Thank you coal!

[Col Hogan]

He chose to go with Griddy instead of the local provider...a local provider that charges a little more on the daily basis, but provides stability over the long run...

What needs fixing...his ability to make choices, or the system that allows him to make choices and have the positives, and negatives, of that choice???

Is he willing to pay back the saving he earned for his choice to have the high cost of buying on the wholesale market fixed???

Fair questions and I didn’t know the distinction with Giddy. Along those lines, aren’t we all on the hook for the poor consumer choices of others if they’re large or common enough?

Some examples, please..

[UNI88]

Fair questions and I didn’t know the distinction with Giddy. Along those lines, aren’t we all on the hook for the poor consumer choices of others if they’re large or common enough?

Some examples, please..

The Gubmint has shown a propensity to bail out large businesses like GM or the airlines after they've made poor choices. Despite Kalm's fishing attempt, I'm pretty sure you're just as opposed to those bailouts as you would be for people who took chances with their electrical provider.

[kalm]

Some examples, please..

The Gubmint has shown a propensity to bail out large businesses like GM or the airlines after they've made poor choices. Despite Kalm's fishing attempt, I'm pretty sure you're just as opposed to those bailouts as you would be for people who took chances with their electrical provider.

I already have two to the boat and it’s still morning!



Kalm mistrusts ALL monopolies including government. I’m centrist like that and have experience in the field. And FTR, I was opposed to the bank bailouts as well.

But there are downsides to allowing the “free” market to exact its pound.

What’s with all of these homeless? They couldn’t afford their utilities bills or something?

[Col Hogan]

The Gubmint has shown a propensity to bail out large businesses like GM or the airlines after they've made poor choices. Despite Kalm's fishing attempt, I'm pretty sure you're just as opposed to those bailouts as you would be for people who took chances with their electrical provider.

I already have two to the boat and it’s still morning!



Kalm mistrusts ALL monopolies including government. I’m centrist like that and have experience in the field. And FTR, I was opposed to the bank bailouts as well.

But there are downsides to allowing the “free” market to exact its pound.

What’s with all of these homeless? They couldn’t afford their utilities bills or something?

So, are we looking for fairness, or are we looking for equity, or equality...

For years, the people using Griddy have paid less than their neighbors using comparable amounts of electricity...now, they are paying more...much more...for their choice in the free market...

[kalm]

I already have two to the boat and it’s still morning!



Kalm mistrusts ALL monopolies including government. I’m centrist like that and have experience in the field. And FTR, I was opposed to the bank bailouts as well.

But there are downsides to allowing the “free” market to exact its pound.

What’s with all of these homeless? They couldn’t afford their utilities bills or something?

So, are we looking for fairness, or are we looking for equity, or equality...

For years, the people using Griddy have paid less than their neighbors using comparable amounts of electricity...now, they are paying more...much more...for their choice in the free market...

Sure. But their choice can impact everyone else in the market.

[BDKJMU]

AZ and Colonel...this is gonna get fixed, right?

As the Texas power grid collapsed under a historic winter storm, Jose Del Rio of Haltom City, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, saw the electricity bill on a vacant two-bedroom home he is trying to sell slowly creep up over the past two weeks. Typically, the bill is around $125 to $150 a month, he said. But his account has already been charged about $630 this month — and he still owes another $2,600.

“If worse comes to worst, I have the ability to put it on a credit card or figure something out," Del Rio said. ”There is no one living in that house. All the lights are off. But I have the air at 60 because I don’t want the pipes to freeze.”


When he contacted Griddy, his electric company, they advised him to switch providers, Del Rio said

“Royce Pierce and his wife, Danielle, who live in Willow Park, west of Dallas, have been watching their electricity bill tick up by nearly $10,000 in the last few days for their three-bedroom home. While the family told NBC News they consider themselves lucky because they’ve had power, the financial burden has come with additional challenges.

Since the family is on a variable rate plan with Griddy, the company automatically debits the bill as they use electricity. Danielle said she closed the debit card connected to their electricity bill because Griddy wiped it out. The family has been using separate accounts and credit cards to pay for necessities as the storm goes on.

“We are hoping there will be relief,” Royce said. “This is something maybe we can skate by and tackle as time goes on but how many people can’t? A lot.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/busine ... fX97HSnn_4

He chose to go with Griddy instead of the local provider...a local provider that charges a little more on the daily basis, but provides stability over the long run...

What needs fixing...his ability to make choices, or the system that allows him to make choices and have the positives, and negatives, of that choice???

Is he willing to pay back the saving he earned for his choice to have the high cost of buying on the wholesale market fixed???

And Fake News NBC, with a completely 1 sided story, neglects to explain this....

