Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Power United States

Texas Spot Power Prices Jump Almost 100-Fold On Tight Supply (yahoo.com) 127

ArchieBunker quotes a report from Bloomberg: Texas electricity prices soared almost 100-fold as a high number of power-plant outages raised concerns of a potential evening shortfall. Spot prices at the North Hub, which includes Dallas, jumped to more than $3,000 a megawatt-hour just before 7 p.m. local time, versus about $32 at the same time Tuesday, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. This morning, Ercot, as the state's main grid operator is known, issued a "watch" for a potential capacity reserve shortage from about 7-9 p.m., meaning the buffer of spare supplies could fall to low enough levels to call on back-up generation, cancel or delay outages or curb usage.

The conditions are the tightest of the year so far and raises the risk of prices rising to the $5,000 cap -- which they last did on April 16, when Ercot also warned of a potential shortfall. Unusually hot weather in the region has boosted demand for cooling and lowered the efficiency of many power plants. Wind output has also fallen from a day earlier and there are more outages. "Ercot has not called for conservation this evening," it said by email. "The grid is operating under normal conditions at this time."

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Texas Spot Power Prices Jump Almost 100-Fold On Tight Supply

Comments Filter:
  • by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Thursday May 09, 2024 @04:01PM (#64460645)
    Again with the Texas power grid? Lol, regulate your shit. And hook it up to the rest of the country, you're terrible at doing this alone.
    • It's an increase in the spot market, average people don't buy their electricity on the spot market...

      • by kalpol ( 714519 ) on Thursday May 09, 2024 @04:24PM (#64460721)
        Yeah these stories are meaningless unless you are literally signing up to buy power at the spot prices, which I believe the cheapest of the cheap power companies might do. But almost no one does, i know no one who does that. Most have standard pricing. And Texas is in fact connected to the other grids, which often have their own problems. You can see the bridge statuses at the ERCOT dashboard.
        https://www.ercot.com/gridmkti... [ercot.com]
        • Actually quite a few people do this for retail power as well. It's a classic case of expecting only good things to happen. People on spot prices can often pay less providing they curb their use when times are bad.

          During the big freeze a few years back there were countless stories of people on spot prices getting royally screwed.

        • Yeah these stories are meaningless unless you are literally signing up to buy power at the spot prices, which I believe the cheapest of the cheap power companies might do. But almost no one does, i know no one who does that. Most have standard pricing.

          Almost no one loses their house in a fire, it's still enough people and enough damage for the government to step in to pay for relief. It's not nothing.
          https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]

          Plus your power company does pay these prices, and the power companies that survived the 2021 disaster for example, they all added surcharges to cover their costs. If your rate is set for the year you got hit the next year, if it was set more frequently like I heard around San Antonio for example, you got hit sooner, but you

        • by tokul ( 682258 )

          https://www.ercot.com/gridmkti... [ercot.com]

          If you believe you have a valid business reason for accessing ERCOT resources, please contact the ERCOT Service Desk.

          Security will make sure that you can't prove your point.

          Southern Spirit Transmission exists only on paper. They were talking about linking the grid in 2024 January. Power lines are not built in three months.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        It's an increase in the spot market, average people don't buy their electricity on the spot market...

        It is better than the sky-high electricity rates in California according to my friends and family that still hang on out there by their fingernails.

        Smart people in Texas buy their electricity on a contract (and there are many to choose from in Texas) where the rate does not change. Only the ID10-Ts that have variable rate plans get caught out in these situations.

        • It is better than the sky-high electricity rates in California according to my friends and family that still hang on out there by their fingernails.

          Electricity markets aren't stationary. This article [usnews.com] paints a summer with higher August prices in Texas compared to California (with California benefiting from relatively good sources of hydroelectric generation this summer).

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I love how people compare Texas to California. That's a great example of whataboutism and a fairly stupid comparison. Most other states have significantly more reliable power generation.
          https://generatordecision.com/... [generatordecision.com]
          Here's a great quote.

          48. Texas 1175 Minutes 2.64 Power Outages 445 Minutes avg.
          34. California 325 Minutes 1.31 Power Outages 248 Minutes avg.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Those high peak prices get factored into the contract. You pay them, just spread out over the contract period instead of for half an hour on a single day.

          I'm on a variable rate plan that tracks the wholesale price of renewable electricity. It doesn't fluctuate as badly as it seems to in Texas, but I do save money by avoiding heavy consumption at peak times.

