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> I ask because I broadly understand ERCOT to have delivered the lowest prices and the highest reliability over the last decade. Until they didn't. Until any m

> I ask because I broadly understand ERCOT to have delivered the lowest prices and the highest reliability over the last decade. Until they didn't. Until any money savings you may have gotten over the last decade was eaten up by what will be the cost of the burst pipes and flooding of your house. How are ERCOT's prices compared to El Paso's? > El Paso Electric said they always try to prepare for the future and after a winter storm in 2011, the utility company worked towards replacing and upgrading their equipment. Many generators now have antifreeze protection. > "We went from plus-10 degrees which was what the original equipment was designed for to a minus-10, so currently everything we install or upgrade is done to a minus-10 degree sustained temperature," said Louie Guarderrama, director of operations for the utility company. * https://kvia.com/news/el-paso/2021/02/15/el-pasos-not-seeing-power-outages-like-the-rest-of-texas-and-heres-why/ https://kvia.com/news/el-paso/2021/02/15/el-pasos-not-seeing...

khuey 6y ago
> Until they didn't. Until any money savings you may have gotten over the last decade was eaten up by what will be the cost of the burst pipes and flooding of your house. Yeah but that's going to be paid for property insurers or perhaps federal disaster relief funds. ERCOT successfully externalized the cost of coping with frigid temperatures, allowing them to provide power at lower prices.
- Olreich 6y ago
  Externalizing costs might be good for business, but it’s pretty clearly not good for customers here.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  If this happens consistently enough, your insurance prices are going to go up. Disaster relief funds aren't unlimited either, and you can experience significant delays when the time comes to go ask for them to pay out.
adolph 6y ago
That’s great that El Paso got this failure mode right. Are there other modes that they de-prioritized? Is holding them up as a model of success a form of "resulting" [0] since we don't know what counterfactuals in which they would have failed? El Paso Energy is interesting bc it represents the old school community monopoly.[1] I wonder if the JPM buyout will help or hinder its mission. 0. https://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/the-resulting-fallacy-is-ruining-your-decisions https://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/the-resulting-fallacy-is-ru... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso_Electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso_Electric
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  I think this is being overthought. Texas suffered a cold-snap freezing the equipment in some parts of the state. The parts that winterized their equipment were able to continue functioning showing the value in such a methodology. I don't see where there is an opening for us to ask more questions of "does winterizing equipment increase reliability when it gets cold".

khuey 6y ago

> Until they didn't. Until any money savings you may have gotten over the last decade was eaten up by what will be the cost of the burst pipes and flooding of your house. Yeah but that's going to be paid for property insurers or perhaps federal disaster relief funds. ERCOT successfully externalized the cost of coping with frigid temperatures, allowing them to provide power at lower prices.

Olreich 6y ago
Externalizing costs might be good for business, but it’s pretty clearly not good for customers here.
kevingadd 6y ago
If this happens consistently enough, your insurance prices are going to go up. Disaster relief funds aren't unlimited either, and you can experience significant delays when the time comes to go ask for them to pay out.

adolph 6y ago

That’s great that El Paso got this failure mode right. Are there other modes that they de-prioritized? Is holding them up as a model of success a form of "resulting" [0] since we don't know what counterfactuals in which they would have failed? El Paso Energy is interesting bc it represents the old school community monopoly.[1] I wonder if the JPM buyout will help or hinder its mission. 0. https://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/the-resulting-fallacy-is-ruining-your-decisions https://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/the-resulting-fallacy-is-ru... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso_Electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso_Electric

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
I think this is being overthought. Texas suffered a cold-snap freezing the equipment in some parts of the state. The parts that winterized their equipment were able to continue functioning showing the value in such a methodology. I don't see where there is an opening for us to ask more questions of "does winterizing equipment increase reliability when it gets cold".