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Not very informative. Both gas & electric markets did payout MASSIVELY to those who had resources because the pricing absolutely exploded by well over 10,000%.

Not very informative. Both gas & electric markets did payout MASSIVELY to those who had resources because the pricing absolutely exploded by well over 10,000%. The Brazos Electric Co-Op went to bankruptcy court (ongoing) because they ran up a multi-billion dollar bill over the course of the week because they didn't want their fucking customers to freeze to fucking death. If there's such a thing as financial rape, this was it. And yes Texans blamed ERCOT because blaming the right-wing politicians whom they answer to (via the Public Utility Commission) does not digest easily, and it turned out wind & solar couldn't be blamed either even if you could somehow make that Obama's fault. It's the kind of massive shit show you get when politics is no longer competitive, much like California. Still better than CA, I guess, for the moment... Wait no I'm not finished. Imagine there's a big hurricane, you gotta get out of town, low on gas, and you pull up to the gas station and the price is... $900.00/gallon. That's how much the price of electricity went up. That is GOUGING. That gas station owner would go to straight to jail if customers didn't murder him outright first. But because this wasn't retail, it was perfectly okay, even though millions of Texans are now paying for it, for years to come. What a crock of fucking shit. Wait, wait, no I'm STILL not finished. Texas politicians made sure they walled off their own energy grid so that they wouldn't have "interstate commerce" and thus prevent federal oversight, which would not have allowed such extraordinarily low reserves in the first place. This is STRICTLY the fault of those politicians, and they answer for shit, because that's life in a one-party state, be it communist, fascist, democrat, or republican. Again: A crock of fucking shit. Fucking hell.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
It's almost as if you can prioritise profits, or you can prioritise service delivery, but you can't prioritise both. Health care in the US is no different. It's traditional to call this 'efficiency' and 'freedom.' But perhaps it's more realistic and honest to call it 'grift.'
- slaw 5y ago
  There is no 'efficiency' nor 'freedom.' in US healthcare.
sremani 5y ago
The gas station analogy is a bad analogy -- understand that demand and supply are being balanced real time on the grid. That is not same with a Gas station or a group of gas stations. A bit more sophisticated thinking is required here -- if you want people to maintain over-capacity, you either pay them during the good times or pay them during the bad times.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  The grid went down due to temperatures across the state. That's not a capacity issue, that's a hardening issue. Capacity is having hot spares in a SAN or whatever. But those extra drives won't help you when your RAID array decides to up and die on you which is what happened here.
Panzer04 5y ago
If you don’t raise prices, many people/companies will senselessly consume excess electricity they don’t need. Thus, you get power outages instead of merely high prices. That being said, it’s not like most people have a real-time monitor of electricity prices so those that can will actually reduce consumption. Ultimately, in a constrained system, either you raise prices (and ensure availability, at expense) or fix prices and ensure scarcity for those unfortunate enough to suffer it (Ie. Rolling blackouts, no fuel at the gas station, etc)
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  They obviously did both
  - kerblang 5y ago
    I.E. They raised prices and "ensured" scarcity, yes.
  - caf 5y ago
    That's exactly what the paper that the linked press release is about looks into. In an energy-only market, the intention is that the possibility of very high spot prices when energy supply is short is supposed to create an incentive to build expensive, robust plant that can meet the demand in such a situation. If you can stay online during the disaster, you can make a profit that makes up for having overspecced your plant for the remainder of the time. It can even make sense to have a quick-starting plant with a high short-run-marginal-cost that almost never runs at all - only starting up when supply is constrained or demand is very high, to take advantage of the high prices - a "peaker" plant. The paper is positing that this didn't work because the risks of investing in such a business plan were too high.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  That being said, it’s not like most people have a real-time monitor of electricity prices so those that can will actually reduce consumption. It's worse than that, this was an extreme weather condition (temps as low as -2F/-19C) in a state where 60% of homes are heated by electricity and many of those use inefficient electrical resistance heating. So even if residential users had real-time access to prices, they'd have to choose between paying any price or freezing. So it's not clear how elastic demand could be.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

It's almost as if you can prioritise profits, or you can prioritise service delivery, but you can't prioritise both. Health care in the US is no different. It's traditional to call this 'efficiency' and 'freedom.' But perhaps it's more realistic and honest to call it 'grift.'

slaw 5y ago
There is no 'efficiency' nor 'freedom.' in US healthcare.

sremani 5y ago

The gas station analogy is a bad analogy -- understand that demand and supply are being balanced real time on the grid. That is not same with a Gas station or a group of gas stations. A bit more sophisticated thinking is required here -- if you want people to maintain over-capacity, you either pay them during the good times or pay them during the bad times.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
The grid went down due to temperatures across the state. That's not a capacity issue, that's a hardening issue. Capacity is having hot spares in a SAN or whatever. But those extra drives won't help you when your RAID array decides to up and die on you which is what happened here.

Panzer04 5y ago

If you don’t raise prices, many people/companies will senselessly consume excess electricity they don’t need. Thus, you get power outages instead of merely high prices. That being said, it’s not like most people have a real-time monitor of electricity prices so those that can will actually reduce consumption. Ultimately, in a constrained system, either you raise prices (and ensure availability, at expense) or fix prices and ensure scarcity for those unfortunate enough to suffer it (Ie. Rolling blackouts, no fuel at the gas station, etc)

NicoJuicy 5y ago
They obviously did both
- kerblang 5y ago
  I.E. They raised prices and "ensured" scarcity, yes.
- caf 5y ago
  That's exactly what the paper that the linked press release is about looks into. In an energy-only market, the intention is that the possibility of very high spot prices when energy supply is short is supposed to create an incentive to build expensive, robust plant that can meet the demand in such a situation. If you can stay online during the disaster, you can make a profit that makes up for having overspecced your plant for the remainder of the time. It can even make sense to have a quick-starting plant with a high short-run-marginal-cost that almost never runs at all - only starting up when supply is constrained or demand is very high, to take advantage of the high prices - a "peaker" plant. The paper is positing that this didn't work because the risks of investing in such a business plan were too high.
Johnny555 5y ago
That being said, it’s not like most people have a real-time monitor of electricity prices so those that can will actually reduce consumption. It's worse than that, this was an extreme weather condition (temps as low as -2F/-19C) in a state where 60% of homes are heated by electricity and many of those use inefficient electrical resistance heating. So even if residential users had real-time access to prices, they'd have to choose between paying any price or freezing. So it's not clear how elastic demand could be.