This is what unfettered deregulation in the pursuit of money gets you. Someone ask Rick Perry, former Governor and Secretary of Energy. Wasn't he governor during the last historic freeze and failed to take the corrective actions that were recommended? Like wrapping the pipes...
1989, 2011, 2021 Who could have ever seen this coming? Other than everyone. Texas twiddled dick for 30 years, and here we are. God Bless Deregulation.
In Texas, as it pertains to what we are talking about, it sure as **** is political. You may not live here or you may be too young to understand things (I'm guessing both), but educate yourself before speaking.
And here we go... Dallas-Fort Worth (WBAP/KLIF) – Some Texans who get their electric service on a variable rate plan are begining to see sky-rocketing bills as a result of record demand over the past week. Our media partner WFAA spoke with Griddy customer Ty Williams who says bill nearly tripled from $600 last month to nearly $17,000 so far this month. https://www.wbap.com/2021/02/19/tex...-bill-spikes-to-over-17000-so-far-this-month/
There was no problem pumping gas to homes. Electricity usage spiked but probably not home gas usage but regardless gas kept flowing The power providers may have just said we can't pay to make up the shortage. Neither the power producers or the natural gas providers are saying anything. All information is coming from ERCOT
Apologies for being so late. Working from home with the pandemic, my attendance here has gotten sporadic. I'll try to do better. I can't comment on 11 pages of posts. But I've read so many bad takes in the news, I have some disjointed thoughts. But ask me whatever and I'll check in this week. 1. I see lots of accusations about generators not insulating after 2011. At least with the big reputable ones, that's not so. They've adopted all the 2011 recommendations for cold weather protocols and it's very robust. The cold-related failures seem to me to be failures of design - that when the plant was built, often decades ago, they didn't anticipate and build for this weather. So operators now can weatherize up the wazoo as an operating expense and it won't matter. It needs capex to change the design of the plant to withstand an event like this. And given that power plants don't clear much return on capital in normal years, it might be hard to justify the capex. Expectations of climate change and more severe weather and/or government mandates might change that calculus. 2. Much was made in the 2011 report of the design specs of plants for what temperatures they can operate at. It looks like they can go down to 10 degrees and sometimes colder, according to the spec, plus considerations for wind speeds. But I wonder how "real world" those numbers are. Also, plants sometimes fail for weird weather-related reasons. The 2011 report talks about one plant that failed because fish in the lake that were ordinarily screened out tried to crowd into water intakes to escape the extreme cold and they broke the plant. Having not had a real world experience of that behavior before, they didn't anticipate a problem like that. Now, extreme weather kits include more fish netting. 3. The 2011 report talks about the failure of the gas wells, but lack of gas supplies was not a significant contributor to the 2011 problem. It was a big problem in 2021. The 2011 report considers recommendations and studies for more gas weatherization but doesn't go after them hard at all. That was an unfortunate missed opportunity because they lack of gas made this event significantly worse. We need the gas wells to better weatherize. 4. Here's the one thing that concerns me about the windmills. A lot of fossil fuel plants were designed decades ago when climate change wasn't a consideration (there was a spate of some recent CCGT builds, and I'm working to figure out if they did better), but climate change should definitely have been a consideration when those wind turbines were built. I'm disappointed they weren't weatherized. 5. Texas having its own grid isn't the culprit. Our neighboring RTOs, SPP and MISO, were also having curtailment events so they wouldn't have shipped us enough power even if they could. Northern Mexico was also having massive blackouts (because they rely on gas from Texas). The one way being more interconnected might have helped (but I'm no engineer) is in managing frequency. Grid operators would have an easier time keeping the frequency within the band with a larger system. The crisis of maintaining the frequency has something to do, I'm told, with the inability to roll the blackouts. But they did maintain frequency and stave off absolute disaster anyway. 6. Griddy had 29,000 customers. Those are the only people who will get astronomical bills. That is a libertarian wetdream product that might be appropriate to people who understand the energy industry. It is too bad that griddy marketed to and sold to customers who did not fit that profile because they didn't understand how much risk they were taking. But that's only 29k household out of millions. Others who might see high prices: (a) If you're on a variable product, the retailer will decide how much to charge you at the end of the billing cycle. They'll charge more, but they'll still eat most of the costs themselves. During the 2014 polar vortex, we saw some retailers desperately avoiding bankruptcy charge 28 cents a kwh. That's still nowhere close to Griddy. (b) There are over 20 companies at risk of going bankrupt right now, usually small guys. If they do (without being sold), their customers go to a Provider of Last Resort (POLR), a big retailer who can afford them, but those customers may be charged a high POLR rate (circa 18 cents the last time I paid attention, but that was a long time ago). If you have a variable product, or you are with a retailer who went bankrupt, go to powertochoose.org today and find a reasonably priced fixed rate contract. That will staunch some of the bleeding. If you're a Griddy customer, well, it's too late for you. Write your congressman or something.
I was month to month, I’m moving to Delaware in the next year. I was still able to lock in at 15 cents/12 months last week. Not cheap but won’t be disastrous.
I'm not as strong on gas, but I understand when there's scarcity, they prioritize homes over businesses for supply for the sake of heating. Gas wasn't flowing for some power plants. I haven't done the math but given that power was selling at $9,000/mwh I find it hard to believe a plant would fail to make money if they could manage to run.
