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 7 of 18
Yes it is. Taxing behavior they don't like as a means to get people to stop doing it is a Democrat strategy.
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Imagine the hypocrisy of a government who will allow businesses to card people to get a job or buy groceries, but won't card people to vote in elections and gives millions of non-citizens free money from taxpayers.
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Quote:Setting the price of electricity at $9,000 per megawatt-hour was completely the Republicans' idea. The Democrats would use the smart electric meters, which read how much is used every 15 minutes, to decide when smart meter will temporarily disconnect you because of load, the same as the meter will disconnect if you don't pay your monthly bill.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yes it is. Taxing behavior they don't like as a means to get people to stop doing it is a Democrat strategy.
www.texasishot.org/smart-meters/
And cheating Texans out of $16 billion for electricity was a Republican Party idea, which figured that when you divide $16 billion by 29 million Texans it only comes to $550 per person, which the GOP feels it can get away with that theft. The GOP is probably right about getting away with it.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Vistra, the largest power company in Texas, said it expects to lose as much as $1.2 billion this year after incurring sky-high natural gas costs during the February winter storm. The company previously forecast a profit as high as $860 million for the year.
Vistra said it was forced to spend $1.1 billion on natural gas in the spot market at a price of $700 per million British thermal units during the storm. The typical contract price is about $3 per million British thermal units.
“In one week alone, Vistra spent more than twice the amount on natural gas than what we usually spend in one full year to power our Texas generation fleet,” Vistra CEO Curtis Morgan said.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210426215248/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/Vistra-forecasts-1-6-billion-financial-hit-from-16129263.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Samsung's Austin fab was offline for more than a month after it was shut down due to power outages during the freeze.
About 71,000 wafers were affected by production disruptions, said Han Jinman, executive vice-president of Samsung’s memory chip business. He estimated the wafer loss is equivalent to $268 million to $357 million.
Semiconductor fabs are typically operational 24 hours a day for years on end. Each batch of wafers — a thin slice of semiconductor used for the fabrication of integrated circuits — can take 45 to 60 days to make, so a shutdown of any length can mean a loss of weeks of work. Restoring a fab is also a complicated process, and even in the best of circumstances can take a week.
The Samsung fab was one of a number of Austin's largest industrial power users that was ordered by the city to idle or shut down operations the week of Feb.15, as millions of Texas homes and businesses lost electricity and the state's power grid came close to a total shutdown.
NXP Semiconductors was also among the facilities that were shut down in February, as its two Austin fabrication facilities were offline for nearly a month. In March, the company estimated the shutdown would result in a $100 million loss in revenue and a month of wafer production.
The product loss and fab shutdown also came as Samsung considers Austin for a significant expansion.
In early February, officials confirmed the region is one of several locations being considered for a more than $17 billion state-of-the-art chip plant. The company is also considering locations including New York and Arizona.
It remains to be seen if the freeze could have an effect on Austin's chances of winning the facility. Company officials declined to comment on whether Central Texas is still under consideration, or when the company might make a decision.
More at https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/04/30/austin-fab-shutdow
n-during-texas-freeze-cost-samsung-millions/4891405001/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Energy Transfer made $2.4 billion from Texas winter storm, it said Thursday in its first-quarter earnings statement.
Controlled by billionaire Kelcy Warren, the company was sued by CPS Energy, a Texas utility, in the immediate aftermath of the crisis for allegedly charging a natural gas price more than 15,000% higher than normal.
The company joins a growing list of gas market players who reaped windfalls totaling almost $5 billion amid the chaos of the storm. Those with available gas supplies were able to sell at sky-high spot prices.
Kinder Morgan Inc., another pipeline operator, said last month the storm had a $1 billion positive impact on its results. BP Plc also reported an “exceptional” quarter in gas trading; while it didn’t break out more detail, one Citigroup Inc. analyst estimated BP’s Texas-related gain easily exceeded $1 billion. Meanwhile Australian investment bank Macquarie Group Ltd. pocketed $210 million.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210507234446/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/Energy-Transfer-Made-2-4-Billion-Gain-From-Texas-16159906.php
Capitalism is at its very finest when gouging customers who have no alternative but to pay whatever price is asked.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Who will pay for the failures of Texas' winter storm? Consumers, apparently.
