The Texas Disaster by JEWELSTAITEFAN

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The Texas Disaster

POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Wednesday, January 17, 2024 11:01
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Thursday, January 20, 2022 11:48 PM

Do you have some magic internet thing that will tell you the exact price per day what energy will cost?

My power company either doesn't have that magic, or they're keeping it a secret.

--------------------------------------------------

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Friday, January 21, 2022 12:11 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Do you have some magic internet thing that will tell you the exact price per day what energy will cost?

My power company either doesn't have that magic, or they're keeping it a secret. "

You and I are not in TX, which is a different world regarding energy prices. Not like IN or WI.

If you've been following this thread, you know TX is unregulated, which secondbot constantly whines about. Those customers who were charged the excessive prices last Feb were able to look at their bills and decipher.

The exorbitant prices only happen during the hours when energy (natural gas) production fails. Because the "responsible" companies have not winterized, they will fail again when the freeze comes. That is the exact times when the prices will be unpredictable.

The next morning can check the news to know what failed, where, and if power company turned off your service.

Last year certain areas were shut out of service. But other areas were not. Some amount of "visiting friends" in an area still served could work as well.

Other than these catastrophic days, the energy prices for every other day of the month is in line and predictable.

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Thursday, February 3, 2022 2:03 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Reports of Tejas having the deepest freeze in 30 years today.

It's above zero in my hood.

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Saturday, February 5, 2022 9:42 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Texas’ gas system didn’t get through the cold snap unscathed.

Some power companies burned fuel oil at their natural gas-fired plants — a fairly unusual occurrence in gas-rich Texas. One of the state’s largest power companies, Dallas-based Vistra Corp., turned to fuel oil at four of its natural gas plants after being unable to come to terms with pipeline giant Energy Transfer for natural gas delivery.

‘Absolutely not a stress test’

Some experts did not view this winter storm or the lack of outages as a testament to the grid’s stability.

“This was absolutely not a stress test of the Texas grid,” said Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based energy consultant who worked for the Public Utility Commission of Texas from 1995 to 2001 and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004. “It’s great the grid ‘survived’ this storm, but gosh it should have, and had it not I’d be pretty darn worried.”

Silverstein pointed to the temperatures, which were warmer than during the 2021 storm. The low in Houston on Friday morning, for example, reached 26 degrees, while the lowest temperature during last year’s was 13 degrees. Temperatures were at 32 or below this week for 18 straight hours, while last year Houston-area residents endured 44 straight hours of temperatures at freezing or lower.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Texas-grid-su
rvives-winter-storm-but-no-16833274.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, February 5, 2022 9:57 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

26 degrees. The horror!

It's currently a toasty 6 degrees here.

--------------------------------------------------

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Saturday, February 5, 2022 10:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
26 degrees. The horror!

It's currently a toasty 6 degrees here.

The gas and electric sellers really wanted a repeat of last year's multi-billion dollar price gouging, but because weather was mild the sellers would have got caught red-handed gouging the buyers. What happened last year?

Texans spent an exorbitant amount on electricity during a week in which most of them couldn’t get much electricity. For the entirety of 2020, Texans paid $9.8 billion to keep the juice flowing. But on February 16, 2021, they spent roughly $10.3 billion. Costs for the month of February totaled more than $50 billion.

During the February 2021 freeze, the gas industry failed to deliver critically needed fuel, and while Texans of all stripes suffered, the gas industry scored windfall profits of about $11 billion.

It’s possible that some of the massive profits were illicit. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking into potential market manipulation by Texas pipeline companies, which are subject to the least regulation and oversight of any pipelines in the country. Those companies operate in a regulatory penumbra. For their pipelines operating only in Texas, they’re generally exempt from reporting tariffs and other market information the federal government requires of interstate pipelines.

More at https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-electric-grid-failure
-warm-up/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, February 5, 2022 4:31 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Texas’ gas system didn’t get through the cold snap unscathed.

Some power companies burned fuel oil at their natural gas-fired plants — a fairly unusual occurrence in gas-rich Texas. One of the state’s largest power companies, Dallas-based Vistra Corp., turned to fuel oil at four of its natural gas plants after being unable to come to terms with pipeline giant Energy Transfer for natural gas delivery.

