ERCOT, PUC, and deregulation got us here

[tx 3 putt 78465]

1 hour ago, Dr. Beeper said:

I’m getting negged and negged for this, and this is why I didn’t really have the energy to lay out my rationale. It’s probably gonna fall on deaf ears because nobody here wants to hear it. But I’ll lay out a numbers based argument here later and see what you think. 

@Continental Op @cactusflinthead No idea where the vitriol is coming from. Yeah, I had and have plumbing issues because I too have been in a terrible freeze. And blood money?  Dude get ahold of yourself. 90% of revenue I have is from oil. Our 10% gas will not be subject to average prices in February because of the way our contract is written. You must think I’m some amalgamation of other posters and Jerry Jones. I have a tiny investment. No, when it comes to this thread, it should be addressed unemotionally. But you can’t do that. 

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/

 

 

[Bateshorn 9989]

Reading about how your power grid works and your power producer incentives, as somebody who lives in a boring regulated utility state is.....totally fucking insane.  Like, y’all choose to live with a totally inverted system that is neither cheap nor reliable. 
 

I live in a pre war 1800 square foot house (with all the accompanying drafts and leaks) and I’ve never paid more than $200 a month to cool it in DC summers and $150 in DC winters at 72 degrees. 
 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Bateshorn

[Pato del Muerto 53329]

Dammit I’m getting pissed at these disingenuous arguments all over about wind. Just because it “can” make 30 MW doesn’t mean it’s expected to. It is expected to make a fraction of that, with the other sources making the balance of demand. When it makes more, cool, gas will make less. When it makes less, cool, gas will make more. That’s how it’s designed to work right now. 
 

saying it made 23 MW one day in the past and using that as the baseline  fraudulent.  
 

eta:  if one would like to argue that the well known reliability issues of wind and solar are a constraint as to why we can’t and shouldn’t trust too much of or generation to them, have at it. If that’s part of the new green deal, then argue against that.  But that’s not what’s happened here. The argument that capital was spent on new renewables instead of maintenance of thermals also has merit.  But the lies need to stop. 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Pato del Muerto

[Captainant 28381]

1 hour ago, Dr. Beeper said:

“Much more strict renewable energy requirements” is precisely the problem, from a reliability and efficiency perspective, and therefore cost perspective. In this instance, it fucked us in the reliability department. 

 

[goatsaag 281]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Actually, renewables probably played a very indirect role in that generation companies invested in and received subsidies for and patted themselves on the back for renewables while stripping their budgets for plant maintenance and winterizing.  Again, it's the generators' fault, but it was a shiny expensive object that distracted them.

Feels like instead of doing the whole "well, renewables were wearing a really short skirt" you could just go with the bolded part.

[Bateshorn 9989]

8 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Dammit I’m getting pissed at these disingenuous arguments all over about wind. Just because it “can” make 30 MW doesn’t mean it’s expected to. It is expected to make a fraction of that, with the other sources making the balance of demand. When it makes more, cool, gas will make less. When it makes less, cool, gas will make more. That’s how it’s designed to work right now. 
 

saying it made 23 MW one day in the past and using that as the baseline  fraudulent.  

I posted this earlier, along with a couple others: OK, CO, and IA are all spinning 25% or more of their power from wind right now. Worse winter conditions. No reliability issues. 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Bateshorn

[PsychMike 1553]

LOL

 

 

[RDCanecutter 26851]

3 minutes ago, PsychMike said:

LOL

 

 

Don't owe it? So what am I supposed to do with this check I wrote for $202,102.16? Checks aren't free you know.

[Pato del Muerto 53329]

2 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

I posted this earlier, along with a couple others: OK, CO, and IA are all spinning 25% or more of their power from wind right now, I. Worse winter conditions. No reliability issues. 

