ERCOT, PUC, and deregulation got us here

[Hagbard Celine 11159]

20 hours ago, Bookman said:

I wonder how long it will be until we get another winter storm like this.

2029

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/weather/polar-vortex-shifts-arctic-air-south/index.html

[Hagbard Celine 11159]

normal vortex:

[Hagbard Celine 11159]

2 weeks before the 2013 ice storm (mack's last hurrah)

[Hagbard Celine 11159]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex

[Bullneck 19454]

1 hour ago, fakebusiness said:

The downvotes are expected. Steven Pinker takes a lot of flack for his evidence based research on this topic. 

Nobody cares.  

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19279]

Ok I’m convinced. 
 
You are just fucking trolling here, including a bunch of people actually suffering. You are a rush Limbaugh level piece of shit. Rot in hell.

I called him out already. Best to ignore.

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19279]

You're just being purposely obtuse and it annoys people.

What do you expect from Fozzz.

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19279]

My niece in Houston got a $202,000 bill from CenterPoint today. Good job, good effort.

That's an error. Centerpoint had acknowledged it. A lot of people I know got that same bill.

[Bookman 4754]

So did anything ever malfunction? It appears like everything worked the way it was designed to.

[MaybeACoordinator 8350]

46 minutes ago, MoJames said:

Auto Pay would be a bitch right now.

Hoo boy thanks for reminding me. Just looked in on my account and I haven't yet gotten a BOHICA on usage but I have suspended autopay for a month to be on the safe side. I also blasted that out on social media -- it's very good advice. 

[Bama Chick 28596]

I bet this asshole figured a private jet would keep him under the radar.

[Brisketexan 106618]

I bet this asshole figured a private jet would give him the inside track on running for a US Senate seat.

FIFTexas.

[Ojo Rojo 2040]

52 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

These assholes don’t give a fuck unless they are or one of their immediate family members is in imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm. And for some not even then

Maybe true for some or even all of them.  I don't know who the real decision makers are here or what their real motivations are.  I try not to make a lot of assumptions.  I tend to think that the politics of the state mandated fewer regulations, lower consumer costs and "free market" effects on the whole industry. And that's the biggest reason why we are where we are.  I'm not willing to say yet that a few individuals decided to enrich themselves to the detriment of the greater good. That might very well have happened, but it's more because the policies of the state as a whole allowed them those decisions in the first place.

[JimmyJames 12271]

10 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

I bet this asshole figured a private jet would keep him under the radar.
 

I’m unclear after reading the article. Of which party is he a member?

[JimmyJames 12271]

Dude got paid almost 2 million from his own son. What the fuck is that about?

https://ballotpedia.org/Gary_Gates

[UTDD 362]

7 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

I'm about to the point where I start seriously advocating that we just round up everyone who doesn't want to acknowledge that we live in a society, put them on a big fucking barge, and we shove it out into the ocean. I'll fucking run for Congress on this plan.  Let them live out their dumb fucking Randian utopian fairytale where they don't routinely get a bunch of the rest of us killed.

 

[Bama Chick 28596]

I’m unclear after reading the article. Of which party is he a member?

He ran against Eliz Markowitz - he’s a Republican.

[TwiceHorn 31987]

23 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Dude got paid almost 2 million from his own son. What the fuck is that about?

https://ballotpedia.org/Gary_Gates

If I had to guess, he's Jr.  He financed his own campaign.

[Ojo Rojo 2040]

3 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

I'll 100% say that. They made the wrong, short-sighted choice. They made an economically inefficient choice if one were to look at the big picture of total costs (i.e., this shut down, and the deaths and misery it caused) associated with it. But, they did so because (1) those costs were external to them and there wasn't a system setup to capture them, and (2) they didn't have strong enough moral convictions to care about those costs in spite of the lack of a proper economic system to account for the true cost of their choices. 

Oh, I agree with you 100% because of my own personal politics.  I'm just pointing out that the decisions were made based on a different set of priorities.  I believe that government should function for the greater good of the people. Not just those who can afford to participate in the political system by direct financial contributions, lobbyists, quid pro quo and the like. But that is not the set of priorities that has won the day in our state.

