It’s not much of a secret that Texas’ nearly completely isolated grid is in a bit of a pickle, with generating capacity often being handily outstripped during periods of extreme demand. In a latest bid to fight this problem, smart thermostats are being offered to customers, who will then participate in peak-shaving. The partnership between NRG Energy Inc., Renew Home LLC, and Alphabet Inc. will see about 650,000 of these thermostats distributed to customers.
For customers the incentive would be mostly financial, though the details on the potential cost savings seem scarce. The thermostats would be either a Vivint (an NRG company) or Google Nest branded one, which would be controlled via Google Cloud, allowing for thermostat settings to be changed to reduce the load on the grid. This is expected to save ‘300 MW’ in the first two years, though it’s not clear whether this means ‘continuously’, or intermittent like with a peaker natural gas plant.
Demand curtailment is not a new thing, with it being a big thing among commercial customers in South Korea, as we discussed within the topic of vehicle-to-grid energy storage. Depending on how it is implemented it can make a big difference, but it’ll remain to see how regular consumers take to the idea. It also provides more evidence for reducing grid load being a lot easier than adding grid-level storage, which is becoming an increasingly dire topic as more non-dispatchable solar and wind power is added to the grid.
It seems counterintuitive that plugging in tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of additional devices could save energy. Personally I’m not sure I like the idea of giving a company that looks to save money control over my heating or let them have the ability to turn off my fridge freezer when it suits them.
The idea is pretty simple; When the grid is overburdened, you try to lower the thermostat to use less heat (and corrospondingly draw less energy from the grid). In times of energy excess, you then heat, and would pay less per BTU, compared to those other times. The capital investment for the device would be a few huundred dollars perhaps. Do you not think this much could be saved? Why is this “counterintuitive”?
Maybe the Texas energy companies could spend some money on improving their grid along with increased energy production instead of lining the pockets of their billionaire investors?
Nah. That’s a dumb idea.
Maybe they could tie into the national grid to allow them to buy/sell capacity with other states?
Nah, Texas is an island, don’t need nuthin from noone.
They do tie to the international grid through HVDC converter stations.
bite your tongue! how would those billionaire investors survive?
Woah, that would mean spending money. Think of the “poor” shareholders, and what about the fat bonuses for the managers! They have families you know, and that Yacht doesn’t pay for itself.
Increased generation is facing huge regulatory problems. More gas turbines run into emissions restrictions (along with NG production problems in extreme cold) and renewable energy is unreliable for base load, especially in extreme conditions. On the nuclear front, the STP plant in San Antonio started adding reactors in 2006 — and they’ve never been added, primarily because the red tape and regulatory burden made them uneconomical. They finally gave up in 2018.
The CO2 released from NG turbines is negligible, and scrubbers take the NOX emissions down below 30 ppm. But, hydrocarbons are scary. Nuclear had literally no emissions, and other than contaminated PPE, all of the “spent” fuel can be used as fuel in different kinds of reactors, and sent back and forth. (This is why all the spent fuel lives in containment pools and isn’t sent to disposal — it’s still worth too much to throw away.) But, nuclear is scary.
So, instead we extract toxic metals to make non-recyclable solar panels and build giant ecologically disruptive turbines (that also can’t be recycled) to allow us to fail to generate enough power.
You haven’t mentioned the most important thing to fix: connect to the grids of your neighbours. Buy power from them when you’re short, sell power to them when they’re short. Duh!
…too soshulist an idea?
Umm… how’s that again? Unless they’re capturing the exhaust gases and sequestering the carbon dioxide in some fashion, then the CO2 released is no more “negligible” than that released from burning any other hydrocarbon.
jenningsthecat: It is lower than any other hydrocarbons. Methane has 4 hydrogens and one carbon, producing 2 water and one CO2. All other hydrocarbons have a lower ratio of H to C. Methane is 4:1 Ethane is 3:1 Propane is 8:3 Butane is 5:2. Octane is 9:4, etc.
Oh cut the BS about solar panels or turbines being non-recyclable, there’s numerous startups doing just that, and large though turbine blades are they are not dangerous and pale in insignificance against the waste produced by other industries or even households.
