Texas electric grid. This is gonna hurt.

[Vaquero]

Public Utility Commission of Texas agrees to new electricity model

The PUC met today, ultimately agreeing on a new electricity model

www.kwtx.com

I hope I'm wrong.

 

[toddnjoyce]

I hope you’re wrong too, but ERCOT’s gotta get that $460M annually from somewhere so you know that’ll be passed on. It’s only $15 for every man, woman, and child in Texas to chip in on so we can have a socialized support system for ERCOT to dole out.

 

[Vaquero]

As much as I dislike ERCOT, it served a purpose.
A "made up entity " that actually buffered us consumers from the government.
The government of Texas.
PUC is government.

Y'all research and draw your own conclusions.

 

[Lonesome Dove]

There's always the pack up and leave the shit to who ever stays option. I did once I can do it again.

 

[PDiddy]

 

[Steve In Texas]

I worked in the power industry for three decades so have some opinions here. The first kilo-watt hours of power sold by Edison cost on the order of 8 to 10 cents each well over 100 years ago. Today you can find reliable residential power at similar actual prices (I pay a bit over 10 cents/kWh to PEC) and that does not factor in the inflation over the same time frame. What has changed however is getting away from solely a local utility that good bad or indifferent had to adopt strategies that served you as their customer for the long run. Open access and competitive markets has served to make good money for some power producers, some power providers, and some power marketing firms since the mid 90s. It has also served to distract from the many green power mandates that we have seen along the same time frame. We have also increased the number of ways we use electricity over that same 100 plus years.

Windmills make power just about 1/3 of the hours of a year and their peak production is anti-coincident with peak system demand. So every windmill added to the electric grid adds near ZERO reliability and costs a backup power plant for truly reliable power. Solar Panels peak production ends about three hours before system peak. Again, unless you add another backup for them, you again reduce reliability per plant added. Nuclear power plants have the highest utilization and availability in the grid. Coal plants are also reliable and have high availability as there is strong incentive to not let them get to cool so they cycle well. Natural Gas plants can be a configured for a variety of operations but per kWh gas is at least a couple time more expensive than coal. Texas has some very reliable hydro power but the biggest value in hydro became cycling around unreliable wind and solar.

Ultimately a simple answer does not exist to a complex problem, but truthful discussions of the options will help us navigate the complex situation better. Analysis looking at just the completely unprecedented ice-storm will not yield useful information for the next out of range event. Weather data used to plan the Texas Power Grid had not seen extended day time highs below freezing across as much of the state as was frozen in as long as there have been weather records. There had only been much shorter cold snaps and a lot less freezing rain/ice in the records. We have the choice of building a cost-effective system that may have some down hours, or one that costs several times as much and has much greater expected reliability.

As of today it is politically intemperate to speak ill of green power mandates yet we are having challenges developing storage and dispatch options to work around their intermittent generation profiles. ERCOT has thus far resisted paying for generation capacity and even that has not worked in California. I have my own opinions and they involve building a lot more nuclear power plants, but the non-technical tell me that is foolish due to radiation risks. Fear and a poor understanding of both technological and econmic risks makes discussing electric power challenging.

 

[jordanmills]

I knew I should have got them solar panels.

 

[billtool]

You mean the “free” ones?

 

[Rhino]

This is not happening in a vacuum. It is happening because of foolish politicians giving away OUR tax dollars to incentivise more and more people to move here faster than new power plants and sources can be added. It's a manufactured crisis, which they are only too happy to solve.

 

[oldag]

Renewables is the issue. They are unreliable, yet on a good day make up a large percentage of generation. So it takes a large amount of backup capacity (that can generate on demand) to keep the grid stable. No one is going to put up a thermal generation plant that only produces when renewables are low. They cannot make enough money to justify the investment. So we will have to pay them for capacity, e.g. to be available even though they are not producing.

This is stupid economically and expensive. But by golly we gotta have more renewables...

And then there is the cost of the taxpayer funded renewables subsidies.

 

[jordanmills]

You mean the “free” ones?

No, but between inflation and increasing costs of electric service, the break-even period would now be much sooner.

 

[Sam7sf]

Go buy a good coat and thermals.

 

[gll]

Go buy a good coat and thermals.

Last resort! But you'd really have to try hard to freeze to death in Texas.

 

[wakosama]

yeah... go naked in the summer too.!

 

[Sam7sf]

Last resort! But you'd really have to try hard to freeze to death in Texas.

Lol I don’t know. When it’s 20 degrees it’s still 20 degrees.

I screwed up. I got so busy recently I let my generator go. Hopefully new gas and a fresh plug do it.

 

[popper]

I think the approach should be 2 fold. Pay generators while they have reduced output so they will maintain 'excess' for when it's needed. Best way to handle is add an 'excess' charge to consumer's bill. Control the excess charge like the regular charge., capped by Gov. Eliminates spike pricing to Tx customers. Second is to reduce use of overhear local distribution. That will be costly. You know, when they replace all the poles on a street as they are rotted/blown down, etc.

 

[seeker_two]

yeah... go naked in the summer too.!

You have not met the members in person, have you?....

 

[wakosama]

Let's not discriminate. So Everybody.!

 

[Steve In Texas]

I think the approach should be 2 fold. Pay generators while they have reduced output so they will maintain 'excess' for when it's needed. Best way to handle is add an 'excess' charge to consumer's bill. Control the excess charge like the regular charge., capped by Gov. Eliminates spike pricing to Tx customers. Second is to reduce use of overhear local distribution. That will be costly. You know, when they replace all the poles on a street as they are rotted/blown down, etc.

Price Caps work up until they do not. California has had varying outcomes with them for better than 20 years now. Their solution for insufficient energy supply at price cap is rolling outages. California also pays for reserve energy, dispatchable demand and has an active energy imbalance market. The challenge comes from only having active price discovery on one side of the market--energy supply. The majority of End Use or Retail Customers are not really in a position to cost effectively respond to real-time energy prices. My electric bill at home even in a high month of $330 just not provide enough room for price signals to change my behavior all that much. There is also a point where if they change the rate design to a higher level all that much, I will investigate other options like generating my own power, super insulating the house, buying my own batteries and load management system, or something not yet on the table.

What we did for the first 80 years of so electric retail service was tell the local utility these are your customers, take care of them by providing cost effective and reliable power. Then we put a regulatory agency in place to minimize bad practices. For electric power it worked well until we decided to listen to book smart economists who felt that an open market for generation would work better. They just forgot the necessity of both a supply and demand curve.

I worked for a many varied players in the electric power market over a career and it paid me relatively well. Still, I am hard pressed to itemize where residential and small commercial customers have benefited from open access or market deregulatory changes. If you are one of those residential or small commercial customers who find benefits in the new system, please post. Electric power is not quite like phone service and I get where breaking up Ma-Bell benefitted many.

 

[TXAZ]

U

As much as I dislike ERCOT, it served a purpose.
A "made up entity " that actually buffered us consumers from the government.
The government of Texas.
PUC is government.

Y'all research and draw your own conclusions.

Ultimately, “we” have to decide how much “we“ are willing to pay (individually and collectively) for:
1) Electricity
2) Reliable electricity
3) Reliable electricity at specific times of the day and year

Time of day and seasonal cost differentials work pretty well in many markets (we had it in AZ and it worked well).

Prices are likely going up, so just how much are you willing to pay for electricity in the hot summer afternoon, or during the night in a future Snowmageddon?

Decide now, as changes are coming. (Or take responsibility for your own needs and install solar / wind on your property. I did).