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How Wind and Politics Pushed the Price of Texas Electricity Below Zero
Slate dissects the strange circumstances that led the price of electricity in Texas to briefly dip not just to zero, but into negative territory, reaching at one point negative $8.52 per megawatt hour. Why? A combination of being an "electricity island" with only weak ties to the surrounding state's grids; strong wind in a state that's sprouted thousands of windmills; and infrastructure design that means the only real buyer for most electricity producers' output is ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. (One of the comments attached to the story notes that Texas is not completely isolated from the national grid, but it's still markedly isolated.) A slice: Demand fell—at 4 a.m., the amount of electricity needed in the state was about 45 percent lower than the evening peak. The wind was blowing consistently—much later in the day Texas would establish a new instantaneous wind generation record. At 3 a.m., wind was supplying about 30 percent of the state’s electricity, as this daily wind integration report shows. And because the state is an electricity island, all the power produced by the state’s wind farms could only be sold to ERCOT, not grids elsewhere in the country.
There are many storage methods available for this excess energy.
Seemingly concerned with the "Texas" angle, TFA fails to mention if this is a rare anomaly or worthy of storage development.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Which is great news! Texas is ahead of the world now in being prepared for the huge increase in electricity usage that good electric cars will cause.
That won't do much good though, Tesla still can't sell in Texas without going through a bunch of hoops for a dealership.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
If you think free markets can't, and don't act erratically, you're delusional. The only time markets don't act erratically is in monopoly situations, where they are tightly controlled -- either by a government monopoly, or a corporate monopoly.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Nope. A negative price of electricity is not a sign that electricity is going to be cheap on average. On the contrary, it is a sign of poor infrastructure and heavy dependence on fossil fuel. (Coal and oil fired plants are expensive to take off-line, which is why the price of energy fluctuates wildly when the wind changes.) With better infrastructure and more hydro power, the price would not have fluctuated into negative, but would have been lower on average.
Right, I mean, it's not like all these huge capitalist tech companies will adopt wind and solar until it's worth their while, and will please the share holders... Oh... wait, what's that? They all build giant solar farms next to their data centres because it's a hugely valuable investment?
Well, damn...
If you can afford a Tesla, you have no problem going a state over and buying them. I see plenty in Austin.
You can't just "do" something with surplus power on the grid...
Actually, you can and in Virginia we do. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station uses surplus power (from a nuclear plant) to pump water up into a reservoir to later be used to generate hydro power during high demand.
Also see: The Inside Story Of The World’s Biggest ‘Battery’ And The Future Of Renewable Energy
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
More like 5cents per kWh - or $50 per MWh? If so then the quoted $23 figure is quite reasonable.