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0 pointsmsandford5y ago0 comments

> All my reading said that the decisions ERCOT made during the weather event were all very competent. They kept the grid from collapsing, which was their job.

I respectfully disagree. Demand might have been twice what supply was, but the way the load shedding was done wasn't smart at all. The rolling blackouts were done on a roughly 18-48 hour basis, i.e. if you lost power you probably lost it for at least 18 hours and I know plenty of people who lost it for much longer, up to 48 hours.

If demand was double what the supply was then it should have been possible to give people power for say 2 hours every 4 hours. Or maybe 6 hours every 12 hours. If demand outstripped supply by a factor of 4 then 3 hours every 12 hours.

But that's not what happened. A lot of houses have gas furnaces but they need electricity to run the fans and the ignition system and such. People died in their houses either from the cold or from running their cars in their garages trying to stay warm. A lot of pipes were burst due to not enough heat in the buildings.

I can think of at least a dozen ways in which the load shedding could have been better managed. I wouldn't agree that it was very competent.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

mindslight5y ago· 2 in thread

> If demand was double what the supply was then it should have been possible to give people power for say 2 hours every 4 hours

The problem is if that electricity is being used for heat, the draw of the 2 hour on periods will increase to make up for the time off. Perhaps even resulting in more total usage, because when power is on, people will set the thermostat to 80 instead of 65, anticipating the power going off and it getting colder. When really you need everyone's expectations of comfort to change to 40 degrees (half the delta T).

The only way to win and supply some power to all houses is to keep the duty cycle so low that the amount of resistive heating equipment becomes the limiting factor (1 hour every 6 hours?). I don't know if they could have managed this, but it's certainly more complicated to figure out than simply lowering the period of the rolling blackouts.

Dylan168075y ago

Only so much of the load is heating, and heaters can only draw so much current.

Even 1 hour every few would stop food from rotting and let people do important tasks.

john-shaffer5y ago

> Even 1 hour every few would stop food from rotting

I just put my food outside, in the car. I never lost power, but I didn't want to waste any electricity on cooling food when it was needed so badly.

bcrl5y ago

ERCOT failed to adjust pricing appropriately after the initial emergency, which allowed energy producers to milk the situation for billions of dollars more than is fair or reasonable. It's not like their input costs went up by billions of dollars that required compensation.

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