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02-20-2021, 11:07 PM | #26 | |
Scooby Specialist
Member#: 14913
Join Date: Feb 2002
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TXIC
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I don't blame the green energy but I'm angry with the miss management of the grid. Without real data of what went wrong. I can't really take a stance on who screwed up, or bashing Texas for an independent grid. Maybe that's the new American way of crapping on people with no real data to backup your opinion. The news is just so hungry for blood lately its pathetic and its toxic for our nation as a whole. Anyways... My family survived just fine even with the cold weather and no electricity. Granted I have a gas fireplace/water heater and a foot and half blown insulation in the attic. The blackouts where just odd as some cities survived with no loss and a neighboring city just fell flat on their face.
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02-21-2021, 12:00 AM | #27 | |
Scooby Specialist
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02-21-2021, 04:46 PM | #28 |
Scooby Guru
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Texas Freeze Raises Cost Of Charging A Tesla To $900
Texas Freeze Raises Cost Of Charging A Tesla To $900
The electricity shortage in Texas amid the cold snap has sent spot electricity prices soaring so much that the surge in power prices equals a cost of $900 for charging a Tesla. The typical full charge of a Tesla costs around $18 using a Level 1 or Level 2 charger at home, according to estimates from The Drive. This estimate is based on an average price of $0.14 per kWh of power. However, the extreme winter weather this week has sent Texas spot electricity prices soaring, as the wind turbines froze in the ice storms and reduced the wind power generating capacity in the Lone Star State by half. Spot electricity prices at the West hub have soared above the grid’s $9,000 per megawatt-hour cap, compared to a ‘normal’ price of $25 per megawatt-hour, FOX Business notes. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called early on Monday for rotating outages across the state as extreme winter weather forced wind power generating units offline, while electricity demand set a new winter peak record. At the same time, freezing cold and ice storms cut offline almost half of the wind power capacity in Texas. “We are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units,” ERCOT said. In Texas, wind power generation overtook coal-fired generation in 2020 for the first time ever, with wind power now accounting for 25 percent of the Texas electricity generation. Natural gas-fired power generation is the leading source of electricity in Texas, with more than 45 percent share. While oil-and-gas rich Texas is the leading U.S. state for wind power installations, the frozen turbines in the Arctic weather have strained the grid so much that rolling outages in Texas continue for a second consecutive day. “The wind-dependent Texas grid is experiencing rolling blackouts, prices the equivalent of $900 per Tesla charge, and an expected supply shortage of 10 GW--the amount of electricity needed to power 5 million homes,” Alex Epstein, Founder of Center for Industrial Progress, tweeted today. Meanwhile, ERCOT’s Senior Director of System Operations, Dan Woodfin, said on Tuesday morning that “The number of controlled outages we have to do remains high. We are optimistic that we will be able to reduce the number throughout the day.” |
02-21-2021, 06:01 PM | #29 | |
Scooby Specialist
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Join Date: Aug 2004
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Oil Price Dot Com... https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...la-To-900.html ERCOT's PR machine is working overtime to pin the issue on windmills. The grid's failure issues were there before Texas proliferated wind power. The dang windmills over performed their expectation during the freeze compared to the coal/gas/nuclear sourced power...but it doesn't matter what the source was. Every single one of them failed. Why? Because money went into pockets instead of making sure the grid could handle the weather Texas anticipates having periodically. Privatizing is supposed to cut the red tape and supply better or equitable services faster and for less $ than regulated ones. Instead, the rich got richer at the extreme detriment of the people they should have been serving. |
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02-22-2021, 06:52 AM | #30 |
Scooby Guru
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What The Media Isn’t Telling You About Texas Blackouts
Unprecedented winter storms hit Texas. The electricity grid cannot deal with excess of demand over supply. Prices soar. Rolling blackouts. Expect more says the grid operator. What the stories do not say is that Texas, long ago, cut itself off from the interties to the rest of the country that might have provided some aid in a time of extreme distress. Texas might as well, electrically speaking, be an island in the middle of the Pacific.
