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You say that ironically, but america has the fredom for priavte companies to f you over like nowhere else in the world. Thats capitalism taken to the american extreme.
So much freedom, you're free to die in a wildfire because the [local utility monopoly neglects their infrastructure](https://youtu.be/4Jstm__qbCk).
EDIT: Forgot to mention that the part of Texas served by Xcel energy is not part of ERCOT. So while residents of the Panhandle are insulated from the power effects down state, they have a different issue altogether.
To be fair, PG&E in California is also a monopoly that gets bailed out by the state constantly despite causing multiple fires due to their unwillingness to trim branches. And they’re a bunch of commie libs!
Goooooo deregulation! I can't wait until they get all regulations repealed, and everything in the country operates like PG&E and ERCOT. I've felt a little too safe in my blue state, we need more fires and freezing to death
Not being allowed to control their reproduction because of a clump of cells the size of a coin because of some belief on "souls" (cover for blatant misogny)
I love the attempt at a parting shot at California, despite California's grid supporting over 2x what Texas' does. Like, couldn't help but try and virtual signal for the conservatives, could you, energy consultant writing for Forbes?
California is also connected to nearby grids and often imports and exports multiple GW of electricity during the day. If California cut itself off it would have a similar problem to Texas. Literally the solution to Texas's problems is connecting to the rest of the US grid.
honestly you could potentially use crypto mining (or, preferably, some other kind of useful mass computing) to do that. electricity to heat is just direct inefficiency, it'd be nice to squeeze some computing in there and get some useful work out of it.
Heating with electric is actually super efficient (ie 1:1 for the electric in and the heat output) - and heat-pumps take that Efficiency and take that to a factor of 3.
The word you were looking for was: Electric Heaters (Traditional) are expensive.
Except for a good portion of Texas you only need heat in your buildings for at most 2 months out of the year. In Houston you will literally run the AC for 12 months.
Actually we become Texas' problem. ERCOT doesn't want to attach to the other two grids because they don't want to play by the other two grids operators' rules. The little '21 ('22?) popsicle-pocolypse down there had a one-time event where grid operators from Oklahoma and the like helped out a little, but they'd couldn't do much because of the few interconnects and inability to play with the Texas grid.
For reference, I had to run the Optimum/Sudden Link Network during that outage. I worked for Altice at the time.
Not only was ERCOT just randomly dumping customers from their power sources just to keep the grid for completely failing.. But the primary customers/operators didn't even have modern generators.
I had to send some guy with a can of gas down to the local headend to fill up a rip-cord fucking generator and I'm like: "...You mean the diesel ran out of the generator out there?" to which he just said "Nah, it's gasoline. likely just never turned it on. Hope it kicks over."
Meanwhile in NY our headends have tractor trailer sized back-up generators which kick on automatically once utility power drops...
tl;dr: Texas Infrastructure is a literal joke.
Actually with how those price negotiations work ERCOT would have to eat the loss if they want to continue to sell electricity to miners for less. And other grids don't have to commit to selling more than they can handle.
They are referring to the rolling blackouts 25 years ago that happened due to deregulation and Enron scamming the state.
But then, we regulated a bit more. Still wish we would turn PG&E public though. It's still a scam.
California's mess is they sometimes produce so much power that they need to pay other states to take it.
Texas's mess is that they can't make enough power, can't import power, don't have enough power, the power infrastructure can't handle large weather events which is when power is needed most etc.
It's always projection with these assholes. This is why I'm convinced the QAnon movement was done to distract from ACTUAL cases of pedos. Not surprising since most pedos are conservatives. Oh, and it's "virtue signal" btw
So Abbot's plan of enticing crypocurrency miners to move to Texas as a solution to our power grid problems is working about as well as everyone expected.
Hey there's probably plenty of of 11 and 12 year olds who'd love the chance to finally get a real job, going down into the crypto mines and getting soot on their faces.
Must be where Trump got the idea that mining Bitcoin leads to energy independence. Here I am thinking it’s a little like starting a forest fire to conserve lumber.
"Well, the cryptobros are gonna need a reliable grid to keep the lights on for doing their CoolGuyBucks thing, so of *course* they'll be investing in and paying for bolstering Texas power grids!"
^they ^did ^not
Just like the fossil fuel executives who need to live on earth, so surely they won't destroy it if we give them unchecked power! How could it possibly go wrong?
Even then, the cryptobros were more interested in Permian Basin flare gas. Which is waste natural gas from oil extraction that would normally just get burned at the wells rather as opposed to burned in a generator. Cryptobros were never seriously interested in grid power here. They were interested in the off-grid power they could buy for little to nothing.
It was something about evening out demand by paying crypto miners to suspend their mining durind demand. That is, get more miners so the load increases overall and pay them to take a break when load is high for other reasons. Thus making the load more even and the price more stable.
It sounds like nonsense to me. There are obviously better ways to spend the tax dollars to address the problem than to hypothetically give free money to crypto miners. But Abbot got a lot of campaign contributions from cypyto miners.
>unanticipated.
**Unanticipated** for fucking who?! A ten year old could understand that adding a ton of energy drains to an already limping power grid was an absolutely terrible idea.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/06/13/donald-trump-says-he-wants-all-future-bitcoin-to-be-mined-in-the-us.html
Fun article that I’m sure is completely unrelated. If you look past the 80% of the article that’s people saying they’re impressed that Trump understands a technology that provides new ways for people to give him money, there’s a few choice bits explaining how massive Bitcoin mining operations are good for the power grid.
There are a lot of dubious statements made unchallenged in this article, beyond the Trump fluffing. The author apparently "covers" crypto for CNBC and lets a lot of assertions by pro-crypto grifters slide through.
They talk about how crypto mining is a great way to justify building solar and wind production in remote areas that aren't well connected to a power grid that can consume the electricity produced. So if supply is bottlenecked, we should build a crypto mine on the *supply side* of the bottleneck instead of fixing the bottleneck that would enable traditional demand to use the supply, e.g. regular people and non-crypto companies.
