How can the Southern power grid handle months of blistering heat with everyone blasting air conditioners, but can’t handle two days below freezing?
In: 1150
If you’re using electricity to heat your house the amount of electricity you need to bring into your house is directly proportional to the difference between indoor and outdoor temps. Because heat loss is directly proportional to the temperature difference.
On a ridiculously hot day the difference between inside and outside is somewhere around 30 degrees for most of the region. Often closer to 20 degrees.
Right now across most of Texas, for example, that difference is closer to 50 degrees. In other parts of the South it’s 60+ degrees.
So you’re losing heat twice as fast on a day like this as you’re gaining it on almost any summer day. So best case are using 2x-3x as much power.
But it actually gets worse than that – in this region heat pumps are a popular heating choice as they’re an efficient and economical way to provide heating in most winters. The thing is heat pump efficiency goes down once you’re below freezing, and gets worse the further below freezing you get, so you need to use even more power to overcome the inefficiency you’re getting hit with. So some places might be using 4x as much power to warm their house right now than they would on all but the hottest summer day.
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