The Great Texas Blackout of ‘21

Post Reply New Topic

Some Texans' electricity bills skyrocket as high as $17,000 during winter storm

Griddy, a wholesale electricity provider in the Texas, said in a statement on its website Thursday, "We know you are angry and so are we. P-----, in fact." The company explained wholesale prices shot up because the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) took control of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, Monday and raised the wholesale price to $9 per kilowatt-hour at least until the grid could manage the demand caused by the winter storm.

The company said that’s around 300 times higher than the normal wholesale price, and even though 99% of homes had electricity by Thursday evening, PUCT left the pricing in place.

"The market is supposed to set the prices, not political appointees," the company said. "We intend to fight this for, and alongside, our customers for equity and accountability – to reveal why such price increases were allowed to happen as millions of Texans went without power."

[The price hikes affected only those customers on variable or indexed-rate plans, not those with a fixed-rate.]

For those talking about how switching to Wind and Solar have failed in Texas, I have to ask why renewable energy has not failed in the Upper Midwest (The Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin). In fact, the biggest issue in the Upper Midwest is not generation but congestion in the distribution system, even after the CapX project which built quite a few electric superhighways. The thing is, up here, the cold is a way of life and ALL electric generation types are winterized for those events, some to as low as -40F (-40C).

Now, Texas decided to go it alone rather than connect to the a national grid. That is fine but when you go it alone, you have to account for every conceivable event, no matter how small, because you have nothing to fall back on should an extreme event occur. However, the power generation companies in Texas, even though they were warned as much as 10 years ago, decided that they did not need to prepare for an extreme cold event as they felt it would never happen (even though a smaller event happened about 2 - 3 years ago which had shown how vulnerable Texas was). Now that the event has come to pass, renewable energy is being blamed even though fossil fuel and nuclear plants all went offline too.

This is not a failure of renewable energy, this is a failure of the electric companies to ensure that their equipment could handle extreme events knowing that they were on their own should generation fail en mass which is what happened here. Texas was warned and yet, the energy producing companies chose profits over their customers.

Contrary to the news reports and claims by ERCOT that there were "rolling blackouts", the fact was that most of us experienced total loss of power for several days. I myself had basically no power from Sun 12AM to Wed 2PM, except for maybe some brief 15 minute power for two or three episodes in that duration. It gets pretty chilly inside with no heat for three days when the temps are in the 20s.

Here's how to get Texas conservatives to regulate a power plant:

Tell them it's an abortion clinic.

Officials Say Texas Was ‘Seconds and Minutes’ Away From Monthslong Blackout

So insane that several online media outlets are providing facts about Texas' power grid, why it's independent (stupid protectionism), why it failed (non winterized oil/gas components freezing) and yet Faux News keeps telling everyone in every segment that windmills and green energy are to blame.

So dumb. The last two times this happened in Texas reports were commissioned and written telling them how to fix the problem and prevent this from reoccurring. They refused to do it because Billionaire oil & gas moguls told them not to - and instead they doubled down on language in the contracts that says Texas energy companies can jack up prices when demand is high and supply is low - like during a crisis like right now.. which is why these Billion dollar energy companies have hit the jackpot while people freeze to death and others receive $10,000.00 electricity bills. All of this are features, not bugs, in the system. Texas politicians sold their citizens out to Texas' Billionaire energy corporation owners and this is the result.

IF *I* were from Texas I would be investing in tar & feathers right now, maybe some pitchforks & torches, and maaaaybe even a guillotine. And I would definitely not be re-electing the same lot that got my fellow Texans killed while lining the already gold lined pockets of Billionaire a**holes.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

Whilst it has been evident from the start that the sudden shedding of wind power played a major part in the blackouts, the establishment media have been quick to close ranks by putting most of the blame on gas power stations, which having much greater capacity naturally suffered bigger drops in generation.

They have done so without publishing any of the detailed data, which I have done above. All they are interested in, of course, is deflecting the blame from renewable energy.

If they had done so, it would have been obvious that the real culprit was unreliable wind power.

Between 6 pm and 10 pm on the Sunday, wind power suddenly lost 2 GW, about a quarter of its load. Fortunately, gas power was quickly ramped up to fully compensate for this.

Wind power continued to be shed, with another 2 GW disappearing by 2.00 am on the Monday morning. As demand was also declining, gas power was reduced accordingly.

However, it was between 2.00 and 3.00 am that gas power too fell off the cliff.

It must be fairly evident that this had nothing to do with weather conditions, which could not possibly have had such a sudden impact. (In this respect, gas power was perfectly stable after 3 am for the rest of the day and week).

So what did cause that sudden drop in generation, something we also see with coal at exactly the same time, which dropped from 11 GW to 9 GW in that hour?

There is only one possible conclusion, and it is that the grid itself has become totally unstable, as wind power fell away. The evidence points to massive tripping out at gas and coal power stations as generation and demand got out of balance.

I would guess that just one gas plant tripping out in this fashion would have a cascading effect.

Source: Wind Power Did Cause The Texas Blackouts!

Even Texas admit it wasn’t the wind power.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.texast ... rozen/amp/
It was the natural gas that was the biggest failure and an overload on the grid.
As I mentioned earlier, chemicals have to be used in pipelines in extra cold weather to keep them from freezing.Texas wasn’t prepared.

I wonder how long until Tucker Carlson tells everyone that a marauding caravan of migrants crossed the border and flipped the power grid switch off?

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.