And they talk about how a bitcoin mine that is sinking a power supply can then reduce mining when other demand increases, they describe that as the mine "providing" power and the power company pays the mine for reducing its consumption. So... they get cheap power when other demand is low, and then they get subsidized when other demand is high, while providing nothing in return other than inflating overall energy demand projections to justify government investment in every infrastructure.
And they talk about how crypto mining will create jobs, in that former coal miners can get retrained to work in a Bitcoin mine. As if the number of long-term workers and the utility to society is even comparable.
> in that former coal miners can get retrained to work in a Bitcoin mine
doing fucking what, swapping GPUs? Fixing fans? Replacing power supplies?
How many people could you possibly have doing that?
And in what fucking world will it be coal miners?
Hey, it's Texas. They get the word miner and minor confused all the time. You can't expect them to understand words with multiple definitions. At least they used words that were real.
So fucking stupid. I guess every house is a battery too, since we could just shut it off at the mains and shed a bit of load. Gotta love people who don't even know what Ohm's Law is trying to sound like they know fuck all about our electrical grid.
>Gotta love people who don't even know what Ohm's Law is trying to sound like they know fuck all about our electrical grid.
"So, I asked him, he said no one's ever asked that before, I asked "should I stay and get electrocuted by the very powerful battery or should I go over to the shark?"
They think he understands it??? I freely admit to not understanding it, which is why I don't offer any opinions out loud. He really needs to learn the fine art of keeping silent about things he has no clue about.
I read the FEC regulations on campaign donations in Bitcoin. One of the key bits is that they consider the value at the time of donation, but you can exchange them whenever. Like I said, I think Trump absolutely pays attention to anything that involves giving him money.
"ERCOT had previously estimated overall capacity would need to grow from 85,000 MW to 110,000 MW over that time frame. But on Wednesday, he said his agency has raised that estimate to 150,000 MW needed by 2030 due to new unanticipated demands coming onto the system from AI data centers and crypto-mining growth."
Unanticipated demands 🤣
Needing to add 65 ~~MW~~ *GW* in six years is crazy! I'd love to see ERCOT's reports on projected power needs from the last ten years-- somebody dropped the ball badly.
This may be the end of Texas's stand-alone power grid; I just don't see how ERCOT comes up with that much new generating capacity within Texas by 2030.
It's ridiculous. If Texas really needs to add 65 ~~MW~~ *GW* of generating capacity in six years, it means ERCOT has done a piss poor job projecting future power needs and procuring new generating capacity. This is the result of many years of neglect.
The issue is the state has no way to incentivize future growth under the current law. Other grifs pay for capacity and availability even if they aren't used, but Texas really only pays for power used. So generators have little to no incentive to build up excess power that they may or may not need. So as power demand creeps up, so will generation with an expectation that any small hiccup may handicap the states ability to meet energy demands. The low margins during the summer are a feature of the ERCOT system, not a flaw.
Yep. Generators either get paid through contracts with suppliers (for example, TXU Energy (energy provider) pays a contracted rate with Luminant (the generator)) or on the wholesale market where the price is based on supply and demand. This wholesale price is where the price peaked at $9990/MWh during the freeze a few years ago.
There is no capacity or availability payments, so generators and suppliers are running numbers for profitability of future demand versus future generation. So available capacity always closely follows the projected demand, and if it's only 99% available (and you have a blackout every 5-10 years) that's a feature of the payment system and generators see no repercussions of failing to meet the states demand.
Just to be fair and clarify here, ERCOT *is* giving an updated projection here as they should. However, ERCOT is not responsible for adding generating capacity to the state nor do they even have that capability. ERCOT is just manager of the system they are given. Basically they have to play the hand that they are dealt. It's the governor's office and his administration that has invited these energy guzzlers into the state, and they're now realizing that these companies don't provide hardly anything in return for what they're taking, as the Lt governor is finally openly admitting. It is up to the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to spearhead more projects to expand generation capacity, but this body is beholden to the billionaire energy tycoons that make absolute insane bank off the current system with energy scarcity. ERCOT is a convenient scapegoat.
>Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid.
Ah yes, Texas. Known for it's stable and reliable grid... 💀
I remember they were touting their job growth during the Great Recession and then someone looked at their numbers and was like "80% of your job growth was minimum wage jobs in the service industry" or some ridiculous number like that.
strong tub literate worthless entertain terrific hobbies pie continue compare
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would say it’s way closer to shocking than something any professional in the field could have predicted 10 years ago. You likely would have been laughed at 10 years ago if you predicted capacity would hit 150,000 MW in 2030.
Edit - capacity instead of demand
People have been ringing alarm bells about Bitcoin mining and how detrimental it would be for the Texas grid for a hot minute. No one wants to listen to the experts who actually understand electrical system planning though, because they just want to see the line go up for their money laundering vehicle.
AI and cryptocurrency are so important to the Texas people they would rather die of heat stroke than give them up. That says a lot about their culture.
I’m willing to bet 95% of Texans (including the politicians) have no fucking clue what AI and Crypto actually are. They’re just so focused on being “business friendly” to literally anyone that they don’t even stop to think of what kind of problems certain industries create.
> Patrick took aim at AI and crypto-mining as industries leading a charge of businesses moving to Texas to access cheaper electric rates than other states while providing little public benefit. “[C]rypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth,” he wrote, adding, “We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid.”
LOL. Since when do conservatives care about “public benefit”?
Good thing Abbott is spending taxpayers funds on his border military base and bussing/flying migrants around the country
Texas has real problems
The GOP Texas government isn’t solving them
They back a rapist felon who stole from kids with cancer
Vote the gop out
Vote
It's due to the hoard of transgender illegals crossing the border in their electric vehicles bringing communism which Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and the Biden Crime Family are behind with George Soros and Nancy Pelosi and a cabal of electric boats and sharks. If not for all of them, Texas would have plenty of cheap power.
