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From: Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (ReacTor) Five SFF Books Featuring Frigid, Icy Worlds
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2024 17:13:53 -0500
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On 7/19/2024 2:40 PM, rkshullat@rosettacondot.com wrote:
> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>> Dimensional Traveler  <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>>> On 7/18/2024 12:50 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>>> We have been living the dream of Beryl down here in Houston for almost
>>>> two weeks now.  Lived on the genny for four days.  Walking outside, it
>>>> was a concert of genny's in all directions.
>>>>
>>> Partly because Texas refuses to be connected to the rest of the North
>>> American power grid....
>>
>> Kind of.  Texas now has two DC interconnects to the two North American grids,
>> which allows them to share power without having frequency management issues
>> or accept government regulation from the FERC (which does include a lot of
>> silliness but also includes standards for safety margins that are worth
>> following).
> 
> Texas has had DC grid ties for years, they're just not high enough capacity to
> make much difference statewide (aggregate of around 1 GW I believe). Peak
> summer demand is somewhere around 85 GW.
> It's doubtful that any realistic grid ties would have done more than reduce
> the scope and duration of the rolling blackouts during winter storm Uri.
> Demand was around double available capacity...a shortfall of at least 35 GW.
> There's been a huge change in potential winter demand as residences moved
> from gas heating to heat pumps and population increased. With the entire state
> below freezing (and many areas below 0 F) there were a lot of heat pumps
> running in "emergency" mode. In our case that changed our power consumption for
> heating from 5 kW to 15 kW. I'm not sure anybody knows what the "real" demand
> was or would have been. We only had power about 1/3 of the time (15 minutes on,
> 30 minutes off) during the height of the rolling blackouts, but when we did
> have it we were running all out...a space heater trying to keep our gecko
> alive, the heat pump running in emergency mode and the (electric) oven on with
> the door open. I'm guessing 20+ kW. I think we hit a low of 50F in the house.
> Even with rolling blackouts we used a normal February's amount of electricity
> in four days.
> 
>      Robert

ERCOT only includes residential and commercial demand in their demand 
calcs.  ERCOT does not include gross industrial power generation from 
the refineries and chemical plants, only the net that is sold to the 
grid.  The industrial power generation in Texas is over 20,000 MW, it is 
a hard number to get a hold of and changes over time as plants are added 
or closed.

For instance, the big Alcoa Aluminum plant in Rockdale, Texas used about 
600 MW for the nine aluminum potlines before they were closed down in 
2008.  Whereas the four older lignite units could generate about 900 MW 
(net) until the oldest three 1950s units (360 MW net) were replaced in 
2009 with a single unit that could generate 580 MW (net) for a plant 
total of 1,137 MW (net).

Lynn