Why wouldn't officials protect power grid when ALL the signs were there !? Is government really THAT Incompetent ?

[KerrTown]

Originally Posted by resonator

I've worked with a half dozen Federal agencies over 30+ years. I've found one or two folks in each agency that are on the ball and working with care and professional competence. They were all contractors to the Federal agency.


When several gov employees visit a company they regulate or investigate they always bring a contractor to do the heavy lifting even if it is only note taking / report writing.

The Federal Government is going to wash their hands of Texas' intrastate problem. Putting political capital to fix Texas' intrastate grid is not palatable to Americans, especially with the party running this state is diametrically opposed to the other party running the United States.

It's OK, we are a wealthy country and everyone needs a good income. The Washington, DC area has thousands of Federal employees and twice that many contract employees. Even NASA has outside contractors on board to do their mission planning, in other words: figure out what we should be doing with our budget. So far they have had some success with hiring Space-X since their own mars project derails itself regularly. The main job for the Feds is to identify and hire 3rd parties to do their work.

The U.S.A. is an overextended empire. Texas is a region unto itself--isolated from the rest of the U.S. Texans will have to fix the problems alone (as usual), but the incompetent GQP state government needs to go. Going back to the traditional regulated system is the start.

The market price of $1,200 MWh was the system working as intended, but the board members raised the price to the MAX of $9,000 MWh arbitrarily because the "price was too low". Now we have to bail out the retail electric providers with bonds backed by tax dollars? To fix the grid, we have to write another bond backed by increased fees instead of clawing back bonuses and profits from disinvestment by the generators!

[groovamos]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

No action about the power grid right now. Reliable electricity is not a priority for the out-of-touch GQP Lege!

The Winter Storm exposed the GQP failed electric deregulation experiment (and created the most prominent example of market failure!!!) and the weak Republic of Texas electric grid. Either the storm or the increased population growth (mostly Americans from DFW corporate

False. We do not have deregulation. Look on your electric bill. You will see various surcharges, including one of them for the $7B electric transmission network tying all of those fanciful windmills into the fancy towns and burbs of North and Central Texas. Like Georgetown, which likes to brag on it's 100% (yeah) fanciful power sourcing. Hardly free market here.

And btw it just came to my attention that several gas fired power plants shut down because of gas pipeline interruptions due to mismanaged ERCOT planning that required natural gas customers to be shut down in an emergency. Just so happens that the power plants were on lines that were purposefully closed down. ERCOT is a regulator OK? With Dems and Repubs on its board several of whom resigned.

And speaking of regulation, Texas lost at least 3 coal plants in the last 10 years, thanks to accelerated depreciation and other incentives heaped on them during the Obama years, in trade for them to decommission. You, know, paid for by the taxpayer without their consent. That's regulation for you, take away infrastructure that could have greatly helped during the deep freeze. And charge you for experiencing the resulting grief. For th common good.

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by groovamos

False. We do not have deregulation. Look on your electric bill. You will see various surcharges, including one of them for the $7B electric transmission network tying all of those fanciful windmills into the fancy towns and burbs of North and Central Texas. Like Georgetown, which likes to brag on it's 100% (yeah) fanciful power sourcing. Hardly free market here.

And btw it just came to my attention that several gas fired power plants shut down because of gas pipeline interruptions due to mismanaged ERCOT planning that required natural gas customers to be shut down in an emergency. Just so happens that the power plants were on lines that were purposefully closed down. ERCOT is a regulator OK? With Dems and Repubs on its board several of whom resigned.

And speaking of regulation, Texas lost at least 3 coal plants in the last 10 years, thanks to accelerated depreciation and other incentives heaped on them during the Obama years, in trade for them to decommission. You, know, paid for by the taxpayer without their consent. That's regulation for you, take away infrastructure that could have greatly helped during the deep freeze. And charge you for experiencing the resulting grief. For th common good.

The coal plants closed because they were no longer economic to run. It had nothing to do with government incentives, and everything to do with the price of natural gas dropping. Luminant bet big on high gas prices, and lost. Residents of Texas benefit from lower pollution, since those plants burned lignite, and cranked out huge quantities of particulates and mercury.

Power generation is deregulated in much of Texas. The infrastructure, like the power lines, is regulated.

[resonator]

Back in the 70's I worked for a company in E. TX that used coal in their new boiler. Built because the price of nat'l gas went up x10.

Funny thing, coal was mined just down the road but regulations had Wyoming and Texas coal trains passing each other in opposite directions on the way to their customers.

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by resonator

Back in the 70's I worked for a company in E. TX that used coal in their new boiler. Built because the price of nat'l gas went up x10.

Funny thing, coal was mined just down the road but regulations had Wyoming and Texas coal trains passing each other in opposite directions on the way to their customers.

The coal from Wyoming is high quality. The big Parrish plant near Richmond burns Wyoming coal. Texas coal is generally very low quality.