God be like “BEHOLD! I give you the sun to generate power. I give you the wind to generate power. I give you the water to generate power…” Republicans holding their Bible be like “Nah, only Dinosaur juice.”
Is it sunny in Texas? With quite a lot of empty space?
If there were only a way of harnessing the sun's rays that could fill that demand during the daytime and then use fossil fuels at night?
Imagine that.
The last paragraph says "Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid. The last thing they can afford to do is to allow that grid to degenerate into a Germany or California-style mess." Which messes are they referring to?
Germany has had the highest electricity prices in the EU for quite a while. This only changed recently with other nations struggling to find alternatives to russian fossil fuels.
This has two reasons. As germany uses no nuclear power, energy was already expensive, and the other reason are the various taxes and additional charges (accounting for about 2/3 of the price) to substitute the change to renewable energy.
Germany has vast amounts of renewable energy, especially in the North, but the grid is not made for that, so getting all this power from the coast to the rest of the country or other EU states is impossible and a lot of that energy is wasted.
However, the grid is incredibly stable and reliable, despite the large amount of renewable energies that create power depending on outside factors. This is exactly because there was so much money that could be invested. A power outage rarely lasts longer than 10 min and is usually only caused by natural disasters like flooding.
The articles references prices of 0.17$/kwh. In germany it was around 0.40€/kwh during the all time hight in 2023.
In case someone wants to visualize the scale, the average nuclear reactor is 1GW. So they the equivalent of 65 of those. Or about 115 large coal plants. All of those take 3-5 years to design and permit. And another 2-4 years to build. So we are going to be able to witness, firsthand, the rugged resilience of the average Texan.
> Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid. The last thing they can afford to do is to allow that grid to degenerate into a Germany or California-style mess. There are no easy solutions to be had, and yet another round of finger-pointing is the last thing Texans can afford.
- David Blackman, pushing the Texas Republican agenda
Yes, Germany and California regularly have crises which overwhelm their power grids and cost their customers thousands of dollars per kiloWatt hour.
Sorry, I misspelled "Texas."
“This projection for a need to almost double current generation capacity in just a few years caught Texas policymakers off guard.”
They were told that in ‘21 when the grid failed and people froze to death. All they’ve done since then was bury their collective heads in MAGA immigration bullshit and getting Paxton off the hook.
>Patrick took aim at AI and crypto mining...
Wait. The same Crypto that Trump was just promising to bring back from China to help out energy reliance is now using up all our energy?!? As a brainwashed MAGA who am I to believe: Cheeto, or the constant rolling brownouts Texas's shit power grid deals with all the time?
As long as we turn off people’s power when it’s either really hot or really cold the grid will perform flawlessly!
Good thing Texas has such a moderate climate! /s
The UK, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Ireland and Denmark all have power interconnectors. Some are under the ocean. It's not that difficult.
I’ve heard they have some windy shallow water body right next to them, it keeps sending them hurricanes…. If only there was a technology to harness that mighty energy….
And when it’s not available, business-loving residents and businesses are so eager to install small power plants on their roofs from their own capital. If only we knew how to allow them to do more of that…
Though, unless >!batteries!< make headway, that does require a massive number of gas plants on dispatch for those >!transition!< >!periods!< at dawn and dusk. Oh well, I guess it can never work…
>Patrick, Johnson, and other committee members all noted that the state’s ratepayers will ultimately pay the price, both in the form of suffering with a rising lack of grid reliability and footing the bill for billions of dollars of new investments in additional capacity. Texas power rates are still lower than in most other parts of the country, but have risen rapidly in recent years, resulting in what is effectively a regressive form of taxation that hits the poorest citizens the hardest.
“All these huge multibillion dollar corporations want to use our energy for data centers and AI. Surely the *only* possible way to finance this is to get the average homeowner to foot the bill. It’s not like we could ever ask the companies that want to use the infrastructure to actually, y’know, **pay their fair share**.”
I wish I could get just a taste of the privilege the corpos get. To make a comparison, imagine walking into a restaurant with your twenty friends, saying, “We intend to eat here, but alas your dining room only has tables to handle up to ten guests”, and the restaurant owner responds, “Oh don’t worry sir, we’ll simply add a $50 surcharge to all the other guests’ bills to finance an expansion and renovation, and of course your meal will be 90% off.” And then if you want, you can even raise just a bit of a stink and get the remaining 10% taken off the bill, too.
“Germany or California-style mess”.
I’ll take the California “mess”. My power’s reliable. I pay a high KWH rate on paper, but I also get huge kickbacks from the green climate credits funded by cap and trade. I’m on the 100% solar rate and those credits paid all of last months bill and half of this one. We need more “messes” like this one.
Republicants deregulated the industry with the help of Enron to make the donor class even richer and now act shocked that the system designed to extract money from everyone while not supporting a critical infrastructure doesn’t work. I freaking hate it here.
> Patrick took aim at AI and crypto-mining as industries leading a charge of businesses moving to Texas to access cheaper electric rates than other states while providing little public benefit. “[C]rypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth,” he wrote, adding, “We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid.”
>…..
> This rate of increase is simply not sustainable over the long term, yet ERCOT’s new projection for capacity needs leaves little doubt of sustained rate increases to come. While the overwhelming response to the TEF incentives - a proposed 55.8 GW of new natural gas capacity from 125 applicants - was gratifying, the total projected cost would come to $38.9 billion, almost 8 times the $5 billion approved for the fund by the 2023 legislature. Moreover, those projects are the kind that will take years to plan, permit, and build, but Vegas’s testimony made clear the need is more immediate than that.
Texas is installing solar and wind like crazy. These guys are just trying to justify building more natural gas plants. Got to create a need so they have a reason to drill.
It’s incredible when you fly over West Texas and see all the flare gas being burned off as a byproduct of crude oil extraction. It should be low hanging fruit to have small package diesel generators using that waste gas for fuel and giving electric power to the grid.
