Blastfurnace 2023

[Post Oak 20,213]

7 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

85 and no lights. Got a fan on me and not bad. 109+ at my house right now. 

 

[Dahobbs 17,534]

10 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

ERCOT dashboard starting to get crazy on the pricing. CenTex folks are looking at $6,000+ per KWH, right now. Again, if ERCOT doesn’t handle the next 5 hours correctly, we’ll start seeing blackouts. 

Err, I think you mean mWh, not kWh. But where are you seeing $6,000?

https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_spp.html

These are high, but not even the highest we've seen in the last week. The 10th spent pretty much all afternoon around $3,000 per mWh. 

 

 

[Biff Tannen 45,685]

Ok, I bumped it to 75, but that's it!  No more!  It's already hotter in here.

[sidis 9,828]

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

Ok, I bumped it to 75, but that's it!  No more!  It's already hotter in here.

are you fucking serious or is this a bit?

[Biff Tannen 45,685]

1 hour ago, sidis said:

are you fucking serious or is this a bit?

Serious as a heart attack pal.

[sidis 9,828]

jesus christ, dude.

[The Dog 44,051]

6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Err, I think you mean mWh, not kWh. But where are you seeing $6,000?

https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_spp.html

These are high, but not even the highest we've seen in the last week. The 10th spent pretty much all afternoon around $3,000 per mWh. 

 

 

probably looking at this:

[TexArcher 37,774]

5 minutes ago, sidis said:

are you fucking serious or is this a bit?

 

3 minutes ago, sidis said:

jesus christ, dude.

 

Are you mad at him for only going up to 75, or for caving in and going up at all just because ERCOT said to?

 

[Eastwood 4,394]

3 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Err, I think you mean mWh, not kWh. But where are you seeing $6,000?

https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_spp.html

These are high, but not even the highest we've seen in the last week. The 10th spent pretty much all afternoon around $3,000 per mWh. 

 

 

On my phone, right now, but the ERCOT dashboard Texas map is now showing ~$4,100 in Travis County and just under $8k in Williamson. This is real time locational pricing taken right off their map. 

[MissingInAction 25,076]

I don't give two shits about ercot. I just don't want my AC to shit the bed, so I keep it at 80 with ceiling fans and a jet turbine floor fan.

[HOOKEM4 5,037]

3 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

I don't give two shits about ercot. I just don't want my AC to shit the bed, so I keep it at 80 with ceiling fans and a jet turbine floor fan.

I am starting to think the thermostats are wildly different. If I set mine to 75 I am cold. We live at 79-80 day and 77 at night. 70, I am wearing a jacket.

[atomheartbevo 89,668]

1 hour ago, TexArcher said:

Annnnnd, ERCOT's asking for voluntary reduced usage from 3:00 until 8:00....

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

For real, I have my AC at 74, a box fan running, one light on in the whole house, the TV, the fridge, and a few vampire power appliances going.  Meanwhile, every business in town isn't doing shit and every HEB is blasting their coolers and freezers.  I don't think I'm the problem.

Had to run to Walmart and the entrance area had their A/C going full-blast (the part with the shopping carts and coke machines and claw machines before you actually enter the store).  Given that the doors to the parking lot are probably open 75% of the time from people exiting or entering, yeah, that's a great use of A/C/electricity.

 

[Biff Tannen 45,685]

1 hour ago, sidis said:

jesus christ, dude.

[sidis 9,828]

7 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

 

 

Are you mad at him for only going up to 75, or for caving in and going up at all just because ERCOT said to?

 

needing your house at <75 in the day time when you live on mercury is fucking absurd.  set that shit to 77-78.  if that is too hot for you, go outside for five minutes and come back in.  i am not saying it needs to be 82 or something...but good lord.

[atomheartbevo 89,668]

1 hour ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

112 at the house... and still has another 1-2 hours until hitting the peak. 

Why do we live here?

Every day like this (or anything above 105 this summer) has been another day where my wife is inching closer to signing off on us moving elsewhere.

[Biff Tannen 45,685]

1 hour ago, sidis said:

needing your house at <75 in the day time when you live on mercury is fucking absurd.  set that shit to 77-78.  if that is too hot for you, go outside for five minutes and come back in.  i am not saying it needs to be 82 or something...but good lord.

You're right.  That 5 degree difference is going to kill the grid when every business in the state is blasting their AC with wide open doors. 

