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Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

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Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#141

Post by imtringued »

chaganated wrote: post #117
mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly agree. Free markets often fail to adopt low cost protections to tail events. E.g. the free market didn't get us 100% of new cars having seatbelts and airbags, government requirements did. And those standards were fought by the car manufacturers. My point is we need regulations to mandate our energy system to be resilient to outlier events (heat/cold/flooding/high wind etc.) and that's a government function s…

[flagged]

Did he count all the deaths caused by fossil fuel plant particulate emissions and all the future deaths caused by right wing extremists using deadly force to stop migration to rich countries?

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#142

Post by godtoldmetodoit »

underwater wrote: post #135
mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly agree. Free markets often fail to adopt low cost protections to tail events. E.g. the free market didn't get us 100% of new cars having seatbelts and airbags, government requirements did. And those standards were fought by the car manufacturers. My point is we need regulations to mandate our energy system to be resilient to outlier events (heat/cold/flooding/high wind etc.) and that's a government function s…

I don't see how the free market could have ever succeeded here. Even if it somehow accounted for events of the last week: the lost lives, damaged properties, and economic impact, it was billed as a once-in-100 year event. Which company is going to take a hit to their profits each quarter so they can prepare properly? The companies who don't will be more competitive and successful right up until a freak event actually…

If generators were required to be winterized in order to access the market, that would have solved the problem.

No individual company will take the profit hit without a regulation forcing all the actors to do it.

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#143

Post by godmode2019 »

carbonguy wrote: post #134
godmode2019 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202164535.h...

This article is referring to the effect of a class of compounds called "aerosols," which does not include CO2. Aerosols do prevent some fraction of solar energy from reaching Earth's surface, but this is separate from the effect of increased CO2 concentrations.

Keep reading.

Aerosols are human emitions, carbon heavy pollution being a order of magnitude bigger than the others. The carbon heavy aerosols turn into co2.

When I was in China I experienced this first hand , it was super hot summer weather very very high pollution. Over night their was freak rain the must of cleared the air because it was the bluest sky's I have ever seen. This tropical weather suddenly because the coldest I have ever been. The pollution acted like a blanket trapping the warmth. With that blanket gone, I had to rush to the store and buy a large winter jacket.

I reread your comment and we may be disagreeing on terms.

[Edit] removed an article

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#144

Post by imtringued »

kortilla wrote: post #86
josephg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets seem to do a bad job with resiliency. Redundancies, winterisation, warehousing N95 masks just in case, etc is treated as inefficiency by a free market and eliminated. These aren’t externalities - is there an economics name for this? I’m sure it’s been noticed before.

Free markets do account for huge shortages, but we’ve eliminated the motivation for actors to do something about it with anti price-gouging regulations. There would be tons of stockpiles if businesses could appropriately upcharge when there was mass panic buying. Instead we stupidly lock prices, which wipes out most of the point of paying extra storage costs compared to a just in time competitor. The problem is we’ve…

This is a fringe event. Large scale grid storage is at least 10 years away. It's not a market failure. The irony is that all the complaints about grid storage will disappear once we have it because running a grid without grid storage will be considered insanity by that point.

The technology isn't there. The real solution would have been to cut demand to non essential uses.

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#145

Post by godmode2019 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #89
godmode2019 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to be negative. I just get bothered when see co2 makes things cold, its almost absurdist joke ie the one thing to nullify a hypothesis is now incorporated into the hypothesis to strength the argument. I don't know anything about Texans, I don't even live in America but American politics trickle down

It's not "co2 makes thinks cold", but there is a real possibility your previous statement that a "trace element" can't affect the jet stream is certainly up for debate. A large factor in the strength of the jet stream is the temperature differential between polar regions and lower latitudes. It's well known at this point that polar regions are warming the fastest, so there is a smaller differential, and the hypothesi…

Paywall.