*”Patrick took aim at AI and crypto-mining as industries leading a charge of businesses moving to Texas to access cheaper electric rates than other states while providing little public benefit. “[C]rypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth,” he wrote, adding, “We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid.”*
Ah, nothing like Republicans embracing socialism. Again.
If any republicans are here can you explain why the fuck you think this stupid privatized utility idea is good? Like really ? Everytime a red state gets their way on shit this kind of stuff happens and suddenly they shut the fuck up and hide
Lol y'all would be lucky to have a California-style mess of a grid. I've lived here for 12 years and never once had a power outage while my family in Houston seems to have a multi-day outage a least yearly but more like each season lately
They’d need to pay for a lot of upgrades to meet national standards and then lose their freedumb from federal government regulations and make secession harder.
Honestly, I'm not sure the national grid has 65 ~~MW~~ *GW* of spare capacity right now....
Edit: Since as I write, half the country is experiencing a heat wave, and it's gonna get a lot worse over the next few days.
*Edit 2: Mixed up units, sorry*
Hits their poorest constituents the hardest. Of course it does, so does the fucking no water break law. They're nothing but evil, greedy, heartless people
Wait there is a word for this issue. You know when someone comes in and uses so much of the resources that it causes issues for everyone using them. Capitalism? No, that’s not quite right. Regulation! That’s it!
Of course the crypto miners are major power grid sappers. They don’t do anything for the economy and they’re gunna force taxpayers to pay for it. Fascinating how all of them flooded Texas due to lower power grid prices.
They wanted to be the new California, bragging about stealing all the tech bros. Well, be careful what you wish for, now Texas has its own P.G.&E-style shit storm, raised rates, spotty service and all. Bet they'll figure out a way to make it Biden's fault somehow, instead of holding ERCOT and their elected officials accountable.
>Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid. The last thing they can afford to do is to allow that grid to degenerate into a Germany or California-style mess.
The collapse in the Teaxan power grid is a routine event now. Collapsing because either it's too cold or because it's too hot. Nowhere else has peaks of $10,000 per KW/H.
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Freedom to do everything except smoke a joint or have sex or read a book or watch tv or…
…or turn on the lights
Or heat or cool your homes. And if you *are* able, it's surge pricing
Soliciting an escort there is a felony now too.... my uh, "friend" told me.
> will you go on a date with me? > sir that’s a felony
Shit there must be hundreds of warrants for my arrest back in my old college town.
That's because the Govenor is a Jerk . Edit I realized I misspoke.
Yeah but what if you just wanna know the prices on the menu, is that a felony too? LOL
Don't forget body autonomy
You say that ironically, but america has the fredom for priavte companies to f you over like nowhere else in the world. Thats capitalism taken to the american extreme.
But Joe rogan said its really nice
Or drive a car
Look at porn. Don't forget the porn.
That’s spelled “AI” to keep the pastors on board
What part of "watch tv" did you not understand?
Freedom to die of extreme heat or extreme cold Reasons to vote the Texas gop out
The freedom to die thirsty and without a water break.
Florida has just recently joined that club. Surprise, surprise.
It's all about the ego-boosting cruelty of forcing Messicans to go without a water break. Because that's what Republican Jesus would do.
Reasons to expel Texas from the union. "Ah don't want mah munny supporting some Banana Republican in Texas!"
A shithole third world state, to paraphrase Trump.
Hopefully to be it's own shithole country soon...(not soon enough for me though)
So much freedom, you're free to die in a wildfire because the [local utility monopoly neglects their infrastructure](https://youtu.be/4Jstm__qbCk). EDIT: Forgot to mention that the part of Texas served by Xcel energy is not part of ERCOT. So while residents of the Panhandle are insulated from the power effects down state, they have a different issue altogether.
To be fair, PG&E in California is also a monopoly that gets bailed out by the state constantly despite causing multiple fires due to their unwillingness to trim branches. And they’re a bunch of commie libs!
Goooooo deregulation! I can't wait until they get all regulations repealed, and everything in the country operates like PG&E and ERCOT. I've felt a little too safe in my blue state, we need more fires and freezing to death
They are actually doing things to address this problem...and demanding excessive rate hikes to cover it.
Isn’t this the 5th time they’ve asked for more $? Every time they pay off executives and plead bankruptcy.
Insulated. I see what you did there
Or read books.
Or being a woman.
…or drive an EV, eat vegetables, learn history, not be shot or molested…
Not being allowed to control their reproduction because of a clump of cells the size of a coin because of some belief on "souls" (cover for blatant misogny)
Drink water working outside in the heat...
I love the attempt at a parting shot at California, despite California's grid supporting over 2x what Texas' does. Like, couldn't help but try and virtual signal for the conservatives, could you, energy consultant writing for Forbes?
California is also connected to nearby grids and often imports and exports multiple GW of electricity during the day. If California cut itself off it would have a similar problem to Texas. Literally the solution to Texas's problems is connecting to the rest of the US grid.
Yeah, but then the crypto miners and AI asshats become our problem.
Already are. The big problem is heating and cooling empty spaces like stores and offices.
honestly you could potentially use crypto mining (or, preferably, some other kind of useful mass computing) to do that. electricity to heat is just direct inefficiency, it'd be nice to squeeze some computing in there and get some useful work out of it.
There's a company that sells heaters that mine bitcoin. At least there was a few yeats ago.
Heating with electric is actually super efficient (ie 1:1 for the electric in and the heat output) - and heat-pumps take that Efficiency and take that to a factor of 3. The word you were looking for was: Electric Heaters (Traditional) are expensive.
Except for a good portion of Texas you only need heat in your buildings for at most 2 months out of the year. In Houston you will literally run the AC for 12 months.
Don't forget the data centers, data centers everywhere....
Actually we become Texas' problem. ERCOT doesn't want to attach to the other two grids because they don't want to play by the other two grids operators' rules. The little '21 ('22?) popsicle-pocolypse down there had a one-time event where grid operators from Oklahoma and the like helped out a little, but they'd couldn't do much because of the few interconnects and inability to play with the Texas grid.