‘Absolutely not a stress test’

Some experts did not view this winter storm or the lack of outages as a testament to the grid’s stability.

“This was absolutely not a stress test of the Texas grid,” said Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based energy consultant who worked for the Public Utility Commission of Texas from 1995 to 2001 and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004. “It’s great the grid ‘survived’ this storm, but gosh it should have, and had it not I’d be pretty darn worried.”

Silverstein pointed to the temperatures, which were warmer than during the 2021 storm. The low in Houston on Friday morning, for example, reached 26 degrees, while the lowest temperature during last year’s was 13 degrees. Temperatures were at 32 or below this week for 18 straight hours, while last year Houston-area residents endured 44 straight hours of temperatures at freezing or lower.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Texas-grid-su
rvives-winter-storm-but-no-16833274.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

why no mention of prices?

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Saturday, February 5, 2022 7:42 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I missed the whole "44 straight hours of temperatures below freezing" part since I only ever read the first few sentences of any crap Second ever posts anymore.

That's pretty fuckin' funny too.

Try 44 days. That's how long it was below freezing without a break up here last year.

Boo fucking hoo.

I thought Texans were made of sterner stuff. Maybe that's just another Hollywood lie.

--------------------------------------------------

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Sunday, February 6, 2022 1:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I missed the whole "44 straight hours of temperatures below freezing" part since I only ever read the first few sentences of any crap Second ever posts anymore.

That's pretty fuckin' funny too.

Try 44 days. That's how long it was below freezing without a break up here last year.

Boo fucking hoo.

I thought Texans were made of sterner stuff. Maybe that's just another Hollywood lie.

I told you that Texas power generators made an extra $50 billion in February 2021 only because the grid almost failed and being that close to failure allowed the sellers of electricity to jack up their rates. The government of Texas changed the laws to allow the electric grid to switch goals from being as reliable as your heartbeat to being as profitable as possible, which sacrificed reliability. That is why it almost failed last year under a slight amount of stress. An almost failing electric grid, with sky high prices per kilowatt-hour, is vastly more profitable than a electric grid that is reliable and has normal prices.

Texas Monthly has the article "The Texas Electric Grid Failure Was a Warm-up"
One year after the deadly blackout, officials have done little to prevent the next one — which could be far worse. And very profitable, but the article won't say that because Texas Monthly would get sued.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-electric-grid-failure
-warm-up/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, February 25, 2022 8:04 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

A swindle by a Texas governor who will most likely be reelected despite the swindle:

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott when the grid manager ordered wholesale power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies.

Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting to come back online, former Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker told him that Abbott wanted them to keep prices high.

Last year the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner, lied to the public when he said Abbott was not “involved in any way” in the decision to keep wholesale electricity prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour – more than 150 times normal prices.

The decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric. Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced co-op into bankruptcy.

“It (keeping prices high) did nothing at all to cause more generation to come online,” said Lino Mendiola, one of the attorneys representing Brazos. “It was an attempted remedy that didn’t solve any of the problems caused by the winter storm.”

“This decision resulted in $16 billion in additional costs to ERCOT's market,” wrote Carrie Bivens, director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor.

Now Governor Abbott is facing questions about his own responsibility in the handling of last year's blackout.

Abbott had, "once again put the profits of his donors over the people of this state. Abbott screwed us, and he’ll continue to screw us until we vote him out," Beto O'Rourke said.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220223232930/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/ercot-chief-abbott-direction-power-outage-storm-16941019.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:06 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Meanwhile in Texas: Privatize the Profits, Socialize the Losses

Under the guise of “protecting” citizens, the Texas legislature, instead of having the gas companies eat their losses from Winter Storm Uri last year, have floated a $3.4 billion bond package to have the taxpayers fund it.