So, let's skip the discussion about the arctic temperatures affecting the US as far south as Texas. Let's focus instead on the fact that Texas, unlike every other state in the lower forty eight, comprises its own power grid called, ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. And the ERCOT grid is managed by a state agency of the same name. But why? Trying to condense 140 years of electric utility history is daunting but we believe the key here is state's rights. This relies on the key distinction between intra-state and inter-state activities. Federal jurisdiction over commercial activities are generally limited to interstate commerce or "commerce among the several states" in the original language of the Constitution. The Federal Power Act, granting federal authority to build, own and operate electric infrastructure, was passed by Congress in 1934. At the same time a new federal administrative body was created, predecessor of our current FERC, to regulate interstate (or today we would say wholesale) electricity transactions. The ERCOT electric system is designed, apart from its other myriad functions, to evade federal jurisdiction. Period, full stop. One relatively recent irony here is that the FERC has been extremely generous in awarding above market authorized returns on equity for its utilities as well as in other policy areas. From an investor owned utility executive's perspective, this is like chaining yourself to the couch while the free money truck rolls past your house distributing largesse. In all fairness there was no way to know a Rooseveltian "tiger" would become a policy "pussycat" although it didn't actually begin to happen until Eisenhower's first administration almost twenty years to the day later. So in order to circumvent federal jurisdiction, in favor of presumably more favorable state utility regulation, the state intentionally became an "island" with respect to electrical connectivity with the rest of the country. At the time this made sense. Texas had all the scale and commodity infrastructure suitable for making electricity: oil, coal, lignite as then later natural gas. Related Video: Texas Freeze Takes 1.2 Million Bpd Of Oil Offline We have no desire to engage in debate about the wisdom of this interconnection "islanding" policy. It reflects a policy choice. Going forward the interesting question is not what to do but what will the climate look like? The present dilemma this week is a potential shortage of electrical power due to extreme cold weather. But from a perspective of extreme weather events, we see a growing prevalence of heat extremes versus cold weather extremes. In other words, building up capacity reserves for summer air conditioning loads (Austin for example was routinely over 100 degrees last summer) has been more vital than wintertime heating demand-until now. Other electric systems can access reserves from places with different demand patterns (and climate). That allows them to keep lower reserves locally. Not so with Texas. We will conclude with the idea of insurance. An electrical system conceptually resembles an insurance policy. Both ask the same basic question: "how much are policyholders or electricity users willing to pay against the chance of some adverse outcome?" How much extra are they willing to pay for political independence? There are differing, valid answers to these questions. Our point here today is simply that Texas from a wholesale electricity perspective is truly the "lone star state". By Leonard Hyman and William Tilles for Oilprice.com https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Ene...Investors.html Last edited by AVANTI R5; 02-22-2021 at 07:02 AM. |
02-22-2021, 07:53 AM | #31 |
Scooby Specialist
Member#: 67960
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Texas + Deregulated Utility = Enron&ERCOT
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02-22-2021, 08:56 AM | #32 | |
Scooby Guru
Member#: 873
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Fact is it is mostly over. And this will fade away. Will people get fired? Not sure. There is already a class action lawsuit started against those extravagant bills, and I am sure they will win. But that will take a LONG time unfortunately. I appreciate your concern. But like always Texas will be fine, politics be darned. Perhaps if all the people fleeing California would stop buying McMansions when they come here we would not need so much extra energy... |
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02-22-2021, 11:45 AM | #33 |
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The numbers point to NG being a big issue. NG was producing 24 billion ft2 before the storm, and that dropped to 12 billion ft2 because lines and pumps froze. Can you explain how that's not a huge contributor to the issues?