I would like to read it

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#146

Post by godmode2019 »

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #81
godmode2019 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to be negative. I just get bothered when see co2 makes things cold, its almost absurdist joke ie the one thing to nullify a hypothesis is now incorporated into the hypothesis to strength the argument. I don't know anything about Texans, I don't even live in America but American politics trickle down

If you're question is 'why can increased CO2 lead to colder weather in Texas?' There's a huge difference between describing average temperatures (what people describe as 'global warming') and describing the temperatures on any specific day. Previously, a strong jet stream air current trapped cold polar air far north of Texas (which is say 30' North latitude). As the pole's warm, the jet has become pone to weakening a…

I get the idea I just dont think its a strong argument.

If you don't mind can you read this article about SSG (which is what caused this weather event, noted in January)

https://eos.org/features/how-sudden-stratospheric-warming-af...

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#147

Post by imtringued »

rhodozelia wrote: post #78
Osiris wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market solves all problems why would the government even need to mandate winterization? Wouldn't smart businesses have done the risk analysis and done the work? Maybe the problem here is that loss of electrical power has a significant external cost that isn't absorbed by the utilities. In other words, the cost of winterization was more than the cost to fix the damage to their equipment but doesn't take into ac…

Vertically integrated government owned and operated utilities have imploded too- notably Ontario hydro failed due to costs related to their nuclear plants, and the rate payers had an extra line item on their bill - $10/mo? - for I don’t know how many decades to pay down the stranded debt. I don’t think markets are the right tool for electricity generation transmission and distribution - too much coordination is requi…

The Chinese model is pretty spot on. Just let the government own voting shares in private companies. The question isn't whether public vs private is better, it's about how to harness the best parts of both. You want the government to step in and prevent unfair and counter productive behavior and you want the private company to run the infrastructure as efficiently as it can.

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#148

Post by thread_id »

bdonlan wrote: post #19
spacemanmatt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that is an accurate description of disincentivizing oversupply. I hate ERCOT.

Unfortunately, storage of electricity is quite difficult; supply and demand therefore need to be balanced at all times. An oversupply (ie, overvoltage or excessive frequency) will damage equipment, so prices go negative to encourage those plants which can go offline quickly to do so; generation stations which take longer to shut down or start up, on the other hand, tend to stay running.

Perfect explanation. This is an example of market contango where the spot price is actually below the futures price completely due to the weather event which has triggered a collapse in demand on the grid. And because of the nature of power generation, for many suppliers, it is actually less costly to remain running and sell at a loss than to shut down.

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#149

Post by silvestrov »

ggm wrote: post #22

The market in power should only exist to optimise. Its become a rei-ified good in its own right, and is being gamed by bad faith actors with stranded assets (coal, oil) to make a point about green power and capital investment money they want. It's possible no power network could have avoided some of this, but its patently obvious a regulated power utility function needs investment, and the market is not the best mode…

I could argue that there isn't really a market as the Texas grid is (almost fully) isolated from the rest of USA.

The first change should be a federal law that all electric grids in USA are well connected so there is one big market place and Texas would be able to get electricity from other states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

For a reference: see how many other countries that a 3-million citizens part of Denmark is connected to: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE?page=highscore&solar=... (Needs Chrome/Firefox due to WebGL).

Re: Clearing price for supplying power to Texas grid –$31.65

#150

Post by godmode2019 »

hedora wrote: post #87
godmode2019 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but how does a trace element affect the polar vortex/ jetstream bending. It doesn't. Its not a good argument if all weather situations can be explained by "climate change". It's too hot - climate change It's too cold - climate change What you are describing is called weather.

Rising CO2 puts more energy into the atmosphere. That means more extreme weather. This has been understood since at least 1980. Here’s a report from the American Petroleum Institute from 1980 that correctly projected the economic impact and timing of current extreme weather events. https://mk0insideclimats3pe4.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload... In some other comments you say the science is still an open question. The…

Thanks I'll need to sit down to read that one
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