. . . the gas companies get to have their cake and eat it too.

https://angrybearblog.com/2022/04/meanwhile-in-texas-privatize-the-pro
fits-socialize-the-losses

https://angrybearblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/3ECLU4SDIBHHLJTS5
DLMNP5NHY.webp

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 21, 2022 6:49 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The Houston-based pipeline company Kinder Morgan on Wednesday said its profit was $667 million in the first three months of the year compared with $1.4 billion during the same period in 2021, when it made about $1 billion during the week of the February freeze. Revenue fell 18 percent to $4.3 billion from $5.2 billion in the first quarter of last year.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Kinder-Morgan
-s-profits-fell-in-Q1-compared-to-17108255.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, May 6, 2022 11:58 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

We are asking all of our customers to help their fellow Texans by curtailing their energy consumption on Friday, May 6th through Monday, May 9th between the hours of 4 PM and 9 PM.

https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages

Hot or cold weather, Texas is short on operating capacity because building capacity cuts into profits. Generating companies make the most money with the least investment when they operate at 100% capacity as many hours as possible. If you don't like that, you will have to vote for a Democratic governor to not select Republicans to the public utility commission. https://www.puc.texas.gov/agency/about/commissioners/Default.aspx

The price of electricity from new power plants
Electricity prices are expressed in ‘levelized costs of energy’ (LCOE). LCOE captures the cost of building the power plant itself as well as the ongoing costs for fuel and operating the power plant over its lifetime.
https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, May 8, 2022 10:13 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Natural gas companies are too powerful in Texas

On a February morning in 2021, a trader at the San Antonio electricity utility CPS Energy messaged his counterpart at the pipeline company Energy Transfer to get a price for natural gas to run CPS power plants over the coming weekend.

On a typical day, CPS might have expected to pay $2 or $3 per million British thermal units. But 90 minutes later, the Energy Transfer trader wrote back, “Ok, are you sitting down?” before quoting $150 per mmbtu — five times Texas’s previous record for gas, according to a court document filed by CPS in September.

Nine minutes later, before the CPS trader had even responded, Energy Transfer — Texas’s largest gas supplier — raised the price to $225. Three days later, with a frigid winter storm sweeping across Texas and leaving millions of Texans without electricity, Energy Transfer raised the price to $500 per mmbtu.

The massive increase in natural gas prices during last winter’s blackout has set off a wave of litigation in state and federal courts and prompted an investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, casting a spotlight on the workings of Texas’s complex, opaque and lightly regulated natural gas market. The Texas market, unlike any other in the United States, provides opportunities for pipeline companies such as Energy Transfer to exercise vast market — sometimes monopoly — power to demand whatever prices they want in times of gas shortages, resulting in soaring costs for customers and profits for the companies, according to experts and legal filings. (Personally, I love this system. Republican politicians want to preserve it. Democrats want to end it.)

In the 15 months since last February's winter storm, power companies such as CPS, Vistra Energy of Dallas and Brazos Electric Cooperative of Waco have accused pipeline firms of price gouging and other practices that contributed to billions of dollars in losses for Texas’s power sector, forcing some electricity providers into bankruptcy and others to raise rates on customers for years to come.

The skyrocketing prices also left Texas natural gas customers with a $3.6 billion bill that will take a decade to pay off. Coincidentally, Energy Transfer and the Houston pipeline company Kinder Morgan earned combined profits of $3.4 billion during the storm.

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20220504200556/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/article/Texas-gas-market-pipeline-companies-17145574.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, May 8, 2022 10:28 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
(Personally, I love this system. Republican politicians want to preserve it. Democrats want to end it.)

Nobody here believes that you have any money.

All you do when you repeat sentences like this all the time is show everybody what a hypocritical cunt you are.

--------------------------------------------------

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Sunday, May 8, 2022 1:29 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
(Personally, I love this system. Republican politicians want to preserve it. Democrats want to end it.)

Nobody here believes that you have any money.

All you do when you repeat sentences like this all the time is show everybody what a hypocritical cunt you are.

You're such a Homer Simpson. Change your name to match, but that doesn't fit because no Marge Simpson would have you, no Monty Burns would let you near the controls of his nuclear power plant, and you will never have a child like Lisa Simpson. Maybe a Bart Simpson, if you're lucky.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, May 14, 2022 1:27 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Power prices on the ERCOT wholesale market on Friday afternoon spiked above $3,000 per megawatt-hour, far above the usual range of around zero dollars to $30 per megawatt-hour.

Friday afternoon, the six power plants that went offline resulted in the loss of 2,900 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 580,000 homes.