What are the daily power requirements of those states vs Texas?  Is that 25% number just for those states, or for the entire grid that those states are on?  Also, I’m not arguing about the turbines being down. I’m saying that with the wind power in the ercot system, there’s going to be a variance of power.  They only expected like 6 MW a day from wind this week even with the max output of 30.  They only got 4 because of some failures but that loss of 2 MW should t have been a big deal. Same loss from nuclear when the one reactor went down at south Texas and nobody is trying to blame nuclear. 

[Bateshorn 9989]

4 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

What are the daily power requirements of those states vs Texas?  Is that 25% number just for those states, or for the entire grid that those states are on?  Also, I’m not arguing about the turbines being down. I’m saying that with the wind power in the ercot system, there’s going to be a variance of power.  They only expected like 6 MW a day from wind this week even with the max output of 30.  They only got 4 because of some failures but that loss of 2 MW should t have been a big deal. Same loss from nuclear when the one reactor went down at south Texas and nobody is trying to blame nuclear. 

According to the EIA, which is fairly definitive, 41% of Iowa’s power is wind generated.  I’ve not looked up the other states, but I will note that both states are under going severe winter weather with minimal outages. It’s 11 degrees in Des Moines right now, and as of my posting there are roughly 30 outages .  It’s not wind.  Stahp.

[MoJames 8258]

3 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

So you are saying that you can pretty much say with a straight face that if LA was on it's own power grid it wouldn't have had similar problems? You can't really compare Oklahoma and Arkansas, because they both regularly see much lower temperatures than Texas. Blaming the plants in Texas for not winterizing better is basically as dumb as blaming your ass for not winterizing better.

To compare it to my line of work, would it be appropriate for the same amount of money and preparedness for an cath lab in Los Angeles as in BFE Oklahoma? And then when some fatass decided to eat his ass into a Myocardial Infarction in Los Angeles and there isn't a Interventional Cardiologist within 30 minutes, I can simply say well fuck you should've lived in Oklahoma where heart attacks are more common, we put as much effort as BFE Oklahoma and they do fine.

Also, I don't live within the backass energy situation in Texas, again I'm at 7400 feet in Colorado and have dealt with 2 foot of snow over the past week without one fucking problem.

In addition, your initial point was that we shouldn't be mad at the people running the plants in Texas because they aren't used to the weather, where as other plants all over the country not used to this weather have done fine.

[Pato del Muerto 53329]

5 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

According to the EIA, which is fairly definitive, 41% of Iowa’s power is wind generated.  I’ve not looked up the other states, but I will note that both states are under going severe winter weather with minimal outages. It’s 11 degrees in Des Moines right now, and as of my posting there are roughly 30 outages .  It’s not wind.  Stahp.

We are talking past each other or arguing different things, because my argument is also that it’s not wind. 

[Bateshorn 9989]

Texas has clearly completely mismanaged every aspect of its power grid. No other state in the Union, since the New England and New York grid disasters in the early aughts, has experienced this type of complete failure. 

1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

We are talking past each other or arguing different things, because my argument is also that it’s not wind. 

 

[TwiceHorn 31984]

33 minutes ago, goatsaag said:

Feels like instead of doing the whole "well, renewables were wearing a really short skirt" you could just go with the bolded part.

I've been pretty consistently clear that I think it is the generator's fault.  Primarily the gas because that's our primary source and when you consider gas you have to consider gas producers and transporters, as well.

But it appears that the wind people fucked the dog, too.  And ownership is really opaque, but a lot of gas/coal generators also own wind farms so they're fucking up everything they touch and probably are spread too thin.

An interesting add on, though.  Many wind farms are built and operated, at least initially, by the same European outfits, like E.ON.  And E.ON built and runs many of the farms in other states.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[Satchel 6982]

The spot price of wholesale electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000% on Monday amid a deep freeze across the state and rolling outages among power producers, according to data on the grid operator’s website.

Real-time wholesale market prices on the power grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) were more than $9,000 per megawatt hour late Monday morning, compared with pre-storm prices of less than $50 per megawatt hour, according to ERCOT data.

