Sims said:

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Maybe we can get Austin on their own grid. Seems like they use a lotta power then scream about others.

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That's not even Austin. That's Round Rock.

Sims said:

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Maybe we can get Austin on their own grid. Seems like they use a lotta power then scream about others.

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See? That's one of the many reasons I am all in favor of just shutting off Austin first, second, and third when there is a crisis.

BQAg84 said:

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fka ftc said:

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Deregulation of the market in Texas has exactly ZERO to do with the issues of generation capacity and EVERYTHING to do with explosive population growth combined with a lack of adequate new generation capacity which has been torpedoed by stupidity in regulations on coal, nuclear, gas and other fuels inconsistent with the greenie push.

Obama more than anything is to blame. And a stupid knee jerk reaction to ***ushima that had more to do with piss poor plant design than anything else. A piss poor plant design that they ignored warnings about for decades.

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On the contrary, it has quite a lot to do with it, since you replaced planned capacity increases with a bunch of thinly capitalized startups competing to be the bottom dollar provider. The other factors such as push for renewables instead of reliables contributed as well.

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I do not think the power providers / generators had any desire to be the lowest cost provider. Yes, the REPs compete to be the lower cost, but not the generators who "make" the power.

Natural gas markets in late 2000s hurt the Texas generation market pretty hard as well. But generation capacity issue and lack of investments in generation capacity are due to regulatory environments making the math not work. It is not more complex than that.

fka ftc said:

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Deregulation of the market in Texas has exactly ZERO to do with the issues of generation capacity and EVERYTHING to do with explosive population growth combined with a lack of adequate new generation capacity which has been torpedoed by stupidity in regulations on coal, nuclear, gas and other fuels inconsistent with the greenie push.

Obama more than anything is to blame. And a stupid knee jerk reaction to ***ushima that had more to do with piss poor plant design than anything else. A piss poor plant design that they ignored warnings about for decades.

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This de-regulation got the TDU out of billing and customer service has nothing to do with power generation

Unlike some utilities Austin Energy actually owns and operates our own generation on the grid. We have Gas, Coal, Nuclear plants that produce 4,600MW. Then additionally we have 3 big Chiller Stations, 1.5MW battery storage, & 2,900MW of solar & biomass. So AE is actually one of the utilities that helps the grid with our generation capabilities.

BurnetAggie99 said:

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Unlike some utilities Austin Energy actually owns and operates our own generation on the grid. We have Gas, Coal, Nuclear plants that produce 4,600MW. Then additionally we have 3 big Chiller Stations, 1.5MW battery storage, & 2,900MW of solar & biomass. So AE is actually one of the utilities that helps the grid with our generation capabilities.

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Texas Municipal Power (which Bryan and Denton are part of) does the same.

BurnetAggie99 said:

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Unlike some utilities Austin Energy actually owns and operates our own generation on the grid. We have Gas, Coal, Nuclear plants that produce 4,600MW. Then additionally we have 3 big Chiller Stations, 1.5MW battery storage, & 2,900MW of solar & biomass. So AE is actually one of the utilities that helps the grid with our generation capabilities.

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It sure looks to me like Austin Energy, as a monopolist co-op, has been retiring reliable coal, investing in EV everywhere projects, and renewables left and right. Sure, they are publicly owned and have some dispatchable nameplate power, but…those are absurd investments/divestments, and the ERCOT map doesn't lie today.

czarnicolas_one said:

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Is power cheaper now than it otherwise would have been had the PUC regulation continued?

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Yes, the answer is yes. Check any deregulated residential electricity plan against the areas in Texas that still have municipal utility monopolies.

BurnetAggie99 said:

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Unlike some utilities Austin Energy actually owns and operates our own generation on the grid. We have Gas, Coal, Nuclear plants that produce 4,600MW. Then additionally we have 3 big Chiller Stations, 1.5MW battery storage, & 2,900MW of solar & biomass. So AE is actually one of the utilities that helps the grid with our generation capabilities.

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Austin Energy has gas plants, a 50% share of a coal plant and 16% share of Bay City nuclear plant.