[workswithseed 2201]

7 hours ago, Foosters said:

This kinda sums up the last 20 years of politics.

Was our national security held to the same standard as the individual workers in the twin towers on 9/11? Well, Dave with Cantor Fitzgerald had no inkling that the Taliban was going to be flying planes into the buildings on 9/11, so how could we possibly expect our Security agencies to be prepared.

Wait, CIA and FBI didn't talk to each other, and that's why 9/11 happened.

[Sawbonz 28081]

This breaks my heart 

 

 

[Ted Lange 16353]

welp, having anther beer now.  Not going to bed with that being the last thing I read.  JFC. 

[C-Man 27685]

This breaks my heart 
 
 

Heard that on the NBC National News tonight, complete with video of the kid playing in the snow. Fucking horrible.

[tx 3 putt 78470]

2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

If I had to guess, he's Jr.  He financed his own campaign.

 

this is correct 

[Horn80 6313]

10 hours ago, The Ace of Aces said:

My niece in Houston got a $202,000 bill from CenterPoint today. Good job, good effort.

Tell her to send it to Dan Patrick.

[WhatTheBuck 28904]

11 hours ago, The Ace of Aces said:

My niece in Houston got a $202,000 bill from CenterPoint today. Good job, good effort.

I guess everything really is bigger in Texas. 

[bad_teammate 13479]

Being mad at Griddy customers is a perfect example of people fighting to survive under capitalist exploitation and being mad at each other instead of the capital that pits them against each other.

Reminds me of how people get mad at Triumph the Insult Comic Dog instead of the human being controlling the puppet.

[Hagbard Celine 11159]

which thread is the austin water disaster being discussed in?

dysentery and typhoid are now on the horizon.

their overnight tweets are day 4 of weaselword untruthiness.

[Ted Lange 16353]

22 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Being mad at Griddy customers is a perfect example of people fighting to survive under capitalist exploitation and being mad at each other instead of the capital that pits them against each other.

Reminds me of how people get mad at Triumph the Insult Comic Dog instead of the human being controlling the puppet.

I don’t think anyone is mad at the customers.   I think they got what they signed up for and don’t feel sorry for them.  If they didn’t won’t to pay outrageous prices, they simply could’ve turned their power off, they chose not to.  

[kevwun 16269]

This is why do you don't shop around for power providers.

[ChiTownDoc 21323]

53 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Being mad at Griddy customers is a perfect example of people fighting to survive under capitalist exploitation and being mad at each other instead of the capital that pits them against each other.

Reminds me of how people get mad at Triumph the Insult Comic Dog instead of the human being controlling the puppet.

Wait.  People were mad at triumph the insult comic dog?

 

We are truly fucked.  

[TwiceHorn 31987]

B_t's point is legit more broadly speaking, but people mad at Griddy are like people mad at the blackjack table or slot they didn't walk away from.

[Guest Lobo]

19 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Wait.  People were mad at triumph the insult comic dog?

 

We are truly fucked.  

I think it was a mistype.  It's Trump the Insult Dog.  

[Llano Estacado 1257]

This is why do you don't shop around for power providers.

It’s actually pretty analogous to the larger ERCOT energy market vs capacity markets, and “free market efficiencies”.

Capacity market

“Honey, commodity prices were low so I looked at various power providers performed some long term cost analysis and locked us in for 18mo at great pricing for ~1500kWh”


vs

PUC/ERCOT method

“Holy shit! My wholesale kWh pricing at 9:05am was $10/kWh! I’ve read baseline nuclear and natural gas can generate power economically at a 1/100th that price. Surely, the free market will dictate generation companies have built new power plants by 9:10am to cover this demand. I’ll buy more power then.”

[Captainant 28387]

6 minutes ago, Llano Estacado said:

 

It’s actually pretty analogous to the larger ERCOT energy market vs capacity markets, and “free market efficiencies”.

