Winter storm coming this week. (Dallas, San Antonio: live, food, trees)

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Since we're on the subject, and just being rationale about it as I personally am not fully versed in how ERCOT works and how related Abbott or any governor for that matter is to it.. ..that question stems to ask, how much control does the governor of Texas truly have directly over ERCOT and their operations? And can the governor intervene in those operations and mandate changes? If so, who supplies the financial resources to make those changes come to past?

The reason I ask is because, it's very easy to point fingers at Abbott - but how much control does he truly have over the system? It seems as though this has been a thing since before he took office.. ..can it easily be changed?

ERCOT really doesn't make many rules or set requirements that impact the consumer on a regular basis. In general, it works with the member companies to balance electric need vs. supply and oversee the exchange of payments between the various entities. Here is the 'About ERCOT' from their web site:

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power [...]. As the independent system operator for the region, ERCOT schedules power on an electric grid [...]. It also performs financial settlement for the competitive wholesale bulk-power market and administers retail switching [...] in competitive choice areas. ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature. Its members include consumers, cooperatives, generators, power marketers, retail electric providers, investor-owned electric utilities, transmission and distribution providers and municipally owned electric utilities.

I highlighted the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), because that is really the place where any substantive changes happen. PUCT writes the rules and ERCOT then operates within the regulatory framework set up by the PUCT. Here is the most recent rule that came out of last year's debacle:
http://www.puc.texas.gov/agency/rule...5.55/25.55.pdf

Note that that rule became effective Nov 11th of last year and had a deadline for compliance on Dec 1st, meaning the companies essentially had to be working on this ahead of time.

As to Abbott's responsibility - at any specific point in time, he has no authority to really do much of anything, although possibly something through the emergency powers act (https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/d...htm/GV.418.htm). He does appoint ERCOT directors, but again, they have little ability to change the rules 'on the fly' - they simply set pricing and direct generation schedules. The PUCT commissioners are all appointed by the governor, as well, and the real power for any kind of additional oversight or improvement lies here. It is noteworthy that all four of the current commissioners were appointed by Abbott after the 'outage event' last year and they presumably were tasked with updating the rules of the 'game', such as the 'Weather Emergency Preparedness' rule linked above.

The ultimate blame? The residents of the state that elected our representatives that failed over the years to take previous close-calls to heart and direct the PUCT to make changes. Why did they ignore the possible weather related system failures? Again, it comes down to 'us':
- Texas is a 'pro business' state, and dictating requirements is a no-no. The 'free market' will sort it out. The fallacy here is that it is all one grid and you have no 'choice' to pick a provider with a higher likelihood of staying online. They are all linked. We all stay up or go down together. So while we have a free market pricing system, we do not have the free market choice to pick a more reliable provider.
- No one wants to pay more for electricity and no state rep wants to be responsible for rates going up (no matter how slightly).
- Most state reps figure a) the odds of a weather outage while they are in office are small, so it is an acceptable risk, b) if there is an outage, they can blame it on ERCOT or their predecessors, and c) some (most?) had no clue that an outage was possible and have never paid attention to infrastructure status or any reports warning them about insufficient infrastructure.

I will give Abbott credit that PUCT did pass some new rules under his new commissioners. To be fair to whoever was there before, they were probably never tasked with improving weather readiness or had it nixed by the politicians if they did.

Finally, read through some of the links related to the rules. We would all be more informed citizens is we knew, at least passingly, what the actually rules/laws said.

[tmtex]

Originally Posted by Dopo

What's the point of saying that?
That's the same as having the police chief saying

"We'll keep everybody safe, but we can't guarantee that nobody will be shot or robbed"

Media/Dems will take it all wrong way when he says " I guarantee you wont run out of power" . If a plane crashed into some substation that provides electricity to Denton county, the Headline would be "Abbott failed to guarantee with providing power...."

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by tmtex

Media/Dems will take it all wrong way when he says " I guarantee you wont run out of power" . If a plane crashed into some substation that provides electricity to Denton county, the Headline would be "Abbott failed to guarantee with providing power...."

He doesn't have to guarantee anything
He's not the one running the power plants


All he has to do is say that the state of Texas has done all they could to make the power plants be more reliable.


When I travel with my kids I don't say:
"I can't guarantee we are going to make it back home"
I say:
"I'm going to do my best to keep everybody safe"

[Lz_2022]

Originally Posted by tmtex

Media/Dems will take it all wrong way when he says " I guarantee you wont run out of power" . If a plane crashed into some substation that provides electricity to Denton county, the Headline would be "Abbott failed to guarantee with providing power...."

Conversely, he can take credit for something he had zero control over now.

He can be the wizard behind the curtain and come out saying “we fixed it all”, take credit and roll off.

[Need4Camaro]

Welp.. ..look at that.. ..the temperature's rising.. ..it's getting hot in this topic...

[CastletonSnob1]

It's 29 degrees where I am in Texas right now, during a cold snap.

Meh, I've been through worse.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Welp.. ..look at that.. ..the temperature's rising.. ..it's getting hot in this topic...

People tend to get mad when their government (Texas) does nothing to make sure that they have reliable electricity

[CastletonSnob1]

I woke up, and we still have power.

I think we're going to be OK.

[elnina]

How is the ERCOT grid right now? Power getting high in demand?
(I can't access it from overseas but worried about things back home)

[Lz_2022]

It’s fine. We didn’t get near the precipitation that was initially forecast.