Comment on How India’s power crisis is self-made & why we could face another crunch during the monsoon

x0x7@wolfballs.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

Almost all power crisises are self made. It's actually pretty easy to make a grid and allow people to contribute to it, and it's such a simple business model. Usually all power crises come from someone being afraid of pure economics. They always have to have a twist and it's usually that twist that causes the problem.

Texas had a near perfect grid. But it had three twists, which like always, come back to bite you. The good? The price of electricity both for contribution and use was set by the amount that the electrical line varied in voltage and frequency. When a grid is under powered it becomes under volted and has under-frequency from physical generators hooked to it lagging. So if that is happening, even the smallest amount, the price has to go up and more power turns on. It works. Here are the twists they had to add. There was a price cap, they wouldn't allow out of grid contribution (isolated from other states), they incentivized wind with subsidies instead of allowing natural investment tuned to the problem of reliability to dominate.

Legislators can't allow something to be simple. They have to assume their opinions are useful. Everywhere power has had significant and maintained dysfunction someone had to do something stupid to the economics.

source
Sort:hotnewtop