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am_Unition  ·  588 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Californians asked to cut power use as extreme heat approaches

Know what's funny?

Because of the variable nature of renewables, in their current forms, a larger grid is almost always physically superior, political and business issues aside, simply because it's far less likely to completely fail.

And that. THAT alone is why Texas is stupid. A voluntary self-kneecapping, based in the fact that we have oil here, and the grid was entirely nonrenewables as recently as 20 to 30 years ago, so we could have electricity cheaper, if we isolationism'd. Add in the American exceptionalist's state-level exceptionalism.

The TX grid is very likely doomed to fail, at some point, all things considered. I'd say like 35% odds within the next five years, with gradually increasing likelihood. Not super keen on market forces after hundreds of Texans froze to death while some energy companies were so, um, "incentivized" that they made literally billion$, and TX energy prices have since gone up, in part, to help gradually pay the debt back to the utility providers, who were somehow permitted to be charged absolutely ridiculous rates by energy producers. The lack of winterization and other regulations and a blatant disregard of climate change predictions, permitted by the same system, are what caused the near-total crash and rolling blackouts. Nothing has actually changed on the regulatory side. When borne out experimentally, the theoretical "financially incentivized to winterize for the next crisis" argument hasn't worked.

Now I am thinking about the fascinating process of phase or frequency-shifting the Texas grid to sync up with the national grid. I think it'd be super location dependent, and you probably have to use retarded time (actual term), right? The delay of a light signal between East and West Texas requires consideration, it's probably about 0.1 degrees or so (of 360) out of phase. I think for the best efficiency, the grid should basically ring like a bell, with a 2D planar geometry, kinda analogous to the second (I think?) 3D spherical harmonic. Like electron orbital 2S (edit: nah, now I think it's a cylindrical harmonic mode. I need to revisit quantum). Like a drum head's response if you hit it dead center. That is to say, the larger phase shift to the continental grid could be as big as +/-180 degrees if the two both oscillate at exactly 60 Hz. Or, you could tactically wait(?), because if the grid frequencies are slightly different, which is more likely, they'd eventually align in phase enough to open power connections across the border periodically. Like using a beat frequency to time the exchange of opening connections between increasingly isolated pockets of the TX grid, to gradually bring the two grids in sync. And the precision required to drive the power generation stations or transformer stations (not sure if one or both) into the correct phases may not currently exist, I'm not sure. Service outtages may be required. Fun to game out, but I think it needs computation/modeling to do right, using the known grid architecture. Not having much luck Goggling for it. Hmm.