Throwing old turbine blades straight into landfill isn’t perfect but it’s about the equivalent of scrapping a few old RV’s or boats (or planes) which are made of similar composites and similarly not recyclable, it’s GRP not nuclear fallout. Compared to other waste like old tyres it’s a fart in a hurricane.
Nat Gas plants release ~1lb CO2 per kWh. Texas is projecting 493TW (yes, TeraWatts) usage for 2024. Thats 493 billion pounds of CO2 – not exactly a rounding error.
There is also the problem with gas leaks in upstream / midstream oil & gas. As someone who used to lead/detection & repair in West Texas I can say that there is a crazy amount of raw gas being leaked from these facilities. Super emitters get all the press, but there are small leaks happening everywhere. There’s a reason the Permian smells like it does.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11
More of an, “what happens when your neighbors too build too much renewable power and start using your grid to dump it?”
The issue is the peak-to-average ratio of production, where you get peaks of 5-10 times the instant power to meet the average demand over the long term, so you hit peaks above your demand at around 20-30% renewables integration level and have to dump it on someone else’s grid.
If that other grid is also producing great quantities of renewable power, there’s a great chance that they too are facing the same problem as you are, at the exact same time. They would also have a good chance of having no renewable power available just as you don’t.
In other words, it only works if you have a very big neighbor that isn’t producing nearly as much renewable power, kinda like Denmark is to the rest of the European grid. One country can claim high portions of clean energy by piggybacking on a 10x larger fossil fuel powered grid.
Without shareholders (investors) there would be no grid. Because Texas pursued a local owned system, power equity was made possible. LBJ got his start in the electrification of rural Texas.
As someone that originally tried to be a part of a previous version of this program, I was enticed by the incentives when I signed up. The first day the automation kicked in on my thermostat, it raised the set-point for the air conditioning to 85F. My home has always run a little bit warm at 77F, but 85F was too much for us, and I immediately got complaints from my housemates that it got too warm.
In minutes, I was back in the thermostat overriding and disabling this program, bringing our in-home temperature back down as quick as our AC could do(probably using more energy in the process, rather than holding it near the 77F we always would have it), and then made a complaint to the program’s complaint line. I haven’t heard a reply back, nor have I rejoined any such program.
For Reference, I’m in Hidalgo County, Texas and this occurred on a lovely July afternoon. I have/ had a NEST thermostat for about 2 years before this, so in theory it knew how to handle the heating and cooling of my home, so why were we forced 8 degrees higher?
Maybe another option is to over-cool the home by a degree or 2(only a degree or 2) before peak hours, and stagger when everybody’s Air Conditioning makes the switch?
Another crazy idea for the Texas grid specifically – FIX the grid such that it can stand up to whatever last 50 years worth of absolute min/ max temps have been, and then go for another 25 degrees beyond those limits, so that the grid can survive reasonable “freak” events in either direction. Then maintain the grid, looking for and fixing any points of insulation or weather proofing that have failed or have been in use since before the youngest technicians have been alive.
“The Grid” as it is, provides a service that consumers pay for, with a reasonable expectation that it will stand up to a “normal” level of inclement weather. The consumers aren’t expected to be up on the poles or working the plants because that’s what we pay the generation and distribution companies for… In the northern parts of Texas, this means temperatures that get to and below freezing, sometimes mildly sub-zero for the northernmost regions. This couldn’t be a simple one-year fix, but it would be more reliable to start with systems known to either be most important, or that have failed most often in the past(Employ some form of systems Triage maybe?)
Traditionally, the utility would have a relay that could break the signal for your HVAC system to curtail the outdoor unit in 15 minute intervals per hour. With the advent of connected thermostats, the shift has been toward setting the temperature back by 3 degrees F. They get the reduction without completely shutting the equipment off, at least not for a long period of time. There is a reduction in comfort, but not a complete shutting off of the equipment for long periods of time. The user can adjust the setpoint at any time, with the caveat that they don’t get credit for participation in that particular ADR (Automated Demand Response) event.
Unintended consequence – people set their thermostats 3 degrees higher
I was thinking about this the other day, maybe they should be giving free heat pumps to everyone who has electric resistive heat. Start with those baseboard heaters.
