why frozen gas

[micky]

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.

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. )

Hence, no gas and no electricity.

[bruce bowser]

But profit and price gouging for heirs and heiresses to big oil fortunes certainly didn't see any 'no'.

[trader_4]

Thanks for that, it's the first time I heard the explanation for why freezing impacted nat gas there. Being connected to the national grid would have helped, but it's questionable how much. The region was in a bad, similar situation so there likely wasn't much excess that they could have sent to TX, but it probably could have helped some. And it's a good idea to have that flexibility for whatever might come along.

[gfretwell]

I agree it was a serious lack of planning for weather events but we have a long history of that. The North East may be among the worst. They won't even clear cut around the power lines so any no name storm, even an ice storm, wipes out power for tens of thousands. My ex lives less than 10 miles from the beltway and she had a generator long before I did. She ends up using it at least once a year. I have used mine once in 15 years. We actually have real storms here, not like "almost a storm Sandy" that wiped NY/NJ out because they don't have a wind code and have ignored FEMA since before the FIRM was established..

[angelica...]

Pffft. You probably don't even have snow load code requirements. :-)

Cindy Hamilton

[Ed Pawlowski]

We had a bad storm in CT some years back and the power company became much more aggressive cutting trees

The same people that complained about the lack of power in the storm were protesting the cutting of the trees.

[Ralph Mowery]

Someties the companies just can not win.

A few weeks ago they called off school here ( middle of NC) because of just a threat of an icey condition. Never happened. Good thing is that with most schools going to on line learning for several days a week I guess there was no big need to go to the school building but the classes could be held on line.

[angelica...]

Same here in Michigan. It didn't help that the utility started cutting in some of the more expensive Detroit suburbs.

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

Actually our download calculations are probably the same as yours. That is pretty universal. By the time you build a roof structure strong enough to hold in 150-180 MPH wind, snow ain't shit.

[gfretwell]

That is the problem. FPL just came down my street and cut every tree that was on or leaning into the right of way. That is 24 feet from the edge of the road. When I drove around Virginia and Maryland a couple years ago I saw power lines going through tunnels cut in the trees.

[angelica...]

Used to be the utility would come through everybody's yard and cut a big L out of the trees near the power lines.

The Michigan Public Service Commission finally made them do a proper job. The took out the two white pines that some previous owner of my house stupidly planted right under the power lines, plus a few other trees.

Cindy Hamilton

[Jim Joyce]

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.

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

[gfretwell]

I suppose the customers have a say in that because that cost would show up in their bill. These are cheap bastards 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.

[trader_4]

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.

[Ed Pawlowski]

The bills are coming from Griddy. From what I read, they are not the typical utility company but a wholesale middleman. You sign up, pay a monthly membership fee, then you get to buy electric at the wholesale price and save money. sure, it may fluctuate, but look at the savings today. There was no cap.

Griddy even told people to switch to another supplier but there was not enough time to get them switched. It was the Griddy suppliers that increased price and they just passed it on.

What I'm not sure about it who decided to gouge with the high prices for gas. I understand the price when from the normal fluctuation of $9 to $15 to $1500 per mm therms. Gas wells not productive enough for profit were suddenly opened again at those prices.

[gfretwell]

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 f***ed.

[Ralph Mowery]

I don't know about some areas of the country, but I think that where I live the power company (Duke Enegery) charges are set by the government and they have to ask the state for permission to raise the rate.

[rbowman]

In 2019 there was a period of hours when the state mandated $9000 / MW hour kicked in. It was a warning to Griddy customers but since it was only a few hours they either didn't notice or figured it balanced against the overall savings of buying at the spot energy market price.

It's a gamble. The propane company I do business with offers a pre-buy at the end of summer for the current price. Most winters I break even, one winter when the price went up I made out. A couple of years I lost a little when the price dropped. So it goes. The electric co-op I'm in does the same thing with long term contracts with the BPA. Sometimes it may be less expensive on the energy market but there are no surprises.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Most areas of the country are similar but Texas opted to make their own grid to escape regulations. In CT we could choose a supplier but they all had fixed rates in a narrow range.

Texas has a bunch of suppliers too, some cheap. Just look at the number of choices

[Clare Snyder]

Texas is "unregulated'