Texas mayor says government and utility services owe residents ‘nothing’ as tens of thousands left without power and water

[MtnMan]

this is texas, who elected rick perry for governor repeatedly, do you really need to ask?

And The Shrub (GWB). Back in the 30's they had a governor in one of her rants against mexicans said "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me".

 

[Zorba]

Do homes in Texas tend to have a higher percentage of heat pumps for HVAC systems? I could imagine their poor efficiency in sub-freezing temperatures would cause a heavier strain on the grid. If you exacerbate that with sub-10-degree weather, that's even worse.

They are pretty common in rural areas where people can't get natural gas. In the cities most people just run NG heat.

 

[hal2kilo]

And The Shrub (GWB). Back in the 30's they had a governor in one of her rants against mexicans said "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me".

In general, seems Texas just went downhill after the Ann Richards days.

 

[dawp]

And The Shrub (GWB). Back in the 30's they had a governor in one of her rants against mexicans said "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me".

I miss Molly Ivans

A Portrait Of Molly Ivins, Maverick Texas Journalist, In 'Raise Hell'

A new documentary about the political columnist and author takes a personal look at a woman who used her scalding wit and investigative skills to skewer politicians for nearly four decades.

www.npr.org

 

[MtnMan]

Reactors generally have open cooling systems. Fresh water comes in, gets heated up & is discharged back into the river or lake it came from. If the intake freezes up, you're screwed. There are obviously ways to counter that but weren't considered necessary.

Let's assume that the water intakes are at least 2 or 3 feet below the surface, if for nothing else than to allow for low water levels during the dry season. How long do you think it would take to freeze a body of water that deep, when it never really went below 0°F, and given that the water is constantly flowing when the plant is in operation.

 

[MtnMan]

No, it isnt.
Anti-freeze and coolant are the same liquid in the same place. And you need it year round.
Cuz thats smart.

Whats not smart is failing to winterize your critical services. Even Miami gets cold once in a blue moon. When it happens the orange farmers lose billions.
Its not worth the risk.

I fully understand that, a proper mixture of antifreeze, typically glycol based, is more efficient at absorbing heat to facilitate cooling the engine.

I was merely doing my 'texas think' imitation.

 

[nickqt]

The entire US electrical grid should get $1T in upgrades just making it more redundant and burying as much of it as possible to avoid terrestrial storms, Coronal Mass Ejections/EMPs, and fucking shitty drivers.

There's so much infrastructure maintenance required that could create tens of thousands of good jobs that create long-term value, but of course we're going to spend 8 years trying to unfuck the last 4, until Republicans gain back the government and give the richest people in the solar system more money to pump the stock market up some more so it'll crash and they can finish buying up the rest of the public lands and infrastructure for pennies on the hundred dollar.

What a fucking shitshow.

 

[Fenixgoon]

The entire US electrical grid should get $1T in upgrades just making it more redundant and burying as much of it as possible to avoid terrestrial storms, Coronal Mass Ejections/EMPs, and fucking shitty drivers.

There's so much infrastructure maintenance required that could create tens of thousands of good jobs that create long-term value, but of course we're going to spend 8 years trying to unfuck the last 4, until Republicans gain back the government and give the richest people in the solar system more money to pump the stock market up some more so it'll crash and they can finish buying up the rest of the public lands and infrastructure for pennies on the hundred dollar.

What a fucking shitshow.

and bridges.

then fund municipal broadband. you'd have a fuckton of jobs.

 

[nickqt]

and bridges.

then fund municipal broadband. you'd have a fuckton of jobs.

Well, yeah, $2T should be allocated right now. Roads, bridges, internet/phone, electrical grid, etc.

High-speed rail, that cold-fusion-esque idea, should connect all of the major megaregions. Eventually it's going to be 99.9% robots (assuming humanity hasn't finally committed speciescide) working in rural areas to grow food...assuming the climate isn't a total shitshow.

There's plenty of investment that should be happening NOW in infrastructure. Infrastructure is what separates a "first world" country from a "third world" country, and right now, we're allowing catabolic collapse just so we can continue siphoning money to the richest people in the solar system.

 

[sdifox]

Well, yeah, $2T should be allocated right now. Roads, bridges, internet/phone, electrical grid, etc.

High-speed rail, that cold-fusion-esque idea, should connect all of the major megaregions. Eventually it's going to be 99.9% robots (assuming humanity hasn't finally committed speciescide) working in rural areas to grow food...assuming the climate isn't a total shitshow.

There's plenty of investment that should be happening NOW in infrastructure. Infrastructure is what separates a "first world" country from a "third world" country, and right now, we're allowing catabolic collapse just so we can continue siphoning money to the richest people in the solar system.

China operates 37,900 km of high speed rail. That is a lot of catch up to do.