On Feb. 10, well before inclement weather hit Texas, spot wholesale prices on ERCOT settled around $30 per megawatt hour at the end of the day, ERCOT data show. But on Sunday, the price per megawatt hour surged past $9,000 on the grid.

https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/the-wholesale-price-of-electricity-spikes-10000-in-texas-power-outage

 

[cactusflinthead 27626]

2 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Those retail companies generally have either a trading arm in house (Reliant/Direct Energy had that) or they use a company that trades in the wholesale market (Mercuria/BP and Shell).  That all depends on the way they are structured.  Load demand is absolutely done at a more granular level.  And that is what some of the more real time or ancillary services could help manage.  However, in the capacity market, which is done to help with capital budgets for facilities, that is much more forward looking, which it must be because of the nature of those capital projects.

Spoon you're a goddamn bossified force

[JimmyJames 12271]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

I've been pretty consistently clear that I think it is the generator's fault.  Primarily the gas because that's our primary source and when you consider gas you have to consider gas producers and transporters, as well.

But it appears that the wind people fucked the dog, too.  And ownership is really opaque, but a lot of gas/coal generators also own wind farms. 

Please explain why it is the generators fault for not spending money at a loss that the state of Texas did not require them to do.

[TwiceHorn 31984]

2 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Please explain why it is the generators fault for not spending money at a loss that the state of Texas did not require them to do.

Wut?

Fault can lie in many places.  In this instance it is with the generators, who do a shitty job maintaining their shit because the state either doesn't incent them or require them to do so.

It is conceivable, although unlikely, that a private entity could do the right, and forward-thinking thing without being flogged by the government to do so.  They have a choice.  Most of them these days make bad choices because nothing punishes them for it.

That alright by you?

[Bateshorn 9989]

Why would a share holder owned company pay to prepare for a black swan?  Unless they were incentived or forced to? 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Bateshorn

[BearSchlong 8229]

Wut?
Fault can lie in many places.  In this instance it is with the generators, who do a shitty job maintaining their shit because the state either doesn't incent them or require them to do so.
It is conceivable, although unlikely, that a private entity could do the right, and forward-thinking thing without being flogged by the government to do so.  They have a choice.  Most of them these days make bad choices because nothing punishes them for it.
That alright by you?

Then the board fires the CEO for violating fiduciary duty. Which is their only responsibility in a deregulated environment.

[JimmyJames 12271]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

Wut?

Fault can lie in many places.  In this instance it is with the generators, who do a shitty job maintaining their shit because the state either doesn't incent them or require them to do so.

It is conceivable, although unlikely, that a private entity could do the right, and forward-thinking thing without being flogged by the government to do so.  They have a choice.  Most of them these days make bad choices because nothing punishes them for it.

That alright by you?

No it’s not. Private companies do shitty things all the time. I see it every day.

But when they do, it doesn’t cripple the entire state, threaten its entire power grid and kill hundreds of people in a matter of days.

This is entirely on the government of the state of Texas and if you support their attempt to deflect blame then fuck you too.

[TwiceHorn 31984]

4 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

No it’s not. Private companies do shitty things all the time. I see it every day.

But when they do, it doesn’t cripple the entire state, threaten its entire power grid and kill hundreds of people in a matter of days.

This is entirely on the government of the state of Texas and if you support their attempt to deflect blame then fuck you too.

Where did you get that last part?

Nothing I said attempts to absolve the government. I fully agree that the current regulatory environment encourages this.  It's a fundamental problem, but it's a less immediate cause.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[TwiceHorn 31984]

19 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

Why would a share holder owned company pay to prepare for a black swan?  Unless they were incentived or forced to? 

Same reason the pharmas developed the COVID vaccine?

It's unlikely in the current environment, but corporations and entities can choose to do the right thing.

