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It wasn’t just the 2021 outage. Ercot fails the same way every decade or so. Also, that outage knocked out something like 25% of global PVC production for abo

by hedora 3y ago

It wasn’t just the 2021 outage. Ercot fails the same way every decade or so. Also, that outage knocked out something like 25% of global PVC production for about a year, which interfered with basic infrastructure projects globally. You can’t build modern drainage or plumbing without PVC. Without drainage or plumbing, you can’t build buildings or repair roads. Also, it was totally predictable, totally avoidable, a bunch of people died as a direct result, and the last N times this happened, they did nothing to fix it. (Fixing it would involve winterizing their production facilities, which over half the planet has done every year for over a century.)

roenxi 3y ago
But ERCOT energy is also cheaper than the US national average. The reason that 25% of global PVC production was ultimately sourced from Texas was probably linked to those power costs. I'd rather my regulators copied ERCOT than what they are actually doing; I pay a lot for power because of serial gold-plating of infrastructure. Then maybe Australia'd be able to afford to manufacture something in globally significant quantities. Not "fixing" things can lead to better outcomes for most people.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Just to double check, you actually do mean you're happy for some people to die from cold in exchange for lower energy bill for yourself, and ignoring the required infrastructure maintenance? (hoping outages won't affect you too much)
  - roenxi 3y ago
    No, that would be stupid. The idea would be to save ~25% on power bills, let the grid fail once a decade and build up alternative things for dealing with disasters, like some sort of well stocked and warm community hall. That would be much cheaper, and has the added benefits like prepares the community for all sorts of disasters.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      > let the grid fail once a decade This means people dying. To move people to a community hall you need enough transportation, clear roads, working communication, and many other things that are indirectly relying on power being available or the disaster plans working properly. (Which they sometimes won't) Also this would have to work for everyone at risk - not for the number of deaths we know about, but likely 100x that. You can't ignore the effects of that once-a-decade failure and hope things will work fine.
      - roenxi 3y ago
        What, so the grid is indestructible but organising diesel for buses is an impossible task? That isn't realistic at all. Wikipedia tells me that something like 250 to 1,000 people died in the Texas power outage which was basically the worst conditions the state has ever seen. Assuming that the at-risk population was 100x that we're still talking numbers that can be managed in an emergency fashion a lot more cheaply than raising power prices by 33% across the board which seems to roughly be the gap from Texas to California. Raising power prices 33% will also kill people, they won't be able to heat their homes every year. I know people who have that problem right now, it is horrible. Even raising prices by ~10% to go from Texas to US national average will probably kill people. Someone will have to make hard choices between eating and heating if the prices go up 10% in real terms. Cheap power saves lives.
        viraptor 3y ago
        > What, so the grid is indestructible but organising diesel for busses is an impossible task? No, grids fail locally quite often and that's easier to manage. A large scale outage where you need to move thousands of people, and know who/where they are in the first place, with plans not fully tested for a decade at a time however is going to fail in many ways, especially when communication is also impacted. Maintaining the plans, training, supplies, etc long term is also not trivial. Community can step us locally in many ways, but not as state-wide solution. > be managed in an emergency fashion a lot more cheaply than raising power prices by 33% across the board There an assumption that it will be effective at scale. And that the price increase would be required. (I've seen quite a few sources saying proper maintenance would be cheaper than dealing with the fallout)
- hedora 3y ago
  Ok, but the cost of the outages far exceeds the cost of buying antifreeze for the facilities that failed, even when averaged over the years between failures (and this has happened so often, we have that data). The reason it hasn’t been fixed is that the ercot market (which is an artificial, legislated thing) is intentionally structured so that the production facilities make unbounded profit during correlated failures. I say “intentionally” because this keeps happening and the legislature explicitly refuses to fix it. There is no better proof than that. One simple solution, assuming you don’t like legislating technical fixes, which I don’t like either, is to fine the shit out of them during correlated failures. For example (real legislation would hopefully be better): 100% of money in the market during months with more than a 10% peak outage would go to the game and wildlife service, or some other popular Texas thing, and they could establish criminal liability for intentionally curtailing production during power shortages. So, when this happens, costs go to max, and revenue goes to zero. Or, they could just legislate basic 1800’s reliability measures. Or, they could let all the idiots that voted these idiots freeze, but keep the industrial facilities online. At this point, I don’t care. (Despite the efforts of some red state politicians to detain pregnant women, the US still has open internal borders, after all). Anyway, I just want to be able to buy PVC the next time a line in my yard gets cut. Nothing makes me give a shit about grid reliability in far off lands more than, well, a literal pool of it.
StillBored 3y ago
Uh right, so almost the exact same thing happened in 2011, and that is how the energy cap was raised to $9K/MWh. The idea being to incentivize the reliable operators to be reliable by paying them a fortune when the power is most needed. Which as we found out didn't exactly work that way because bean counters aren't happy to fund reliability for "what if" scenarios that happen once a decade. https://www.texastribune.org/2012/10/25/texas-regulators-act-texas-electricity-prices/ https://www.texastribune.org/2012/10/25/texas-regulators-act... This time around they largely just reverted that previous action and returned it to the earlier 2012 proposal (~5k/MHw), and recently have been talking about basically having the state government pay to build NG plants. (although i've not been paying real close attention to where those bills went). ex: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/13/texas-power-natural-gas-cost-senate-bill-6/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/13/texas-power-natural-...