ERCOT’s management of the grid has been under scrutiny since February 2021, when a historic winter storm led to millions losing power for days and the deaths of at least 246 people.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2022/05/13/ercot-asks-texans-to-conser
ve-power-after-electricity-plants-go-offline/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 12, 2022 6:20 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Texas Claimed It “Fixed” Its Electricity Grid. It Doesn’t Look Very Fixed!

Texas’ governor hasn’t seemed too perturbed. Back in February, in the midst of uniquely icy storms, Abbott publicly praised his administration’s electricity operations, stating that “The Texas electric grid is the most reliable and resilient it’s ever been.” It's not.

https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/texas-power-grid-electricity-erco
t-abbott-heat.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, November 11, 2022 7:51 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

After almost a year of analysis, three plans to overhaul Texas's wholesale power market have been pushed aside in favor of two new proposals -- each of which could cost power consumers an estimated $460 million more per year.

The new plans, one from E3, the San Francisco-based energy analysis firm hired by the Public Utility Commission to review the previous proposals, and another by the PUC itself, come more than a year after the state launched an effort to revamp the power market in the wake of the catastrophic February 2021 winter storm. The deep freeze caused blackouts across the state -- some lasting for days -- that were blamed in the deaths of at least 200 people.

The study's authors from E3 said their review fails to consider the effects of another deep freeze on peak winter demand, adding that "such analysis is beyond the scope of this study."

"Twenty-one months after the storm, they have not stopped to clearly define what the problem is, and without that problem statement, you have a lot of analysts, stakeholders and consumers who are not even talking about the same thing. Why else would you be grasping for new solutions this late in the game? That's why I think we're in this place where it doesn't seem like we're all that close to anything that would make a meaningful difference."

https://web.archive.org/web/20221111042654/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/PUC-consulting-firm-recommend-two-previously-17574572.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, December 4, 2022 10:30 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

https://web.archive.org/web/20221204151309/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Untested-power-grid-overhaul-17626578.php

No risky experimenting with Texas grid. Here's how to lower bills, and keep lights on. [Editorial]
The Editorial Board, Dec 4, 2022

The first step was admitting Texas’ electrical grid had a problem.

For years, state leaders sold a vision of the Lone Star State as a haven for power generators. Bring us your natural gas, your coal producers yearning for low taxes, low costs, and minimal regulation.

Then Winter Storm Uri swept across the state in February 2021, killing hundreds of people and leaving more than 4.5 million Texas homes and businesses without power for three days. The denial stage was over. State regulators were forced to reckon with the fact that our cherished independent grid had serious vulnerabilities. Chief among them: thermal energy producers who failed to adequately winterize; skimpy power reserves; and minimal state oversight over the utility market.

The next step was to fix it. Yet more than a year after the state launched a two-phase plan to make the grid more resilient and incentivize power generators to increase production before a future Uri-level crisis, a taxpayer-funded report intended to serve as a blueprint for a grid redesign only added more confusion.

The Public Utility Commission, Texas’ energy regulator, commissioned E3, a San Francisco-based energy analysis firm, to evaluate several market design proposals that would help the state avoid widespread blackouts from severe weather.

Despite that mandate, E3 only analyzed weather data from 1980 through 2019, ignoring two of the most extreme weather events Texas has faced in the past decade: Uri and this past summer’s heat wave which pushed the grid close to emergency conditions several times. The consultants' explanation for such an inexplicable oversight? They did not expect “the same levels of outage would be observed during similar weather conditions due to improvements that have been made by the PUC” such as weatherization rules and incentives for energy producers to have backup fuel on site in case of an emergency.

Apparently, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s power grid manager better known as ERCOT, doesn’t share their confidence.

A winter report released by ERCOT on Tuesday, November 29 ( https://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/resource ) laid out several scenarios that could push the grid into emergency conditions. ERCOT officials acknowledged that if high power demand this winter is combined with power plant outages and low electricity output from wind and solar generators, utility providers would likely be forced to institute rolling blackouts.

While ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas called this a "very low probability scenario," he added that the winter report further reinforced the need to “redesign the market to make sure there is enough generation so there is enough power."