And, of course, government has to make a decision on whether to plan for an extremely unlikely event.  There's a legit question how much it should expend doing so.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[Satchel 6982]

I don’t understand why some people buy the once in a lifetime storm bs as a reason for excusing the state’s lack of preparedness. Texas consumers don’t demand much from their elected officials but an event like this should be the very thing we should demand they be prepared to handle. It’s beyond ridiculous.

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19279]

I think a lot of people are agreeing on a lot of points, but this thread is moving fast. 

We all agree:

1.  Texas has mismanaged its grid, and this sits squarely on the shoulder of The Governor (Abbott and Perry who appointed the PUC), the PUC, and ERCOT.  

2.  A lot of blame also sits with the RRC.

3.  Both of the above do not require weatherization of generation assets (green or traditional) or oil and gas infrastructure, which is fucking stupid.

4.  IT IS NOT GREEN ENERGY THAT CAUSED THIS CRISIS.

Now that we all agree on this, let's continue.

[JimmyJames 12271]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Where did you get that last part?

Nothing I said attempts to absolve the government.

You, much like abbot and the rest of the state government will soon do, will blame generation companies for not doing what they recommended but did not require them to do and what the state told ERCOT to recommend but not required to do with no enforcement ability. 

It is not those generation companies job to ensure the entire state has power. That falls on abbot and his government. Obviously. They wholly failed on that. Obviously.

[cactusflinthead 27626]

10 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

Why would a share holder owned company pay to prepare for a black swan?  Unless they were incentived or forced to? 

Ding ding ding!

We have a winner.

[TwiceHorn 31984]

30 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

According to the EIA, which is fairly definitive, 41% of Iowa’s power is wind generated.  I’ve not looked up the other states, but I will note that both states are under going severe winter weather with minimal outages. It’s 11 degrees in Des Moines right now, and as of my posting there are roughly 30 outages .  It’s not wind.  Stahp.

He's not saying it's wind.  Geezus H.

But, your example goes toward making NAAL's poorly articulated point.  Des Moines' average low in February is 18.  They deal with this routinely, several months a year.

Dallas' average low in February is 32.  Take Des Moines down to -17 and see how they do.  The point being that there are going to be some fuckups even if you do try to do it right when the conditions are so far out of the norm.  Which is not to say that anyone in Texas tried to do it right.  Or that the regulatory system encouraged them to do it right.

 

[Serak The Preparer 3482]

2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Actually, renewables probably played a very indirect role in that generation companies invested in and received subsidies for and patted themselves on the back for renewables while stripping their budgets for plant maintenance and winterizing.  Again, it's the generators' fault, but it was a shiny expensive object that distracted them.

You have an implicit assumption that the generation companies chased after subsidies INSTEAD budgeting for plain maintenance and winterizing. Why is that? We already know (and more importantly THEY know) that nobody was going to make them winterize, and doing so would cost them money. I have seen no evidence that even your indirect role is valid. If I have a choice of either dumping my oil in the grass (with no consequence) or dumping my oil in the grass (with no consequence) and also getting $10, taking the second choice doesn't mean that the $10 led to oil in my front yard.

[MoJames 8258]

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Which is not to say that anyone in Texas tried to do it right.  Or that the regulatory system encouraged them to do it right.

Went ahead and got rid of all the non-important stuff.

[TwiceHorn 31984]

15 minutes ago, Satchel said:

I don’t understand why some people buy the once in a lifetime storm bs as a reason for excusing the state’s lack of preparedness. Texas consumers don’t demand much from their elected officials but an event like this should be the very thing we should demand they be prepared to handle. It’s beyond ridiculous.

One thing that this points up is the rise of the administrative state.  Not many or any elected officials have a lot of direct control over this because it's been delegated to agencies.

You usually see this problem at the federal level, but it exists at the state level, too.  And this is a grand example.

It's impossible for government to function without agencies and delegation to them.  But it sure uncouples things from electoral politics.  And can be flat dangerous.