[BDKJMU]

Kerry: There‘s no room for BS anymore. We‘ve only got 9 years left!

[kalm]

Kerry: There‘s no room for BS anymore. We‘ve only got 9 years left!

Gawd...I still can’t stand Kerry after all these years...still a doofus. Not to mention the poor, easily assailable optics of jet setting carbon footprint.

Nominate pointy head nerds in lab coats for spokesmen.

[HI54UNI]

Before global warming was imagined, we would go a week with -20 for the high, and no talk of power outages. Something change over the years.

Aging infrastructure and decades-long tax cuts. Some states and localities decided to increasingly privatize utilities to offset the lack of incoming money, but the utilities business is a low-margin industry which makes cost-cutting a real issue.

The Feds also continue to bail out private companies because energy delivery is a matter of national security.

I can understand disagreements about what services government should and shouldn't provide, but I feel like utilities should be an open-and-shut case of a public service paid for through taxes.

What liberal blog posted this? I saw the same arguments several times on various forms of social media.

Tax cuts have nothing to do with electric operations. What electric utilities were privatized from government ownership? I saw one person trying to compare this to the water situation at Flint, Michigan. These are not the same thing.

And paying for utilities through taxes?

[HI54UNI]

Solar battery banks from good contractors are typically sized for 2-3 days of back-up energy at minimal load output. Of course the user needs to understand they can't be using the energy like it's a normal day.

But in an emergency, the point isn't to heat your home to a comfortable level. Hell, it may not be able to heat the home at all. However the energy could be the difference between freezing or being able to use a portable electric heater for a few days or hours at a time.

I agree that the green approach will require logistical issues for the next few decades, but at some point the goal is to be 100% green so we don't have to rely on fossil-fuel plants. Until that time, yes they'll have maintenance costs associated with them.

Battery banks are not designed to run things like electric heat. A Tesla power wall would power a typical electric space heater for 6-7 hours max with no other electrical usage.

[HI54UNI]

^No surprise.

As explained multiple times in this thread, blaming wind energy in this crisis is such a red herring. The entire system failed, and last I read wind capacity was down 25%, coal and nuclear at 30%, and natural gas at 40%.

You simply have to winterize equipment before cold-weather events if you didn't pay to winterize them upfront.

Hell, the US has wind turbines in the Antarctic running for 10+ years now: https://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/mmg_disp.j ... 8353&from=

Wind energy is part of the problem but it is not the sole problem. Many generation plants and other facilities in the south were not built to withstand the extended periods of cold that we had last week. There are also issues with an over reliance on natural gas generation. Usually the peak load is in the summer and natural gas power plants are not competing with home/commercial/industrial heating use of natural gas. This caused natural gas prices to spike which drove up electric costs. The high demand also made it so some gas generators couldn't even get gas.

The bigger problem with wind is the way subsidies are structured (save me the all sources are subsidized stuff). Wind gets 2.3 cents in tax credits for every kWh they produce. That means prices in the energy market go negative at times because wind still makes money due to the tax credit. A nuclear or fossil fuel plant can't compete with that so they are shut down for economic reasons. But you cannot guarantee that wind will blow when you need it. So last week we needed wind and it didn't blow. But the fossil fuel plants, particularly coal, are no longer there to back it up. That's when the shit hits the fan.

[HI54UNI]

What's the power grid going to be like when we have 100,000,000 electric cars plugged in at night.

This is the hidden tax that is coming. The electric distribution system infrastructure in place cannot handle one or two electric vehicles charging at every house. Rates will have to go up pay for the upgrades that will be needed.

Guess who that hits the most? Low income people.

[HI54UNI]

Kerry: There‘s no room for BS anymore. We‘ve only got 9 years left!

Gawd...I still can’t stand Kerry after all these years...still a doofus. Not to mention the poor, easily assailable optics of jet setting carbon footprint.

Nominate pointy head nerds in lab coats for spokesmen.

This is why I have him on my punch list. What an arrogant, elitist prick.

[kalm]

Gawd...I still can’t stand Kerry after all these years...still a doofus. Not to mention the poor, easily assailable optics of jet setting carbon footprint.

Nominate pointy head nerds in lab coats for spokesmen.

This is why I have him on my punch list. What an arrogant, elitist prick.

I’ll allow it.

[HI54UNI]

What a crazy week it was. We operate in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) energy market. SPP covers 14 states from North Dakota to the Texas panhandle. On a typical day prices for energy would be maybe 2-2.5 cents per kWh. On a hot day or cold day that might jump up to an average of 5-6 cents per kWh. On a typical day we sell about 1.0-1.2 million kWh to our members. So on a normal day it costs us $25,000 +/- to meet our needs. On a hot or cold day we could be looking at $72,000 for one day. We have ownership in various generation facilities that we sell to the market and get credit back. Basically the two offset each other every day.

