Texas Power Grid Run by ERCOT Set Up the State for Disaster

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

HOUSTON — Across the plains of West Texas, the pump jacks that resemble giant bobbing hammers define not just the landscape but the state itself: Texas has been built on the oil-and-gas business for the last 120 years, ever since the discovery of oil on Spindletop Hill near Beaumont in 1901.

Texas, the nation’s leading energy-producing state, seemed like the last place on Earth that could run out of energy.

Then last week, it did.

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Part of the responsibility for the near-collapse of the state’s electrical grid can be traced to the decision in 1999 to embark on the nation’s most extensive experiment in electrical deregulation, handing control of the state’s entire electricity delivery system to a market-based patchwork of private generators, transmission companies and energy retailers.

-snip-

With so many cost-conscious utilities competing for budget-shopping consumers, there was little financial incentive to invest in weather protection and maintenance. Wind turbines are not equipped with the de-icing equipment routinely installed in the colder climes of the Dakotas and power lines have little insulation. The possibility of more frequent cold-weather events was never built into infrastructure plans in a state where climate change remains an exotic, disputed concept.

-more-

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-power-grid-run-by-ercot-set-up-the-state-for-disaster/ar-BB1dSg2O?li=BBnb7Kz

[House of Roberts]

1. Texas didn't run out of energy,

it ran out of viable delivery systems.

The interesting thing to me, is how Texas being on its own closed grid, made it easy for consumers to be overcharged for power that was delivered. How could they get away with overcharging if power from, say, TVA, could be purchased much more cheaply?

[Scruffy1]

2. "power lines have little insulation" ?

I'm beginning to think our whole education system has failed. I guess news writers don't know anything or how to look it up. I've read about "frozen" windmills and all kinds of really stupid things the last week.

[hunter]

4. Someone in Texas is spewing bullshit...

... and the reporters are generally clueless.

The gas distribution system supplying the power plants broke down. The loss of electrical power caused further breakdowns in the gas distribution system.

It had nothing to do with wind or insulation. It had everything to do with corrupt and incompetent management failing to take reasonable precautions.

Unregulated free markets are unstable. Crooks and fools will always break them.

[LeftInTX]

6. It's total BS about the " unprecedented weather"

Total BS.
If weather was the real issue, why did failure begin at 1:30 am Monday? Although it was cold, the real cold would happen 18 hours later
We also had similar weather in the 80s and did not lose power.
ERCOT did not plan.

[abqtommy]

3. I wonder if there's anybody working for ERCOT that used to work for ENRON...

[LeftInTX]

5. BS about the "unprecedented weather"

We had the same cold in the 80s. (We did not lose electricity either)

We haven't had this kind of cold 30 years, but you're supposed to prepare.

Also there were no reserves once it got cold at 1:30 am Monday?

It was about 25 degrees at my home at that time. I was in my yard, wearing my sandals and snapping snow pictures. It also means the cold had not reached Houston when they started the blackouts