 

[MoJames 8258]

Does anyone in this thread thing Texas and all those involved and discussed in the thread did a good job with this? Or are we at the point where different folks are simply trying to push the blame around?

[TwiceHorn 31984]

 

 

6 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

You have an implicit assumption that the generation companies chased after subsidies INSTEAD budgeting for plain maintenance and winterizing. Why is that? We already know (and more importantly THEY know) that nobody was going to make them winterize, and doing so would cost them money. I have seen no evidence that even your indirect role is valid. If I have a choice of either dumping my oil in the grass (with no consequence) or dumping my oil in the grass (with no consequence) and also getting $10, taking the second choice doesn't mean that the $10 led to oil in my front yard.

It's not an implicit assumption, it's what I said explicitly.

But you're right they probably would have spent resources allocated to renewables on some bullshit other than winterizing and maintaining.  Hence why I said a very indirect role.

I'm not arguing that the regulatory environment doesn't encourage it.  Hell, coal and gas probably ought not be allowed into renewables.

[JimmyJames 12271]

4 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

One thing that this points up is the rise of the administrative state.  Not many or any elected officials have a lot of direct control over this because it's been delegated to agencies.

You usually see this problem at the federal level, but it exists at the state level, too.  And this is a grand example.

It's impossible for government to function without agencies and delegation to them.  But it sure uncouples things from electoral politics.  And can be flat dangerous.

 

This is total bullshit. 
 

The state of Texas is not some ridiculously huge sprawling agency that abbot can’t possibly oversee. Energy is the dominant industry in the state. It literally pays him money. Why are you indirectly defending him? 

[TwiceHorn 31984]

5 minutes ago, MoJames said:

Does anyone in this thread thing Texas and all those involved and discussed in the thread did a good job with this? Or are we at the point where different folks are simply trying to push the blame around?

I don't think anyone on this thread is so simple as to say one thing and one thing only caused it, except maybe the regulatory environment.

We're just scattershooting about the various faults and problems.

Which is necessary in order to develop a regulatory environment that works.

[Pato del Muerto 53329]

Makes you wonder what kind of safety maintenance has been deferred on the gas, coal, and nuclear plants. Hopefully safety is still regulated and enforced. 

[Brisketexan 106614]

Even if you're a psychopath and are fine with people dying to save some money, how much is repairing all the broken pipes, etc. going to cost?  And are the financial costs of these massive repairs really less than paying to winterize the infrastructure?
 

He says no big deal, we just lost a week of prosperity.

Seems that we lost a bit more:

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/2021/02/18/this-years-winter-storm-could-become-the-costliest-weather-event-in-texas-history/

Granted, some of those claims aren’t power-loss-related (eg, car wrecks), but a majority of them are.

We saved some pennies...only to lose billions, on the costliest disaster in American history. It was a bad bet.

Speaking of dumb messaging, dude, you came in guns blazing saying everyone was being stupid for suggesting we pay more for energy. All you had to do was say that your solution was for the energy businesses to just eat the cost in their margins. You'd have gotten positive rep galore. 

That’s not his message. Because that would be a fantasy. Nobody in leadership would push a solution that costs private industry money without letting them recover from consumers. Which is an obvious truth most of us here have acknowledged.

Texas has clearly completely mismanaged every aspect of its power grid. No other state in the Union, since the New England and New York grid disasters in the early aughts, has experienced this type of complete failure. 
 

This is, literally, catastrophic. It’s a catastrophe. It’s looking like it will be the costliest natural disaster in US history. And the bulk of the impact was man-made. It is inexcusable. But it will be excused. You and I know it will be.

Why would a share holder owned company pay to prepare for a black swan?  Unless they were incentived or forced to? 

Gosh, seems like that’s what most everyone on here has acknowledged. Private enterprise will never ever act out of the goodness of their hearts. They are economic creatures only. If we freeze to death, that doesn’t hurt their bottom line. Spending money on winterizing and employees does. So they won’t do that.