For decades, ERCOT, which covers most of Texas except for El Paso, the upper panhandle and parts of East Texas, has resisted connecting with the nation’s two other power grids. That independence has allowed the state to skirt federal oversight, but also leaves us unable to import megawatts from neighboring power authorities in the South and Midwest in emergency situations such as Uri. ERCOT is structured in a way that a power generator — be it natural gas, wind, coal, nuclear or solar — gets paid only for the amount of power it generates. Rather than pay power producers to ensure that a cushion is available when it’s most needed — the same “capacity market” employed by other grids, including California and New York — ERCOT has steadily refused to do this because it would raise electricity rates for customers.

Yet PUC’s preferred market design would still increase consumer costs. While the E3 consultants recommended that Texas pursue a capacity market, the PUC has instead settled on a system that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the U.S. The hope is that this proposal would incentivize more generation to be available during times of high demand. It would pay generators to let ERCOT know a year in advance when they would have power available and how much they would generate. If they produced the promised power during peak demand hours they would receive a “performance credit.” Utilities would then be obligated to purchase these credits and then pass on the costs to consumers to the tune of $460 million annually.

PUC Chairman Peter Lake told reporters this new Performance Credit Mechanism, which would take up to four years to implement, would require “anyone who sells to a household or business, to guarantee that they are buying that power from a reliable source."

What the Performance Credit Mechanism wouldn’t do is guarantee any new investment in power generation or ensure that the lights would stay on during extreme weather. One proposal evaluated by E3 and ignored by the PUC would have paid certain fast-acting natural gas generators to quickly dispatch energy to the grid to help meet sharp spikes in demand, such as during the summer when home air conditioners are running through late afternoons and evenings. A report released in October by the energy consulting firm ICF found that this Dispatchable Energy Credit proposal would be costly in the first three years of implementation but then actually save consumers roughly $2 billion each year because the energy market would become more efficient and reliable.

Evidently, lawmakers aren't thrilled with the PUC's plans. All nine members of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee sent a letter late Thursday to the PUC asking the commission to halt its market redesign and continue to work with the Legislature on a better system for Texas.

Pausing this experimentation with the power market is the right move.

The PUC should be proposing reforms that can actually solve the dual problem of high energy bills and high power demand. How about starting with conservation? As a growing state, we get so focused on growing our energy supply that we don't talk enough about how much more supply we'd have if we didn't waste so much.

A report released last year by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that an aggressive state investment in energy efficiency over the next five years could free up enough energy to serve about 9 million Texas households and offset roughly 7,650 megawatts of peak summer load and 11,400 megawatts of peak winter load — equal to the electricity generated by building 10 new gas power plants.

What do we mean by efficiency? Incentivizing homeowners to upgrade from electric furnaces to heat pumps, switching to smart thermostats; insulating attics; and retrofitting water heaters with control devices. These measures, deployed by the PUC over a 5-year period would cost about $4.9 billion, nearly half the cost of building 10 new power plants.

Believe it or not, Texas was once a leader in this area, establishing the first Energy Efficiency Resource Standard in the nation — requiring utilities to achieve a specific amount of conservation savings every year. That was 23 years ago. Today, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranked Texas 38 among 50 states in energy efficiency savings. The PUC can increase energy efficiency unilaterally without legislative approval, yet its members don’t appear keen on using their authority. Last month, the commission rejected a petition from the Sierra Club to strengthen efficiency standards.

Texas’s population is booming, putting an inordinate strain on our energy resources. If we want a more resilient, reliable grid that will function when the temperatures plunge in the winter and soar in the summer we should pay at least as much attention to managing energy demand as maintaining an adequate supply of generation. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel to keep our electric bills affordable. At least not just yet.

https://web.archive.org/web/20221204151309/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Untested-power-grid-overhaul-17626578.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, December 23, 2022 12:27 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

Snow falls as temperatures drop across North Texas

https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-snow-flurries-122222

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Thursday, February 2, 2023 7:02 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

Con air Flight is cancelled

340K without power amid frigid temperatures in Texas; 2,300 flights canceled, at least 6 dead

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2023/02/01/ice-storm-texas
-arkansas-tennessee-wednesday-weather-updates/11150433002/

Legal status of Texas?

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Saturday, July 22, 2023 6:31 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

LA Times energy writer: What if we accepted occasional blackouts to solve climate change?

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/07/21/la-times-energy-writer-what-if-
we-accepted-occasional-blackouts-to-solve-climate-change-n566286

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Saturday, July 22, 2023 6:53 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
What if we accepted occasional blackouts to solve climate change?