[Dahobbs 17,534]

15 minutes ago, The Dog said:

probably looking at this:

The standard gradient is worthless. You have to use high gradient to see anything. 

[Dahobbs 17,534]

5 minutes ago, sidis said:

needing your house at <75 in the day time when you live on mercury is fucking absurd.  set that shit to 77-78.  if that is too hot for you, go outside for five minutes and come back in.  i am not saying it needs to be 82 or something...but good lord.

You do you buddy. 

[TexArcher 37,774]

I wonder how many gazillion tax dollars we're paying the crypto miners to turn off their machines for the next few hours so old people don't have to die...

(If you haven't googled this before and you want to be fucking furious, give it a shot)

[irishtexan 11,519]

Shit, I set mine at 77 but it can't keep the temp below 81 since I lost all my large trees in the freeze a few years ago and we have a West-facing sun room that just cooks the whole fucking house. 

[Brisketexan 105,139]

54 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

ERCOT dashboard starting to get crazy on the pricing. CenTex folks are looking at $6,000+ per KWH, right now. Again, if ERCOT doesn’t handle the next 5 hours correctly, we’ll start seeing blackouts. 

 

47 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

That doesn't apply to Austin Energy right?

So, the locational marginal price (LMP) is the spot price of power at a given delivery point.  In times of scarcity, it obviously skyrockets (supply/demand, all that).  Most utilities and large-scale power buyers do not pay that price (or, they don't pay for a lot of power at that price).  They have a blend of long-term contracts and shorter-term purchases that mean they are buying power for a lower price.

E.g., maybe your local utility has a contract with the Super Solar plant or Wild Wind farm near Sonora to take all their output, which is 100MW at good peak times.  And they have another contract to buy 100MW from Gary's Gas Plant.  They pay $50 per MWh under all those contracts (in truth, it will surely vary).  They pay that when nobody needs much power, and the LMP is $5.  And they pay that when everyone needs juice, and the LMP is $5000.  If, over the course of the year, power bought at $50 results in beating the market, that's good.  If it doesn't, that's bad.  Of course, how good or bad depends on how much difference there is from market.

Note that they buy power based on forecast needs and forecast generation.  If your local utility looks at the forecast for today, and sees that it is expected to need 200 MW at the peak intervals, but the forecast for its generation assets says they'll only generate 180 MW at that time, then it's going onto the "day-ahead" market to buy some extra power.  Which, yes, based on the forecast, is gonna be a lot pricier than $50.  But maybe not as pricey as $5000.

Oh, and the utility is not actually using the exact "electrons" generated by the people it contracts with.  The power generated by Super Solar or Wild Wind just goes into the ERCOT system, and is routed to the best available customer.  The local utility gets credited for putting that much power in to the system, so it can pull that much power out at a different location without having to pay a penny more (and yes, there are some issues with geography and transmission constraints, but I'm keeping it really simple here).

Vastly oversimplified, but that's a snapshot of how the market works.  So, as long as your utility isn't highly exposed (that's what happened to all of those folks who signed contracts to buy retail power at the exact market price -- they were fully exposed to that volatility, which worked in their favor when power was cheap...then when it was $9000 for several days in February 2021....that was bad.  This also happened to some degree to a lot of utilities who had plenty of power under contract, but then the gas generators they had contracts with failed to deliver, so they had to buy replacement power on the real-time market), you are okay when prices spike.

[MissingInAction 25,076]

16 minutes ago, irishtexan said:

Shit, I set mine at 77 but it can't keep the temp below 81 since I lost all my large trees in the freeze a few years ago and we have a West-facing sun room that just cooks the whole fucking house. 

I'd be filling that sun room with concrete.

[Bozo_Casanova 26,461]

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

Ok, I bumped it to 75, but that's it!  No more!  It's already hotter in here.

I bumped mine to 78 because ... it's already 78

[Dahobbs 17,534]

21 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

So, the locational marginal price (LMP) is the spot price of power at a given delivery point.  In times of scarcity, it obviously skyrockets (supply/demand, all that).  Most utilities and large-scale power buyers do not pay that price (or, they don't pay for a lot of power at that price).  They have a blend of long-term contracts and shorter-term purchases that mean they are buying power for a lower price.