Also, all generators within ERCOT are required to sell their electricity to ERCOT and in turn purchase back all of their usage they sell to their customers.

The co-ops are no different than other generators in that regards so one does not help more than another.

hurricanejake02 said:

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czarnicolas_one said:

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Is power cheaper now than it otherwise would have been had the PUC regulation continued?

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Yes, the answer is yes. Check any deregulated residential electricity plan against the areas in Texas that still have municipal utility monopolies.

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It's way, way more complicated than that. At times, those in co-ops can be cheaper than those in the competitive market. Again, that is on the consumer side.

All generation gets sold to ERCOT and bought back by the REPs, coops and munis.

This applies only to ERCOT areas and not the parts of state not within ERCOT's domain (I.e. Entergy in E Texas, etc)

I guess I should have clarified, "for the average consumer...." it isn't any more complicated than that.

BQAg84 said:

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fka ftc said:

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Deregulation of the market in Texas has exactly ZERO to do with the issues of generation capacity and EVERYTHING to do with explosive population growth combined with a lack of adequate new generation capacity which has been torpedoed by stupidity in regulations on coal, nuclear, gas and other fuels inconsistent with the greenie push.

Obama more than anything is to blame. And a stupid knee jerk reaction to ***ushima that had more to do with piss poor plant design than anything else. A piss poor plant design that they ignored warnings about for decades.

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On the contrary, it has quite a lot to do with it, since you replaced planned capacity increases with a bunch of thinly capitalized startups competing to be the bottom dollar provider. The other factors such as push for renewables instead of reliables contributed as well.

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Guess we will ignore all the coal plants that shut down BECAUSE of regulations.

Meh, I have been in Coserv for the better part of 20 years. There have been times my net power costs were cheaper than what the REPs can provide. YMMV.

It's not really an issue as the consumer has no choice if they are in a coop or muni or not part of ERCOT to participate in the competitive market.

samurai_science said:

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BQAg84 said:

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fka ftc said:

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Deregulation of the market in Texas has exactly ZERO to do with the issues of generation capacity and EVERYTHING to do with explosive population growth combined with a lack of adequate new generation capacity which has been torpedoed by stupidity in regulations on coal, nuclear, gas and other fuels inconsistent with the greenie push.

Obama more than anything is to blame. And a stupid knee jerk reaction to ***ushima that had more to do with piss poor plant design than anything else. A piss poor plant design that they ignored warnings about for decades.

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On the contrary, it has quite a lot to do with it, since you replaced planned capacity increases with a bunch of thinly capitalized startups competing to be the bottom dollar provider. The other factors such as push for renewables instead of reliables contributed as well.

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Guess we will ignore all the coal plants that shut down BECAUSE of regulations.

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Coal is a dirty fuel. One can completely the CO2 aspect of coal and still come to the conclusion the crap those plants spewed into the atmosphere from burning coal completely warrants the transition to other fuels, including natural gas.

Bubblez said:

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samurai_science said:

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BQAg84 said:

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fka ftc said:

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Deregulation of the market in Texas has exactly ZERO to do with the issues of generation capacity and EVERYTHING to do with explosive population growth combined with a lack of adequate new generation capacity which has been torpedoed by stupidity in regulations on coal, nuclear, gas and other fuels inconsistent with the greenie push.

Obama more than anything is to blame. And a stupid knee jerk reaction to ***ushima that had more to do with piss poor plant design than anything else. A piss poor plant design that they ignored warnings about for decades.

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On the contrary, it has quite a lot to do with it, since you replaced planned capacity increases with a bunch of thinly capitalized startups competing to be the bottom dollar provider. The other factors such as push for renewables instead of reliables contributed as well.

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Guess we will ignore all the coal plants that shut down BECAUSE of regulations.

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Coal is a dirty fuel. One can completely the CO2 aspect of coal and still come to the conclusion the crap those plants spewed into the atmosphere from burning coal completely warrants the transition to other fuels, including natural gas.

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Oddly enough, I didn't hear anyone without power during Uri talking about how glad they were those retired coal-fired plants were off-line.

