The Texas Disaster Freezing Sacrifices At The Alter Of Wind And Solar Power
POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Sunday, September 14, 2025 08:00
VIEWED: 11410
PAGE 8 of 18
Earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 3 into law, which mandates the weatherization of power plants; creates a statewide emergency alert system; improves communication among those in the industry; and designates some natural gas facilities as “critical” so their power can’t be turned off during crises.
Abbott said the bill, along with a handful of others, ensured “that everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas.”
Experts, however, said the early season conservation alerts by ERCOT show that a fundamental problem remains unaddressed: The state needs more power generation to keep up with its population and handle emergency situations.
The new law “was destined to fail because no one would invest in new capacity or at least not invest fast enough to keep pace with demand,” said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow with the University of Houston. “There’s really no incentive to reinvest or maintain the grid for weatherization.”
www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/ERCOT-issues-intermit
tent-conservation-alerts-16246788.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Analysis: The Texas electric grid and the improvements that didn't come
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/texas-ercot-power-gri
d-legislature-16230665.php
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Without energy, pumps could not fuel the trucks. Loaded semis sat idling at the edge of the Texas blackout zone, while store shelves remained empty. Milk had to be dumped, as well as eggs, and livestock died without energy.
Remember One time you were going to call yourself Texas
what are you calling yourself these days? Israeli? Canadian? can you also explain why you cheer the bombings of USA's Marines, Navy and Civilians during the attack on the USS Liberty?
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Power plants that failed Texas in February also triggered June's power grid scare
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/energy/2021/07/10/ercot-plants-te
xas-power-outages-february-june-breakdown-unplanned-outages/7926109002/
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:The article tells you WHY the operators of power plants would want the power to fail:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Power plants that failed Texas in February also triggered June's power grid scare
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/energy/2021/07/10/ercot-plants-te
xas-power-outages-february-june-breakdown-unplanned-outages/7926109002/
Quote:The operators of power plants will be stingy about maintenance because:
"But the fact that these same plants went offline in normal weather (for June) means their problems go beyond insufficient weatherization for freezing temperatures and perhaps reveals an underlying lack of sufficient maintenance," Jones said. "It suggests (the plants') maintenance standards are inferior to what should be the norm."
Wholesale prices on the deregulated ERCOT power market soared last month when it appeared electricity was in short supply relative to demand. The price shot up to $1,828.65 per megawatt-hour on June 13 and $1,952.86 on June 14 after topping out at $31.52 on June 11.
1) Maintenance costs money. The less maintenance, the more money they make.
2) If there is an artificial shortage of electricity caused by lack of maintenance, the price for electricity will soar, which means the operators make more money.
In other words, when operators of power plants can only make 99% of the required power because of less maintenance, the operators charge $1,828.65 per megawatt-hour while the operators can charge only a measly $31.52 per megawatt-hour when power plants can make 101% of the required power. The operators are strongly motivated to engineer a power shortage in order to make more money, but they have to do it in a way that is not obvious that they deliberately caused a power shortage.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Texas oil and gas regulator needs to explain failure during February blackout
The more we learn about how and why the grid failed, the more apparent our state regulators’ failure becomes.
Texas’s natural gas producers definitely were the problem, according to a new report from 12 University of Texas at Austin faculty members. And Craddick’s Railroad Commission could have done more to prevent blackouts.
The 100 page Report: https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin%20%282021%29%20
EventsFebruary2021TexasBlackout.pdf
West Texas natural gas has a lot of water in it, which can freeze at the wellhead and block the flow. The Commission has repeatedly ignored calls to require well operators to prepare for freezing temperatures. By the time the wells were freezing in February, the Railroad Commission could do little but watch the dominoes fall.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210716112946/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Tomlinson-Texas-oil-and-gas-regulator-needs-to-16317325.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The average natural gas bill in Houston could triple next year unless state regulators step in to ease the financial burden after natural gas spot prices spiked during the February freeze.
CenterPoint Energy and a dozen other utilities statewide filed applications Friday that, if approved, would allow the state to issue bonds on the utilities’ behalf to spread the $3.6 billion cost of natural gas during the winter storm over a period of up to 30 years.
If CenterPoint’s application is approved, the average Houston natural gas bill of around $30 a month would go up by between $2 to $5 a month starting next year. If not, CenterPoint said it would have to levy a monthly fee of as high as $40, pushing average natural gas bills to almost $80 in the summer and over $100 in the winter.
More than 1.8 million CenterPoint customers in the Houston area are on the hook for the $1.14 billion natural gas bill incurred by the utility when it was forced to buy natural gas on the spot market when production plummeted during the winter storm.
As a result, natural gas prices in the Houston rose as high as $400 per Dekatherm, compared to average market prices of around $3 per Dekatherm. Dekatherm is a unit of energy used primarily to measure natural gas. If you own natural gas wells, it was a perfectly legal opportunity to gouge your customers.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210730185342/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/Natural-gas-bills-will-go-up-after-the-winter-16352485.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
After Kelcy Warren’s Energy Transfer Partners Made Billions from the Deadly Texas Blackouts, He Gave $1 Million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott
The natural gas industry raked in billions during the winter grid failure and Governor Abbott let them off the hook. He was rewarded with a huge campaign contribution from the grid collapse’s biggest profiteer.
https://www.texasobserver.org/after-kelcy-warrens-energy-transfer-part
ners-made-billions-from-the-deadly-texas-blackouts-he-gave-1-million-to-greg-abbott/
https://web.archive.org/web/20210801093729/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-We-froze-and-Abbott-got-paid-1-16354431.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Although there are consumer protections prohibiting price gouging of essentials such as bottled water and gasoline during hurricanes and other emergencies, there are no such protections for natural gas customers.
Texans are on the hook for $3.6 billion in natural gas costs incurred by utilities during one freezing week in February — a burden consumers will bear for a decade or longer.
During that same winter week, several natural gas pipeline companies and traders made billions of dollars as they transported and sold natural gas at sky-high prices when supplies were short.
Pipeline companies Energy Transfer of Dallas and Kinder Morgan of Houston made $2.4 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively, while British oil major BP made more than $1 billion from its natural-gas trading business during the deadly, historic storm, according to company filings and analyst estimates. Houston pipeline company Enterprise Products Partners said it made $250 million for transporting and selling natural gas at high prices to utilities, industrial customers and power generators during the storm.
Ultimately, Texans will fund these companies’ profits, said Jim Krane, an energy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“It’s pretty clear this is a wealth transfer from the public to investors and traders who could capitalize on the high prices,” Krane said. “The frustrating thing is, even though people were shivering in their homes, their (natural gas) bills are going up anyway. They’re still going to have to pay for this. It’s really a slap in the face.”
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210803112421/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/CenterPoint-customers-will-pay-price-for-natural-16358810.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Ain't capitalism grand?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:It is not actually capitalism, although it does involve money. It is a very simple and straightforward swindle that the governor of Texas is permitting to run. Both natural gas and electricity were being regulated to benefit the customers, but since George Bush became governor, all of his successors have regulated gas and electricity to NOT benefit the customers.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ain't capitalism grand?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME