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Texas power grid will be impacted by Oct. 14 solar eclipse, ERCOT says (chron.com)
13 points by geox on Sept 28, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


It'll be impacted if we all sneeze simultaneously, I'm truly so tired of hearing about/dealing with this grid.

I've been in Austin since ~2013, I've only learned about the quirks here in the past few years


How is this framed in the US? Solar (and wind) prop up grid that would have failed otherwise? Or the other way?


Just tell people to turn their air conditioning units off for the thirty minutes before and after the eclipse.


Ironically that would make the problem worse. Supply must precisely and exactly match demand to the millisecond. Dropping 40% of the demand will cause an oversupply. Followed by a slightly lower oversupply for the rolling 30s supply dip caused by the eclipse passing over solar farms. Followed by a return to the massive oversupply once the eclipse passes.

These are solved problems. Texas is trying to reinvent the wheel trying a blind walk to uncover a more profitable way of operating an electric grid. Primarily by not implementing standard safety and weatherization methods that are common (and required) elsewhere in the US. The social cost is frequent outages and deaths of vulnerable people. But that’s a price that profit seeking providers of public power and the leaders of Texas are willing to pay!




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