Capacity market

“Honey, commodity prices were low so I looked at various power providers performed some long term cost analysis and locked us in for 18mo at great pricing for ~1500kWh”


vs

PUC/ERCOT method

“Holy shit! My wholesale kWh pricing at 9:05am was $10/kWh! I’ve read baseline nuclear and natural gas can generate power economically at a 1/100th that price. Surely, the free market will dictate generation companies have built new power plants by 9:10am to cover this demand. I’ll buy more power then.”

 

This is a really effective description of how ERCOT and corporate business sense works generally in the US. There is an endemic lack of long term thinking and planning. 

[gmr548 16681]

The downvotes are expected. Steven Pinker takes a lot of flack for his evidence based research on this topic. 

The fuck is evidence based research? You’re just trying to mix and match buzzwords

[Ojo Rojo 2040]

1 hour ago, Ted Lange said:

I don’t think anyone is mad at the customers.   I think they got what they signed up for and don’t feel sorry for them.  If they didn’t won’t to pay outrageous prices, they simply could’ve turned their power off, they chose not to.  

Nobody's mad at them yet.  Wait til the taxpayer funded bailout.  I don't see these people paying $100,000 electric bills.

[DonkeyCigars 143]

1 hour ago, bad_teammate said:

Being mad at Griddy customers is a perfect example of people fighting to survive under capitalist exploitation and being mad at each other instead of the capital that pits them against each other.

Reminds me of how people get mad at Triumph the Insult Comic Dog instead of the human being controlling the puppet.

People aren’t mad at Griddy customers...yet. If they get bailed out of their electricity bills and nobody else does, then that will be problematic.

[DonkeyCigars 143]

Ojo beat me to it!

But I guess we could read Bt’s post as, people are getting pre-mad and pre-outraged at something that hasn’t happened— a potential and hypothetical— which I agree is probably irrational and unhealthy.

[Buzzrock 15115]

What’s the CR consensus after a week of frozen hell? The WSJ says the problem was an over-reliance on renewables that were built out in a race for subsidies and rebates. NPR says that’s not true, all kinds of power production failed, and a lack of connection to other state grids plus a lack of extreme cold prep was a disaster waiting to happen.

What says the hive mind after a few days to process?

[kevwun 16269]

Solar overperformed expectations and wind underperformed.  Let's say wind was 10%-15% of the problem.  Gas plant failures were responsible for the overwhelming majority of our lack of power production.  Most of the issues were because the various plants weren't winterized.  Even the South Texas Nuclear plant had to shut down because of water issues.  You should clarify that it was the WSJ editorial also which doesn't bother to use facts.

Edited February 20, 2021 by kevwun

[Brisketexan 106618]

This is a really effective description of how ERCOT and corporate business sense works generally in the US. There is an endemic lack of long term thinking and planning. 

This, this, this.

What infuriates me is NOT a “pro-business” approach to the world. Business is good. Commerce is good. It’s the anarcho-capitalist perversion of that to reach the current extreme: the only thing that matters, the only measure of a society’s success, is profit....and it’s even worse than that...it must be profit NOW. Our current market structure turns quarterly profits into the God to whom all must be sacrificed, and thus turns anything contrary to that (long term business planning, having a conscience, etc) into devils that must be opposed in the name of the One True God.

It’s an utterly destructive way of looking at the world. And it’s absolutely the dominant way of looking at it in the US.

[Eastwood 4394]

14 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

What’s the CR consensus after a week of frozen hell? The WSJ says the problem was an over-reliance on renewables that were built out in a race for subsidies and rebates. NPR says that’s not true, all kinds of power production failed, and a lack of connection to other state grids plus a lack of extreme cold prep was a disaster waiting to happen.

What says the hive mind after a few days to process?

