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 11 of 18
Do you have some magic internet thing that will tell you the exact price per day what energy will cost?
My power company either doesn't have that magic, or they're keeping it a secret.
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Quote:You and I are not in TX, which is a different world regarding energy prices. Not like IN or WI.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Do you have some magic internet thing that will tell you the exact price per day what energy will cost?
My power company either doesn't have that magic, or they're keeping it a secret. "
If you've been following this thread, you know TX is unregulated, which secondbot constantly whines about. Those customers who were charged the excessive prices last Feb were able to look at their bills and decipher.
The exorbitant prices only happen during the hours when energy (natural gas) production fails. Because the "responsible" companies have not winterized, they will fail again when the freeze comes. That is the exact times when the prices will be unpredictable.
The next morning can check the news to know what failed, where, and if power company turned off your service.
Last year certain areas were shut out of service. But other areas were not. Some amount of "visiting friends" in an area still served could work as well.
Other than these catastrophic days, the energy prices for every other day of the month is in line and predictable.
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Reports of Tejas having the deepest freeze in 30 years today.
It's above zero in my hood.
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Texas’ gas system didn’t get through the cold snap unscathed.
Some power companies burned fuel oil at their natural gas-fired plants — a fairly unusual occurrence in gas-rich Texas. One of the state’s largest power companies, Dallas-based Vistra Corp., turned to fuel oil at four of its natural gas plants after being unable to come to terms with pipeline giant Energy Transfer for natural gas delivery.
‘Absolutely not a stress test’
Some experts did not view this winter storm or the lack of outages as a testament to the grid’s stability.
“This was absolutely not a stress test of the Texas grid,” said Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based energy consultant who worked for the Public Utility Commission of Texas from 1995 to 2001 and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004. “It’s great the grid ‘survived’ this storm, but gosh it should have, and had it not I’d be pretty darn worried.”
Silverstein pointed to the temperatures, which were warmer than during the 2021 storm. The low in Houston on Friday morning, for example, reached 26 degrees, while the lowest temperature during last year’s was 13 degrees. Temperatures were at 32 or below this week for 18 straight hours, while last year Houston-area residents endured 44 straight hours of temperatures at freezing or lower.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Texas-grid-su
rvives-winter-storm-but-no-16833274.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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26 degrees. The horror!
It's currently a toasty 6 degrees here.
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Quote:The gas and electric sellers really wanted a repeat of last year's multi-billion dollar price gouging, but because weather was mild the sellers would have got caught red-handed gouging the buyers. What happened last year?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
26 degrees. The horror!
It's currently a toasty 6 degrees here.
Texans spent an exorbitant amount on electricity during a week in which most of them couldn’t get much electricity. For the entirety of 2020, Texans paid $9.8 billion to keep the juice flowing. But on February 16, 2021, they spent roughly $10.3 billion. Costs for the month of February totaled more than $50 billion.
During the February 2021 freeze, the gas industry failed to deliver critically needed fuel, and while Texans of all stripes suffered, the gas industry scored windfall profits of about $11 billion.
It’s possible that some of the massive profits were illicit. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking into potential market manipulation by Texas pipeline companies, which are subject to the least regulation and oversight of any pipelines in the country. Those companies operate in a regulatory penumbra. For their pipelines operating only in Texas, they’re generally exempt from reporting tariffs and other market information the federal government requires of interstate pipelines.
More at https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-electric-grid-failure
-warm-up/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:why no mention of prices?
Originally posted by second:
Texas’ gas system didn’t get through the cold snap unscathed.
Some power companies burned fuel oil at their natural gas-fired plants — a fairly unusual occurrence in gas-rich Texas. One of the state’s largest power companies, Dallas-based Vistra Corp., turned to fuel oil at four of its natural gas plants after being unable to come to terms with pipeline giant Energy Transfer for natural gas delivery.
‘Absolutely not a stress test’
Some experts did not view this winter storm or the lack of outages as a testament to the grid’s stability.
“This was absolutely not a stress test of the Texas grid,” said Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based energy consultant who worked for the Public Utility Commission of Texas from 1995 to 2001 and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004. “It’s great the grid ‘survived’ this storm, but gosh it should have, and had it not I’d be pretty darn worried.”
Silverstein pointed to the temperatures, which were warmer than during the 2021 storm. The low in Houston on Friday morning, for example, reached 26 degrees, while the lowest temperature during last year’s was 13 degrees. Temperatures were at 32 or below this week for 18 straight hours, while last year Houston-area residents endured 44 straight hours of temperatures at freezing or lower.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Texas-grid-su
rvives-winter-storm-but-no-16833274.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I missed the whole "44 straight hours of temperatures below freezing" part since I only ever read the first few sentences of any crap Second ever posts anymore.
That's pretty fuckin' funny too.
Try 44 days. That's how long it was below freezing without a break up here last year.
Boo fucking hoo.
I thought Texans were made of sterner stuff. Maybe that's just another Hollywood lie.
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Quote:I told you that Texas power generators made an extra $50 billion in February 2021 only because the grid almost failed and being that close to failure allowed the sellers of electricity to jack up their rates. The government of Texas changed the laws to allow the electric grid to switch goals from being as reliable as your heartbeat to being as profitable as possible, which sacrificed reliability. That is why it almost failed last year under a slight amount of stress. An almost failing electric grid, with sky high prices per kilowatt-hour, is vastly more profitable than a electric grid that is reliable and has normal prices.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I missed the whole "44 straight hours of temperatures below freezing" part since I only ever read the first few sentences of any crap Second ever posts anymore.
That's pretty fuckin' funny too.
Try 44 days. That's how long it was below freezing without a break up here last year.
Boo fucking hoo.
I thought Texans were made of sterner stuff. Maybe that's just another Hollywood lie.
Texas Monthly has the article "The Texas Electric Grid Failure Was a Warm-up"
One year after the deadly blackout, officials have done little to prevent the next one — which could be far worse. And very profitable, but the article won't say that because Texas Monthly would get sued.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-electric-grid-failure
-warm-up/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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A swindle by a Texas governor who will most likely be reelected despite the swindle:
The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott when the grid manager ordered wholesale power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies.
Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting to come back online, former Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker told him that Abbott wanted them to keep prices high.
Last year the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner, lied to the public when he said Abbott was not “involved in any way” in the decision to keep wholesale electricity prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour – more than 150 times normal prices.
The decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric. Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced co-op into bankruptcy.
“It (keeping prices high) did nothing at all to cause more generation to come online,” said Lino Mendiola, one of the attorneys representing Brazos. “It was an attempted remedy that didn’t solve any of the problems caused by the winter storm.”
“This decision resulted in $16 billion in additional costs to ERCOT's market,” wrote Carrie Bivens, director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor.
Now Governor Abbott is facing questions about his own responsibility in the handling of last year's blackout.
Abbott had, "once again put the profits of his donors over the people of this state. Abbott screwed us, and he’ll continue to screw us until we vote him out," Beto O'Rourke said.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220223232930/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/ercot-chief-abbott-direction-power-outage-storm-16941019.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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