A microcontroller sure does use a lot less energy than an AC compressor or a heating coil. It’s not too complicated.
But yeah I sure do hate my utility company and wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. And seeing as they weigh many hundreds of tons, I can’t throw them at all!
It’s simple economics, a half hearted push to “reduce load” and blame the customer when it cannot meet the demand but the power provider gets to keep the profit of being under powered for a peak demand the rest of the year.
Until that narrative changes this will be the norm.
I like the idea here, seems like a good partial solution to the overtaxed grid. But a cloud connected off the shelf domestic thermostat with a 3rd party remote control actively enabled to make it work for load shedding seems like a network security nightmare. At least for most folks who won’t know how to isolate the devices they can’t really trust from the rest of their network.
I don’t mind a ‘smart’ meter that reports use too much, as they only get to know your homes power consumption of the moment, which is at best for an attacker an inaccurate are you home indicator (one of many) and are usually at least not connected to your home network (regular RF or Cellular phoning home seems to be the norm to me). And so the reverse of that where the grid can send out its ‘units 1-25 please shed’ message as it needs would be IMO the right method. The energy company will know if the shedding is taking place as they get the smart meter data to pay whatever fiscal incentive to the customer.
Point is, the claimed reason for this digitalization is fully, easier, cheaper and more reliable and dependable archieved by conventional means. Let the thermostats watch the grid frequency (which is a directmeasure of energy balance) and adjust the set point within the already existing bandwidth of temperature. You (the electricity company) can pay for this by the steepness of the t/f curve times the power rating and get a reliable number for how much the grid self-balances.
Generating a digital signal and getting it out to all the thermostats is so slow you get oscillations as soon as you get a measurable effect from it (not to mention all the cyber security issues, such a digital network is a really promising target for anyone trying to cause trouble).
if someone hacks your smart thermostat then it’s a nightmare and you resolve it by upgrading to a dumb thermostat.
but if your smart thermostat theoretically has a zillion flaws but works just fine, that’s not a nightmare at all, specifically for the folks who don’t know anything.
Texas produces 23% of its energy from wind and 2% from solar. When extremely cold air from Canada settles over Texas in a rare event and the wind turbines have no wind or freeze up and the solar panels are covered with snow, they are already short of energy when they need it most. Further, their inadequately insulated natural gas infrastructure froze up. Since they aren’t attached to the national power grid, they couldn’t suck power from other states that didn’t virtue signal with wind and solar to compensate.
About that virtue signaling, I fixed the title [in brackets]:
China is building six times more new coal plants than [all other] other countries [combined], report finds – March 2, 2023
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin
“Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas,” she says. “We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined.“
CO2 by country:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/US%20China%20fossil%20fuels.png
Glad you found your soapbox
Crabs in a bucket much?
Yes, this really signals a failure, and shows the effect of enthusiasm for the unreliables and other unicorn dreams. If there is anything a modern civilization with an eye to a better future needs, it is the production of as much low cost power as people want or are willing to pay for. Someone needs to break the USA’s irrational aversion to nuclear. Texas has 4 reactors and is a little bigger than France, which has 56.
We obviously remember this event very differently, because I remember that despite what the politicians initially said, the facts showed that wind was working and natural gas was failing.
To use NPR just as you did, at the very least they agree renewables didn’t do any worse than fuels.
https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-winter-storms-2021/2021/02/18/968967137/no-the-blackouts-in-texas-werent-caused-by-renewables-heres-what-really-happened
Also, natural gas did particularly badly, and that’s most of our capacity. Wind can be winterized to keep operating even in a lower temperature range than we reached during the whole event, while solar likes the cold and apparently can tolerate more snow than you’d think. The below article cites a bunch of references that seem worth looking at.
https://baigroupllc.com/why-texas-suffered-power-disruptions-during-winter-storm-uri/
Nuclear would not be bothered by any of it.
Wind works in the North Sea, under much worse conditions than Texas has ever seen.
Though the turbines are wee bit more expensive than those designed to run under typical conditions in Texas. The North Sea also gets much more consistent winds with availability factors reaching 40-50% over typical in-land turbines at 20-30% which makes the extra investment worth it.
