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Texas power prices soared 20,000% Wednesday evening amid another brutal heat wave.
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Spot electricity prices topped $5,000 per megawatt-hour, up more than 200 times from Wednesday morning.
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The state’s grid operator issued its second-highest energy emergency, then later said conditions returned to normal.
Meanwhile in reality:
Texas is 1st in the nation in renewables (thanks Obama).
3000Mw battery storage averted this emergency, and there’s a ton more of that on the way (thanks Biden).
Look, this is super misleading information and I keep seeing it repeated. They’re first in the nation in total electricity generation from renewable sources, but that’s mainly because of how big they are. If you look at what percentage of their consumption is from renewable sources, they’re not even in the top ten.
The reason Texas is #1 in renewables is actually Rick Perry, bless his heart. He pushed for a massive expansion of wind generation capacity back in the early 00s and was instrumental in building high voltage transmission lines between west Texas wind and the more eastern population centers. He would be drummed out of today’s Republican party
Oh he didn’t mean that, he just wanted to be president and thought that’s how he’d get there. He wasn’t the brightest bulb
Aaahhh, the free market economy at work without limits, without government planning, regulations, or interference.
Government regulations bad! It means we can’t squeeze our customers, we can’t fuck up on an hourly basis, we can’t be dicks!
And in before the commies start… No. Bad dog! Get out with your “we need to become Communist hippie communes!” comments, please
We need to put reasonable rules and limits to a capitalist system. Regulate big companies, regulate infrastructure, tax the rich, use the money for social platforms
In all fairness, Texas has an incredibly weird, idealistic, view of the value of market forces and their government utterly fails in its job as a result.
It’s not just power lines. It’s everything. They distort their market on ideological lines and then assume that’s the best case.
Too be fair, it is the best case if you’re one of the rich assholes who owns everything and just wants to squeeze the poors.
I’m with the commies on this one. We need to nationalize utilities like energy distribution. No reason to have a profit seeking entity in charge of necessities like electricity.
In sane parts of the US, utility companies are technically private entities, but they’re related so much they pretty much operate like government agencies.
The big difference being a drive toward profit. Nationalizing energy production and distribution would be a slam dunk for everyone except the people at the top of these energy companies and their shareholders.
As a lib, I feel so owned.
I’m glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.
I’m glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.
Texas has more renewable energy production than you do. In Q1 of 2022 Washington State generated 25 Million Megawatt hours of renewal energy and Texas generated 34.
If you had the same amount of heat, you’d have more sunlight hours and thus better conditions for solar power. If you had more wind, wind power etc.
There’s no scenario anywhere in the world where the entire energy consumption and more can’t be supplied via renewable sources. All that’s missing is the political will to go against the fossil fuel industry.
Texas has plenty of power. Their problem is the delivery network. Their prices surge because power can’t be delivered to everybody, not because there isn’t enough for everybody.
I need you to explain this further? The price goes up because the demand on the grid goes up, and as the price goes up, typically additional generation comes online to take advantage of higher rates. I’m not saying it’s a good system by any means, but I don’t understand what you mean saying “power can’t be delivered to everybody”
apperently not on peoples roofs though.
Especually for ACs having your own solar panels is perfect. The demand and supply are always highest at the same time.
They lead the nation, iirc. Not just in the space for it, but for the actual amount that’s been implemented.
You are kind of owned, since these red states fucking up just means that more of your tax money will go to saving these idiots from themselves through federal aid
Never should have let the southern states back in like we did.
We should have hanged every last confederate.
It’s not too late though.
As another fellow Washingtonian, I’m getting pretty tired of subsidizing willful stupidity.
honestly it’s not willful for a lot of residents there because of gerrymandering instead of redistricting.
Red states are a luxury we can’t afford anymore. They need to pull themselves up by their freedom bootstraps and start turning a profit, or the spigot turns off.
Texas actually does better in the renewable energy front than you may expect.
A quarter of the state’s energy is produced through wind and solar. The biggest bottleneck preventing more wind adoption is the capacity of transmission lines up and the lack of energy storage.
The advantage of natural gas is that it can be dry up pretty much anywhere and isn’t dependent on weather.
The biggest problem Texas has right now regarding energy (and housing costs, and inflation, and municipal planning, and traffic, etc) is its extremely rapid population growth.
Yes, the heat wave is historic and ERCOT is awful, but even in perfect weather the grid is being stressed from the sheer number of people and businesses moving here
Don’t forget natural gas lines can freeze. Remember Ted Cruz going to Cancun? Pepperidge farm remembers.
While a lot of shitty things happened regarding ERCOT and that freeze (and ESPECIALLY the lack of response to prevent the next 2 freeze emergencies), Snovid was a perfect storm. And again a lot of the issues were from transmission problems when lines iced over and tress took out transmission lines.
We’re lucky the 2023 freeze was as short as it was, because it’s impact on the grid was almost as severe even though it was shorter and not nearly as cold. It was an ice event instead of snow, and had a much larger impact on trees and therefore transmission lines. Some people were without power for 3-4 times as long as with the 2021 storm despite it being a much milder event.
Maybe stop electing Republican orcs and your state will improve.
Republicans in Texas still blame liberals for the grid problems for some reason.
True. They need a scapegoat so they know if they say “low wind and unexpected thermal outaged”, they know people are too stupid to realize they’re saying its NG and/or coal plants playing a large role in the shortfalls and that centralized power NG/coal/nuclear power plants also have unpredictable swings in power (sometimes a 2-3 GW on/off if a large plant shuts down). Yet you can look at the comments on ERCOT to find plenty of people blaming renewables and saying we need to build more of those power stations that failed us in the winter storm in 2021 and have be causing issues this summer as well.
I’m trying so hard… I swear, our ballot boxes should be called wishing wells to better curb my hopes…
The problem is Texas Democrats and those who’d stand against Republicans don’t vote. I don’t feel like digging out the exact numbers, but the 2022 gubernatorial race shows it best. Abbott got nearly 80% of the votes Trump did in 2020. Beto got 60% of the votes Biden did. Republicans show up, Democrats don’t. Until that changes. nothing in this state will change.
Wow, I’m so shocked that Democrat turnout is depressed in *checks notes… states that go out of their way to gerrymander so only the Republicans can win, and use authoritarian tactics and putting Yes Men in key positions, have laws like it being illegal to give water to people standing in the voting line, and in general violently repress their Democratic constituents.
Gee I wonder why those votes might be depressed! It certainly has nothing to do with a system that has already been rigged against them! /s
Being real though, that’s purposeful on the part of Republicans. They want Democrats to lose hope. Makes their job easier.
Texas is so gerrymandered that even when new maps are made anyone opposing Republicans gets annihilated by districting.
My Texan ass was confused because the last week has been the most pleasant weather we’ve had in months. The I looked at the article and saw it’s from 2017. Don’t get me wrong our state is fucking dumb all of the time, but I assure you we are not experiencing a heat wave. It’s been unseasonably cool.
