Posted on 05/20/2024 8:52:36 AM PDT by george76
With seven people killed and close to a million losing power, the recent storms hit Texas hard. Restoring electricity may take days and may not be completed by Wednesday.
The isolation of the Texas power grid has become a symbol of the state’s independent streak and resistance to federal oversight in recent years. The massive outages during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 were a wake-up call to the vulnerabilities of Texas’ system. But Texas hit the snooze button, resulting in repeated crises in Summer 2022 and Winter 2023. Now it seems Texas is sleepwalking into another avoidable crisis
...
ERCOT is regulated by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and is responsible for meeting about 90% of the state’s energy demands.
The flaws of ERCOT were put on full display in February 2021 when a perfect storm of disastrous conditions emerged: just as the cold caused energy demands to spike, natural gas production and power plants were buckling, knocked out by weather conditions that energy providers and weather forecasting services had underestimated. ERCOT reported that demand peaked at 69,000 megawatts, far exceeding any planned worst-case scenario. As a result, over 4.5 million homes lost power, and at least 200 people died from conditions caused by the storm.
...
An isolated grid also creates persistent problems even when no foul weather impacts the state. Spot wholesale electricity prices in Texas are $175 per Megawatt-hour (Mwh) for August, up from $90.18 in August 2023. Price increases of this magnitude are not consistent across the United States. California’s spot electricity prices for August are trading for $80 per Mwh, 30% below last year’s average. By allowing these issues to persist, average Texans will continue to bear the brunt of growing costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
It doesn’t cost much to weatherize coal and gas plants for severe low temperatures. It just takes proper risk assessment and capital investment. A lot was done after the debacle.
Yes, overbuilding wind and solar and shutting down coal and gas is a MAJOR disaster.
The enduring symbol of incompetence and the left loves it.
Yup. ERCOT was shown to be staffed primarily by furriners (non-Texans) who apparently are fixated on windmills, solar and pixie dust for power generation back during that debacle.
btt
AS IF those that lost power would not have if Texas hade been tied to a larger electric grid? BS!
The article completely ignores The Beast - a.k.a. the Texas bitcoin mining industry.
IT is BS. Everyone in the South Central had huge demand that week, there was no spare generation available.
The FEDERAL GOVERNMENT sent a letter to ERCOT requiring them to charge $9,000 per MW/H when operating the coal plants at full steam. The FED and the EPA caused this problem.
The article conveniently ignores the massively energy-consuming bitcoin mining industry.
The article below is critical of the bitcoin mining industry in Texas, and points out how, when it comes to regulators and government, it's "hands-off."
https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-mining-texas-energy-grid/
Texas residents have complained that industrial-scale bitcoin mines are driving up energy prices and destroying the quality of life of those living nearby. Meanwhile, politicians are demanding clarity over crypto mining’s impact on both the environment and the stability of the ailing Texas energy grid.
The lawsuit is just the latest flareup of a broader fight over bitcoin mining in Texas. Detractors and government agencies trying to understand the industry’s full impact have so far been forced to scrape together only “piecemeal information,” says Adrian Shelley, an energy policy expert and branch director of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
The bitcoin mining industry in Texas claims that details of its energy usage are proprietary. To tell you how much power they have over regulators and politicians - the government backed off. ERCOT could easily provide this information - and they don’t want to either.
It may seem harebrained to invite industrial-scale consumers of power onto an already-creaking grid
Why yes it does, regardless of the counterintuitive nonsense that the bitcoin industry tries to peddle.
The state of Texas was sold (or encouraged the sale of) a bill of goods, because bitcoin mining has not provided the “failsafe” that it was supposed to. Its real purpose was to make gobs of money for mining companies, which could then be shared with Texas energy regulators and politicians - all at the expense of the people who live, work and pay taxes there. I bet if we looked into the ownership of those companies, we would find substantial foreign influence, and not just everybody's favorite boogieman, China.
In June 2021, Abbott signed a new law that established a formal legal definition for virtual currency and set clear rules for businesses handling it, which he described as part of a “master plan” to attract crypto firms to the state. The following November, in an interview with the TBC, Abbott declared his intention to turn Texas into the “centerpiece” of the bitcoin industry.
...a long queue of companies, representing around an additional 32 GW of consumption, are either awaiting approval for new mining installations or beginning construction. ERCOT declined to provide up-to-date figures.
