Here's a suggestion for Texas regulators. Add a cap of let's say a maximum of $1000 in case this happens again. Now people have three choices instead of two. The original 12 cents per KWH guaranteed or the original 2 cents but with no limit. Or a new third selection: 5 cents per KWH with the $1000 cap. The cap will force the utility to charge more per KWH to protect itself.
What do you think will happen? I'd say there still will be people who will play the game and take the 2 cent deal with no cap. What do you think?
Here's a suggestion for Texas regulators. Regulate rather than recommend.Texas has had this happen before. In 1989, several Texas power generating plants failed due to extreme winter cold and it happened again in 2011. After the failures in 1989, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, whose members are appointed by the governor and whose mission statement is to “protect customers, foster competition, and promote high quality infrastructure”, issued a number of
recommendations aimed at improving winterization of the generators. The
recommendations were not mandatory and as a result were not followed by many of the electric power and gas utilities which have placed more emphasis on the cost of energy than on its reliability.
After power blackouts occurred again in February 2011 due to extreme cold temperatures, the Texas state legislature held a hearing where many expressed surprise that Texas had outages when other areas of the country are able to keep power on during cold weather. In August of 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. wrote a 357-page report showing that winterization
recommendations following the 1989 outage weren’t implemented. Texas keeps nearly all of their power grid contained solely within Texas and therefore the grid operated by ERCOT, which supplies 90% of the power in Texas, is not subject to federal regulation by FERC which has mandatory reliability standards for operators within its jurisdiction.
https://www.ferc.gov/industries-data/electric/electric-power-markets/ercotThe Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in its 2011 report noted:
Winterization
"Generators and natural gas producers suffered severe losses of capacity despite having received accurate forecasts of the storm. Entities in both categories report having winterization procedures in place. However, the poor performance of many of these generating units and wells suggests that these procedures were either inadequate or were not adequately followed.
The experiences of 1989 are instructive, particularly on the electric side. In that year, as in 2011, cold weather caused many generators to trip, derate, or fail to start. The PUCT [Public Utility Commission of Texas] investigated the occurrence and issued a number of recommendations aimed at improving winterization on the part of the generators. These recommendations were not mandatory, and over the course of time implementation lapsed. Many of the generators that experienced outages in 1989 failed again in 2011."
"While extreme cold weather events are obviously not as common in the Southwest as elsewhere, they do occur every few years. And when they do, the cost in terms of dollars and human hardship is considerable."Again on July 18, FERC and NERC issued a staff report titled, The South Central United States Cold Weather Bulk Electric System Event of January 17, 2018. The report discusses the cold weather event that occurred in the south-central U.S. in January 2018. In the report, FERC and NERC note that "More than one-third of the GO/GOPs that lost generation during the Event did not have a winterization plan".
Their recommendation again:
"Developing one or more mandatory Reliability Standards that require Generator Owner/Operators to prepare for the winter and to provide information regarding their preparations (or lack thereof) to their RCs [Regulatory Commissions] and Balancing Authorities (BAs)."I mean the nerve of that pesky federal government to make recommendations to Texas, when Texas has designed a system exempt from federal regulation. Every conservative ideologue knows deep in their bones that states know better than the tyrannical federal government what is best for their state and their citizens!