On Saturday, February 13 the market started going crazy. Average prices each day and our cost at 1.2 million kWh per day:

13th - $0.137/kWh $164,712
14th - $0.294/kWh $352,932
15th - $2.994/kWh $3,593,538
16th - $2.756/kWh $3,307,092
17th - $2.219/kWh $2,663,352
18th - $3.633/kWh $4,360,130
19th - $1.114/kWh $1,336,393

So instead of spending between $175,000 - $500,000 like we normally might during this period we spent $15,778,000 to supply our members with power. Fortunately we have sufficient generation to offset this cost in the market. But there are a lot of utilities that don't have sufficient generation and rely on the market that are going to take a huge financial hit from this. This is also what happened to the customers of Griddy - they were essentially playing in the market and got burnt badly.

In addition to our regular baseload generation SPP called on all of our emergency backup diesel generation to run as well. We did our part to support the SPP grid. We had members run well over 100 hours during this period for plants that really aren't designed to be pushed that hard. For much of this crisis we were generating over 200% of our needs - in other words we were covering all of our electrical load from our members plus somebody else's by pushing surplus back onto the grid. There were times where we were covering 270%. On Tuesday morning SPP had to implement rolling blackouts over the 14 state territory. We weren't hit with any blackouts because we were actually generating 215% of our load at the time the blackouts were implemented. Disconnecting us would have actually made things worse.

One of our backup plants burns 2500 gallons of fuel an hour. They had to have a tanker truck delivering fuel every 3 hours. 42 semi loads delivered during this period. Over $600,000 in diesel fuel for just that one plant. I haven't even had time to add up all the others yet. I'm guessing the fuel bill will be over $2 million. Fortunately we will get reimbursed from the market for this.

A lot of regulators, politicians, and utilities are in CYA mode right now to try and avoid blame. There are going to be investigations and a lot of hand wringing over this. I recieved one call from the chair of our state regulatory commission and 3 calls from another state commissioner. Fortunately with how we performed we look pretty good. But had some of our stuff not worked it could have been ugly real fast. Sad thing is nothing will really change to make things better. Usually the regulators have good intentions but tend to make things worse.

I'm already starting to see talk of bailouts for utilities that didn't have adequate generation in place or limiting the amount of "profit" that some generators were able to make. Pisses me off that we have made investments at a cost to our rate payers to avoid this problem and now somebody that made poor decisions is going to get a bailout.

[AZGrizFan]

^No surprise.

As explained multiple times in this thread, blaming wind energy in this crisis is such a red herring. The entire system failed, and last I read wind capacity was down 25%, coal and nuclear at 30%, and natural gas at 40%.

You simply have to winterize equipment before cold-weather events if you didn't pay to winterize them upfront.

Hell, the US has wind turbines in the Antarctic running for 10+ years now: https://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/mmg_disp.j ... 8353&from=

Wind energy is part of the problem but it is not the sole problem. Many generation plants and other facilities in the south were not built to withstand the extended periods of cold that we had last week. There are also issues with an over reliance on natural gas generation. Usually the peak load is in the summer and natural gas power plants are not competing with home/commercial/industrial heating use of natural gas. This caused natural gas prices to spike which drove up electric costs. The high demand also made it so some gas generators couldn't even get gas.

The bigger problem with wind is the way subsidies are structured (save me the all sources are subsidized stuff). Wind gets 2.3 cents in tax credits for every kWh they produce. That means prices in the energy market go negative at times because wind still makes money due to the tax credit. A nuclear or fossil fuel plant can't compete with that so they are shut down for economic reasons. But you cannot guarantee that wind will blow when you need it. So last week we needed wind and it didn't blow. But the fossil fuel plants, particularly coal, are no longer there to back it up. That's when the shit hits the fan.

Can’t wait to see trip’s response to this. Arguing with a power expert...

[∞∞∞]

My response is good, keep having them unable to compete with renewable energies until fossil fuels are a thing of the past.

Subsidize them more until renewables overwhelm the fossil fuel industry and end it once and for all.

That's what many are voting for so that's what we expect from our government.

[HI54UNI]

My response is good, keep having them unable to compete with renewable energies until fossil fuels are a thing of the past.

Subsidize them more until renewables overwhelm the fossil fuel industry and end it once and for all.

That's what many are voting for so that's what we expect from our government.

Please explain how you plan to keep the lights on when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Please explain how you plan to make it affordable for low income customers that cannot afford to put solar panels on their roof or make energy efficiency improvements to their homes to try and keep their bills down.