The prospect of more miners tapping the Texas grid has sparked concern among stakeholders who believe, variously, that the influx of mining activity will lead to blackouts, increase the price of energy for consumers, drive up carbon emissions, and damage Texans’ quality of life.
Others argue the state’s strategy of paying bitcoin miners not to mine when the grid is under heavy load is nonsensical. “The most important thing a regulator can do is match assets and liabilities—match supply and demand,” says Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston. With the deterioration of the state’s fleet of fossil fuel plants, he says, allowing large-scale mining facilities to increase demand on the grid can only “exacerbate the situation” and invite further instability.
In Texas, claims Hirs, crypto mining is primarily an energy arbitrage business, the profitability of which is dependent on the ability to purchase energy cheaply in bulk and sell it back to the grid at a premium when demand is high. These operations are effectively double-subsidized by residents, says Hirs, whose taxes provide both the funds for buying energy from the miners in periods of peak demand and the fees paid to miners for participating in demand response. Hirs likens miners to parasites, calling them “the tapeworm on the ERCOT grid.”
Before the recent surge in the price of bitcoin, which has made mining more profitable, news reports noted that some firms made more money by switching off and collecting fees when the grid was under pressure than they were through mining bitcoin. In August 2023, when a Texas heatwave led to a surge in energy demand, Riot said it earned $31.7 million through its participation in grid stabilization programs and only around $10 million from mining.
Opponents of inviting more mining facilities into Texas have been stymied by the absence of data showing the extent of the additional burden on the grid. Other than the miners themselves, nobody currently knows quite how much energy is devoted to mining in the state or the wider US. The EIA says it has “developed general estimates,” but can’t piece together an accurate picture due to the “difficulty of identifying cryptocurrency mining activity among millions of US end-use customers.”
This one sounds like a whopper. The U.S. government can get any information it wants, anytime. In 2024, everything, including all electrical grids, are managed and controlled. The information exists somewhere, even if the gov't wants to pretend it doesn't.
Critics of the mining industry have interpreted the move to squash the EIA survey as a cynical attempt to preserve a shroud of secrecy. “The last thing a parasite wants you to know is how bad it is going to become,” says Hirs. But the mining industry says it had every reason to object, as evinced by the sympathy of the judge, who stated in a ruling that the government’s justifications for expediting the survey—that a rise in crypto prices would incentivize more mining activity and, if the weather were to turn, destabilize power grids—“fall far short” of the necessary level of risk.
The bitcoin mining industry has carte blanche - not only in Texas, but everywhere else. It steamrolls into rural areas, compromising quality of life for millions of Americans. It raises electricity rates for consumers, and devours electricity. It ignores the government at no detriment. It's unregulated and untouchable. You really have to wonder why.
There is not a truly red state in this nation.
Not one.
This is just continuing proof.
I just did. IIRC, it's different than the 2021 group. This time, All board members are Texas residents. (at least that's what their website says...)
So, maybe, it's at least a little of a good thing - I don't know any one of them individually though, so I can't say if they're commie stooges or not.
Forbes and others have been publishing hit pieces on the Texas grid since February of 2021.
Current outages ... https://poweroutage.us/area/state/texas
ERCOT is evil.
Interconnection won’t fix this. Taking out-of-state idiots off of the ERCOT board will. A co-cop provides my electricity, and we never even had a flicker during that winter storm. Keep the Texas grid independent, and take idiots from positions of authority!
Easily fixed if we just built another nuke or three. Simple.
If I lived in Texas I would have totally off grid power.
I’ve lived in Houston over 40 years & that was one of the strangest storms I’ve ever seen.
Thanks
The population density in TX was much lower in the 60’s & 70’s.
In the 20’s & 30’s many rural areas didn’t even have electricity. Power lines that went up in the 40’s & 50’s would have been relatively new infrastructure..
The article is saying that to have superior electric service, like California, Texas needs to connect to the national grid.
He’s an expert on what is best for Texas. He is on the vaunted Atlantic Council. Also Cohen was born in Yalta, Soviet Union. In 1986, he graduated Bar-Ilan University’s law school in Tel Aviv, Israel with a L.L.B. He received a M.A. in Law and Diplomacy in 1989, and a Ph.D. from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1993.
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