Also, Penelope continues to own this thread. Listen to her.

[TwiceHorn 31984]

8 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

This is total bullshit. 
 

The state of Texas is not some ridiculously huge sprawling agency that abbot can’t possibly oversee. Energy is the dominant industry in the state. It literally pays him money. Why are you indirectly defending him? 

Goddam dude.

Where do you get some of your interpretations of what I post.

ERCOT, PUC, all of it is part of the fucking administrative state. You don't get to vote for them, so you can't vote them out.  Of course, we get to vote for Railroad Commissioner, but that has to be one of the least informed votes that gets cast.

It's just a general observation about the state of government.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[tx 3 putt 78465]

3 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Makes you wonder what kind of safety maintenance has been deferred on the gas, coal, and nuclear plants. Hopefully safety is still regulated and enforced. 

the state is all over it *wink wing*

[MoJames 8258]

5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

We're just scattershooting about the various faults and problems.

The story I'm reading suggest there is a decent subset who feel that what Texas did is what you should have expected. There is also some echoing of more regulations etc, but not a single person expecting that to happen.

It's disturbing.

[JimmyJames 12271]

10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Goddam dude.

Where do you get some of your interpretations of what I post.

ERCOT, PUC, all of it is part of the fucking administrative state. You don't get to vote for them, so you can't vote them out.

It's just a general observation about the state of government.

Because I’m mad. Very mad. Sitting in a house with no water for three days. And I know where the blame lies. And while you’re right I don’t get to vote on the PUC and ERCOT. I do get to vote for the governor and that fuckhead bears the most responsibility for this fiasco over anyone else currently in government because he’s the type of guy that gets 10 million dollar settlements after filing frivolous lawsuits against oak trees then supports tort reform, then fights laws helping other disabled people while sitting in his wheelchair.

And he had the ability to prevent this and just did not give a shit. The guy is a psychopath and now we all get to suffer. 

Edited February 19, 2021 by JimmyJames

[TwiceHorn 31984]

15 minutes ago, MoJames said:

The story I'm reading suggest there is a decent subset who feel that what Texas did is what you should have expected. There is also some echoing of more regulations etc, but not a single person expecting that to happen.

It's disturbing.

I am certainly not saying that.  NAAL has been interpreted as saying that, but I don't think that's what he means.  What he means I think is that this was gonna suck to one degree or another no matter how well we planned.

The only real regulatory solution anyone has proposed is the capacity market, which should focus participants more on capital improvements and maintenance rather than short-term profit seeking at the mercy of spot pricing for kWhr and fuel, but you never know.  There's probably some other shit we could do too.

We could also just make everything public or quasi-public.  I'm not sure anyone thinks that's a great idea, but that's the old school solution.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[TwiceHorn 31984]

9 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Because I’m mad. Very mad. Sitting in a house with no water for three days. And I know where the blame lies. And while you’re right I don’t get to vote on the PUC and ERCOT. I do get to vote for the governor and that fuckhead bears the most responsibility for this fiasco over anyone else currently in government because he’s the type of guy that gets 10 million dollar settlements after filing frivolous lawsuits against oak trees then supports tort reform, then fights laws helping other disabled people while sitting in his wheelchair.

And he had the ability to prevent this and just did not give a shift. The guy is a psychopath and now we all get to suffer. 

Fair enough.  Sorry.

Greg Abbott sucks.  His predecessors have sucked for a long time.  No argument from me on that.

I do question his particular ability to prevent this.  It was a long time brewing.  And he's a gimp in addition to being a Republican (that's a joke, btw).  The not voting for him, or other state Republican shitheads goes without saying, as well.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4998]

1 hour ago, MoJames said:

To compare it to my line of work, would it be appropriate for the same amount of money and preparedness for an cath lab in Los Angeles as in BFE Oklahoma? And then when some fatass decided to eat his ass into a Myocardial Infarction in Los Angeles and there isn't a Interventional Cardiologist within 30 minutes, I can simply say well fuck you should've lived in Oklahoma where heart attacks are more common, we put as much effort as BFE Oklahoma and they do fine.