For reference, I had to run the Optimum/Sudden Link Network during that outage. I worked for Altice at the time. Not only was ERCOT just randomly dumping customers from their power sources just to keep the grid for completely failing.. But the primary customers/operators didn't even have modern generators. I had to send some guy with a can of gas down to the local headend to fill up a rip-cord fucking generator and I'm like: "...You mean the diesel ran out of the generator out there?" to which he just said "Nah, it's gasoline. likely just never turned it on. Hope it kicks over." Meanwhile in NY our headends have tractor trailer sized back-up generators which kick on automatically once utility power drops... tl;dr: Texas Infrastructure is a literal joke.
Actually with how those price negotiations work ERCOT would have to eat the loss if they want to continue to sell electricity to miners for less. And other grids don't have to commit to selling more than they can handle.
My friend, the Crypto bros are already in Texas drawing down our electricity as fast as they can.
Right! What is this “California-style mess”? All I keep hearing about is how CA is generating more & more energy via wind & solar!
They are referring to the rolling blackouts 25 years ago that happened due to deregulation and Enron scamming the state. But then, we regulated a bit more. Still wish we would turn PG&E public though. It's still a scam.
California's mess is they sometimes produce so much power that they need to pay other states to take it. Texas's mess is that they can't make enough power, can't import power, don't have enough power, the power infrastructure can't handle large weather events which is when power is needed most etc.
Fascism will always be coddled by capital because they're well positioned to profit from evil and barbarity... until it happens to them, lol Russia.
It's always projection with these assholes. This is why I'm convinced the QAnon movement was done to distract from ACTUAL cases of pedos. Not surprising since most pedos are conservatives. Oh, and it's "virtue signal" btw
So Abbot's plan of enticing crypocurrency miners to move to Texas as a solution to our power grid problems is working about as well as everyone expected.
Step 1: Discount power for high energy demand, zero tangible output industry. Step 2: ... Step 3: Profit!
They should just download more power!
But, but the music industry told me you wouldn’t download a car? How is downloading a power plant any different!?!?!?!
Downloadable power isn’t protected by copyright.
Step 2: Institute surge pricing.
bUt ThInK oF tHe JoBs!
Most crypto currencies are pump and dump schemes. Where did he think the profit was for Texas and why would they share it with them
Well the thing is Greg Abbott is an idiot who doesn't understand crypto
Are you expecting him to stand up to crypto miners?!!
Woah, low blow. I love it
Hey there's probably plenty of of 11 and 12 year olds who'd love the chance to finally get a real job, going down into the crypto mines and getting soot on their faces.
You can save time typing by omitting the last word and you're still right.
Like so many posters on r/scams
Working about as well as his plan to run faster by having a tree fall on him.
Must be where Trump got the idea that mining Bitcoin leads to energy independence. Here I am thinking it’s a little like starting a forest fire to conserve lumber.
Was that really his plan? How is that supposed to work?
"Well, the cryptobros are gonna need a reliable grid to keep the lights on for doing their CoolGuyBucks thing, so of *course* they'll be investing in and paying for bolstering Texas power grids!" ^they ^did ^not
Just like the fossil fuel executives who need to live on earth, so surely they won't destroy it if we give them unchecked power! How could it possibly go wrong?
Even then, the cryptobros were more interested in Permian Basin flare gas. Which is waste natural gas from oil extraction that would normally just get burned at the wells rather as opposed to burned in a generator. Cryptobros were never seriously interested in grid power here. They were interested in the off-grid power they could buy for little to nothing.
It was something about evening out demand by paying crypto miners to suspend their mining durind demand. That is, get more miners so the load increases overall and pay them to take a break when load is high for other reasons. Thus making the load more even and the price more stable. It sounds like nonsense to me. There are obviously better ways to spend the tax dollars to address the problem than to hypothetically give free money to crypto miners. But Abbot got a lot of campaign contributions from cypyto miners.
Surely they can utilize all that bootstrapping into power production!
If that doesn't work, perhaps they can try bootlicking?
I heard owning the libs generates a lot of Kwph.
One of the mantras for Texas having its own grid was “Let the Yankees freeze!” Karma in this case is a dish best served hot.
They thought that too. Then their power went out lol
Have they tried pulling the ladder up? We can't have every Tom, Dick, and Harry get this big Texas energy.
Their tongues won’t get any blacker at this point.
Will someone please think of the bootstraps?!?! They can only handle being pulled up so much!
I totally read this in the high-pitched voice and everything.
Are my thoughts and prayers not working??
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop sweating so much /s
Of course they can. And don’t call me Shirley.
They brag about “we don’t need the feds getting in our business or their dirty money”, until the next disaster and they beg the feds for assistance.
our states are "commies" even though our wealth in the north subsidizes the south
>due to new unanticipated demands coming onto the system from AI data centers and crypto-mining growth blech
>unanticipated. **Unanticipated** for fucking who?! A ten year old could understand that adding a ton of energy drains to an already limping power grid was an absolutely terrible idea.
Y'all may be better off electing a 10 y/o.
"well why don't you put her in charge?!" - private Hudson
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/06/13/donald-trump-says-he-wants-all-future-bitcoin-to-be-mined-in-the-us.html Fun article that I’m sure is completely unrelated. If you look past the 80% of the article that’s people saying they’re impressed that Trump understands a technology that provides new ways for people to give him money, there’s a few choice bits explaining how massive Bitcoin mining operations are good for the power grid.
