This is what poor energy planning leads to and NY State is headed down a similar path.
Texas power grid operator pays Bitcoin miner over $30 million to curb energy usage
https://www.techspot.com/news/100066-texas-power-grid-operator-pays-bitcoin-miner-over.html
ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) has left Texas with an islanded utility system and few interconnections to other states so that they will not be subjected to Federal utility regulations.
They provided large subsidies for wind energy which now account for 25% of their energy generation. Texas has some of the best onshore wind resources in the world but the winds slow down in August just as they do off of the coast of Long Island and in the North Sea off the coast of Europe. The net result in Texas was too much energy on the system during certain periods which actually pushed electricity prices negative on many nights and forced several gas plants to close because they weren’t profitable to operate. Now, during heat waves they have insufficient dispatchable generation to rely on and they ask businesses to close while paying them to do it. In the article, it says five to ten hours per month. Over the course of a year, that is 60 – 120 hours and the Texas ratepayers are footing the bill for that.
In the case of the bitcoin miner, it worked out favorably because their market has issues but if a business is extremely busy and has orders to fill, losing almost a week of work based upon weather conditions can be debilitating. Additionally, computers can restart in a few minutes after a shutdown in the case of the bitcoin miner. For other businesses, what do they tell their customers? “We’ll take your order but if it’s hot out, it will be delayed a week or two.” For some equipment, a shutdown can require an extended period to restart. They can’t be turned on and off like a lamp. For many businesses, a daylong shutdown can lead to several days of lost production. Are they going to tell Micron, an eventual user of 16 TWh of energy that they are going to have to turn off their semiconductor ovens and reduce production during a chip shortage? Those ovens take a while to heat back up.
In Texas, power demand has hit records nine times this past summer after hitting record demand eleven times last summer requiring energy use curtailments frequently over the past three months and energy prices have hit records, in part because of paying people to go home and not work. The day ahead power prices in Texas were increasing by $2000 in many ERCOT hubs, in part to subsidize paying people to go home and not work.
Recently, Texas has put plans into place to subsidize more natural gas based generation to offset the issue and they are going to require renewable projects to secure backup capacity to provide for energy curtailments due to weather.
One critique of the new Texas bill is that interconnection to the national system would help to fix the problems and that is correct. However, in NY State, that will not help because the Eastern neighbors in new England and New Jersey are going to have their own energy issues as they pursue similar plans to NY State’s. As can be seen from the recent heatwaves that affected the entire Southeast US and Texas, these weather events are large and affect several states simultaneously. A map of Wednesday’s (9/6/2023) heat advisory is below. Some energy may be available from Pennsylvania and Ohio, however their energy profiles are far more carbon intensive than NY State’s.
Just an observation of the future energy landscape in NY State. If you owned a business and were looking to relocate somewhere, would you want to subject your business to the whims of the weather. Texas has no state income tax so that is a draw that can overcome the energy issues. NY State doesn’t even have that with the highest overall tax burden in the US at 12.47% of income.
(Olean Times Herald.com / NY Has Highest Tax Burden in Nation)
Rich
Texas power use hits another record during heat wave
Aug 9, 2023 (Reuters) – Demand for power in Texas hit a record high on Wednesday for the second time this week and ninth time this summer as homes and businesses powered their air conditioners to escape a lingering heat wave.
After setting 11 new highs for demand last summer, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said power use hit a preliminary 83,961 megawatts (MW), which topped the most recent record of 83,854 MW on Monday.
Texas heat brings the state’s power grid closest it has been to outages since 2021 winter storm
By JUAN A. LOZANO
Associated Press
HOUSTON (AP) — Texas’ power grid manager on Thursday again asked residents to cut their electricity use as the state endures another stretch of sizzling summer heat. The request carried fresh urgency, coming the day after the system was pushed to the brink of outages for the first time since a deadly winter blackout in 2021.