CNN had a great opinion piece this morning that talks about how Texas going it alone and deregulated is good and how that wasn't the cause of the power grid failure.
Opinion: Texas goes it alone on electric power. That's actually a good thing
The TL/DL
The unregulated electric grid has lead to the most innovation in the country. Many people associate California with green energy, but Texas is actually the leader. Texas both more Solar and Wind energy generation than California. Because Texas is independent from the interstate grid, there is no requirement to go through the federal government to seek approvals to test out new types of energy generation. This means it's far easier, quicker and cheaper to innovate and test new types of power generation and has allowed Texas to create the most green energy. If Texas was its own Country, it would be the 6 largest green energy producer in the world.
In addition to green energy, the deregulations have kept cost down, there is far more competition and over all the consumer wins.
The failure of the power grid was not because Texas is independent from the interstate grid, nor was it from the failure of wind turbines like the Governor said on Fox News.
The failure came from the failure of the Natural Gas. Natural gas is one of the leading forms of power generation in Texas, and the cold weather crippled it. Not only was demand way of for heating, but the distribution system failed because of the cold weather freezing things at plants.
As for not being connected to an interstate grid. The surrounding grids to to Texas were in critical condition as well. Both grids surrounding Texas saw rolling blackouts as well from the failure of Natural Gas power generation from the cold weather. While they didn't see rolling blackouts to the scale of Texas, they were happening. So this proves if Texas had interstate connectivity the blackouts would have still happened. And every well could have effected more people, just spread out over a larger region including many places outside of Texas.
Lastly, which is the part I disagree with. Is that Capitalism and Deregulation had nothing to do with the failure. The failure occurred because both the power companies and the natural gas companies have not invested in updating their infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure is antiquated and hasn't been updated in decades. This same infrastructure also has never been built to withstand extreme weather temps. For example, much of the infrastructure in Texas has been designed to work in temperatures below the freezing point. It was thought not thought to be needed.
To me that sounds exactly like capitalism. Investing the bare minimum to turn the most profit.
This article also fails to mention anything about the electric bills people were seeing in the order of several thousand dollars to 10's of thousands of dollars.
There was another article on CNN about this this morning though.
Those closely familiar with Texas's energy market say these thousand-dollar electric bills are less a bug than a feature of the state's deregulated system.
www.cnn.com
It basically sums this up as Capitalism works until it doesn't. Most of the time it works the best for everyone.
People have the options. Most people choose to have the fixed rate plans they buy through energy resellers, but some to choose to buy their electricity at wholesale market rate through services like Griddy. Griddy says 96.9% of the time their rates are lower than the set fixed rates. And when they are not, its incentive for people to conserve electricity. The article says normally that is a good thing. But when it fails, it fails drastically.
One example of how bad it failed is one City, Denton in the Dallas-Fort Worth area saw an energy bill for $207 million accumulated over just four days. $207 million is 3 times the cities entire costs for electricity in the entire fiscal year of 2020.
Energy suppliers also got hit with these huge bills. Some may file for bankruptcy while many will pass on the cost to fixed rate customers with higher rates next time they renew their contact.
There is some movement in the Texas house looking into options for not sticking consumers with these unreasonable bills.
Many of the consumers who got these unreasonable bills are likely the same consumers with the least ability to pay for them as well. People who choose to gamble on the the market rate plans to save money are likely people who live in or near poverty. Where saving a little money can help them put food on the table or pay rent.
theintercept.com
www.theonion.com
www.zillow.com
nerdist.com
www.epi.org
