There is going to be a lot of that.
The PUC, whose board is completely made up of Governor A ott’s appointees, made ERCOT artifically increase the price of kilowatt-hours to $9,000 from $1,200, and stuck it there for 90 hours.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/25/texas-power-grid-ercot-puc-greg-abbott/
Governor Abbott is responsible for bankrupting firms from fake power costs during the worst possible time to do so.
There is something missing from this article. I read that Texas’ governor called the White House to get a temporary suspension of the EPA rules that forbade the Texas power producers from operating at full capacity. Biden allegedly told the governor he would waive the rules if Texas would agree to a huge increase in their electric power prices.
Several things were not explained in that article. Why didn’t the governor tell Biden to shove it and order the companies to go full out and then fight the issue in court?
If what I described happened, the EPA has the power to bankrupt any power company. Also, why were the grid prices of shared power bumped up? If you did that in Florida, you would go to prison for profiteering*.
* Not sure if that’s the term. But if a hurricane hits and you load up with water and generators and take them to the affected area, you can’t charge any more for the items than you paid. Thus, those areas are well and truly foo-caid.
Obviously, it’s time to nationalize Texas’s electrical grid.
SloJoe can run it better than the electrical companies...
More like they’re filing bankruptcy due to the coming law suits from customers freezing to death.
I still want to know why our subdivision had blackouts. 90 houses but only 6 houses with permanent residents. Mostly tourists who use tons more electricity for a/c in the tourist season. The power company can keep up with all those a/c 24/7 but had to cut the power on 6 houses last week. We’re on the border line to the next subdivision which had their lights on more than us.
Multiply the same full time vs vacay homes all over this area. No freakin’ way were the residents putting any strain on the power supply.
That said, the power company did wake the heck up and turn ours back on in shorter cycles and was able to send power elsewhere in the state.
I know “a little” about bankruptcy and this filing by Brazos seems waaaayyyyy too fast and therefore unnecessary at this time. The so called “storm” only happened a couple weeks ago.
The predicament that Texas finds itself in is a direct result of the deregulation craze that swept the nations utilities starting back in the 80’s. This was all done under the guise of reducing the cost to the consumer. As usual the results, catastrophically the opposite. When the the electric utilities operated under the benevolent monopoly model it worked mush better than what’s in place today.
The $9000.00 a MW was a random value picked to entice new generation to invest new generation.
Proof that politicians failed economics 101