6 ms·

This is the typical distraction of "Don't worry about how bad things are, think of how lucky you are that they weren't worse." Us Texans really need to focus o

This is the typical distraction of "Don't worry about how bad things are, think of how lucky you are that they weren't worse." Us Texans really need to focus on getting the people in charge out of office. I will vote for anybody that will work towards strengthening our infrastructure. Hell I'd run on an infrastructure platform if I had any idea how. (And of course the means to run.)

toomuchtodo 6y ago
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/770332855/how-to-run-for-office https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/770332855/how-to-run-for-offi... https://runforoffice.org https://runforoffice.org
- buzzy_hacker 6y ago
  Also https://www.wherecanirun.org/ https://www.wherecanirun.org/
Griffinsauce 6y ago
> And of course the means to run I'd vote for fixing this first, everything else will follow.
Shared404 6y ago
I'd vote for you if were to do so. I imagine we'll see an influx of people running on infrastructure in the near future, hopefully some of them will be doing more than "not wasting a good catastrophe".
livueta 6y ago
Here's something I've been wondering: an "infrastructure platform" sounds cool in theory at least in part because it's so vague; anyone can kinda take what they want from it, like the phrase "America is in crisis". Especially right now, I'm sure an infrastructure platform in the abstract would poll well. But in terms of concrete economic choices, the popularity of services like Griddly seems to indicate that many quite explicitly choose low (instantaneous) cost over reliability/price stability. It's like airline tickets: everyone loves griping about seatroom or whatever but revealed preference is for low-cost offerings. Put differently, as a non-Texan looking in, I guess I'm asking how hopeful you are that this zeitgeist can be capitalized on once you get down to actual policy and the inherent trade-offs you've got to deal with therein (and also when participants are warm and comfortable). To be clear I personally would vote for you in a heartbeat, but the cliffs in support between vague positive overarching statements and concrete policy proposals in other areas don't leave me super hopeful.
- WJW 6y ago
  Nobody is ever against it, until they realize that money spent on infrastructure is money not spent on something else. Do you use the infrastructure money on less police, less education or less healthcare? This is an intentionally provocative statement of course, but somehow you will need to make choices on how to fund it and there are (extremely solidly) entrenched players all over the field. Even worse, most of the entrenched players actually have good points.
- asciimov 6y ago
  > Do I have hope that this disaster will spur changes in policy? If the past as shown us anything, it is nothing will change unless we can improve things for everybody. We've gotta make sure everybody gets something of value. Changes have to be made at a local level to improve peoples lives and those improvements need to be advertised in a way that the people know what policies helped them out. Or what policies are hurting them. Most people here just want lower taxes and more money in their pockets. Yet, they don't realize that while they pay for their share of the state bills plenty of other people/companies aren't.
- redbeard0x0a 6y ago
  Just want to say that I am a griddy customer, I don't do it for the absolute lowest cost, but the ability to see and respond to pricing via home automation. A way to hack my electric bill. This week has definitely sucked in terms of cost. Griddy is also introducing contract rates next month, so some amount of power can be purchased at a predicted rate and you get that power at that rate, not the spot price until you run out of that contracted amount of power. (I only know the vague details of the program, just fyi). Also, this is a regulation failure because the PUCT (or whatever it is called), which is under the purview of the Railroad Commissioner (an elected position), didn't make recommended winterization guidelines mandatory. Without this, the market favors the biggest corner cutting.
revel 6y ago
If only it were that simple. The hard part is getting legislation passed that mandates adherence to standards. Texas has prioritized minimal regulation and low taxation and "running on an infrastructure platform" means nothing if you can't get it enacted into law. Right now the TX regulatory climate is fiercely against these kind of measures and, terrible as recent events have been, I don't see it changing any hearts or minds in Austin. It's just not where the state government is at.
xkjkls 6y ago
I'm not sure that's what this is. I think this is more an indication that the Texas power grid infrastructure has been messed up for years and this should call into attention how messed up it is. None of this is new engineering or revolutionary engineering. People have decades of experience around the world building reliable power grids able to withstand serious winter storms of shocks to the system. The fact that Texas does not have a state of the art grid able to points to decades of mismanagement and incomptence.
- asciimov 6y ago
  All while letting companies come here and not pay their share of our general maintenance bills.
hourislate 6y ago
Exactly, it's all damage control. From Abbot coming out and immediately blaming ERCOT Management and calling for their resignation (deflecting attention from himself) to trying to blame renewables (like we even have enough to make a difference). How appropriate no one in Gov is blaming their buddies in Oil&Gas for not winterizing pipes and well heads. Abbot and the Legislature should resign, they did what Terrorists and Covid couldn't...they brought the state to its knees through gross negligence.
howlin 6y ago
> Hell I'd run on an infrastructure platform if I had any idea how. (And of course the means to run.) All that is required is to know there is a problem and to judge who is likely to have a workable solution if you seek them out. Politicians don't know anything about technical issues. A good politician's strength is in knowing when to defer to experts and to judge who is a good expert.