The high availability factor is the major reason why they’re building wind turbines is such inhospitable places anyhow. You get much better wholesale prices if you can push power all the time versus having a peaky output that comes online once per average week.
Actually one was! Texas is so badly winterized that even a nuclear plant froze over. South Texas Nuclear Generating Station unit 1.
“One of the state’s four nuclear reactors went offline for about 36 hours due to a frozen sensor on a water feed line”
I didn’t know that this was EVEN POSSIBLE before 2021. What moron makes a nuclear power plant that can freeze? This is isn’t an issue anywhere in the north because we prepare for winter. It’s incredible how the Texas power companies cheaped out on every single aspect.
It didn’t freeze. The sensor did. They made the choice to shut down rather than risk a breakdown in case there was an actual problem in the water pumps.
Per-capita energy use is the telling statistic. Wake me when the average Chinese citizen is using more than 50% the usage of the average Texan.
The big Texas fail was not connecting up to their neighbours’ grids.
Unfortunately the environment doesn’t really care much about per capita figures, it looks at total outputs. And places like China and India will always have exceedingly many people, and they make up a much larger portion of emissions than the US and Europe.
Did you know that per capita US emissions are currently back below their levels during WWI? At some point you’re going to have to seriously tackle the developing world question, and I think you’re ideologically incapable of it. Or if not you, enough people in power have a complete mental block against the concept that they someday MUST try and reduce the activities of third worlders. They will sooner die than admit it
Countries with more people use more energy. Wow. Film at 11.
The whole “but China!” thing re energy is just epic BS. They’re still expending all that energy to build cheap stuff for the West that we won’t stop exploiting. They are also building the smaller more efficient EVs that the world needs. So what do we do? Slap a 100⁰% tariff on them. Cos we gotta protect dem Cybertrucks.
“But China!” is just evasion, excuses. Clean up your own yard first, and then share your solutions for clean efficient energy with the rest of the world. Keeping the rest of the world down while wallowing in excess isn’t gonna fly.
“Clean up your own yard first” means you can only afford stuff from China.
When you export your entire manufacturing sector to China, it’s no wonder their emissions go up and yours go down.
Adding tariffs is a way to get the industry back, so we can deal with the issue on our terms rather than wish that the Chinese even care.
peak demand modulation addresses a different problem than the 2021 texas power crisis
When I lived in Maryland, SMECO (local power coop) was doing something similar, though the thermostats weren’t smart. I think maybe they were getting commands over RF? Or possibly they were just pre-programmed. I’m not entirely sure how it worked, I was just renting a room at the time. Unfortunately for me, my hours didn’t always quite align with what the device expected, and I often came home in the summer to a very hot house with no way to do anything about it other than wait it out.
I think in this specific case, my roommate/landlord ended up finding that it was actually cheaper to not participate in the program, as the place was getting far too hot during the “off” hours and taking too much energy to cool back down when the system came back on. Ultimately he ended up with a Nest, when they were relatively new, and set a less aggressive program for energy savings when the place was unoccupied during the day.
Presumably with a properly insulated dwelling, and a properly balanced HVAC system, this idea would work better. But nothing about that place inspired confidence in it’s design or construction.
Yes, it was operating over a pager network. But we’ve never had more than one or two curtailment periods per season for the last 5 years or so, at least. And the pager network is not exactly as robust as it once was, and many locations would never even get the signal.
Yours was most likely just running it’s default schedule, because no one bothered to change the program, and couldn’t be bothered to learn how to do it, because it was inherently unintuitive. Default schedule has it 80 F during working hours. We’ve been replacing them with Wi-Fi smart thermostats that have a much more user friendly interface and app for the last couple of years, now. All in all, the program is working fairly well, and we pretty much never have to purchase supplemental power during the summer, and we don’t really have peak demand events in the winter due to the large amount of gas or oil systems in people’s homes.
Actually, a lot of electric energy is literaly wasted on flush toilets. Millions upon millions of pumps working to pump water up only so it can be flushed down the drain. The solution is easy, instead of current system there should be a solution where every street has only one major canal (without endpoints to individual homes). If you need to go, you go outside, open the flap and dump it straight to canal where flow flushes the stuff to sewage treatment plant. No need to pump water, no need to flush, just needs people to open up.