California rejects that kind of thinking as nonsense. Surrendering to a problem, such as either shutting down electricity to achieve zero CO2 or declaring "Climate Change Is A Chinese Hoax"-Trump, is the very opposite of solving a problem. The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), California’s grid operator, has aimed to upgrade its capacity to a standard it calls “1-in-10,” or no more than one capacity-related power outage every 10 years.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/california-is-sweltering-
but-its-power-grid-is-strong-2-reasons-why/ar-AA1ebnK7

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 22, 2023 2:31 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Texas grid at risk of winter blackouts? ERCOT, Abbott can’t decide. (Editorial)

By Houston Chronicle Editorial Board | Dec 22, 2023

https://web.archive.org/web/20231222111640/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/editorials/article/ercot-winter-abbott-pablo-vegas-power-grid-18564135.php

In the two years since Winter Storm Uri plunged millions of Texas homes into darkness, Gov. Greg Abbott has leaned on a familiar refrain: legislative fixes have made the state’s power grid healthier than ever. Abbott spent serious political capital ramming these changes through the Legislature in 2021, then practically staked his entire reelection bid on avoiding a Uri repeat.

Then it was rather alarming to see Pablo Vegas, the man Abbott appointed to lead the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, take a wrecking ball recently to the narrative that Texas has plenty of power to weather the next winter storm.

Vegas, who took over ERCOT in October 2022, began this fall calling on owners of mothballed natural gas and coal plants to revive their dormant facilities to lower the likelihood of massive blackouts to less than 10%. Vegas made that desperate ask — which he later revoked when it failed to attract any interest — because ERCOT’s own projections, made public in November, showed an uncomfortably high 1-in-6 chance of a grid emergency if a major winter storm strikes Texas.

Then, at an event hosted by the U.S. Energy Association earlier this month, Vegas again warned that the state’s power grid is at a heightened risk of failing from extreme weather, citing the state’s lack of investment into developing transmission lines and natural gas pipelines to deliver energy to the grid when most needed.

“The reality is risk is increasing. We’re all seeing it,” Vegas told the audience. “If we do smart things with investments in resources, we can bring that risk down. But we need to make smart decisions.”

Yet several days later, speaking at a news conference alongside Abbott at the Houston headquarters for the power generation company Calpine, Vegas sang a markedly different tune. The event, a photo op unveiling the design of Calpine’s 425-megawatt natural gas plant — which the company had already announced in April — gave Vegas an opportunity to walk back his previous foreboding assessment, this time in the presence of his political benefactor.

“I want to … assure Texans that the power grid is as ready and reliable as it has ever been for the winter season,” he said. Abbott offered his own assurances, saying Calpine would not be opening a new plant in Texas if “they thought that the grid was not reliable.”

This dizzying spin is the last thing Texans want to hear as we approach what is typically our coldest stretch of the year. It reinforces the suspicion that our leaders are more concerned with self-preservation than leveling with Texans about our safety.

The result is such a deep level of mistrust that the winter solstice has become the new June 1 — a milestone date many Texans now have circled on their mental calendars as the unofficial starting point for weather-related anxiety. Except instead of breathlessly tracking tropical storm systems crossing the Atlantic, we now fret over “polar vortexes,” “bomb cyclones” and other apocalyptic terms meteorologists dream up to characterize hazardous cold weather.

It’s true, as the Chronicle’s business columnist Chris Tomlinson wrote recently, that this is not the same grid that failed two years ago. The Legislature passed weatherization requirements for gas plants, mapped out a critical supply chain and infrastructure network and required certain generators to have additional gas supply on site for emergencies. As long as crypto miners and industrial customers ramp down their considerable power usage when grid conditions get tight, we can hopefully avoid another disaster.

Yet it’s also clear that the state hasn’t done enough to account for the soaring power demand brought on by a population boom. Even the lowest-hanging fruit to improve grid reliability has failed to advance, such as basic measures to incentivize residential customers to weatherize their homes and install heat pumps or give them rebates for installing smart thermostats. Some studies estimate that such aggressive investments in energy efficiency in the next five years could free up enough energy to serve about 9 million Texas households. It’d sure be nice to have that kind of cushion heading into this winter.

