You better demand climate justice!
Austin weather forecast next week: from 3 degrees to 72 degrees.
Want to come to Austin? Free skating ring… can skate on roads or lawns.
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as someone in the energy business, the price swings in ERCOT for the cost of electricity has been super interesting. For you energy nerds, ERCOT doesn’t have a capacity market like CA and others, just an energy market. So prices go crazy when there is a huge demand (like hot summer days, or icy winter days)
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New topic for me to understand, so what is capacity market vs energy market?
Energy is the power used (MW), capacity is ability to use where and when you want it (MWh). Water is an imperfect analogy, but Energy is like the tank of water, and Capacity is basically the size of the pipes carrying the water relative to the location/size of the tanks on the system.
Texas has HUGE tanks of “water” (wind) on the West Side, that right now have relatively small pipes to get it to the population centers. Other markets buy capacity in advance so they can ensure that the water gets to where it is needed when it is needed. ERCOT assumes that the market forces will adequately determine where people build capacity based on energy prices so doesn’t purchase or have a market for capacity.
I am not an expert on electricity markets by any means, but on Twitter, someone equated what is going in Texas power pricing right now the GME short squeeze. not enough power to distribute given demand due to cold so prices are through the roof. Imperfect analogy but similar enough I think.
also this should go into Tesla thread, but this will definitely incentivize Energy Storage in TX - Tesla MegaPacks for the win!
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Sounds bad.
Well, in the morning, you can skate on the roads. Now, you can ski on the road.
This morning, I took risks to buy grocery since the weather coming week is impossible to go out. Even though I travel very slowly, always slide when I make turns (left or right). Reach home, thought finally… can’t drive up the driveway since it is covered with 1/4-1/2 inches of ice! What to do? Leave the car outside and risk the car get damaged by the extreme cold? Luckily, remember there is a traction on feature, manage to drive slowly back to the garage. No more going out for a week or two. Have a big fridge, a freezer and a pantry full of food and beverages, can easily last one month.
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Time to move back to California.
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.
The choice is between hellish CA’s inferno 
or heavenly TX’s 
Obvious, right?
Wow, this global warming thing is intense.
My Brazilian friend in Austin kept saying the weather
was similar to San Ramon… Didn’t know how cold it can get
I told her to get on a flight to Cancun.
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Don’t make fun of California’s blackouts or karma won’t be kind to ya.
Those damn windmills froze. Sorry but green energy is unreliable
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Nope was natural gas plants
This week’s cold front caught Texas’s highly decentralized electricity market especially by surprise. The region’s grid is designed for hot summers, not ice-cold winters. Utilities there haven’t had to carry out rolling blackouts since 2011. Power plants with a combined capacity of more than 34 gigawatts were forced offline overnight, including nuclear reactors, coal and gas generators and wind farms, Woodfin said. It’s not yet clear why.
Do your homework and choose wisely. In 2019, I was staying in Santa Cruz for a few months when blackout strikes! All neighborhoods surrounding where I stay were blackout. Life as per normal for me. I don’t choose blindly.
Forget which day, three times split second cutoff over a few hrs, that’s about it.
Maybe you should have chosen to stay in CA for the winter.
I have already planned to stay in Singapore. If not for the Covid.
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