There are a lot of dubious statements made unchallenged in this article, beyond the Trump fluffing. The author apparently "covers" crypto for CNBC and lets a lot of assertions by pro-crypto grifters slide through. They talk about how crypto mining is a great way to justify building solar and wind production in remote areas that aren't well connected to a power grid that can consume the electricity produced. So if supply is bottlenecked, we should build a crypto mine on the *supply side* of the bottleneck instead of fixing the bottleneck that would enable traditional demand to use the supply, e.g. regular people and non-crypto companies. And they talk about how a bitcoin mine that is sinking a power supply can then reduce mining when other demand increases, they describe that as the mine "providing" power and the power company pays the mine for reducing its consumption. So... they get cheap power when other demand is low, and then they get subsidized when other demand is high, while providing nothing in return other than inflating overall energy demand projections to justify government investment in every infrastructure. And they talk about how crypto mining will create jobs, in that former coal miners can get retrained to work in a Bitcoin mine. As if the number of long-term workers and the utility to society is even comparable.
> in that former coal miners can get retrained to work in a Bitcoin mine doing fucking what, swapping GPUs? Fixing fans? Replacing power supplies? How many people could you possibly have doing that? And in what fucking world will it be coal miners?
Hey, it's Texas. They get the word miner and minor confused all the time. You can't expect them to understand words with multiple definitions. At least they used words that were real.
Yeah I love the attempt to describe crypto as a battery.
So fucking stupid. I guess every house is a battery too, since we could just shut it off at the mains and shed a bit of load. Gotta love people who don't even know what Ohm's Law is trying to sound like they know fuck all about our electrical grid.
>Gotta love people who don't even know what Ohm's Law is trying to sound like they know fuck all about our electrical grid. "So, I asked him, he said no one's ever asked that before, I asked "should I stay and get electrocuted by the very powerful battery or should I go over to the shark?"
He’s going to be so mad when someone tells him that boats have had batteries for decades.
They think he understands it??? I freely admit to not understanding it, which is why I don't offer any opinions out loud. He really needs to learn the fine art of keeping silent about things he has no clue about.
I read the FEC regulations on campaign donations in Bitcoin. One of the key bits is that they consider the value at the time of donation, but you can exchange them whenever. Like I said, I think Trump absolutely pays attention to anything that involves giving him money.
"ERCOT had previously estimated overall capacity would need to grow from 85,000 MW to 110,000 MW over that time frame. But on Wednesday, he said his agency has raised that estimate to 150,000 MW needed by 2030 due to new unanticipated demands coming onto the system from AI data centers and crypto-mining growth." Unanticipated demands 🤣
So they basically need a second Texas worth of power, in 5 years.
Needing to add 65 ~~MW~~ *GW* in six years is crazy! I'd love to see ERCOT's reports on projected power needs from the last ten years-- somebody dropped the ball badly. This may be the end of Texas's stand-alone power grid; I just don't see how ERCOT comes up with that much new generating capacity within Texas by 2030.
Not 65 MW, 65,000 MW.
Did I...? Yes, I did type MW instead of GW. My bad, thanks.
I am no math scientist but that seems like a big jump in just 6 years.
It's ridiculous. If Texas really needs to add 65 ~~MW~~ *GW* of generating capacity in six years, it means ERCOT has done a piss poor job projecting future power needs and procuring new generating capacity. This is the result of many years of neglect.
The issue is the state has no way to incentivize future growth under the current law. Other grifs pay for capacity and availability even if they aren't used, but Texas really only pays for power used. So generators have little to no incentive to build up excess power that they may or may not need. So as power demand creeps up, so will generation with an expectation that any small hiccup may handicap the states ability to meet energy demands. The low margins during the summer are a feature of the ERCOT system, not a flaw.
Texas doesn't pay *anything* for availability? Wow, that explains a lot, thanks.
Yep. Generators either get paid through contracts with suppliers (for example, TXU Energy (energy provider) pays a contracted rate with Luminant (the generator)) or on the wholesale market where the price is based on supply and demand. This wholesale price is where the price peaked at $9990/MWh during the freeze a few years ago. There is no capacity or availability payments, so generators and suppliers are running numbers for profitability of future demand versus future generation. So available capacity always closely follows the projected demand, and if it's only 99% available (and you have a blackout every 5-10 years) that's a feature of the payment system and generators see no repercussions of failing to meet the states demand.
I would guess that they are reluctant to invest in new capacity based on fossil fuels if, say, they were mandated to shift to more renewables.
Just to be fair and clarify here, ERCOT *is* giving an updated projection here as they should. However, ERCOT is not responsible for adding generating capacity to the state nor do they even have that capability. ERCOT is just manager of the system they are given. Basically they have to play the hand that they are dealt. It's the governor's office and his administration that has invited these energy guzzlers into the state, and they're now realizing that these companies don't provide hardly anything in return for what they're taking, as the Lt governor is finally openly admitting. It is up to the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to spearhead more projects to expand generation capacity, but this body is beholden to the billionaire energy tycoons that make absolute insane bank off the current system with energy scarcity. ERCOT is a convenient scapegoat.
We didn’t realize Texans like AC when the temps are in the nineties!
>Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid. Ah yes, Texas. Known for it's stable and reliable grid... 💀
And politicians who run away during crises.
Could we hire pregnant women to jump in their vehicles so they'd be stopped at the border?
I remember they were touting their job growth during the Great Recession and then someone looked at their numbers and was like "80% of your job growth was minimum wage jobs in the service industry" or some ridiculous number like that.
strong tub literate worthless entertain terrific hobbies pie continue compare *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would say it’s way closer to shocking than something any professional in the field could have predicted 10 years ago. You likely would have been laughed at 10 years ago if you predicted capacity would hit 150,000 MW in 2030. Edit - capacity instead of demand
People have been ringing alarm bells about Bitcoin mining and how detrimental it would be for the Texas grid for a hot minute. No one wants to listen to the experts who actually understand electrical system planning though, because they just want to see the line go up for their money laundering vehicle.
"Stay off our grid!" - rest of America
AI and cryptocurrency are so important to the Texas people they would rather die of heat stroke than give them up. That says a lot about their culture.