    • On the average Texas electricity rates are quite low. A temporary spike might move the average up some but we'll need to have some more history on this to see any real impacts.
      https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review.com]

      From what I see they are doing well enough alone. Sure, they had that big winter outage some time ago but that was news because of the rarity. I believe such things happen far more often in other states. What made this bad, and newsworthy, is that people weren't prepared for it. Where I live it's

    • I am in Texas and I agree. First quit subsidizing bit coin mining. They get better rates for ridiculously long contracts, than actual people that need it to live. Worse, we pay them NOT to use it. Let's flip the Profit over People paradigm https://www.texasmonthly.com/n... [texasmonthly.com] Thanks for giving our money to the ultra-rich... jerks
      • The bitcoin mining (more accurately spot cloud compute) is necessary to regulate the cycling of wind and solar. You want more solar and wind than any other state then you need to make sure you can soak up the unneeded energy to do something useful for most of its lifecycle, otherwise it becomes an expense (like Germany where they pay people to take green energy and then charge people 25c when they need it)

    • This is an overreaction. This is just letting the free market help control usage by the likes of the Bitcoin miners. There are NO rolling blackouts, unlike the ones that happen in some other high-regulated states.

      And, what's YOUR electricity cost? I'm paying 14 cents per kWh. If that low price comes with an occasional spike in spot prices, I'm pretty OK with that!

    • The Texas grid handled it just fine, thank you. There were no rolling blackouts.

      Nobody pays spot price, unless they choose to speculate on spot prices. Nearly everybody pays a contracted fixed price. And that fixed price per kWh is lower in Texas (14 cents) than the US average (16 cents) and less than half of California's (31 cents). https://www.energybot.com/elec... [energybot.com]

      Why am I, a Texan, supposed to be upset by this?

  • ERCOT -- Electric Reliability Council of Texas

  • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday May 09, 2024 @04:24PM (#64460719)

    Now, where I'm from, most people are on a fixed rate. There is a floating rate available. It's for people who want to gamble that the floating rate works out better in the long run, but who can also absorb spikes like these from time to time.

    But there's another group that can be forced to pay the floating rate - those with bad credit. To enter into a five year fixed rate contract, you need to pass a credit check. And, in a cruel twist, those with poor credit are most at risk of being torpedoed by these fluctuations.

    But... I am not from Texas. How does it work there?

    • You pay a deposit of a couple of months typical billing if you have really bad credit. That's about all. You get it back when you terminate.
    • Fixed rate contracts are available. Variable rate contracts for the gamblers out there are also available.
    • Are you talking about the same thing? There's usually three types of contracts. Fixed rate, Variable rate, and Spot. Even with variable rate you don't normally deal with hour by hour variance, typically month by month or day by day. When you say floating rate what are you talking about?

      You normally need to make a very narrow and targeted choice to end up with an energy contract anywhere in the western world to be subjected to a spot price. It can happen, and in Texas it does happen, but often it's quite dif

    • No, there is no credit check for a fixed-rate contract. I live in Texas and renew my contract every year or two. No credit checks.

  • by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 ) on Thursday May 09, 2024 @04:37PM (#64460753)
    Under the PURPA ACT [wikipedia.org] of 1978 US electric companies are required to maintain spare capacity. Texas maintains it's own reliability requirements under the ERCOT Council [wikipedia.org].
    • from the article: "Ercot has not called for conservation this evening," it said by email. "The grid is operating under normal conditions at this time." That's the equivalent of "It's just capitalism bro."
    • by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      The stock holders demand we make as high a profit as is possible, to hell with the consequences. When hospitals cannot afford to keep the lights on, blame the capitalists.

  • Nothing to see here, this is typical for a grid with too many intermittents. Same problem happening here in Finland last few days, spot pricing went from 37,0202 eurocents per kilowatt hour on 8.5. to zero on 9.5., to -0,01984 today.

    And variance hour to hour is nuts when weather is unstable. On the day when most expensive hour was over 37 cents, cheapest was just over 3. It doesn't even match the actual generation, because of the way European grid spot prices are determined (they are pushed to the next day)

  • by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Thursday May 09, 2024 @07:27PM (#64461121)
    is to maximize power producer profits by limiting excess capacity and creating repeated crises that "justify" exorbitant rates for the companies that are on-line during an "emergency". It is not the "Energy Reliability Council of Texas", it is the "Energy Producer Profitability Council of Texas" -- what else would one expect in Texas?

    Texas could increase its reliability tremendously quite easily by connecting to either the Eastern U.S. Grid or the Western U.S. Grid. But that would blow up the profit making game for the the Texas energy producers so that will never happen.
  • Texas clearly learned nothing from Enron.
  • spot power pricing is the stupidest thing ever to be invented by capitalism.

    • Nobody pays spot prices, except those who *choose* to pay spot prices. The vast majority of Texas customers pay a fixed contract rate.

To stay youthful, stay useful.

Working...