bsder 6y ago
It's worse than that, this article basically says: "ERCOT has no idea how to do a controlled shutdown and cold restart." My God, man, that's like Priority 1 of your job--have a plan to reboot. What a bunch of morons.
- salawat 6y ago
  No, it isn't. ERCOT does not micromanage the grid. ERCOT owns 0% of the power grid. They are a facilitator, and coordinator. All power generation in Texas is done on privately held equipment, and transmitted on private infrastructure. ERCOT facilitates a marketplace where power and generation capacity is bought and sold, and they have the ability to tell all providers to shed load or do things with their infrastructure to support the grid. The onus for implementing is on the utilities themselves. Some, did great. Others, were a dumpster fire. Read the bloody About page and stop letting the press sell you the narrative that this is government mismanagement. This was just a case where there was not a cohesive distributed amongst all providers plan completely rehearsed. I find the entire thing funny because you'd think ever since the Midnight Connection nonsense, there'd be a bit more inter-utility coordination, but eh... No accounting for the lack of effort put into becoming hyper-reliable. I will say, in the towns I know people, the community has been rallying to support each other. I've been rather curious about the stark difference between the small townish response vs responses in the urban centers. Austin Energy has done a terrible job.
  - bsder 6y ago
    Your post in no way refutes my statement that "ERCOT cannot shutdown and reboot the grid". If they are the facilitator and coordinators, then that's their damn job--even if the entities being coordinated are private. In addition, ERCOT are the only organization with the levers to pull--so that's where the job lands. All you've provided a pile of excuses and deflections. This is what caused the pileup to begin with--everybody going "<plugs ears> LA LA LA, WHAT YOU SAID WILL COST ME MONEY LA LA LA SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROBLEM." Funnily enough, El Paso did just fine--perhaps because they actually had to follow some minimum maintenance standards for their grid. I wonder where those came from ...
citilife 6y ago
To be fair, there was a large influx of people to Texas recently. Plus the lowest temperatures in 30 years. Not an excuse, per se, but it makes sense things were stretched. Personally, I live in Illinois, we use nuclear power and have to say I'm very pro-nuclear. Wind can stop, solar causes a lot of environmental damage (mining, producing, shipping, etc). Nuclear has minimal risks and produces a lot of energy for minimal pollution. I'd love to see some deregulation (still keep safety) and investment. For reference, you can see energy costs yourself https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ And production: https://www.eia.gov/state/ https://www.eia.gov/state/
- munk-a 6y ago
  Nuclear power is the best option that everyone irrationally rejects due to incredibly irresponsible mismanagement in the past. There are some really good reactor designs that are resilient against the kind of human error that struck chernobyl and the kind of natural disaster that struck fukushima - but for some reason there is a large proportion of environmentalists that hold the incredibly anti-environmentally friendly position that nuclear power is bad.
- asciimov 6y ago
  This happened because our lack of regulations allowed it to happen. The areas of the state not under ERCOT control weathered this storm significantly better. I too am pro nuclear. While nuclear isn't perfect, we have to take steps in the right direction. That means, investing in energy research, building from the best options we have now, and planning to build better things in the future.
munk-a 6y ago
For years and years GOP policies in the state have led to an apparent reduction in costs for utilities but, in actuality, what was actually being skimped on was the system resiliency. Spending money on maintaining and improving infrastructure is always important and it requires a constant supply of revenue to ensure that utilities are able to withstand events such as these. Additionally - a lack of regulation heavily failed Texans. There are ways to weatherize wind turbines to operate in the cold properly but Texas long ago stripped these away. This is a tragedy and many folks in Texas are feeling a lot of pain right now, it's not the time to guilt over politics but it is a good time to realize that moving forward social services do need more a reasonable level of support.
- asciimov 6y ago
  Once people are comfortable again, they will be singing the praises of the republican party.
munk-a 6y ago
To realize significant political change in America we need to kill Us vs. Them-ism and that means eroding the two-party system. If you can, at a local level, advocate for proportional representation for local elections and you'll see improvements start to grow in naturally since politicians will need to argue for things instead of just against things.
- asciimov 6y ago
  The problem for me, in a fairly blue area, is that everything we try to do gets smacked down by the state. Since this state is so divided between the rural and urban areas, the democrats have to find a way to address the issues of the rural populace in order to heal the us vs them divide.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    If your area is solidly blue then just keep doing it and force the state to continue to intervene. They absolutely can keep doing so but it's terrible PR and strongly opposes declared beliefs in libretarianism and the "laboratory of democracy." I really feel for people living in red states who are trying to make everything better for everyone - most people give up and just move elsewhere but you can make change happen.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/770332855/how-to-run-for-office https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/770332855/how-to-run-for-offi... https://runforoffice.org https://runforoffice.org

buzzy_hacker 6y ago
Also https://www.wherecanirun.org/ https://www.wherecanirun.org/

Griffinsauce 6y ago

> And of course the means to run I'd vote for fixing this first, everything else will follow.

