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On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 06:43:00 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 4:59:43 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 05:32:23 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 11:02:13 PM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 07:02:25 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 3:15:58 PM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 09:27:58 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 11:31:52 AM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:14:08 -0600, Jim Joyce

wrote:
On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 07:21:16 -0500, micky
wrote:

Somone on NPR's Morning Edition excplained that the water in
natural gas
is removed by the gas companies in the north, so thta it
won't freeze,
but they didn't do that in Texas, so it did freeze.

I suspect they're not set up to do it even if they wanted to.

In Texas, like you said, the natural gas distribution system
isn't
winterized. Likewise, the wind farms aren't winterized, which
led to Gov
Abbott's bizarre claim that wind energy stops working in cold
weather. I
guess someone should tell him that wind energy works just fine
in cold
weather if you take steps to make it so. There are plenty of
examples of
that around the world.

This isn't the first time the power grid partially collapsed
in Texas as a
result of cold weather. Just like before, recommendations get
made that
ERCOT should winterize their freaking equipment, but as
before, they've
said they won't do it because it costs too much.

I suppose the customers have a say in that because that cost
would
show up in their bill. These are cheap *******s and they might
still
say no assuming this won't happen again any time soon.
You just have to think of those people who tied their bill to
the
wholesale cost of power and got clobbered when the wholesale
price
skyrocketed.
Other places are willing to pay extra for better reliability.
We actually understand we pay a little extra on our bills here
in
Florida to cover storms. We had a "Storm Charge" on our bills
for
years after Charley and Wilma but the extra we paid in on the
regular
service charge was enough to cover the Irma damage so they
didn't need
to tack on an extra charge to cover the shortfall.

And of course, the Texas electric grid is separate from the
rest of
America, so they won't be regulated by the feds, but this
means they
also can't take electricity from the rest of the country when
they need
it, like last week. (Except for El Paso, which is connected
to the USA
grid and iiuc not the Texas grid. )

There are actually 3 electrical grids in the US: West, East,
and Texas.

Hence, no gas and no electricity.

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were
getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I
can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power
companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the
suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial
ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be
reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off,
there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it
or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger
solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge
totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that
day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market
with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they
got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican
state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually
commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have
never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you
have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities
market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much
delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric
disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the
regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many
elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take
that gamble, they didn't learn much in all of those years.

When people want something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

That's bull****. I have never been stupid enough to pay any
fee for a bank account, credit card etc etc etc and have
ended up so comfortably off that I havent even bothered
to do the paperwork to get the state aged pension etc.