And how much power would be used up when people in highrises have to go down 20 floors to do their business, then back up 20 floors? It takes a lot less power to pump the water – it weighs significantly less..
Not to mention the fact that in most cases there’s no separation between the water that supplies the toilet and that which supplies the sinks, bathtubs, showers, etc. You’re pumping water anyways, unless you expect people to go collect their all daily water needs in buckets.
Weird way to try and fix such a weird problem.
Maybe just connect the grid to the surrounding ones or build another power plant? i too think its a bit odd to have a thermostat that can be controlled by your local government as a “fix” for bad infrastructure
They should continue to snub any offers to integrate their grid and simply build another nuclear plant
The “Galt’s Gulch” approach. Love it.
Texas never had a bad grid. It’s a very new problem. The problem is already in the article. They need to build reliable energy sources that don’t dip and cause major issues. Dips in the system are notorious for causing major issues, blowing up transformers etc. Just look at all the problems California has. If they would build a nuclear station and get rid of wind/solar energy, the problems would be solved. Besides that, any politician even suggests the power grid of Texas should be connected, knows it’s their last term in office, so that would never happen.
Over here in the Netherlands we have similar issues and most of the network operators have openly states they do not approve of any more wind/solar parks because of the problems it generates. The electric companies are asking people to use the power they generate using solar panels at home as much as possible so it doesn’t get put back on the grid. Network operators are demanding factories turn off their power at times to offload the grid. The minister of energy said that we will see rolling blackouts in the near future. It’s not sustainable unless we can build new houses that are not connected to the grid, and switch over to nuclear for the rest.
Is there a subscription for NEST thermostats? I’m asking for a friend… Anyway, standing this whole system up is going to be a serious effort, as every house is different, every Internet configuration is different (but mostly the same) every heater configuration is different, etc. What happens to people that just have their phones for Internet and no wifi? What happens when a customer can’t self install? What happens when the climate control system doesn’t have a 24v power line going to the thermostat location? Or the installer realizes that the thermostat is actually next to the door to outside? Is there going to be a new building code? It’s a great idea, but I think the actual utilization is going to be a lot lower than everyone hopes and more expensive than anyone can dream.
This is a business deal, not a technical announcement. The Nest Thermostat has been capable of fleet-wide demand control for many years; indeed, it was one of the many energy saving features touted for the 1st and 2nd generation thermostats released before the Google acquisition. Over the years Nest has partnered with various energy providers to offer discounted/free thermostats to customers in exchange for permission to shave load during peak periods.
Generally speaking, units are offered to customers regionally, with the caveat that some customers may not be eligible for technical reasons. The Nest thermostat is somewhat unique in that it can run without a dedicated power source (C wire). This is achieved by sipping power from the control lines. This doesn’t always work, so indeed some installations will require retrofitting a power source.
Obviously, demand control requires connectivity to a central coordinating service. In practice, this is really no different than the remote control feature that is a centerpiece of most smart thermostats. Most of the technical work here is on the back-end, connecting the Nest service to the energy provider.
Since demand control is about reducing peak energy usage, it is not necessary for every home in an area to have a smart thermostat. They just need enough participation that it makes fiscal sense vs. building new capacity. Whether that will pan out in this case I have no idea.
SoCal Edison has been doing this for ages here in California. It’s a form of rationing when there’s not enough electricity to support demand. It’s voluntary and you get a small credit on your bill. If enough customers participate you can avoid rolling blackouts.
I think there a slight problem with this idea: you need enough people to buy into it, and for them to believe other people are doing their bit too. I mean: you’d feel like a right chilly plonker if the government turned down your heating in winter just so that your neighbours could have their’s up full, wouldn’t you?
Really depends on how far down they turn it down, and how hot you folks actually want it. You could be feeling quite smug if your able to more than outdo the Jone’s on every visible element of your life thanks to the money saved. As long as the swing isn’t stupid so all you need is a lightweight jumper – you are still warm enough wearing clothing that is still practical for any situation.