Shared404 6y ago

I'd vote for you if were to do so. I imagine we'll see an influx of people running on infrastructure in the near future, hopefully some of them will be doing more than "not wasting a good catastrophe".

livueta 6y ago

Here's something I've been wondering: an "infrastructure platform" sounds cool in theory at least in part because it's so vague; anyone can kinda take what they want from it, like the phrase "America is in crisis". Especially right now, I'm sure an infrastructure platform in the abstract would poll well. But in terms of concrete economic choices, the popularity of services like Griddly seems to indicate that many quite explicitly choose low (instantaneous) cost over reliability/price stability. It's like airline tickets: everyone loves griping about seatroom or whatever but revealed preference is for low-cost offerings. Put differently, as a non-Texan looking in, I guess I'm asking how hopeful you are that this zeitgeist can be capitalized on once you get down to actual policy and the inherent trade-offs you've got to deal with therein (and also when participants are warm and comfortable). To be clear I personally would vote for you in a heartbeat, but the cliffs in support between vague positive overarching statements and concrete policy proposals in other areas don't leave me super hopeful.

WJW 6y ago
Nobody is ever against it, until they realize that money spent on infrastructure is money not spent on something else. Do you use the infrastructure money on less police, less education or less healthcare? This is an intentionally provocative statement of course, but somehow you will need to make choices on how to fund it and there are (extremely solidly) entrenched players all over the field. Even worse, most of the entrenched players actually have good points.
asciimov 6y ago
> Do I have hope that this disaster will spur changes in policy? If the past as shown us anything, it is nothing will change unless we can improve things for everybody. We've gotta make sure everybody gets something of value. Changes have to be made at a local level to improve peoples lives and those improvements need to be advertised in a way that the people know what policies helped them out. Or what policies are hurting them. Most people here just want lower taxes and more money in their pockets. Yet, they don't realize that while they pay for their share of the state bills plenty of other people/companies aren't.
redbeard0x0a 6y ago
Just want to say that I am a griddy customer, I don't do it for the absolute lowest cost, but the ability to see and respond to pricing via home automation. A way to hack my electric bill. This week has definitely sucked in terms of cost. Griddy is also introducing contract rates next month, so some amount of power can be purchased at a predicted rate and you get that power at that rate, not the spot price until you run out of that contracted amount of power. (I only know the vague details of the program, just fyi). Also, this is a regulation failure because the PUCT (or whatever it is called), which is under the purview of the Railroad Commissioner (an elected position), didn't make recommended winterization guidelines mandatory. Without this, the market favors the biggest corner cutting.

revel 6y ago

If only it were that simple. The hard part is getting legislation passed that mandates adherence to standards. Texas has prioritized minimal regulation and low taxation and "running on an infrastructure platform" means nothing if you can't get it enacted into law. Right now the TX regulatory climate is fiercely against these kind of measures and, terrible as recent events have been, I don't see it changing any hearts or minds in Austin. It's just not where the state government is at.

xkjkls 6y ago

I'm not sure that's what this is. I think this is more an indication that the Texas power grid infrastructure has been messed up for years and this should call into attention how messed up it is. None of this is new engineering or revolutionary engineering. People have decades of experience around the world building reliable power grids able to withstand serious winter storms of shocks to the system. The fact that Texas does not have a state of the art grid able to points to decades of mismanagement and incomptence.

asciimov 6y ago
All while letting companies come here and not pay their share of our general maintenance bills.

hourislate 6y ago

Exactly, it's all damage control. From Abbot coming out and immediately blaming ERCOT Management and calling for their resignation (deflecting attention from himself) to trying to blame renewables (like we even have enough to make a difference). How appropriate no one in Gov is blaming their buddies in Oil&Gas for not winterizing pipes and well heads. Abbot and the Legislature should resign, they did what Terrorists and Covid couldn't...they brought the state to its knees through gross negligence.

howlin 6y ago

> Hell I'd run on an infrastructure platform if I had any idea how. (And of course the means to run.) All that is required is to know there is a problem and to judge who is likely to have a workable solution if you seek them out. Politicians don't know anything about technical issues. A good politician's strength is in knowing when to defer to experts and to judge who is a good expert.