It wasn’t enough for Texans to shiver for days in our heatless houses. It wasn’t enough to miss work for lack of internet. For Mom and Pop to shutter their already struggling business. For homeowners to face broken pipes and water damage. For ratepayers to face sky-high electric bills. For us to wait in line at the grocery store for water because the stuff coming out of faucets was contaminated.
It wasn’t even enough for nearly 200 people to die, some freezing to death in their beds, during Texas’ devastating winter blackouts.
Now, lawmakers expect ordinary Texans to pick up the bill for the government’s incompetence and the private sector’s greed.
After months of testimony, legislative debates and finger-pointing, it’s still anyone’s guess what solutions will become law. But it’s clear who will pay for some of them: consumers, who never voted for Texas’ wild west energy market in the first place and bear no blame for February’s statewide calamity.
Last week, the House approved a $2.5 billion plan to bail out Texas electricity entities at risk of defaulting on debts from the storm. The bill would impose an undisclosed fee on electricity companies, which would be passed on to residential and business ratepayers and the proceeds would be used for bonds to help cover the costs.
It was Gov. Greg Abbott’s appointees at the Texas Public Utility Commission, the elected Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick and the bureaucrats at ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, whose cascade of failures brought Texas’ grid within seconds of complete collapse.
Indeed, it was government’s fumbling that we now know made a terrible situation worse. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that while ERCOT was desperately trying to meet surging demand amid dwindling power supply, it inadvertently paid natural gas companies to go offline.
ERCOT said that when it activated a program that pays large industrial power users to reduce consumption during emergencies, it didn’t know the list of participants included key pieces of natural gas infrastructure needed to generate power: “We do not know what type of facility it is,” Kenan Ögelman, ERCOT’s vice president of commercial operations, told the Journal.
Who pays for that shoddy bookkeeping? Consumers.
It’s ratepayers, including those who chose fixed-rate energy plans and have thus far avoided higher costs, who could end up with a line-item expense on their monthly bills for years or even decades to compensate, in part, for the billions that electric coops and other entities were charged for power during the state’s astronomical energy pricing that turned out to be both unnecessary and woefully ineffective at luring more power onto the grid.
The added sum on each bill isn’t likely to make many eyes bulge but the unfairness of the charge irks consumer advocates, especially since it isn’t going to anything constructive.
“You’re putting a lien on future generations who are still going to have to pay for what went wrong,” says Tim Morstad, who tracks utility policy at AARP. “It’s a cleanup cost. Those billions of dollars aren’t going to make the gas supply more reliable by making those improvements or making the power generation facilities hardened to be able to withstand cold better.”
A bill to retroactively re-price energy during a point in the storm when ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, left it in place long after the emergency was over, had passed the Senate but was shut down by House Speaker Dade Phelan. The fallout has been severe with several entities in bankruptcy.
Somebody’s got to bail them out. Why not consumers, who unlike industry, have very little voice in any aspect of Texas’ system, from the ERCOT board to public utility regulation?
And it won’t just be Texas consumers. Our energy market is so big that the winter freeze that crippled our energy grid had a broad impact, with gas utilities as far north as Minnesota complaining that spiking gas
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'Collective amnesia': Texas GOP politicians knowingly blew 3 chances to fix the failing power grid
In 1989, Texas suffered a cold snap considered worse if not equal to the winter storm earlier this year yet managed to keep the grid functioning, with only a few hours of rotating outages. But then George Bush, Republican, replaced Ann Richards, Democrat, for Texas governor. With each passing year, the grid has steadily become less reliable.
February’s Winter Storm Uri brought the Texas power grid to within five minutes of complete collapse, officials acknowledged. Millions of residents were left without power for days in subfreezing temperatures; nearly 200 died.
Ten years ago, Texas power plants froze during a fast-moving winter storm, causing rolling electricity blackouts across the state. Outraged Texas regulators and lawmakers, vowing to crack down, debated requiring energy companies to protect their equipment against extreme weather to ensure reliability.
But they didn’t.
Nine years ago, two state agencies that regulate utilities and the oil and gas industry warned that natural gas facilities that lost power during outages couldn’t feed electricity generation plants, creating a spiral of power loss. The agencies jointly recommended that lawmakers compel gas suppliers and power plants to fix the problem.
But they didn’t.