E.g., maybe your local utility has a contract with the Super Solar plant or Wild Wind farm near Sonora to take all their output, which is 100MW at good peak times.  And they have another contract to buy 100MW from Gary's Gas Plant.  They pay $50 per MWh under all those contracts (in truth, it will surely vary).  They pay that when nobody needs much power, and the LMP is $5.  And they pay that when everyone needs juice, and the LMP is $5000.  If, over the course of the year, power bought at $50 results in beating the market, that's good.  If it doesn't, that's bad.  Of course, how good or bad depends on how much difference there is from market.

Note that they buy power based on forecast needs and forecast generation.  If your local utility looks at the forecast for today, and sees that it is expected to need 200 MW at the peak intervals, but the forecast for its generation assets says they'll only generate 180 MW at that time, then it's going onto the "day-ahead" market to buy some extra power.  Which, yes, based on the forecast, is gonna be a lot pricier than $50.  But maybe not as pricey as $5000.

Oh, and the utility is not actually using the exact "electrons" generated by the people it contracts with.  The power generated by Super Solar or Wild Wind just goes into the ERCOT system, and is routed to the best available customer.  The local utility gets credited for putting that much power in to the system, so it can pull that much power out at a different location without having to pay a penny more (and yes, there are some issues with geography and transmission constraints, but I'm keeping it really simple here).

Vastly oversimplified, but that's a snapshot of how the market works.  So, as long as your utility isn't highly exposed (that's what happened to all of those folks who signed contracts to buy retail power at the exact market price -- they were fully exposed to that volatility, which worked in their favor when power was cheap...then when it was $9000 for several days in February 2021....that was bad.  This also happened to some degree to a lot of utilities who had plenty of power under contract, but then the gas generators they had contracts with failed to deliver, so they had to buy replacement power on the real-time market), you are okay when prices spike.

My contract gives me a credit for anything I export at 90% of the real time SPP. Today is a pretty good day for me.  

[South Austin 52,504]

25 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

So, the locational marginal price (LMP) is the spot price of power at a given delivery point.  In times of scarcity, it obviously skyrockets (supply/demand, all that).  Most utilities and large-scale power buyers do not pay that price (or, they don't pay for a lot of power at that price).  They have a blend of long-term contracts and shorter-term purchases that mean they are buying power for a lower price.

E.g., maybe your local utility has a contract with the Super Solar plant or Wild Wind farm near Sonora to take all their output, which is 100MW at good peak times.  And they have another contract to buy 100MW from Gary's Gas Plant.  They pay $50 per MWh under all those contracts (in truth, it will surely vary).  They pay that when nobody needs much power, and the LMP is $5.  And they pay that when everyone needs juice, and the LMP is $5000.  If, over the course of the year, power bought at $50 results in beating the market, that's good.  If it doesn't, that's bad.  Of course, how good or bad depends on how much difference there is from market.

Note that they buy power based on forecast needs and forecast generation.  If your local utility looks at the forecast for today, and sees that it is expected to need 200 MW at the peak intervals, but the forecast for its generation assets says they'll only generate 180 MW at that time, then it's going onto the "day-ahead" market to buy some extra power.  Which, yes, based on the forecast, is gonna be a lot pricier than $50.  But maybe not as pricey as $5000.

Oh, and the utility is not actually using the exact "electrons" generated by the people it contracts with.  The power generated by Super Solar or Wild Wind just goes into the ERCOT system, and is routed to the best available customer.  The local utility gets credited for putting that much power in to the system, so it can pull that much power out at a different location without having to pay a penny more (and yes, there are some issues with geography and transmission constraints, but I'm keeping it really simple here).

Vastly oversimplified, but that's a snapshot of how the market works.  So, as long as your utility isn't highly exposed (that's what happened to all of those folks who signed contracts to buy retail power at the exact market price -- they were fully exposed to that volatility, which worked in their favor when power was cheap...then when it was $9000 for several days in February 2021....that was bad.  This also happened to some degree to a lot of utilities who had plenty of power under contract, but then the gas generators they had contracts with failed to deliver, so they had to buy replacement power on the real-time market), you are okay when prices spike.

I didn’t read all that, but I think Brisket is telling us it’s okay to drop to 72.

[Kringelbert Fishtybuns 943]

Well

Frequency is dragging a little and reserves below 3k.  
May be some butt clinching time in an hour or so.

[woohorn 1,131]

Well
Frequency is dragging a little and reserves below 3k.  
May be some butt clinching time in an hour or so.

Statewide or is problem regional?

[Kringelbert Fishtybuns 943]

7 minutes ago, woohorn said:

17 minutes ago, Kringelbert Fishtybuns said:

Well
Frequency is dragging a little and reserves below 3k.  
May be some butt clinching time in an hour or so.

