:
- My contract with Griddy is basically a subscription fee of $10/month - and pay whatever energy cost is set by ERCOT/TX PUC over 15 min interval (may be 5 min average - would have made little difference during this event).
- There were several days of continuous $9/kWH pricing (yes, 900 cent/kWH). Not being at home and having gas heating, my consumption was only 20-30 kWH per day. Even with this low usage, my electrical bill during this extreme event was over $1000 - anecdotally that some where over $10,000.
In the past, did you save money while you were on Griddy? What were your average cents per kWh including taxes and fees?

I heard a lot of advertising from them on the radio a few years back and even considered switching but I'm glad I didn't.
 
Triggerhappy007 said:
In the past, did you save money while you were on Griddy? What were your average cents per kWh including taxes and fees?

I heard a lot of advertising from them on the radio a few years back and even considered switching but I'm glad I didn't.

Griddy used the average all in cost in the ERCOT domain and compared to my actual all inclusive cost and I had saved around $1200 over a 28 month period - very substantial as I'm not a huge user ($100/month average). I'd watch fairly often, especially during the summer and would text my wife to not use the oven/stove and turn up the A/C a couple of degrees when the fairly predicitable spikes occurred. So it took some work. I also precooled the house during the night and typically only charged my Leaf during early morning. It was actually a fun challange that if everyone had practiced, our ERCOT grid would be so much more stable!
 
Marktm said:
Griddy used the average all in cost in the ERCOT domain and compared to my actual all inclusive cost and I had saved around $1200 over a 28 month period - very substantial as I'm not a huge user ($100/month average).
How many kWh do you use a month?
 
My usage varies so much because of A/C:
Peak summer ~ 2000+ kWH - June thru Sept.
Mid fall/winter/spring - 600-800 kWH
All in rate for entire 28 months = 9 cents/kWH (before the ERCOT disaster - a one month bill of over $1000 with only 20 - 30 kWH/day)
 
For those interested in the Griddy bankruptcy (and some damn good reasons to pass blame to ERCOT):
https://www.griddy.com/

This should be a good test of our "two tiered" justice system - we'll see.
 
Marktm said:
My usage varies so much because of A/C:
Peak summer ~ 2000+ kWH - June thru Sept.
Mid fall/winter/spring - 600-800 kWH
All in rate for entire 28 months = 9 cents/kWH (before the ERCOT disaster - a one month bill of over $1000 with only 20 - 30 kWH/day)
9 cents/kWh is a lot cheaper than what TXU or Reliant charges, but that's about what the lowest electric providers charge for a 12 month+ contract. Have you used the price comparison site, powertochoose.org?
 
I have not done a cost comparison of the "cheapest" - generally because these advertised costs don't work well for me as I'm a low consumer and there are usually fixed costs (and sometimes almost hidden) added on that make the "all-in" different than the advertised. That being said, the $10/month "subscription" fee AND the credit card fee (sort of hidden) made it difficult to achieve really low "all ins" during my low usage months. My main goal was to see how much influence I could make by regulating my main users - and I'm convinced that using V2X with a really cheap Leaf battery - and solar - would have a significant payback. Plus give me a "low carbon" resilient system that I could get real life experience with. I have two solar systems installed at a rural location and I'm quite familiar with the cost/benefits at a location that is powered by a co-op at a "fixed" rate. It is difficult in TX as energy rates are soooo low! However, overall US, a "smart" control system with a modest solar/battery storage system could make qute a difference in the grid stability/resilience - just IMHO.
 
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