Texas Disaster Day 2

[essentialsaltes]

If you thought a Biden presidency would be just like a Hillary Clinton presidency, maybe you were right.

Hundreds of tacos delivered to seniors amid brutal winter storm

Taco Tuesday came Wednesday for hundreds of Houston-area seniors who have been suffering in the cold following this week's winter storm.

 

[Nithavela]

If you thought a Biden presidency would be just like a Hillary Clinton presidency, maybe you were right.

Hundreds of tacos delivered to seniors amid brutal winter storm

Taco Tuesday came Wednesday for hundreds of Houston-area seniors who have been suffering in the cold following this week's winter storm.

It's something.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Texas Mother and Daughter Killed By Carbon Monoxide After Trying to Stay Warm Running Car in Garage

Houston Police Department were called to do a welfare check on the home after concerned relatives lost contact.

The mother had been on the phone with a relative in Colorado when she suddenly became disoriented and stopped talking; prompting the family member to call HPD, ABC7 reported.

A man and a 7-year-old boy were found alive but suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, and were rushed to hospital.

 

[essentialsaltes]

California residents urged to conserve energy to help Midwest, Texas and Southeast

Californians are being asked to reduce their energy usage as winter storms batter the South and Midwest, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The California Independent System Operator (California ISO) is now urging residents of the Golden State to use energy sparingly over the next few days to help ease the burden on power grids elsewhere.

This is exactly the same kind of request (during rolling blackouts during heat/fires in CA) that Ted Cruz mocked.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Governor Abbott nationali... er, state-izes Texas gas to prevent foreigners from getting any.

The Texas governor announced on Wednesday that natural gas would be restricted from leaving the state through Feb. 21 to allow for power generators to have enough gas to function. Bloomberg News reported that the order would mandate gas be sold in Texas before becoming available across state lines.

Abbott said that his disaster declaration, announced last week ahead of the winter storm, allows him to make such an order. But some experts disagree, according to Bloomberg News, saying it violates the Constitution's commerce clause by hindering interstate trade.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Government regulation of prices.

Texas officials are cracking down on businesses they say have hiked the prices of food, water, and hotel rooms while the state continues to deal with shortages caused by unprecedented winter weather.

 

[essentialsaltes]

While I have great sympathy for the people of Texas, I fear I must ready my tiniest violin for billionaire Elon Musk, who left California after complaining about the regulation of business.

Elon Musk slams Texas power grid operator for being unreliable

In December, the billionaire moved from California to Austin, where he’s building a new Tesla factory.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Texas households face massive electricity bills, some as high as $17K, after winter storm

The families who saw their bills spike were reportedly on variable-rate plans with Griddy, an electricity provider in the state.

Griddy had recommended that customers switch to a different provider this week, warning them to find fixed-rate plans instead as it predicted the climbing cost of electricity due to the spiking demand. But many customers who tried to switch said other companies were not accepting new customers until weeks into the future, leaving them stuck with their large bills.

 

[rjs330]

It sounds like Texas was trying to be responsible regarding green energy, which failed in this scenario. Along with gas and coal because things froze up.

We can't blame politicians for a failure of equipment that wasn't built for this type of weather.

Our energy grid is more vulnerable than we want to admit. And green energy cannot be the savior because it will not be able to produce enough to satisfy demands.

In Texas case I believe green energy make up about 8-10% of the energy. It failed too. No we can't blame green energy completely as it was just part of the equation.

I'm hoping Texas will find a way to prepare for the next time.

 

[Pommer]

It sounds like Texas was trying to be responsible regarding green energy, which failed in this scenario. Along with gas and coal because things froze up.

We can't blame politicians for a failure of equipment that wasn't built for this type of weather.

Our energy grid is more vulnerable than we want to admit. And green energy cannot be the savior because it will not be able to produce enough to satisfy demands.

In Texas case I believe green energy make up about 8-10% of the energy. It failed too. No we can't blame green energy completely as it was just part of the equation.

I'm hoping Texas will find a way to prepare for the next time.

Texas eschewed having the windmills fitted with anti-icing technology because it doesn’t happen often, besides they had coal and gas fired generators...what’re the chances all three sources would fail?

 

[rjs330]

Texas eschewed having the windmills fitted with anti-icing technology because it doesn’t happen often, besides they had coal and gas fired generators...what’re the chances all three sources would fail?

Yeah that's what I found. There was a lot of freezing going on of all plants. The power grid is run by a private organization who knew the bad weather was coming. Apparently they didn't plan for it correctly. It sounds like they might have been able to store up some energy, but chose not to. I don't know how it all works, but I am hoping that Texas will get their stuff fitted with anti freezing tech.

It sounds like Ercot Reliability failed to prepare the equipment. There were other places in Texas that weren't run by Ercot that had winterized their equipment and they didn't have any problems.