[∞∞∞]

Affordable? Should be free for low-income people, subsidized by people like you and me and the ultra-wealthy who can afford it through higher taxes. That's literally the policies of the Green New Deal...higher taxes for the middle-class (~37%) and upper-class (~70%) to build much needed green infrastructure across the entire United States which everyone benefits from.

To answer your first question, battery banks (plant or personal) will only get better over time and become integral to the overall energy infrastructure. Feds should be granting scientists and researchers more funding, both in private industries and academia, in developing breakthroughs there.

[UNI88]

Affordable? Should be free for low-income people, subsidized by people like you and me and the ultra-wealthy who can afford it through higher taxes. That's literally the policies of the Green New Deal...higher taxes for the middle-class (~37%) and upper-class (~70%) to build much needed green infrastructure across the entire United States which everyone benefits from.

To answer your first question, battery banks (plant or personal) will only get better over time and become integral to the overall energy infrastructure. Feds should be granting scientists and researchers more funding, both in private industries and academia, in developing breakthroughs there.

A 70% federal tax rate plus state taxes is nuts. Why bust your ass to create something that could change the world if the government is going to take 75+% of your income? And if someone's already done it, why remain a US citizen? They can move their citizenship and assets to a more tax-friendly location.

Let's chase innovation and assets to other countries with excessive taxation while we wallow in our equity and fairness on our way to socialist misery.

[HI54UNI]

Affordable? Should be free for low-income people, subsidized by people like you and me and the ultra-wealthy who can afford it through higher taxes. That's literally the policies of the Green New Deal...higher taxes for the middle-class (~37%) and upper-class (~70%) to build much needed green infrastructure across the entire United States which everyone benefits from.

To answer your first question, battery banks (plant or personal) will only get better over time and become integral to the overall energy infrastructure. Feds should be granting scientists and researchers more funding, both in private industries and academia, in developing breakthroughs there.

Free electricity does not promote conservation. It only encourages waste. And there are already programs to provide assistance to help low income people. Why should anyone pay more taxes for the government to provide more "free" stuff? Most utilities have a check off to contribute voluntarily to help low income people pay their bills. How much do you contribute every month? And do you have any idea what this green infrastructure is going to cost? And what are we going to do about NIMBY? The number of people that are starting to oppose transmission lines and wind turbine construction in rural areas is growing dramatically. Is it OK to trample their rights in pursuit of the climate change religion's goals?

I agree that more funding should be spent on storage technology but our government is too busy sending money to foreign countries and other stupid shit. At today's levels of battery production and technology it would take 400 years to build enough batteries to power the United States for 1 day. 1 day. So all the talk of battery storage is just like in the 1960s when the talk was all "nuclear is going to be too cheap to meter".

[HI54UNI]

Affordable? Should be free for low-income people, subsidized by people like you and me and the ultra-wealthy who can afford it through higher taxes. That's literally the policies of the Green New Deal...higher taxes for the middle-class (~37%) and upper-class (~70%) to build much needed green infrastructure across the entire United States which everyone benefits from.

To answer your first question, battery banks (plant or personal) will only get better over time and become integral to the overall energy infrastructure. Feds should be granting scientists and researchers more funding, both in private industries and academia, in developing breakthroughs there.

A 70% federal tax rate plus state taxes is nuts. Why bust your ass to create something that could change the world if the government is going to take 75+% of your income? And if someone's already done it, why remain a US citizen? They can move their citizenship and assets to a more tax-friendly location.

Let's chase innovation and assets to other countries with excessive taxation while we wallow in our equity and fairness on our way to socialist misery.

I asked him here to show his math on how properly taxing would eliminate our deficit. still waiting.

https://championshipsubdivision.com/for ... 0#p1350550

[HI54UNI]

Starting to see some reports that Texas grid operator ERCOT asked the Biden admin for waivers from some environmental rules to increase generation during the power crisis and they were denied. Remains to be seen if this is true but is a bad look for Biden's EPA if it is.

[AZGrizFan]

My response is good, keep having them unable to compete with renewable energies until fossil fuels are a thing of the past.

Subsidize them more until renewables overwhelm the fossil fuel industry and end it once and for all.

That's what many are voting for so that's what we expect from our government.

I’m gonna guess you lost more than a few converts in the state of Texas this past week.

[AZGrizFan]

Affordable? Should be free for low-income people, subsidized by people like you and me and the ultra-wealthy who can afford it through higher taxes. That's literally the policies of the Green New Deal...higher taxes for the middle-class (~37%) and upper-class (~70%) to build much needed green infrastructure across the entire United States which everyone benefits from.

To answer your first question, battery banks (plant or personal) will only get better over time and become integral to the overall energy infrastructure. Feds should be granting scientists and researchers more funding, both in private industries and academia, in developing breakthroughs there.

That must be one hell of an engineering degree you have. You’re like an expert on EVERYTHING.