Eight years ago, economists warned that the state’s free-market grid left companies with little incentive to build enough plants to provide backup power during emergencies. With the support of then-Gov. Rick Perry, legislators and regulators considered increasing power rates to encourage the construction of more power plants, so that Texas, like other states, would have sufficient reserves.
But they didn’t.
In the wake of each power failure, or near-failure, over the past decade, Texas lawmakers have repeatedly stood at a fork in the road. In one direction lay government-mandated solutions that experts said would strengthen the state’s power system by making it less fragile under stress. The other direction continued Texas’ hands-off regulatory approach, leaving it to the for-profit energy companies to decide how to protect the power grid.
In each instance, lawmakers left the state’s lightly regulated energy markets alone, choosing cheap electricity over a more stable system. As a result, experts say, the power grid that Texans depend on to heat and cool their homes and run their businesses has become less and less reliable — and more susceptible to weather-related emergencies.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210521235354/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/news/investigations/article/texas-politicians-power-grid-failures-blackout-16185399.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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How Houston's winter storm went from wonderland to deadly disaster
Thursday, Feb. 11. 62 degrees
Texas’ power grid operates on a just-in-time electricity model, where power supplies are closely matched with demand. ERCOT relies on sophisticated weather and demand forecasts to manage the flow of power from power plant to customer. Unlike other states that mandate higher levels of excess power, ERCOT does not operate with a lot of spare power on the grid — by design.
ERCOT predicted power demand would spike to more than 70,000 megawatts on Sunday, a record for a Texas winter. In November, the agency had predicted peak winter demand would hit only 57,699 megawatts.
The agency’s forecast set off a red flag for Adam Sinn, president of Houston electricity trading firm Aspire Commodities. He realized 70,000 megawatts were dangerously close to all the power that would be available under perfect conditions, let alone a freak cold snap.
Then it dawned on him: ERCOT would not have enough power.
Some 250 miles away, analysts at Vistra Energy, a power company outside Dallas, had come to the same conclusion. They reached out to ERCOT, warning the grid would be short 10,000 megawatts on Monday and Tuesday.
Friday, Feb. 12, noon. 40 degrees
Demand for power surged as temperatures plunged and Texans turned up their thermostats. As power supplies fell, wholesale electricity prices started to skyrocket.
Texas is one of 16 states with a deregulated energy market, allowing consumers to buy electricity from hundreds of retail electricity providers instead of a single regulated utility. Retail power companies buy electricity on the wholesale market directly from power plant operators and sell it to customers. The electricity is distributed to customers by regulated utilities such as CenterPoint Energy.
About 70 percent of Texans have fixed-rate electricity contracts. The rest have variable-rate contracts, where the price of electricity fluctuates month to month or even minute-by-minute based on the wholesale market.
Retail power companies, facing the likelihood they would have to buy power at much higher rates than were set in contracts, urged customers to reduce electricity consumption, offering cash incentives and even a chance to win a Tesla.
Griddy, a small provider, used a different model, offering access to fluctuating wholesale electricity prices for a monthly fee. Most of the time, wholesale prices are much lower than those in standard retail contracts. But wholesale prices change constantly, and they can quickly soar.
Griddy warned its 29,000 Texas customers to switch to other providers offering fixed-rate plans. About 10,000 customers did. (Long story made short: Griddy was out of business by the end of the storm)
Sunday, Feb. 14, 7 p.m. 34 degrees
At ERCOT’s Grid Control Center at its headquarters outside Austin, controllers monitored the flow of electricity across some 46,500 miles of transmission lines, balancing power supply and demand for 29 million Texans.
Magness was feeling good as power demand surged to 76,000 megawatts, an all-time winter peak. The system was holding up.
But temperatures kept falling. Natural gas wells froze over as water used in hydraulic fracturing turned to ice. Sleet and snow froze wind turbines in West Texas. A sensor at a nuclear power plant in East Texas malfunctioned.
This could have been prevented. After a 2011 freeze led to rolling blackouts in Texas, federal authorities advised state regulators to weatherize power plants and ensure adequate energy supplies to prevent a repeat. The state failed to do so.
Shortly after 11 p.m., power plants started shutting down, lighting up computer monitors and large screens with yellow, orange and red alarms. An hour later, power reserves dropped dangerously low, forcing ERCOT to issue an emergency alert for all available generation to start firing.