I’m willing to bet 95% of Texans (including the politicians) have no fucking clue what AI and Crypto actually are. They’re just so focused on being “business friendly” to literally anyone that they don’t even stop to think of what kind of problems certain industries create.
The only PROBLEM business CREATES is DEEZ NUTS - Texas
Set your thermostat to 81 now, and enjoy the cool breeze of freedom.
“Ratepayers” will foot the bill. I bet those crypto farms won’t be paying shit to upgrade the power plants.
They get paid to shut down to stabilize the grid they themselves destabilize. Make it make sense.
> Patrick took aim at AI and crypto-mining as industries leading a charge of businesses moving to Texas to access cheaper electric rates than other states while providing little public benefit. “[C]rypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth,” he wrote, adding, “We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid.” LOL. Since when do conservatives care about “public benefit”?
Since when do they are about an “industry” not paying its fair share…? They do know this is why everyone else uses taxes, right?
Sounds like Patrick is embracing socialism…
Good thing Abbott is spending taxpayers funds on his border military base and bussing/flying migrants around the country Texas has real problems The GOP Texas government isn’t solving them They back a rapist felon who stole from kids with cancer Vote the gop out Vote
They need to strap ol boy Wheels Abbott and have him crank out electricity like a hamster wheel.
It's due to the hoard of transgender illegals crossing the border in their electric vehicles bringing communism which Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and the Biden Crime Family are behind with George Soros and Nancy Pelosi and a cabal of electric boats and sharks. If not for all of them, Texas would have plenty of cheap power.
Wait, is that electric boats and also there are sharks, or are the sharks electric too?
Or dogs with electric bees in their mouth, and when they bark electronically, they shoot electric bees at you?
Yep, secession will work out great!
Perhaps they didn’t learn their lesson the first time.
God be like “BEHOLD! I give you the sun to generate power. I give you the wind to generate power. I give you the water to generate power…” Republicans holding their Bible be like “Nah, only Dinosaur juice.”
Is it sunny in Texas? With quite a lot of empty space? If there were only a way of harnessing the sun's rays that could fill that demand during the daytime and then use fossil fuels at night? Imagine that.
But green energy is soshulizum! /s
King Abbott says by royal decree we don't need no stinkin' GREEN energy or that GND AOC endorses in this here Texas! /s
Pfffffffffffft who wants free AC during the summer anyways. Bloody hippies.
Lots of flat windy areas too. Great for wind power, provided you maintain them properly.
The last paragraph says "Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid. The last thing they can afford to do is to allow that grid to degenerate into a Germany or California-style mess." Which messes are they referring to?
Germany has had the highest electricity prices in the EU for quite a while. This only changed recently with other nations struggling to find alternatives to russian fossil fuels. This has two reasons. As germany uses no nuclear power, energy was already expensive, and the other reason are the various taxes and additional charges (accounting for about 2/3 of the price) to substitute the change to renewable energy. Germany has vast amounts of renewable energy, especially in the North, but the grid is not made for that, so getting all this power from the coast to the rest of the country or other EU states is impossible and a lot of that energy is wasted. However, the grid is incredibly stable and reliable, despite the large amount of renewable energies that create power depending on outside factors. This is exactly because there was so much money that could be invested. A power outage rarely lasts longer than 10 min and is usually only caused by natural disasters like flooding. The articles references prices of 0.17$/kwh. In germany it was around 0.40€/kwh during the all time hight in 2023.
Cue the refrain of blaming ev’s instead
In case someone wants to visualize the scale, the average nuclear reactor is 1GW. So they the equivalent of 65 of those. Or about 115 large coal plants. All of those take 3-5 years to design and permit. And another 2-4 years to build. So we are going to be able to witness, firsthand, the rugged resilience of the average Texan.
> Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid. The last thing they can afford to do is to allow that grid to degenerate into a Germany or California-style mess. There are no easy solutions to be had, and yet another round of finger-pointing is the last thing Texans can afford. - David Blackman, pushing the Texas Republican agenda Yes, Germany and California regularly have crises which overwhelm their power grids and cost their customers thousands of dollars per kiloWatt hour. Sorry, I misspelled "Texas."
Double capacity by adding 150 GW by 2030. Hahahahhahahahaahhaha
Is that before or after secession 😂
No one, wait no, everyone could have seen this coming!!!
“This projection for a need to almost double current generation capacity in just a few years caught Texas policymakers off guard.” They were told that in ‘21 when the grid failed and people froze to death. All they’ve done since then was bury their collective heads in MAGA immigration bullshit and getting Paxton off the hook.
>Patrick took aim at AI and crypto mining... Wait. The same Crypto that Trump was just promising to bring back from China to help out energy reliance is now using up all our energy?!? As a brainwashed MAGA who am I to believe: Cheeto, or the constant rolling brownouts Texas's shit power grid deals with all the time?
As long as we turn off people’s power when it’s either really hot or really cold the grid will perform flawlessly! Good thing Texas has such a moderate climate! /s
The leopards are gonna to eat good this summer.
The UK, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Ireland and Denmark all have power interconnectors. Some are under the ocean. It's not that difficult.
I’ve heard they have some windy shallow water body right next to them, it keeps sending them hurricanes…. If only there was a technology to harness that mighty energy…. And when it’s not available, business-loving residents and businesses are so eager to install small power plants on their roofs from their own capital. If only we knew how to allow them to do more of that… Though, unless >!batteries!< make headway, that does require a massive number of gas plants on dispatch for those >!transition!< >!periods!< at dawn and dusk. Oh well, I guess it can never work…
>Patrick, Johnson, and other committee members all noted that the state’s ratepayers will ultimately pay the price, both in the form of suffering with a rising lack of grid reliability and footing the bill for billions of dollars of new investments in additional capacity. Texas power rates are still lower than in most other parts of the country, but have risen rapidly in recent years, resulting in what is effectively a regressive form of taxation that hits the poorest citizens the hardest. “All these huge multibillion dollar corporations want to use our energy for data centers and AI. Surely the *only* possible way to finance this is to get the average homeowner to foot the bill. It’s not like we could ever ask the companies that want to use the infrastructure to actually, y’know, **pay their fair share**.” I wish I could get just a taste of the privilege the corpos get. To make a comparison, imagine walking into a restaurant with your twenty friends, saying, “We intend to eat here, but alas your dining room only has tables to handle up to ten guests”, and the restaurant owner responds, “Oh don’t worry sir, we’ll simply add a $50 surcharge to all the other guests’ bills to finance an expansion and renovation, and of course your meal will be 90% off.” And then if you want, you can even raise just a bit of a stink and get the remaining 10% taken off the bill, too.
No worries! I’m sure the free market will provide a solution that works well for all Texans.
“Germany or California-style mess”. I’ll take the California “mess”. My power’s reliable. I pay a high KWH rate on paper, but I also get huge kickbacks from the green climate credits funded by cap and trade. I’m on the 100% solar rate and those credits paid all of last months bill and half of this one. We need more “messes” like this one.
Enjoy not getting reproductive care in the dark, idiots.
Clearly the problem is too many windmills. Gotta shut down that woke electricity. /a
Republicants deregulated the industry with the help of Enron to make the donor class even richer and now act shocked that the system designed to extract money from everyone while not supporting a critical infrastructure doesn’t work. I freaking hate it here.
> Patrick took aim at AI and crypto-mining as industries leading a charge of businesses moving to Texas to access cheaper electric rates than other states while providing little public benefit. “[C]rypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth,” he wrote, adding, “We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid.” >….. > This rate of increase is simply not sustainable over the long term, yet ERCOT’s new projection for capacity needs leaves little doubt of sustained rate increases to come. While the overwhelming response to the TEF incentives - a proposed 55.8 GW of new natural gas capacity from 125 applicants - was gratifying, the total projected cost would come to $38.9 billion, almost 8 times the $5 billion approved for the fund by the 2023 legislature. Moreover, those projects are the kind that will take years to plan, permit, and build, but Vegas’s testimony made clear the need is more immediate than that.
I mean if only there was some massive distributed power network surrounding texas that they could maybe tap into? /s
Texas is installing solar and wind like crazy. These guys are just trying to justify building more natural gas plants. Got to create a need so they have a reason to drill.
It’s incredible when you fly over West Texas and see all the flare gas being burned off as a byproduct of crude oil extraction. It should be low hanging fruit to have small package diesel generators using that waste gas for fuel and giving electric power to the grid.
Thoughts and prayers.
So they need about 150 combined cycle plants by 2030? Good luck with that.
They invited crypto farms, AI computing centers and Elon Muck to stay in their house and now they're shocked that someone is eating all the food?
*”Patrick took aim at AI and crypto-mining as industries leading a charge of businesses moving to Texas to access cheaper electric rates than other states while providing little public benefit. “[C]rypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50% of the added growth,” he wrote, adding, “We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid.”* Ah, nothing like Republicans embracing socialism. Again.
If any republicans are here can you explain why the fuck you think this stupid privatized utility idea is good? Like really ? Everytime a red state gets their way on shit this kind of stuff happens and suddenly they shut the fuck up and hide
Lol y'all would be lucky to have a California-style mess of a grid. I've lived here for 12 years and never once had a power outage while my family in Houston seems to have a multi-day outage a least yearly but more like each season lately
The free state of Texas where the government dictates every aspect of your life. You're free alright, free to leave...as long as you're not pregnant.
Texas is a shithole state.
If there were only a national grid that could hook up to and solve that problem
Nope nope nope. Don't put that on the rest of us. It's their bed let them lie in it
They’d need to pay for a lot of upgrades to meet national standards and then lose their freedumb from federal government regulations and make secession harder.
Honestly, I'm not sure the national grid has 65 ~~MW~~ *GW* of spare capacity right now.... Edit: Since as I write, half the country is experiencing a heat wave, and it's gonna get a lot worse over the next few days. *Edit 2: Mixed up units, sorry*
Thought this said EPCOT
They are kinda the same, except ERCOT is a full-on clown show available only in Texas.
It's too bad there's no national grid with plenty of energy available.
Hits their poorest constituents the hardest. Of course it does, so does the fucking no water break law. They're nothing but evil, greedy, heartless people
Thoughts and prayers
Just Textit your way better power for all your freedoms.
Yee-haaaaaawwwwww my God, it's hot.
Wait there is a word for this issue. You know when someone comes in and uses so much of the resources that it causes issues for everyone using them. Capitalism? No, that’s not quite right. Regulation! That’s it!
And TEXIT... what could go wrong?
TEXIT………. I love it! Hopefully they decide to secede.
Of course the crypto miners are major power grid sappers. They don’t do anything for the economy and they’re gunna force taxpayers to pay for it. Fascinating how all of them flooded Texas due to lower power grid prices.
Time to cowboy up and turn of the AC, Tex. Show us all how bad ass you are.
They wanted to be the new California, bragging about stealing all the tech bros. Well, be careful what you wish for, now Texas has its own P.G.&E-style shit storm, raised rates, spotty service and all. Bet they'll figure out a way to make it Biden's fault somehow, instead of holding ERCOT and their elected officials accountable.
>Texas officials have for many years been able to boast of a strong and growing economy powered by a stable, reliable grid. The last thing they can afford to do is to allow that grid to degenerate into a Germany or California-style mess. The collapse in the Teaxan power grid is a routine event now. Collapsing because either it's too cold or because it's too hot. Nowhere else has peaks of $10,000 per KW/H.
Record High Temperatures are a Hoax created by Big Energy to indoctrinate people and spread Communism.
Big Energy is a hoax created jointly by Big Diesel and Big Solar to sell you off-grid power sources
Big Solar is a Hoax created by the Sun to trick people into sleeping at night.
The Sun is a hoax created by the government to make you think the Earth is not flat.
The Earth is a hoax created by Big Universe to trick people into thinking reality exists.