 

[rjs330]

We absolutely can. The government should be properly regulating the electrical infrastructure. This includes things like making sure electrical generation does basic things to protect itself from just this sort of event. An event they've had happen before on a smaller scale, had a study done ~10 years ago to see what should be done to keep it from happening again, which was ignored. So an even worse weather event happened, and the whole system collapsed. The Texas government decided to remove itself from the national power grid specifically so it didn't have to deal with federal regulations. That connection and regulations would have prevented the vast majority of the problems TX experienced with this weather.

This is not an event that's the result of green energy failing (green power actually did better than anticipated), or a "oh crud! There was no way we could have seen this coming or prepared for it!". This is a failure of the deregulation of the electrical system. They knew the problem was present. They knew this sort of event was not some impossibility. They knew how to prevent it. They did nothing.

Years ago Ercot Reliability was in charge of certain sections of Texas. They failed to winterize. Ercot is overseen by the Texas Public Utility Commission. As with any government agency you trust they will do their due diligence in providing proper oversight. The utility commission failed in this situation as well as Ercot itself. There were other places in Texas that had no problems because they weren't run by Ercot.

I'm glad Texas has removed itself from national stuff. Anytime a state allows the federal government control is not a good thing. The federal government was never supposed to have the power it does. Texas has chosen to remove itself, which is fine. However their Power Commission failed to do its job. Just like any government agency including federal ones. How often have we seen a failure in Federal agencies?

Don't act like if they had just been federally plugged in, everything would have been fine. Ercot failed, the state commission failed. It wasn't the entire state that did.

 

[Arcangl86]

Years ago Ercot Reliability was in charge of certain sections of Texas. They failed to winterize. Ercot is overseen by the Texas Public Utility Commission. As with any government agency you trust they will do their due diligence in providing proper oversight. The utility commission failed in this situation as well as Ercot itself. There were other places in Texas that had no problems because they weren't run by Ercot.

I'm glad Texas has removed itself from national stuff. Anytime a state allows the federal government control is not a good thing. The federal government was never supposed to have the power it does. Texas has chosen to remove itself, which is fine. However their Power Commission failed to do its job. Just like any government agency including federal ones. How often have we seen a failure in Federal agencies?

Don't act like if they had just been federally plugged in, everything would have been fine. Ercot failed, the state commission failed. It wasn't the entire state that did.

You know who regulated the parts of Texas that didn't fail? The federal government.

 

[ewq1938]

 

[essentialsaltes]

Five board members of Texas grid operator ERCOT resign in wake of massive power outages during winter storm

 

[essentialsaltes]

Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation

Texas’s deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark last week. For two decades, its customers have paid more for electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a Wall Street Journal analysis has found.

Those deregulated Texas residential consumers paid $28 billion more for their power since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates charged to the customers of the state’s traditional utilities, according to the Journal’s analysis of data from the federal Energy Information Administration.

 

[durangodawood]

It sounds like Texas was trying to be responsible regarding green energy, which failed in this scenario. Along with gas and coal because things froze up.

We can't blame politicians for a failure of equipment that wasn't built for this type of weather.

Our energy grid is more vulnerable than we want to admit. And green energy cannot be the savior because it will not be able to produce enough to satisfy demands.

In Texas case I believe green energy make up about 8-10% of the energy. It failed too. No we can't blame green energy completely as it was just part of the equation.

I'm hoping Texas will find a way to prepare for the next time.

Of course we can. Electric power is a life & death matter, and precisely the right kind of place for government to intrude upon the market and regulate for reliability.

 

[essentialsaltes]

ERCOT overcharged power companies $16 billion for electricity during winter freeze, firm says
An independent market monitor for the Public Utility Commission of Texas wrote in a letter that the power grid operator kept market prices too high for nearly two days after widespread outages ended.

In Texas, wholesale power prices are determined by supply and demand: When demand is high, ERCOT allows prices to go up. During the storm, PUC directed the grid operator to set wholesale power prices at $9,000 per megawatt hour — the maximum price. Raising prices is intended to incentivize power generators in the state to add more power to the grid. Companies then buy power from the wholesale market to deliver to consumers, which they are contractually obligated to do.

Because ERCOT failed to bring prices back down on time, companies had to buy power in the market at inflated prices.

At least $1.5 billion could be passed on to retail electric providers and their customers. Some retail providers have already begun to file for bankruptcy.

 

[Arcangl86]

It sounds like Texas was trying to be responsible regarding green energy, which failed in this scenario. Along with gas and coal because things froze up.

We can't blame politicians for a failure of equipment that wasn't built for this type of weather.

Our energy grid is more vulnerable than we want to admit. And green energy cannot be the savior because it will not be able to produce enough to satisfy demands.

In Texas case I believe green energy make up about 8-10% of the energy. It failed too. No we can't blame green energy completely as it was just part of the equation.

I'm hoping Texas will find a way to prepare for the next time.

Sure we can blame the politicians, because they didn't require weatherization of power generation equipment after already being shown that the grid is vulnerable to cold weather.

 

[cow451]

Perhaps Texas could consider changing “Texas grid” into “Smart Grid”
Tennessee Valley Authority to install its first grid-scale battery storage system - Daily Energy Insider