Statewide or is problem regional?

ERCOT wide

We are hanging in there, but margins will be tight until 9 or so.  They cut in half (from 6k to ~ 3k) between 6:30-7:15.

[Bozo_Casanova 26,461]

Just now, Kringelbert Fishtybuns said:

ERCOT wide

We are hanging in there, but margins will be tight until 9 or so.  They cut in half (from 6k to ~ 3k) between 6:30-7:15.

Not to worry! @Trey3216 says 97% of this is just the concrete around Camp Mabry.

[Kringelbert Fishtybuns 943]

LMP dropping back down, although adders are still up.

Should be good until next week’s episode of “The Hot and the Morons Running Our Energy Market.”

[Doc Sam Beckett 5,793]

2 hours ago, sidis said:

needing your house at <75 in the day time when you live on mercury is fucking absurd.  set that shit to 77-78.  if that is too hot for you, go outside for five minutes and come back in.  i am not saying it needs to be 82 or something...but good lord.

 

[Dahobbs 17,534]

5 minutes ago, Kringelbert Fishtybuns said:

LMP dropping back down, although adders are still up.

Should be good until next week’s episode of “The Hot and the Morons Running Our Energy Market.”

You mean tomorrow?

[Kringelbert Fishtybuns 943]

1 minute ago, Dahobbs said:

You mean tomorrow?

Tomorrow is a walk in the park - relatively speaking.  Next week looks okay too, but that probably depends on what the low pressure system decides to do.

[Post Oak 20,213]

What do you look at to forecast out a day or week?

[Kringelbert Fishtybuns 943]

17 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

What do you look at to forecast out a day or week?

ERCOT has them for the next 6 days on their dashboard screen.

[InkaUtexas 25,941]

3 hours ago, Post Oak said:

 

85 is a damn fine temperature. It is why people go to the Caribbean. Sorry Nannook of the North who wants to wear a sweater at work. 

I work from home. So wear shorts, flip flops and when I need to get on a meeting I put on a linen shirt. Ain't hard. I have also spent years of my life is hotter places than 85. Shit, that is winter in Dubai. 

[HenryJames 66,052]

Keep mine on 78 because I’m not a fattie.

[miguelito 11,266]

We could use some rain in Kendall County. We've been in Satan's asshole all summer.

 

[Radical Larry 28,619]

[Post Oak 20,213]

1 hour ago, Kringelbert Fishtybuns said:

ERCOT has them for the next 6 days on their dashboard screen.

Thx

[closetohumping 17,442]

We're getting a hurricane in Socal on Sunday

[Hate 20,108]

5 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

We're getting a hurricane in Socal on Sunday

[closetohumping 17,442]

1 minute ago, Hate said:

Wind and rain for 48 hours.  Not fun

[sidis 9,828]

5 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

You're right.  That 5 degree difference is going to kill the grid when every business in the state is blasting their AC with wide open doors. 

 

5 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

You do you buddy. 

 

4 hours ago, South Austin said:

I didn’t read all that, but I think Brisket is telling us it’s okay to drop to 72.

 

2 hours ago, Doc Sam Beckett said:

 

fucking entitled white people, man.

just kidding, love all you dickheads who need to wear a sweater inside in august.  i'm just amazed your compressor lines haven't frozen over and failed.

full disclosure, i prefer 71.  but in this shit, i'm making allowances.

[hookemATL 11,734]

16 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

Wind and rain for 48 hours.  

[gsoda3 3,261]

So you guys with solar are selling it back to the grid for $x,xxx?

[atomheartbevo 89,668]

So officially hit 110° at around 3:15 at Camp Mabry.

Good news, there are only two days that were hotter.  So far.

Sept. 5, 2000, and Aug. 28, 2011, were hotter than today. Both of those days hit 112°.

Good thing that it's August 18 and those days were earlier in the summer 

[MrBig 5,398]

5 hours ago, miguelito said:

We could use some rain in Kendall County. We've been in Satan's asshole all summer.

 

Any drier and another category will be added on top called Special with a black colored box.

[HenryJames 66,052]

6 hours ago, closetohumping said:

We're getting a hurricane in Socal on Sunday

[Texzilla58 4,735]

We would fuck up the back up planet in 10 years tops. 

So what. It’s a fucked up dead planet. We give it ten good years. It can remember those days after we go find another.