Last edited by dwf137; 02-22-2021 at 11:57 AM. Reason: less argumentative. |
02-22-2021, 12:01 PM | #34 |
Scooby Specialist
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expect EVs to jump in price too, Copper has gone from $1.60 to now over $4.10 last I checked, Lumber and wood tippled since Dec. I guess they are getting that inflation Fed Res trying for
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02-22-2021, 12:09 PM | #35 | |
Scooby Guru
Member#: 139693
Join Date: Feb 2007
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The reality is like SoDealer stated......the deregulation failed in TX, period. The state agency did not push these "independent" power suppliers to winterize. The Feds warned them the last time, with what a 200 page study to winterize their s**t. They chose not to do it, and line their pockets instead. 10 years later, bam. The weather was not the cause of this, it was a bunch of cheap ass companies who refused to invest properly, in weatherization of their equipment. They have windmills and solar up north where these cold temps are regular and they have no such issues there. So this blame game that Ercot is doing is State regulation failed, these companies failed, it certainly wasn't the weather. They had 10 full years to get this done and they did exactly zero. Like many things in TX, it will be up to the citizens to sort this out themselves. I will have to spend many thousands of dollars before next winter to install whole home backup power via battery, generator, or both because I can no longer count on my state regulatory agencies nor the grip/power suppliers. I feel bad for the citizens who have thousands of dollars of repair bills. And I feel bad for all of us homeowners, who will have to foot the bill via homeowner insurance premium increases upon next renewal. The citizens will file homeowner claims, then the insurance companies will tax us all due to this fact. So the citizens have to foot the bill, yet again, due to the powers that be. It sucks. |
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02-22-2021, 01:31 PM | #36 | |
Scooby Guru
Member#: 873
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NO worries. I will take deregulation any day. Seems the people who complain about it most do not even live here. Things are fine. If it gets bad enough, the market will fix it. Or people will plan accordingly. |
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02-22-2021, 02:41 PM | #37 | |
Scooby Specialist
Member#: 161333
Join Date: Oct 2007
Chapter/Region:
NWIC
Location: snoco wa
Vehicle:135i vert fast leaf |
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The people complaining about it are paying tax dollars for federal aid to be sent to Texas because of the mismanagement. They're donating millions of dollars to help pay. Because people are unnecessarily dying. I'm sure all the conservatives in Texas are happy to accept AOC's 5 million dollars in aid. Really hope the family of the 11 year old boy who froze to death wins their lawsuit against the power companies. Clear mismanagement. Negligent homicide. They were informed in 2011 that they needed to winterize their systems, and they didn't because profit was better. This was completely avoidable. |
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02-22-2021, 03:02 PM | #38 |
Scooby Guru
Member#: 4562
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NWIC
Location: Auburn, WA
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02-22-2021, 08:30 PM | #39 | |
Scooby Specialist
Member#: 67960
Join Date: Aug 2004
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02-22-2021, 09:33 PM | #40 | |||
n00b Moderator
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Join Date: Feb 2001
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Location: Encinitas
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Regular rolling blackouts in the summertime. I had to look up the Wiki on it, but prices not withstanding... Deregulation didn't workout well here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000**...tricity_crisis Quote:
Since I don't know the whole story, I am not defending deregulation. It sounds like it wasn't planned out very well, however. Quote:
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02-22-2021, 09:50 PM | #41 |
Scooby Specialist
Member#: 67960
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Let's not forget, ENRON was also an episode in deregulation. It's not even like Texas has super low rates or anything. Based on its rates vs. other states, the savings are clearly going into pockets as opposed to lower rates. It's definitely not going into the infrastructure.
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02-22-2021, 10:32 PM | #42 |
Scooby Specialist
Member#: 161333
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Location: snoco wa
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02-23-2021, 09:16 AM | #43 |
Scooby Specialist
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MAIC
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power utility co's are pretty much monopolies and while the names have changed those pole still in business. Younger here probably don't remember but evidence of unmaintained power lines in CA causing wold fires and whats happening in minor snow storm TX show nothing being done to make the single energy source up to date or viable as we enter the great EV world.
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02-23-2021, 09:29 AM | #44 |
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: cold
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There's a middle ground between very tightly controlling the power companies with Soviet style 5-year plans and having very few consumer protections or long term thinking.
Clearly there needs to be enough regulation to get the system there up to snuff for cold temperatures, maybe through a combination of winterizing, diversifying, and being able to get power from the other grids. That doesn't mean some of the unique features of the Texas power system have to be completely eliminated. There has to be a pragmatic way forward. As for the locals who tapped into the wholesale markets - let's face it, these people were likely given a huge stack of disclosure documents and warnings that they didn't read or didn't understand. How financially literate is the general population? What % of people who signed up even know what the wholesale market is? How many people understand something as mundane as a mortgage or a car lease? Sometimes you need to save people from themselves. We already do that in the financial industry. That's why individual investors without high net worths aren't allowed to buy in to private company like SpaceX. |
02-23-2021, 05:07 PM | #45 |
Scooby Guru
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