Texas power prices briefly soar 1,600% as a spring heat wave is expected to drive record demand for energy
fortune.com
For about one hour late Friday, day-ahead prices on ERCOT's website jumped as high as $688 per MWh.

lmao lmao.

Reminder that Texas is a separate grid, which is deregulated and financialized, according to neoliberal ideals of efficiency.

  • Tunnelvision [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    7 months ago

    Having power go out during peak summer never used to happen. Texas sucks ass, but genuinely we produce enough energy that we often sell it to the other energy grids from what I understand. We shouldn’t really have any brown/blackouts at all other than the freezes.

    • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      Summer probably wasn’t as hot (as 2023 and probably 2024)

      On an hourly basis, ERCOT load had never exceeded 80,000 megawatts (MW) before this summer. Not only was a record 85,464 MW load set on Aug. 10, but demand breached 80,000 MW on 42 days between June 1 and Aug. 31

      16 percent growth in two years will cause challenges for any infrastructure

      Population and GDP cannot explain peak summer load growth of 9 percent in 2022 and 7 percent in 2023

      • Tunnelvision [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        Ercot has been saying this for almost a decade at this point though. I’m not arguing it isn’t hotter than it used to be, I’m saying it’s more likely that they’re lying about the reasoning for it. Like their lack of modernization of the infrastructure in general.

        • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          10·
          7 months ago

          ERCOT is a bazinga system operator set up by the characters from looney tunes. They’re the only system operator without a forward capacity market. Everyone else pays uneconomic reserve plants money just to stay connected and ready to respond to demand spikes, but the brain trust at ERCOT decided it would be cheaper for rate payers to not do that. Turns out it is until it isn’t, and the only way they have to balance supply with demand is to curtail demand with eye bleedingly high real time prices since there isn’t enough slack in the system.

        • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          I would be surprised if there isn’t any manipulation of the market.

          Some of my state’s SOE electricity generators got sued by the federal government for price manipulation on the national energy market (and then they gave up and changed the rules to try and stop it)