The Texas Dip, Part 1

There has been a lot of talk, lately, about a 'Duck Curve', which seems to afflict California and other states that have high photovoltaic electric production.?What I'm about to show you is the 'Texas dip'.?While California can see deep slumps in electric prices mid-day, Texas sees the slump around 3AM.?The graph shows the average bus prices in ERCOT for years 2020-2022, excluding the Winter Storm Uri.?Shown is a peak around 5PM, with a dip at 4AM.?

There are forces at work that might exacerbate the peak and the dip in the coming years.?First, electric cars are expected to increase tenfold in Texas.?Second, the amount of wind turbine generated electricity is going to double.?Having said that, without any incentives, a typical electric car driver will start charging their car at the time that person returns home.?Surveys have found that a small minority of electric drivers even know that it is possible to schedule a charge.?A typical pattern for the electric car fleet, will be to charge at the period in the 'high' red oval ~ $65/MWh.?Some utilities encourage late-night charging.?But even a 12AM midnight start of a time-of-use (TOU) plan would put many cars charging at the blue oval ~$28/MWh.

In a very good world, electric cars would pick the lowest wholesale price to charge: red oval at 4AM ~$24/MWh.?In a much better world, those electric cars would pick only the best third of all nights to charge during the 3-4AM period.?This is marked by the green star, where the price, is $14/MWh.?Stay tuned for part two, of this post, where I explain what it would take to encourage electric car drivers to get this time, consistently.

???WindEverest is looking for electric car driving volunteers to test our app which helps people charge at peak wind penetrations on the grids of the Great Plains (Texas too). Please visit and get on our wait-list for beta testing.

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