Welcome to your deregulated “free market”, Texas. Don’t want to be tied to government regulation? Guess you get to pay more or cook…or freeze. Your choice by season.
This is Enron-scale manipulation. Someone’s ripping off the public and making a mint with the help of the regulators.
Jerry Jones, yeah same one that owns the Cowboys, made almost $1B off the price hikes durning the big freeze that almost crippled the grid.
The vast majority of Texans are on contracted plans and pay a consistent price per kilowatt.
That doesn’t mean prices won’t skyrocket when that contract renews though
It’s not a coincidence that Texas is a hotbed of development for “microgrid” systems to cover for when ERCOT shits the bed – and of course all those systems are made up of diesel and natural gas generator farms, because Texans don’t want any of that communist solar power!
I’ve got family in Texas who love it there for some reason, but there’s almost no amount of money you could pay me to move there. Bad enough when I have to work on projects in the state – contrary to the popular narrative, in my personal opinion it’s a worse place than California to try and build something, and that’s entirely to do with the personalities that seem to gravitate to positions of power there. I’d much rather slog through the bureaucracy in Cali than tiptoe around a tinpot dictator in the planning department.
Not to mention their Governor, who seems to be in a race with FL’s Governor for the “evil monster of the century award.”
Governor hot wheels!
I live in Texas and have already received 2 notices this spring to conserve electricity. It has barely hit 90, and they aren’t able to keep up with demand. They get the same weather reports we have access to, up to 14-21 days, yet they can’t/won’t anticipate demand?
It’s almost like they have a financial incentive to pull this shit.
In 2000/2001 this same shit was being done in California, leading to rolling blackouts and record-high energy prices. One company was buying all the plants and shutting them down for “maintenance” specifically to increase energy prices.
There were going to be congressional hearings over it in early 2022, but that company was Enron, and at the end of 2001 they collapsed due to other bullshit they were pulling.
|early 2022
Bit late, if you ask me.
Bookmarking this for the next time white supremacists here in good ole’ South Africa peddles the “privatisation is the only thing that will fix our electricity problems!” bullcrap.
Thanks, Texas!
No no no, that’s not true privatization. True privatization would fix all the problems
I bet those businesses who relocated from Cali to Texas are loving those power prices.
Oh yeah, they already left Texas.
Besides that one time power goes out more often in California. In Texas you just have a temporary price surge you could treat like a blackout if you wanted to. The difference is it’s less often and you have a choice.
I haven’t had a power outage in about ten years, between SDG&E, PG&E, and SoCal Edison. Meanwhile, Texas has regular power outages. So just what are you on about?
Like the time people were freezing to death during a power outage while the governor took a vacation to Cancún?
Exactly, they were too poor to heat their homes and that was their choice.
The biggest mistake a lot of people make is being born poor.
*Senator
Yeah, if you want a governor abandoning his people, look to Kevin Stitt (Oklahoma) last year when Tulsa was without power for about a week. Lieutenant Governor was out too, literally no one had any idea who was in charge of the state.
Maybe power is more reliable in central Texas, my family still has no electricity from the derecho that hit Houston. And they lose power frequently from all the heavy storms or hurricanes that pummel the gulf coast.
Pretty sure they are happy they don’t have “communism” when they pay those bills.
Oh, Texas. Your power grid is an endless source of amusement (for people who don’t have to rely on it, of course).
Losing power for three days, but knowing my energy bill will be twice as high as last months is always a cool feeling.
Smartass remarks aside, you have my sympathies.
I mean, I work in the O&G industry. Y’all have every right to be as smartass as you please.
Everything’s bigger in Texas.
Especially the incompetence.
The reason Texans hate government so much is because they have no idea what it looks like when it’s run correctly.
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Greed and incompetience. No wonder Texas has been resistant to federal regulation and interconnect its power network with the rest of the country.
So I assume that ted cruz flees to ski somewhere this time? And does he still blame his daughters, or does that change as well?
Maybe he’s not fleeing the states crumbling infrastructure, maybe he’s taking his wife and/or daughter(s) for out of state abortions.
Better Sue him to be on the safe side.
Texas indeed has been blessed with much sunlight to make solar energy quite viable. This includes solar hot water heaters, and many trees to grow with vigour and bio-filtrate.
and many trees to grow with vigour
Not so vigorous when climate change causes a massive drought.
They have 591 km of coastline.
lots of salt water + lots of solar energy = lots of desalinated water
What do you do with all the leftover toxic brine?
Presumably it’s toxic mostly because of the concentration of salt.
If it can’t be used—and up north salt is used in winter for roads—it can be cleaned a bit, diluted with more seawater and discharged back into the ocean.
((the brine of 1 mass unit of seawater that’s been desalinated) + 20 units of regular seawater) ÷ 20 = 20 units of 5% saltier seawater discharged
You make it sound so safe and easy. It isn’t.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/desalination-pours-more-toxic-brine-ocean-previously-thought
What is their ratios-of-brine to seawater do they use?
It’s nice that you think you, without any experience in the matter, can solve problems with desalination that engineers in the field can’t, but I doubt you are actually able to.
Buttma taxes
Gotta love capitalism.
particularly if you have lots of PVC cells to sell.
Gotta love unregulated capitalism.
The Enrons are Enroning the faces.
I guess they’ll have to shut down their bootstrap-pulling engines for awhile.
