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To: Pontiac
We learned a hard lesson at our plant a few years ago.

I do hope the Texas government and the energy companies in Texas start learning some of these hard lessons soon. Two very public, very embarrassing failures to do the thing that they are being paid to do within a single year. If there was a hint of journalism still left in this country, there would be reporters digging into the money spent on the Texas energy grid over the past decades and data being collected about who got wealthy by cutting corners, neglecting maintenance, or investing in things like prepositioning critical spare parts.

11 posted on 06/19/2021 8:34:58 AM PDT by jz638
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To: jz638
Actually, the big problem in the electricity industry today is that it is very hard to make money making electricity.

The company that where I worked for 30 years got out of the generating business, sold off or decommissioned their generating plants so that they could be strictly in sales and distribution.

The deregulation laws passed in the 1980s and 90s separated generation and sales and made so called bidding and contracting for the sale of electricity a thing. In Texas you should be well aware of how well this went.

The EPA made it prohibitively expensive to build or maintain Coal fired plants.

From the 1970 through the 2010 the price of gas made generating with gas to expensive. Then Fracking made gas so cheap that independent companies started building gas turbine generating stations that would compete against the old utilities. Federal Laws required the utilities to permit these startups to connect to their grids.

The financial pressures of all of these Federally mandated changes to their business forced the electric companies to; cut employees, cut money from the budgets for things like line maintenance, right of way maintenance (tree trimming), system upgrades (replacing outdated equipment).

I have seen a lot of changes in the last 40 years and I have to say that I preferred the old system of a regulated electric utility. Certainly their was waste in the old system but part of the deal with the state governments was a reliable grid and the utilities delivered.

27 posted on 06/19/2021 11:23:49 AM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit)
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