 

[PowerEngineer]

A similar but less severe event happened in 2011. The grid operators and politicians know ERCOT is very vulnerable to cold but have elected to ignore it to maximize profit and maintain low prices. Of course Texas population has increased about 5 million people since then and it seems the scenarios the grid operator relied on utilize outdated assumptions.

There was a proposal a number of years back for a 15GW mega link to the Western Interconnection but the state decided it wasn't needed or wanted. Perhaps time to give that a look again...

Yes, it seems that lessons that could have been learned a decade ago were not. Here's a link to the FERC report on the 2011 outages:

Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011

To be fair to ERCOT, it serves as an independent operator of the Texas electrical transmission system and coordinates the activities of the actual utilities and power plant operators in Texas. ERCOT can supposedly set reliability standards but its enforcement authority is weak.

I am sure you are right that maximizing profits entered into a lot of the decisions made, however electric utilities are very heavily regulated by state and local governments with rates set based on the cost of providing service rather than the market-based value of the service to the customer. The wiggle room for maximizing profits isn't that wide.

It is also fair to say that customers are generally in favor of keeping the prices they pay as low as possible.

The root of the problem IMHO is that everyone involved (including politicians and utility customers) hesitate to pay the "insurance premium" needed to protect against these rare (but inevitable) events; they would rather roll the dice and hope to stay lucky. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't.

15GW would be quite a big transmission link; very "mega". There isn't any location in the Western Interconnection with the supporting transmission lines to serve as an end point for that amount of power flow (and transmission in bordering New Mexico is especially meager). A better solution would be establishing several smaller transmission interconnections to the east, north, and west. I expect those would have to be HVDC for stability reasons. Or so I think...

 

[K1052]

Yes, it seems that lessons that could have been learned a decade ago were not. Here's a link to the FERC report on the 2011 outages:

Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011

To be fair to ERCOT, it serves as an independent operator of the Texas electrical transmission system and coordinates the activities of the actual utilities and power plant operators in Texas. ERCOT can supposedly set reliability standards but its enforcement authority is weak.

I am sure you are right that maximizing profits entered into a lot of the decisions made, however electric utilities are very heavily regulated by state and local governments with rates set based on the cost of providing service rather than the market-based value of the service to the customer. The wiggle room for maximizing profits isn't that wide.

It is also fair to say that customers are generally in favor of keeping the prices they pay as low as possible.

The root of the problem IMHO is that everyone involved (including politicians and utility customers) hesitate to pay the "insurance premium" needed to protect against these rare (but inevitable) events; they would rather roll the dice and hope to stay lucky. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't.

15GW would be quite a big transmission link; very "mega". There isn't any location in the Western Interconnection with the supporting transmission lines to serve as an end point for that amount of power flow (and transmission in bordering New Mexico is especially meager). A better solution would be establishing several smaller transmission interconnections to the east, north, and west. I expect those would have to be HVDC for stability reasons. Or so I think...

The drumbeat is already going that we need more natural gas plants when the gas plants are what froze up and had fuel supply problems. It looks like money is going to be spent one way or the other it would seem following the winterizing recommendations and ensuring fuel switching at existing plants can be done when the NG supply goes low would be the way to go. My confidence that the state will actually fix this is however rather low. As a result I'm doing my own planning about how best to weather an extended outage of utility services.

The 15GW plan was borderline absurd but Texas surely could use more/larger DC ties to the eastern and western interconnections than it has. I think the big plan included extending larger lines across NM and AZ to feed the mega tie.

 

[kage69]

I wonder if Musk can get involved and help Texas extract it's head wrt electricity, what with him relocating there and all. Didn't he help do something similar with Australia few years ago?

 

[esquared]

And here's how Texans paid more for their energy because they didn't want any pesky federal oversight over their coporations wanting to eff over their citizens.

Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

WSJ News Exclusive | Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

Texas’s deregulated electricity market left millions in the dark last week. For the past 20 years, its consumers have paid more for their electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a WSJ investigation found.

www.wsj.com

 

[Brainonska511]

I wonder if Musk can get involved and help Texas extract it's head wrt electricity, what with him relocating there and all. Didn't he help do something similar with Australia few years ago?

FFS. There are actual real experts they could consult instead of that loud-mouthed schnook.

 

[thilanliyan]

And here's how Texans paid more for their energy because they didn't want any pesky federal oversight over their coporations wanting to eff over their citizens.

Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

WSJ News Exclusive | Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

Texas’s deregulated electricity market left millions in the dark last week. For the past 20 years, its consumers have paid more for their electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a WSJ investigation found.

www.wsj.com

Nuh uhhh...deregulation and rah rah free market is the answer to all of life's problems...It's one of the 11 commandments

 

[Jhhnn]

And here's how Texans paid more for their energy because they didn't want any pesky federal oversight over their coporations wanting to eff over their citizens.

Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

WSJ News Exclusive | Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

Texas’s deregulated electricity market left millions in the dark last week. For the past 20 years, its consumers have paid more for their electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a WSJ investigation found.

www.wsj.com

Heh. What a great middleman/ salesmanship racket in a faux free market. Had the revenue gone to actual producers & distribution companies they might have gone deluxe & been better prepared. Shocker, huh?

 

[dawp]

And here's how Texans paid more for their energy because they didn't want any pesky federal oversight over their coporations wanting to eff over their citizens.

Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

WSJ News Exclusive | Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

Texas’s deregulated electricity market left millions in the dark last week. For the past 20 years, its consumers have paid more for their electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a WSJ investigation found.

www.wsj.com

can't disagree as I used to live in the DFW area and moved out in 2007, the deregulation was sold to the peons that it would lower energy cost and all I saw were increases before leaving.

 

[shortylickens]

And The Shrub (GWB). Back in the 30's they had a governor in one of her rants against mexicans said "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me".

I thought you were joking.

Miriam A. Ferguson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You were not.

 

[PowerEngineer]

And here's how Texans paid more for their energy because they didn't want any pesky federal oversight over their corporations wanting to eff over their citizens.

In the interest of being completely fair to Texas, federal oversight really hasn't been all that involved (or interested) in protecting utility customers. Just as in Texas, oversight of and rate making for electric utilities is handled at the state level for investor-owned utilities and generally at the city or county level for publicly-owned utilities. (The exceptions being TVA and BPA.)

Remember these guys?



Yes, they were Texans too! 😏

But their whole push was for deregulation of the electric utility business claiming that "free markets" for power generation would result in lower customer bills. At that time, Enron had a lot of political influence and a Boeing/FAA-like relationship the federal regulators (FERC). FERC issued new orders that opened access to utility transmission systems (not a completely bad idea), and thereby unlocked the door to state endorsed experiments with electrical energy markets. Too many state regulators bought into this idea without understanding the risks and the results were uniformly disastrous. The worst example being the 2000-2001 California energy crisis.

Anyway, my point is that federal regulation is no protection against the kind of electrical energy "free market" that Texas has (and the resulting cost exposures that Texas ratepayers face). What is stunning is that despite the California disaster and the collapse of Enron that Texas continued on with essentially the same flawed market ideas. A prime example of hubrus.

Where federal regulation might have helped is with reliability standards on power plant and fuel supply availability under adverse weather conditions, but (again) it is really up to the state/local regulators to provide for this too in their oversight and rate making activities.

In the end, it is all about being Texas. 🤷‍♀️

 

[Pohemi]

In the interest of being completely fair to Texas, federal oversight really hasn't been all that involved (or interested) in protecting utility customers...
...Where federal regulation might have helped is with reliability standards on power plant and fuel supply availability under adverse weather conditions, but (again) it is really up to the state/local regulators to provide for this too in their oversight and rate making activities.

This is the important point now- it may not have helped pricing and rates for consumers much, but it would have likely REQUIRED them to do the weatherization upgrades that the fed suggested for their shitty grid a decade ago, instead of it only being a recommendation.

It might have prevented this latest catastrophe, thereby also avoiding billions in FEMA funding being needed, people dying, etc. This was a fuckup of epic proportions that was entirely expected (sooner or later) and preventable.

 

[Jhhnn]

wind turbines designed to work in the cold work in the cold. not all of them. it's a rare enough event in TX that they do not have blade heaters or any of the other things that are required for them to prevent ice buildup. you cant just add these things seasonally. the nacelles we built had totally different ventilation systems, weather proofing, and internal electrical systems between the cold climate and warm climate versions.

"due to no regulation!!!!" the government can't regulate everything, and government regulation will not save everyone from everything bad that happens.

Ugh. Cheaper is always better until it craps out when you need it most. Wind turbines were only a small part of the problem in Texas, anyway. The biggest failure was the shutdown of coal & gas fired generators.

 

[fskimospy]

Ugh. Cheaper is always better until it craps out when you need it most. Wind turbines were only a small part of the problem in Texas, anyway. The biggest failure was the shutdown of coal & gas fired generators.

The issue is simple, they didn’t prepare their energy infrastructure for extreme cold. This is true across both fossil fuels and renewables.

Because republicans are culture warriors and not actually interested in governing they tried to make their governance failure into a culture war about renewables but really it was just them being bad at their job.

 

[MrSquished]

Fuck those leeches in Texas. More than happy to ask for funds from the federal coffers when they need it but vote against aid to go to Sandy relief and Covid state aid because it was to Blue States.

Eat shit Texas. Do that seceding already don't let the door hit you on the way out. Take your buddies the shithole deep south red States with you.

 

[shortylickens]

I would love it if dumb people got themselves wiped out in mass numbers, the problem here is the republican party desperately needs their votes, so they do just enough to keep them alive and then take credit for whatever the democrats do, and their voting base grows a little bit every two years.