Monday, Feb. 15, 1:23 a.m. 27 degrees
Engineers in ERCOT’s control room realized the grid was in trouble.
ERCOT ordered CenterPoint Energy and oth
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How can Texas fix its broken power grid? Can we trust politicians to get it done?
Rob Snyder quit the retail power business two years ago, no longer willing to take what he viewed as an increasing and unacceptable risk. In 2019, he sold his firm, Stream Energy, for $300 million to the Houston power company NRG Energy.
Snyder was mostly worried about broiling summer days when power supplies often are stretched to their limits. But his analysis, borne out over four frigid days in mid-February, pinpoints the underlying problem that led to the massive failure of the state’s power system and an estimated 200 deaths across Texas: a shortage of power when conditions turn extreme.
It’s a problem that will be neither cheap nor easy to fix. At the most fundamental level, experts say, avoiding another grid disaster will require the rethinking of a market-driven system that favors efficiency — and the resulting lower prices — over reliability, which requires backup generation and redundant systems that can add significant costs, even if they are rarely used.
What worries insiders such as Snyder is politicians are looking for simple fixes, a checklist of solutions to protect against a repeat of February’s frigid weather, as opposed to creating a more resilient system capable of handling extreme weather yet to be anticipated.
“I’m getting a lot of calls from legislators, and frankly the people who are going to be voting on this understand the problem just enough to be really freaking dangerous,” Snyder said in March. “I don’t know how this is going to come out.”
The Texas Legislature is moving to require power generators, natural gas operators and pipeline companies to better weatherize their systems, as well as revamp the organizations that oversee the grid and power system, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, and the Public Utility Commission. But these measures do little to induce power companies to have sufficient generation ready for unusual weather that drives electricity demand far beyond what was forecast, experts say.
For the past decade, ERCOT has operated with the smallest amount of backup generation of any grid in the country. In 2019, ERCOT ran a reserve margin of just 9 percent, compared to 19 percent in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which runs from Minnesota to Louisiana, and 32 percent in Southwest Power Pool, which spans an area running from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota.
That margin is increasing — reaching 15.5 percent this summer — but almost all of it comes from new solar and wind farms, which are weather-dependent and can’t be counted on during power shortages.
“The power market needs to do two things. It needs to provide power today, but it also needs to plan years ahead. And that’s where the Texas market fails,” said Eric Fell, who studies power and gas markets for the research firm Wood Mackenzie. “ERCOT has skated by for years with several close calls where we avoided blackouts because the weather wasn’t quite so crazy.”
An influx of renewables
Running a grid necessitates a constant balancing of electricity demand and supply. Historically, that meant ramping power plants up and down, depending on whether temperatures were rising or falling, or households were turning on televisions and dishwashers.
But as renewables have expanded in recent years, accounting for as much as 42 percent of the state’s electricity generation during some months, the grid has become far more difficult to manage. Grid operators must predict how much power wind turbines and solar panels will generate based on weather forecasts, which is relatively easy for tomorrow, but not three weeks in advance.
To manage this unknown, power grid operators rely on backup generation — a rule of thumb is one megawatt of backup for every megawatt of wind or solar. Grid-scale batteries offer an enticing option, storing solar power in the day and discharging it at night, but the costs remain prohibitive. So, power grid operators rely on natural gas plants, which c
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Tight grid conditions expected due to high number of forced generation outages
Grid operator requests energy conservation
AUSTIN, TX, June 14, 2021 – The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is asking Texans to reduce electric use as much as possible today through Friday, June 18. A significant number of forced generation outages combined with potential record electric use for the month of June has resulted in tight grid conditions.
Generator owners have reported approximately 11,000 MW of generation is on forced outage for repairs; of that, approximately 8,000 MW is thermal and the rest is intermittent resources. According to the summer Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy, a typical range of thermal generation outages on hot summer days is around 3,600 MW. One MW typically powers around 200 homes on a summer day.
"We will be conducting a thorough analysis with generation owners to determine why so many units are out of service," said ERCOT Vice President of Grid Planning and Operations Woody Rickerson. "This is unusual for this early in the summer season."
Today’s peak load forecast may exceed 73,000 MW. The peak demand record for June is 69,123 MW set on June 27, 2018 between 4 and 5 p.m.
www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/233037
View current load and available generation at http://www.ercot.com
Is Texas about to go dark again?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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