15 sats \ 2 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 14 May 2022 \ on: Riot Blockchain mining temporarily powers down after ERCOT asks Texans to conserve power bitcoin
Here's an article on the event that triggered this:
Friday afternoon, the six power plants that went offline resulted in the loss of 2,900 megawatts of electricity.
ERCOT asks Texans to conserve power after electricity plants go offline https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2022/05/13/ercot-asks-texans-to-conserve-power-after-electricity-plants-go-offline/ https://archive.ph/kMZta <-- An archive of the article, with no paywall / no subscription required
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @itsrealfake 15 May 2022
It's not clear to me how "hot weather" causes power plants to go "off-line"
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 15 May 2022
They run fine in a lot hotter weather in the summer so it wasn't the heat alone that did it.
The ERCOT grid in Texas is pretty much isolated -- there is limited transmission capacity to import power from (or export power to) neighboring grids.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/NERC-map-en.svg/800px-NERC-map-en.svg.png
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
Thus a failure may cascade into many failures and that will really affect reliability. They overbuilt on wind, for example, but if the wind isn't blowing when they need it the rest of the generation capacity may not be able to make up for the difference. I have no idea if lack of wind was a contributor this time but it has been a common denominator in previous ERCOT grid reliability incidents.
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