bsder 6y ago

It's worse than that, this article basically says: "ERCOT has no idea how to do a controlled shutdown and cold restart." My God, man, that's like Priority 1 of your job--have a plan to reboot. What a bunch of morons.

salawat 6y ago
No, it isn't. ERCOT does not micromanage the grid. ERCOT owns 0% of the power grid. They are a facilitator, and coordinator. All power generation in Texas is done on privately held equipment, and transmitted on private infrastructure. ERCOT facilitates a marketplace where power and generation capacity is bought and sold, and they have the ability to tell all providers to shed load or do things with their infrastructure to support the grid. The onus for implementing is on the utilities themselves. Some, did great. Others, were a dumpster fire. Read the bloody About page and stop letting the press sell you the narrative that this is government mismanagement. This was just a case where there was not a cohesive distributed amongst all providers plan completely rehearsed. I find the entire thing funny because you'd think ever since the Midnight Connection nonsense, there'd be a bit more inter-utility coordination, but eh... No accounting for the lack of effort put into becoming hyper-reliable. I will say, in the towns I know people, the community has been rallying to support each other. I've been rather curious about the stark difference between the small townish response vs responses in the urban centers. Austin Energy has done a terrible job.
- bsder 6y ago
  Your post in no way refutes my statement that "ERCOT cannot shutdown and reboot the grid". If they are the facilitator and coordinators, then that's their damn job--even if the entities being coordinated are private. In addition, ERCOT are the only organization with the levers to pull--so that's where the job lands. All you've provided a pile of excuses and deflections. This is what caused the pileup to begin with--everybody going "<plugs ears> LA LA LA, WHAT YOU SAID WILL COST ME MONEY LA LA LA SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROBLEM." Funnily enough, El Paso did just fine--perhaps because they actually had to follow some minimum maintenance standards for their grid. I wonder where those came from ...

citilife 6y ago

To be fair, there was a large influx of people to Texas recently. Plus the lowest temperatures in 30 years. Not an excuse, per se, but it makes sense things were stretched. Personally, I live in Illinois, we use nuclear power and have to say I'm very pro-nuclear. Wind can stop, solar causes a lot of environmental damage (mining, producing, shipping, etc). Nuclear has minimal risks and produces a lot of energy for minimal pollution. I'd love to see some deregulation (still keep safety) and investment. For reference, you can see energy costs yourself https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ And production: https://www.eia.gov/state/ https://www.eia.gov/state/

munk-a 6y ago
Nuclear power is the best option that everyone irrationally rejects due to incredibly irresponsible mismanagement in the past. There are some really good reactor designs that are resilient against the kind of human error that struck chernobyl and the kind of natural disaster that struck fukushima - but for some reason there is a large proportion of environmentalists that hold the incredibly anti-environmentally friendly position that nuclear power is bad.
asciimov 6y ago
This happened because our lack of regulations allowed it to happen. The areas of the state not under ERCOT control weathered this storm significantly better. I too am pro nuclear. While nuclear isn't perfect, we have to take steps in the right direction. That means, investing in energy research, building from the best options we have now, and planning to build better things in the future.

munk-a 6y ago

For years and years GOP policies in the state have led to an apparent reduction in costs for utilities but, in actuality, what was actually being skimped on was the system resiliency. Spending money on maintaining and improving infrastructure is always important and it requires a constant supply of revenue to ensure that utilities are able to withstand events such as these. Additionally - a lack of regulation heavily failed Texans. There are ways to weatherize wind turbines to operate in the cold properly but Texas long ago stripped these away. This is a tragedy and many folks in Texas are feeling a lot of pain right now, it's not the time to guilt over politics but it is a good time to realize that moving forward social services do need more a reasonable level of support.

asciimov 6y ago
Once people are comfortable again, they will be singing the praises of the republican party.

munk-a 6y ago

To realize significant political change in America we need to kill Us vs. Them-ism and that means eroding the two-party system. If you can, at a local level, advocate for proportional representation for local elections and you'll see improvements start to grow in naturally since politicians will need to argue for things instead of just against things.

asciimov 6y ago
The problem for me, in a fairly blue area, is that everything we try to do gets smacked down by the state. Since this state is so divided between the rural and urban areas, the democrats have to find a way to address the issues of the rural populace in order to heal the us vs them divide.
- munk-a 6y ago
  If your area is solidly blue then just keep doing it and force the state to continue to intervene. They absolutely can keep doing so but it's terrible PR and strongly opposes declared beliefs in libretarianism and the "laboratory of democracy." I really feel for people living in red states who are trying to make everything better for everyone - most people give up and just move elsewhere but you can make change happen.