Also, I don't live within the backass energy situation in Texas, again I'm at 7400 feet in Colorado and have dealt with 2 foot of snow over the past week without one fucking problem.

In addition, your initial point was that we shouldn't be mad at the people running the plants in Texas because they aren't used to the weather, where as other plants all over the country not used to this weather have done fine.

Does your practice have detailed plans with years of experience implementing those plans for dealing with tornadoes and earthquakes and massive flooding from hurricanes? Does it have city blocks' worth of automated equipment engineered, installed, and run successfully for multiple decades with technology that has never been tested by such natural catastrophes in the whole area with a workforce that is relatively young and have never experienced anything like this in their working lives because of generational turnover? Do you think you can just put a dome around a power plant and freeze it to -5 degrees to see where the problems are? 

Do you think the medical community did a pretty good job adapting to the global pandemic? I mean, you should know better than I how much they have changed up treatments and stuff to save lives and developed vaccines in record time. Yet we aren't here blaming doctors for not expecting this. Just like with the pandemic, there were structural, leadership, and political problems that exacerbated the issue. I'm not arguing that. But sometimes shit happens and we have to figure out how to deal with it. Instead of recognizing that most of these people are putting themselves out there and doing there best to get power to people, folks are basically blaming the doctors for the pandemic. That doesn't mean we don't have some issues to address, but maybe let's try and put stuff into perspective before blaming the very folks who are trying to put things back together.

[TwiceHorn 31984]

27 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

He says no big deal, we just lost a week of prosperity.

Seems that we lost a bit more:

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/2021/02/18/this-years-winter-storm-could-become-the-costliest-weather-event-in-texas-history/

Granted, some of those claims aren’t power-loss-related (eg, car wrecks), but a majority of them are.

We saved some pennies...only to lose billions, on the costliest disaster in American history. It was a bad bet.




That’s not his message. Because that would be a fantasy. Nobody in leadership would push a solution that costs private industry money without letting them recover from consumers. Which is an obvious truth most of us here have acknowledged.





This is, literally, catastrophic. It’s a catastrophe. It’s looking like it will be the costliest natural disaster in US history. And the bulk of the impact was man-made. It is inexcusable. But it will be excused. You and I know it will be.





Gosh, seems like that’s what most everyone on here has acknowledged. Private enterprise will never ever act out of the goodness of their hearts. They are economic creatures only. If we freeze to death, that doesn’t hurt their bottom line. Spending money on winterizing and employees does. So they won’t do that.

Also, Penelope continues to own this thread. Listen to her.

 

The costs of this need to be tallied relentlessly and relentlessly shoved up the ass of Texas state government and power entities in this state.

You fuckers saved yourselves a couple of million the past couple of weeks, and look what you've done.

Sometimes this stuff just gets compiled and everyone just oohs and ahs over it.  This needs to be used.  Ruthlessly and repeatedly.

[BearSchlong 8229]

Same reason the pharmas developed the COVID vaccine?
It's unlikely in the current environment, but corporations and entities can choose to do the right thing.
And, of course, government has to make a decision on whether to plan for an extremely unlikely event.  There's a legit question how much it should expend doing so.

Lol thinking pharma is making vaccines altruistically. Far from it.

I'm not criticizing them, im just pointing out that reliability and an SLA target hasn't been baked into the industry.

If I go try to spend money to improve customer reliability under the guise of "its the right thing to do" my CRO laughs at me. But he's all ears if they want to pay for it.

[Okie State 3887]

I never realized how many Surly posters live in Colorado.

