3/29/2023 0 Comments Ercot grid![]() ![]() It's the sound of 60 hertz, a frequency common to all grids in North America. That may sound like a romantic metaphor, but it actually gives off a hum like when a guitar isn't properly plugged into an amp. Avoiding a grid 'heart attack'ĮRCOT has a heartbeat. Hertz-Shargel is concerned that bitcoin mining would only raise peak demand, ultimately adding stress to the system. "Miners are a strain on the grid, not a help," said Ben Hertz-Shargel of Wood Mackenzie, a provider of commercial intelligence for the world's natural resources sector. "If you have a moment where you have a power shortage or a power crisis, whether it's a freeze or some other natural disaster where power generation capacity goes down, that creates the capacity to instantaneously shift that energy to put it back on the grid," Cruz said of the ability of bitcoin miners to shut down their operations within seconds.īut not all are convinced that bitcoin miners are the solution. Mining for cryptocurrencies is the computationally intensive process by which new tokens are created and transactions of existing digital coins are verified.Īt the Texas Blockchain Summit in October, Cruz pointed to the ability of bitcoin miners to turn their rigs on or off within seconds - a feature that is hugely beneficial during times when energy needs to be shifted back to the grid to meet demand. These flexible buyers are bitcoin miners. A lot of people lost faith in the grid altogether after a winter storm earlier this year resulted in a multi-system meltdown that "was within minutes of a much more serious and potentially complete blackout."Ĭrypto enthusiasts believe the fix to this problem is actually to add another electricity consumer into the mix - a buyer who will take as much power as they're given, whatever the time of day, and are just as willing to power down with a few seconds' notice. Rolling blackouts at moments of peak power consumption no longer come as a surprise. The price of power per hour is all over the place, routinely going negative. ![]() Maintaining that balance has proven to be a real challenge this year, and Texans are feeling it. ![]() Having too much power and not enough buyers is just as bad as everyone wanting to fire up their AC units on the same day in July. The grid is called ERCOT - short for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is the organization tasked with operating it - and it's fussy and temperamental.ĮRCOT powers about 90% of the state, but to run smoothly, it requires a perfect balance between supply and demand. ![]()
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