What you are saying may be part of the equation, but the reality is that deregulation, being very business friendly and lower tax revenue come with a cost because corners are cut. Perhaps it is worth it to Texans, and I believe at this point it likely is. Texas is the top state in the country for wildcatters and for those that are driven by business. That can be very very good, but there are also consequences as well. A large part of the problem with Texas is that the state has a lot of enemies largely from some jealousy, but mostly because of the Texas political leaders. There is no way to say it other than Texas has horrible state elected politicians. I have seen it with Chicago.... when one party has a stranglehold on politics, mediocre men lead.
Bottom line is that Texas refused to join the national grid system and now they are paying the price.
This, and as someone that has been in freezing temperatures.... and also -30 degree temperatures, there is a MASSIVE difference..... just ask @rocketsjudoka and @bobrek who were in Minnesota.......
Eh.... I don't view it as being mutually exclusive, same thing with a deregulated grid... everything has pros and cons. Deregulation doesn't mean zero rules, but it's clear the state of Texas let producers/utilities/etc cut corners on the one hand.
To add some flavor about Minnesota. Here our primary utility in the Twin Cities is now up to 25% renewable energy (along with 25% nuclear). The last of the coal plants will be shut down this decade with the utility stating that they'll be 100% renewable by 2050. And all of the cost of weather proofing the power generation and transmission lines have been priced into our cost of energy. The power industry here operates using the traditional model of a heavily regulated utility (which serves as a monopoly in individual markets). This is how power is managed in most states. In Texas, the focus was on finding a market centric mechanism to incentivize rapid increases in power generation to meet ever increasing demand (especially in summer). In the 1990s, the original wave of deregulation focused on creating a marketplace for power generation and transmission (with ERCOT having the responsibility of ensuring grid reliability). However, those two things don't really mix. If the goal is to incentivize power generation, ERCOT's incentives were warped. If ERCOT both has to ensure reliability in the electricity market and create market competitiveness, it actually creates incentives to minimize regulations on power generation and transmission in order to remove barriers to entry. I think everyone is focused on the deregulation of the sale of electricity to consumers that happened in 2002 but this whole disaster started in the 90s when ERCOT's mission changed. From the 70s to the 90s, ERCOT was intended to act as a parallel to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and NERC operating responsibilities. Once the 90s deregulation passed, ERCOT became a hybrid nonprofit that had reliability mandates AND a mandate to ensure the competitiveness of the wholesale power market. Regardless of whether Texas joins the US grids, ERCOT needs its mission to focus only on reliability again. Now joining the US grid would mean that FERC would also have significant regulatory influence as well but you still need ERCOT to focus on reliability again and perhaps that means that power generation and transmission deregulation needs to be ended as well then.
There's a difference between market deregulation and deregulating industry safety standards. The fallacy of thinking is that somehow businesses will regulate themselves if the gov't butts out. But that's not always the case. Businesses are driven by profit, not to handle once in 40 year events that result in consumer deaths but higher profits. That's why regulations exist. That's why building codes go beyond what what most building will ever face in 20 years. Because the gov't is designed to prevent catastrophe and not just maximize profits - because lives do matter more than making an extra few million. Forget the economic cost of what is happening with rolling blackouts. Just think of the lives that were lost because of it. So now, should we spread deregulation to other markets? We've seen what deregulation did to the financial markets in 2007-2008. Deregulation isn't always a bad idea - it worked wonders on the airline industry saving consumers money. But they didn't deregulate safety, the deregulated routes and pricing.
It's kinda like China, except in China when people say "heads of those responsible will roll for this!!", they literally do.
Our friend in Florida just had a Tesla roof installed. It looks like a shingled roof with 70% of the shingles acquiring sun and powering the house and 3 batteries. Unused energy is sent back to the grid. Each battery fully powers the house for at least 5 hours. It's slick and expensive. He was the first person in St. Petersburg to have one installed. Cost for him was around $100k.
I agree. I believe at some point he will be getting payments from Duke Energy. If that never happens, it will take him 20 years or so to recoup, however, (I'll need to ask him), I think he gets tax credits which lowers the cost To digress, I had a mosquito misting system installed. I added a solar charging system for around $400. That allows me to claim a tax credit of around $800 for the system
I would have to think he got tax credits up front? or perhaps the roofing is like the cars and Tesla gets all the tax credits? I don't know anything about the roofing, would love to find out more
We are going to get a quote when we get back home. Incidentally, i looked it up and the misting system will get us a $1118 credit on our 2020 taxes and the cost for the little solar charger was $300.
Total cost was $97,000 which included 3 batteries. Tax credit is 26% of solar and battery cost ( I assume it doesn't apply to the non solar "shingles"). So probably brings the cost down below $80,000. Worst case would be 16 year recovery, but it should be quicker than that.
This is right up there with Patrick telling us to be ok with our elderly loved ones dying to keep the economy going. **** all of these guys. I wish I could be hopeful that the Texas public would have long memories and hold them accountable, but I know there's no basis to believe that.
I would expect class-action lawsuits once these charges start landing in people's mailboxes. Remember, the State just authorized these prices to be passed to the consumer. The spot price of wholesale electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000% on Monday amid a deep freeze across the state and rolling outages among power producers, according to data on the grid operator’s website. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-electricity-texas-prices-idUSKBN2AF19A