[MoJames 8258]

1 minute ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Does your practice have detailed plans with years of experience implementing those plans for dealing with tornadoes and earthquakes and massive flooding from hurricanes? Does it have city blocks' worth of automated equipment engineered, installed, and run successfully for multiple decades with technology that has never been tested by such natural catastrophes in the whole area with a workforce that is relatively young and have never experienced anything like this in their working lives because of generational turnover? Do you think you can just put a dome around a power plant and freeze it to -5 degrees to see where the problems are? 

Do you think the medical community did a pretty good job adapting to the global pandemic? I mean, you should know better than I how much they have changed up treatments and stuff to save lives and developed vaccines in record time. Yet we aren't here blaming doctors for not expecting this. Just like with the pandemic, there were structural, leadership, and political problems that exacerbated the issue. I'm not arguing that. But sometimes shit happens and we have to figure out how to deal with it. Instead of recognizing that most of these people are putting themselves out there and doing there best to get power to people, folks are basically blaming the doctors for the pandemic. That doesn't mean we don't have some issues to address, but maybe let's try and put stuff into perspective before blaming the very folks who are trying to put things back together.

Yes, our hospital is set up to handle all sorts of issues with a disruption of function from all sorts of catastrophes. 

Yes, the medical community did an exceptional job dealing with the pandemic. The large chunk of the population did as well. A subset of the population did a god awful job. The ability of the medical/pharmaceutical community to develop a vaccination for a novel virus in 6 months is fucking nuts. The augmentation of treating ARDS from an ICU standpoint has as well improved beyond what we thought it could.

My annoyance with this entire situation is that it will shock most people if the energy sector does much. As Sydney said, it makes much more financial sense for the entities involved to pay out lawsuits than do an substantial change. As well, the Texas government doesn't appear to be doing anything with this tragedy other than using it for a soap box to preach about the importance of fossil fuels.

It's nauseating.

[TwiceHorn 31984]

12 minutes ago, BearSchlong said:

Lol thinking pharma is making vaccines altruistically. Far from it.

I'm not criticizing them, im just pointing out that reliability and an SLA target hasn't been baked into the industry.

If I go try to spend money to improve customer reliability under the guise of "its the right thing to do" my CRO laughs at me. But he's all ears if they want to pay for it.

I wouldn't say altruistically.  They've gotten some government money to reimburse their costs of development.  But from a purely economic standpoint, they'd probably be better off to direct their resources to another wildly profitable drug than making a relative pittance, if anything, on vaccine sales.

But they are putting short- or even long-term profit (arguably everything in pharma is long-term) to the side for more humane purposes.  They're advancing science.  Making themselves look heroic.

Hell, you can't even count on individual humans to be altruistic, but they still do the right thing fairly often.

Corporate culture or conscience here is rotten to the fucking core.  It's short-term, quartely report driven and nothing else.  That needs to change.  I'm not sure how, but it needs to change.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4998]

1 minute ago, MoJames said:

Yes, our hospital is set up to handle all sorts of issues with a disruption of function from all sorts of catastrophes. 

Yes, the medical community did an exceptional job dealing with the pandemic. The large chunk of the population did as well. A subset of the population did a god awful job. The ability of the medical/pharmaceutical community to develop a vaccination for a novel virus in 6 months is fucking nuts. The augmentation of treating ARDS from an ICU standpoint has as well improved beyond what we thought it could.

My annoyance with this entire situation is that it will shock most people if the energy sector does much. As Sydney said, it makes much more financial sense for the entities involved to pay out lawsuits than do an substantial change. As well, the Texas government doesn't appear to be doing anything with this tragedy other than using it for a soap box to preach about the importance of fossil fuels.

It's nauseating.

No disagreement about the whole political situation. I'm merely speaking as someone with a decade of experience in operations in the chemical industry. It's not energy, but they are substantially similar in the basic technologies they use to operate their plants. An event like this was always going to bring down a significant portion of our power supply. There is just no getting around it. There is still plenty of room for criticism with regards to the way we have structured it. We obviously never anticipated an event like this that would encompass the entire state.