If on the other hand its turning the target temps down (or I suppose up as AC is a big power draw too) to the point you can’t be comfortable with only a minor and not impractical change of wardrobe…
My thermostat never sees a leading “2” over winter, I am more than capable of wearing a jumper.
I am reminded of when the some europeans recently had to implement some form of energy rationalisation, iirc they said maximum of 18 degrees in all public buildings in winter, and air con was pretty much right out in summer. And in the UK, we were under threat of rolling blackouts, but that never happened in the end.
I suppose my original point could be reinterpreted to say people might not care about losing or gaining a degree Celsius if it keeps the grid running, as long as they believe other people are also playing the game.
Would a standalone thermostat with onboard power quality monitoring be useful in these situations? Or would it be that by the time the voltage/hz sag is detected at the residential level it’s already too late?
the voltage/hz sag is instantaneous (except for the phase shift across the power lines as the transported power changes), so the monitoring device may use the frequency shift to predict incoming adjustments and also measure the time needed to calculate, encrypt and send said adjustments
the goal for the consumer is not to use less energy at any moment in time but rather to enjoy whatever incentive (cost reduction) the power company has for them. so yeah you could install such a device but why would you? as far as what device the power company mandates, it’s just that the ‘smart thermostat’ thing is, by now, well-tested and reasonably well-liked (i guess), so piggy backing onto that is convenient. presumably they could have a device that monitors the grid frequency at your house instead but that’d be more of a custom device and they’d still have the hassle of verification.
Somehow I don’t see Texans agreeing to the idea of handing control of their personal private home thermostats over to a government entity to decide how hot or cold their home will be.
In Texas (at least on the Centerpoint grid), any thermostats voluntarily put under their control, had heat turned off during the last big freeze. Their lack of preparedness killed dozens in this state and more recently. About a dozen died when they weren’t prepared for a minor hurricane. Their fix, try to charge customers more to fix their infrastructure like they did after the winter storm (and they were almost successful). But they did promise to fix their outage tracker online so we’ll know we don’t have power…
Giving the power company control of people’s home heat? I’m sure there’s nothing that can go wrong there. I’m sure there’ll never be a bug in the system that turns off heat even though the house has power and gas. I’m sure there will never be the temptation for the power company to turn up the heat a little bit and give themselves millions of dollars.
They have that power already, they can shut off all power. With this kind of system, they can keep the power on, but reduce the power used, so there is no full on black out.
As for the illegal practises or bugs, well the bugs can still happen now and the illegal stuff is illegal.
If these things are so “smart” and connected, why can’t the market prevail?
If ConEd or whoever wants to turn off my power when it hits a spot price of (say) $1.23/kWh, just to sell it to someone else, then I should get a (large) fraction of that money. Let me bid on how much power I want to let them have, and at what price. I don’t have to be babysitting my phone to do this: just like the stock market, I can set buy and sell thresholds and the transactions will happen automatically.
Isn’t that what the ‘connected grid’ is supposed to be about?
“Isn’t that what the ‘connected grid’ is supposed to be about?”
Um no?
Part of that deregulated “market magic” in Texas meant paying $9,000 per megawatt-hour instead of $25 per megawatt-hour. Yay markets…
The idea that there is anything even marginally resembling a free market in the US today is absurd
Don’t forget the massive savings / subsidies passed to crypto companies for shedding their load. Of course, Jim Bob McPublic doesn’t see those savings on their energy bill.
Problem with the regulation via price is, it kills itself. The best working regulation will gain zero, as it regulates out all variations. The most profitable regulation will be as bad for the grid as possibly legal, including the exciting of oscillations for more variations to regulate.
In this case you better skip the market and demand the markets borders as technical baseline.
Why not just call it what it is? Rationing.
Loosely, it was brought about because Texas didn’t join the national grid because it didn’t want to abide by emissions standards & federal regulations.
So this is the position they (or more specifically, their state government) has left them in – if this wasn’t an option on the table, it would bring down their entire grid if demand spikes in extreme weather; or they could go for rolling blackouts…
Yeah and ask Germany about it. Austerity progressivism. And they wonder why they are having such a hard time lately
It probably has something to do with Russia starting a war, and sanctions.