For now, here’s a word to the wise for Texans: don’t depend on the men behind the curtain pulling the strings of the state’s power grid. We can’t count on them to put our interests first. Instead, prepare for the worst and hope it doesn’t come. Know where your water shutoff valves are. Insulate as many pipes as you can. Seal up any drafty windows or doors. Dust off your generator if you have one or invest in backup power batteries. And be sure to raise hell if you end up huddled in darkness on a cold winter’s night.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 22, 2023 2:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I was wondering how that was going. Seems like progress, but not enough to gurarantee energy delivery during a severe storm.

Fingers crossed that doesn't happen, and that Texas will continue to weatherize.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, January 15, 2024 7:57 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

We Need Your Help to Conserve Energy!

Dear Customer,

Due to high demand and tight grid conditions, ERCOT has issued a Conservation Request for today, January 15th.

As a result, Shell Energy is asking that you voluntarily conserve energy, if safe to do so, today from 6AM-10AM CST.

Electric Supply Dashboard: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, January 15, 2024 7:58 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
We Need Your Help to Conserve Energy!

Dear Customer,

Due to high demand and tight grid conditions, ERCOT has issued a Conservation Request for today, January 15th.

As a result, Shell Energy is asking that you voluntarily conserve energy, if safe to do so, today from 6AM-10AM CST.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

That means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, January 15, 2024 8:05 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

That means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.

It means the Republicans control the grid in order to make the maximum profit.
Shortages are good for profits.
Shortages mean prices skyrocket unless you've got a fixed-price contract.

See system-wide prices at https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
There is a bump in prices showing right now.

A more dramatic price graph of what is happening at this moment:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/energy/ercot-power-grid-trac
ker/?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vcHJvamVjdHMvZW5lcmd5L2VyY290LXBvd2VyLWdyaWQtdHJhY2tlci8=&time=MTcwNTMyNDUyODM3Mg==&rid=MmRmOGI5YmQtMGMyMS00MmNjLWE4NzEtYzdjOTViMDg3MWRi&sharecount=MQ==

Wholesale electricity prices
At 7:30 AM Jan 15th the price was $294.70
At 12:15 AM Jan 14th the price was $6.84
That is a nice profit differential.
Although the price skyrockets,
the cost to produce the electricity stays about the same at midnight compared to morning.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprices

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, January 15, 2024 11:31 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

That means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.
It means the Republicans control the grid in order to make the maximum profit.

Okay.

It also means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, January 15, 2024 11:36 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Okay.

It also means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.

That is NOT how electric generation works, but you never cared about what does and does not work:

22:29 CT
• Solar: 0 MW (0.0%)
• Wind: 24,209 MW (32.7%)
• Hydro: 0 MW (0.0%)
• Power Storage: 14 MW (0.0%)
• Other: 106 MW (0.1%)
• Natural Gas: 32,873 MW (44.4%)
• Coal and Lignite: 11,730 MW (15.8%)
• Nuclear: 5,123 MW (6.9%)

https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

Not that you care, but your inability to care is why things go wrong for you, 6ix.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, January 15, 2024 11:39 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Okay.

It also means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.
That is NOT how electric generation works

Yes. It is.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, January 16, 2024 8:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Yes. It is.

It is silly that the parts of Texas that are NOT firmly tied to the national electric grid have a daily emergency when the temperature goes below freezing. But in those parts of Texas not on the national grid, the power companies can strongly prefer profitability over the reliability required by Federal law.

ERCOT Expects Tight Grid Conditions, Requests Conservation Tuesday, January 16, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. CT

(Austin, TX) – With the winter storm encompassing the entire state and temperatures forecasted to be colder this evening and into tomorrow morning, ERCOT is asking Texans to conserve electricity use, if safe to do so, Tuesday, January 16, from 6 a.m. – 9 a.m. CT.

https://www.ercot.com/news/release/2024-01-15-ercot-expects-tight

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 17, 2024 4:52 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

On days when grid conditions are predicted to be tight, ERCOT contracts with “ancillary” power plants that get paid to quickly dispatch energy to the grid if needed, even if they ultimately aren’t deployed. ERCOT’s independent market monitor in September estimated that from June through August, ancillary procurement raised wholesale electricity costs by $8-10 billion.

