ERCOT to Blame for Outages?

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by WRM20

I don't think ERCOT has the regulatory authority to force power generators to winterize. The PUC might have that capability. The power companies don't want to spend the money, since they want to make higher profits. ERCOT certainly doesn't have the power to force natural gas producers to winterize, that's a Railroad Commission responsibility.

ERCOT should at least know the precise status of each component of the power generation system. It's their job to keep the grid online. Did they know that a lack of winterizing would threaten the grid in a freeze? If so then they should have been pressuring operators to winterize and if the operators will not respond to their calls to winterize then they should be going to the PUC or the state to get the regulations. The PUC or the state legislature isn't going to act on their own and create regulations until someone demonstrates that there is a need for them.

[futuregleam]

In all seriousness, they probably took a risk based approach in term of both severity and likelihood (severity high, likelihood low), and decided that they don’t need to winterize

[futuregleam]

I’m curious about whether if texans pay less for their electricity than other states

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by futuregleam

I’m curious about whether if texans pay less for their electricity than other states

The site below has average rates for each state. It's a few years old but it takes time to aggregate data and it's probably a good overview. Texas has low rates but not the lowest. At 11.36/kwh it looks to be about 8th or 9th lowest but surrounding states Lousiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma come in a bit lower. Lousiana was lowest in the nation followed by Arkansas, the only two under 10 cents.

On the other end, the highest rates are in the New England states, California, Alaska, and Hawaii at around 20 cents/kwh. Alaska and Hawaii obviously have some challenges, being both isolated and lacking economy of scale. Most of the remaining states come in 12-15 cents/kwh.

Bottom line: you can't really say being their own independent grid has resulted in benefits to the consumer, at least as far as rates go. I haven't seen any data on overall uptime reliability.

https://www.electricchoice.com/elect...ices-by-state/

[futuregleam]

Thanks! That’s really interesting to know

[houston-nomad]

Someone profited plenty by not spending money on winterizing. And now there are billions of dollars of damages, historic insurance claims, and loss of life.