And somebody blowing up their LNG pipeline. Whoever that was. And the cabal of geriatrics with ugly glasses in charge shutting down all their nuclear plants. That didn’t have anything to do with the war
Well, shockingly, we’re in agreement on the nuclear front, halting it is just stupid.
Over here in the UK, we don’t exactly have a fantastic record of implementing large scale projects on time and on budget though, otherwise “build a bunch more nuclear powerstations” would be the obvious long term solution for our energy issues.
Unless my memory fails me, I thought it was now known exactly who blew up that pipeline – named Ukrainian operatives who war-gamed it with their government, but were ordered to drop it, then went on holiday and did it on the sly anyway. But I do have a very flakey memory…
Not in Texas, but my power company wants me to install a smart thermostat so they can tweak my air conditioner in the summer.
I’m not against the energy management. I’m unwilling to put a security nightmare like a cloud-controlled thermostat inside my home network.
And what, pray tell, did you type this reply on, exactly?
There’s a lot of fearmongering here, about people being in the cold.
In the Netherlands we already have a few different schemes like this:
-Trade-based energy pricing. Residential connections who pay a price based on the wholesale prices, which change every 15 minutes (and are known 24 hours in advance). This allows people to save money and balance the grid by timing their energy intensive usage at off-peak times.
-A mandatory cutoff of energy production (mainly solar) at times where (local or regional) demand is lower than production.
-energy-intensive industries who get timeslot-based connections. E.g. I work at a bus company, and for several depots we can not use electricity to charge buses between 6:30 and 9 and 16 and 19:30. For a depot opening next year, we can not use ANY electricity in those times: power for the office is taken from powerpacks, while the building is insulated enough that no heating or ac is needed in those times. Charging is not necessary as all buses are driving in peak hours.
As someone on the energy grid in Texas, I feel I have room to speak here. Many places are ALREADY having their loads shed by something you can “opt-in” to that Google calls “seasonal savings.” Not fun when Texas hit 100+ degree summers though – and for several days in a row.
The big problem is that Texas in general wasn’t built for energy efficiency, but for consumption. I’m no climate change apologist but Texas earns a LOT of sales taxes off oil and gas (not to mention the fund for Texas universities funded by said oil and gas), gas companies here are essentially monopolies (go tell Atmos how their “competition” is doing) and more things people probably don’t want to hear.
But a lot of Texas houses, especially the older or converted military homes, have little or no insulation. It is hard to tell someone it is time to load shed when you can fry an egg inside your car due to the heat of the Texas sun, let alone to have some anonymous corporation do it for you. The real problem is infrastructure. During Winter Storm Uri, a whole neighborhood lost hot water because their heat pump systems were installed outside their garages. A transformer right on a wood pole in my backyard has blown a minimum of three times in the 10 years I have been at my current home.
The truth is Texas suburbia really started in the 1940’s – 50’s as a postwar sprawl when Texas was largely countryside. Our population is exploding. Just take a look at our antiquated road systems and you’ll see that they’re not scaling up an infrastructure originally meant for connecting a few urban centers between huge rural areas – or at least, not doing it properly. Good enough for government work I guess.
The upside is non existent as the $$ incentive is zero.
Control over high energy consuming devices is a standard since many years in Switzerland. Installing a remote shutoff managed by the power company is a (standard) requirement here. The devices gets status updates from impulses sent over the grid to all households simultaneously. No financial incentive here.
We still have houses here that are fully equipped with full electric heating and warm water production (as stored heat) and cooking is mostly done on an electric stove.
So for example, at noon, all heating and warm water production will be suspended remotely to reduce the load on the grid while people are cooking their meals.
And so far we survived our cold winters, even with this system in place ;)
Programs like this have existed in Texas for at least 5 years. In San Antonio, I participated in one of these programs for something like $10 a year. Big mistake.
Instead of doing something sane like limiting your AC thermostat to a quite tolerable 78 F, it actually raised the temperature by several (3-4) degrees no matter what you had it set to. So if you are an economical person who usually sets it to 78 anyways you end up in unbearable heat.
Once again the HaD comments section is crying out for an upvote/downvote system to help some of the solids float to the bottom…