Page 9 of https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2023/09/15/imm-as-methodology-for-wmw
g-091523-v2.pdf

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 17, 2024 11:01 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

3 lessons learned from the Texas electric grid powering through the 2024 freeze

By Chris Tomlinson, Columnist | Jan 17, 2024

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article
/texas-freeze-electric-grid-ercot-lessons-18610322.php

Thank you to everyone who conserved electricity on Monday and Tuesday and to those who did not; you owe us one.

Winter Storm Heather will not go down in history like 2021’s Winter Storm Uri or 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott, a sign the grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has improved. But Texans need to avoid learning the wrong lessons from this success.

When ERCOT called for Texans to conserve electricity, it blamed cold temperatures and lower-than-normal wind power. But that’s not the whole story; reducing reliance on renewable energy is not the answer.

The wind in West Texas was unseasonably low, reducing the electricity produced by those turbines. But wind along the Lower Gulf Coast and South Texas blew like the dickens. The problem was not a lack of power but a lack of transmission lines.

When wholesale electricity was selling for $300 a megawatt hour across most of the state, it was selling for $20 in Corpus Christi and Brownsville. Transmission is the secret sauce to building a reliable grid that does not overheat the planet with greenhouse gas emissions.

An example of the right move is Pattern Energy’s Southern Spirit transmission line, which is currently hung up by locals in Louisiana. The high-voltage, direct current line would bring nuclear power from the Mississippi to Dallas when needed and allow Texas to export wind and solar when we have extra.

I first wrote about the project in 2017, but it’s only now getting built, demonstrating the need for permitting reform. The lines will carry direct current, which, along with other factors, will allow the Texas grid to remain outside federal regulation while adding backup power.

The oil and natural gas folks argue Texas needs more fossil fuel power plants to avoid another near miss. But that’s a sales pitch by people who want to lock in a 40-year supply contract; there are a half-dozen cheaper ways to guarantee reliability.

Batteries provided 1,200 megawatts of backup power, enough for 240,000 homes, during the Tuesday morning crux after winds died down and the sun was still rising, according to ERCOT. That much power could have prevented the cascading blackouts in the first hours of Winter Storm Uri.

Battery operators, many co-located with wind and solar facilities, plan to more than double ERCOT’s battery capacity by next winter, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. Most emergency conditions on the ERCOT grid only last a few hours. Most batteries are good for at least four.

Producing more power only addresses the supply side. Texas can lower demand, too. Texans used 13% less electricity than ERCOT expected Monday morning and 10% less during Tuesday’s critical 8 a.m. hour.

Tomlinson's Take

Numerous studies show state building codes make Texas homes among the leakiest, costing homeowners hundreds of dollars a year in unnecessary energy bills. Contractors still install cheap furnaces that use electric heat strips and waste energy.

Requiring more insulation and replacing old furnaces could save enough electricity to reduce the need for new power plants. Not only would the upgrades cost less than natural gas power plants, but they would lower consumer electricity bills for a decade or more.

“Implementing these programs from 2024 through 2030 could reduce summer peak loads statewide by about 14,800 megawatts and reduce winter peak loads by about 23,500 megawatts,” an American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy report determined.
New Texas Power Plants Would Cost More than Cutting Energy Waste in Buildings
May 11, 2023
https://www.aceee.org/press-release/2023/05/study-new-texas-power-plan
ts-would-cost-more-cutting-energy-waste-buildings

If given a choice between spending $18 billion on 10,000 megawatts of polluting natural gas power plants or investing $610 million in 23,500 megawatts of energy efficiency that will reduce bills by $13 a month, the choice should be obvious.

We will always need natural gas power plants for backup, but that dependence remains the biggest threat. No federal or state entity ensures natural gas reliability in Texas, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission warned, and while the industry was on best behavior for Winter Storm Heather, we remain at the mercy of for-profit corporations that face no consequences when they fail.

The Texas Legislature should ban pipeline operators from owning the natural gas in their pipes and order ERCOT to monitor supply in a publicly transparent way. In return, we need a wholesale market that makes owning backup power plants profitable, even though they should operate only a few hundred hours a year.

Texans weathered this winter blast well, but a storm with ice and snow would have been different. Lawmakers must do more before we can sleep confidently, knowing we won’t wake up freezing.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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