by hedora 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago

But ERCOT energy is also cheaper than the US national average. The reason that 25% of global PVC production was ultimately sourced from Texas was probably linked to those power costs. I'd rather my regulators copied ERCOT than what they are actually doing; I pay a lot for power because of serial gold-plating of infrastructure. Then maybe Australia'd be able to afford to manufacture something in globally significant quantities. Not "fixing" things can lead to better outcomes for most people.

viraptor 3y ago
Just to double check, you actually do mean you're happy for some people to die from cold in exchange for lower energy bill for yourself, and ignoring the required infrastructure maintenance? (hoping outages won't affect you too much)
- roenxi 3y ago
  No, that would be stupid. The idea would be to save ~25% on power bills, let the grid fail once a decade and build up alternative things for dealing with disasters, like some sort of well stocked and warm community hall. That would be much cheaper, and has the added benefits like prepares the community for all sorts of disasters.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    > let the grid fail once a decade This means people dying. To move people to a community hall you need enough transportation, clear roads, working communication, and many other things that are indirectly relying on power being available or the disaster plans working properly. (Which they sometimes won't) Also this would have to work for everyone at risk - not for the number of deaths we know about, but likely 100x that. You can't ignore the effects of that once-a-decade failure and hope things will work fine.
    - roenxi 3y ago
      What, so the grid is indestructible but organising diesel for buses is an impossible task? That isn't realistic at all. Wikipedia tells me that something like 250 to 1,000 people died in the Texas power outage which was basically the worst conditions the state has ever seen. Assuming that the at-risk population was 100x that we're still talking numbers that can be managed in an emergency fashion a lot more cheaply than raising power prices by 33% across the board which seems to roughly be the gap from Texas to California. Raising power prices 33% will also kill people, they won't be able to heat their homes every year. I know people who have that problem right now, it is horrible. Even raising prices by ~10% to go from Texas to US national average will probably kill people. Someone will have to make hard choices between eating and heating if the prices go up 10% in real terms. Cheap power saves lives.
      - viraptor 3y ago
        > What, so the grid is indestructible but organising diesel for busses is an impossible task? No, grids fail locally quite often and that's easier to manage. A large scale outage where you need to move thousands of people, and know who/where they are in the first place, with plans not fully tested for a decade at a time however is going to fail in many ways, especially when communication is also impacted. Maintaining the plans, training, supplies, etc long term is also not trivial. Community can step us locally in many ways, but not as state-wide solution. > be managed in an emergency fashion a lot more cheaply than raising power prices by 33% across the board There an assumption that it will be effective at scale. And that the price increase would be required. (I've seen quite a few sources saying proper maintenance would be cheaper than dealing with the fallout)
hedora 3y ago
Ok, but the cost of the outages far exceeds the cost of buying antifreeze for the facilities that failed, even when averaged over the years between failures (and this has happened so often, we have that data). The reason it hasn’t been fixed is that the ercot market (which is an artificial, legislated thing) is intentionally structured so that the production facilities make unbounded profit during correlated failures. I say “intentionally” because this keeps happening and the legislature explicitly refuses to fix it. There is no better proof than that. One simple solution, assuming you don’t like legislating technical fixes, which I don’t like either, is to fine the shit out of them during correlated failures. For example (real legislation would hopefully be better): 100% of money in the market during months with more than a 10% peak outage would go to the game and wildlife service, or some other popular Texas thing, and they could establish criminal liability for intentionally curtailing production during power shortages. So, when this happens, costs go to max, and revenue goes to zero. Or, they could just legislate basic 1800’s reliability measures. Or, they could let all the idiots that voted these idiots freeze, but keep the industrial facilities online. At this point, I don’t care. (Despite the efforts of some red state politicians to detain pregnant women, the US still has open internal borders, after all). Anyway, I just want to be able to buy PVC the next time a line in my yard gets cut. Nothing makes me give a shit about grid reliability in far off lands more than, well, a literal pool of it.

StillBored 3y ago

Uh right, so almost the exact same thing happened in 2011, and that is how the energy cap was raised to $9K/MWh. The idea being to incentivize the reliable operators to be reliable by paying them a fortune when the power is most needed. Which as we found out didn't exactly work that way because bean counters aren't happy to fund reliability for "what if" scenarios that happen once a decade. https://www.texastribune.org/2012/10/25/texas-regulators-act-texas-electricity-prices/ https://www.texastribune.org/2012/10/25/texas-regulators-act... This time around they largely just reverted that previous action and returned it to the earlier 2012 proposal (~5k/MHw), and recently have been talking about basically having the state government pay to build NG plants. (although i've not been paying real close attention to where those bills went). ex: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/13/texas-power-natural-gas-cost-senate-bill-6/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/13/texas-power-natural-...