Pieces are being written before the dust has even settled because people are running to the press with their side of the story. A highly credible source with impressive credentials in the energy field gives a breakdown of a failure that occurred in the grid. Of course the press is going to run the story. Problem is that it was a system wide failure. Everyone is blaming everyone else because everyone failed. That's what is so wild. Nobody is really wrong when they point out another company or organization's failure in all this. Some are saying that they failed only because someone else failed first, but in reality, everyone would have failed anyway. Nobody winterized, the infrastructure of the grid was weak, ERCOT didn't plan for the storm, and PUC kept things deregulated for decades. A cascade failure of the grid was happening regardless of which producer went down first. ERCOT didn't plan for the storm, but even if they planned, things got so bad that even nuclear plants had to shut down. But plants had to shut down because they didn't winterize. They didn't winterize because PUC didn't make them. If I would call this situation anything, it would be a feedback loop of failure.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Eastwood

[kevwun 16269]

Yes, that is a good way to put.  Everything failed because not a single aspect of our power grid was required to prepare for extreme cold weather because it eats in to profit margins and regulations in general are socialism.

Edited February 20, 2021 by kevwun

[TwiceHorn 31987]

I might even suspect that, given their limited power to actually affect things, ERCOT winds up being less at fault than many other participants.

I think their efforts to manage a really shitty situation in real time may turn out to be kind of heroic, at least the folks flipping switches and monitoring shit while the plants they begged to weatherize went off line and fucked up the grid.

[Eastwood 4394]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

I might even suspect that, given their limited power to actually affect things, ERCOT winds up being less at fault than many other participants.

I think their efforts to manage a really shitty situation in real time may turn out to be kind of heroic, at least the folks flipping switches and monitoring shit while the plants they begged to weatherize went off line and fucked up the grid.

I wouldn't go that far. Their meeting the week leading into the storm is pretty damning, from the reports I read. The spent very, very little time in that meeting planning for the coming winter storm. I would like to see the meeting minutes and transcript before declaring final judgment, though.

[jimmyjazz 46976]

I'd like to know exactly what ERCOT could have done to "prepare".  Were they going to order power providers to winterize their equipment in a matter of days?

All they could do was try to mitigate supply and demand.

[hayden_horn 11401]

7 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

I wouldn't go that far. Their meeting the week leading into the storm is pretty damning, from the reports I read. The spent very, very little time in that meeting planning for the coming winter storm. I would like to see the meeting minutes and transcript before declaring final judgment, though.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/environment/2021/02/19/winter-storm-texas-ercot-officials-spent-40-seconds-preparedness-meeting/4507805001/

Quote

During their last meeting ahead of the winter storm that left millions of Texans without electricity and potable water for days on end, top officials at the state electric grid operator spent less than one minute discussing the impending storm and whether the state was prepared.

Bill Magness, president and chief executive officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, spoke briefly about the winter weather during his report to the board at the Feb. 9 meeting, the only mention of the incoming storm during the public portion of the virtual meeting, which spanned two hours, 28 minutes.

Magness spoke about the approaching cold front for about 40 seconds: 

“It is actually going to be winter here pretty soon. As those of you in Texas know, we do have a cold front coming this way. We’ll probably see our winter peak later this week or in the very early part of next week. And Operations has issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everyone is up to speed with their winterization and we’re ready for the several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way.

“So more on that in the next couple of days, but it does look like we’ll have a little bit of winter weather to contend with during the course of the rest of this week. We do have a cold front coming this way.”

 

[TwiceHorn 31987]

35 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

What’s the CR consensus after a week of frozen hell? The WSJ says the problem was an over-reliance on renewables that were built out in a race for subsidies and rebates. NPR says that’s not true, all kinds of power production failed, and a lack of connection to other state grids plus a lack of extreme cold prep was a disaster waiting to happen.

What says the hive mind after a few days to process?

Eastwood is right, it is a little early to tell and to allocate "blame."  But there is a WSJ story upthread, the second one that I linked (not the bullshit oped), that explains the various failure points in a summary fashion that I think is pretty accurate.  There are also a number of articles by academics that are pretty good, but a little denser.

[TwiceHorn 31987]

4 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/environment/2021/02/19/winter-storm-texas-ercot-officials-spent-40-seconds-preparedness-meeting/4507805001/

 

Just for some perspective, that is a Board of Directors meeting, not an internal operation meeting.  You wouldn't really expect a deep dive on readiness to the Board.