Looks like tomorrow is going to be just as troublesome. Saturday we might avoid blackouts, but it will be close based on the current projection.

samurai_science said:

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BQAg84 said:

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fka ftc said:

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Deregulation of the market in Texas has exactly ZERO to do with the issues of generation capacity and EVERYTHING to do with explosive population growth combined with a lack of adequate new generation capacity which has been torpedoed by stupidity in regulations on coal, nuclear, gas and other fuels inconsistent with the greenie push.

Obama more than anything is to blame. And a stupid knee jerk reaction to ***ushima that had more to do with piss poor plant design than anything else. A piss poor plant design that they ignored warnings about for decades.

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On the contrary, it has quite a lot to do with it, since you replaced planned capacity increases with a bunch of thinly capitalized startups competing to be the bottom dollar provider. The other factors such as push for renewables instead of reliables contributed as well.

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Guess we will ignore all the coal plants that shut down BECAUSE of regulations.

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In a sane world, the feds would have ZERO input into how a state generates its electricity but alas the feds have made a completely ****nannery of electrical generation in the US.

Power in our whole north Fort Worth neighborhood just went out.

Maroon Elephant said:

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Power in our whole north Fort Worth neighborhood just went out.

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Local issue. We're not yet to the point where rolling blackout start.

Man I wish Monticello was still burning coal right about now

Along with sandow, big brown, and gibbons creek.

MISO currently…whole lot of coal

Charpie said:

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Sims said:

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Maybe we can get Austin on their own grid. Seems like they use a lotta power then scream about others.

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That's not even Austin. That's Round Rock.

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And Georgetown.

What's up with that?!?

Yeah we def could be using that 4,800 MW right about now

javajaws said:

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Charpie said:

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Sims said:

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Maybe we can get Austin on their own grid. Seems like they use a lotta power then scream about others.

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That's not even Austin. That's Round Rock.

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And Georgetown.

What's up with that?!?

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Tesla gigawatt factory.

It's transmission bottleneck causing congestion pricing.

I'm assuming they can drop a few hundred mw quite easily. What would it have to be before Uri style blackouts were actually a possibility? Doubt we'll ever see that again outside of a natural disaster

gonemaroon said:

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I said outages are low, and we don't have a plan in place to have more generation built. I explain that in some other posts. And since you brought up winterization - during that winter storm in December that came through had we not had wind and solar that would have gotten very interesting - I think over night we had 5,000MW of derates and trips. It'll never ever be perfect, but have to plan for the obvious.

Our plan is more solar and more battery - which absolutely will fail on a winter storm repeat.

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It will also fail in the summers at sunset when the solar goes away. Ercot records show that at sunset on August 22, 2023, the gas, coal and lignite was generating 53,561 MW and wind 13,548 MW. If you divide the latter into the former the result is 3.95. Therefore, in the future when we shut down all fossil fuels as the climate advocates we do, wind and battery generation will have to increase 3.5 times to supply that day's load at sunset.. This does not include the future load growth due to electric cars, all electric homes and etc. It will be a monumental undertaking.

Demand exceeds supply starting around 7:30

I think we make it through. Still some capacity for gas to spin up.

Not sure how the batteries work in the forecast. Are they excluded and then provided when needed if demand exceeds generation?

Last time we got close to having outages like this, my lib neighbor turned on all her lights in her house around 8 pm. Why are libs such miserable people that want the grid to fail? Y'all voted for this!

XXXVII said:

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Last time we got close to having outages like this, my lib neighbor turned on all her lights in her house around 8 pm. Why are libs such miserable people that want the grid to fail? Y'all voted for this!

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On Twitter, lots of commies talking about doing the same thing because they think breaking the grid will ensure they sweep Texas in 2024.

XXXVII said:

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Last time we got close to having outages like this, my lib neighbor turned on all her lights in her house around 8 pm. Why are libs such miserable people that want the grid to fail? Y'all voted for this!

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Reading many of their responses on X makes me question how they are able to successfully use a microwave oven.

Rain showers in Houston of all places may actually save the day. 95% of the time these dire straits amount to nothing. Not saying we are out of the woods, but it is looking better.

Megawatt price down to 155 right now. Hit 3500 earlier