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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

#151

Post by carmen_sandiego »

herpderperator wrote: post #130
tankenmate wrote: post #3

strangely every time i have tried to access the ercot site i keep get an "access denied" error. i wonder if it is because it thinks i am in europe, or maybe some other reason.

I've noticed that happen when browsing from outside the US on many sites recently, including Ercot. Extremely annoying. It's companies paying for Imperva's web firewall ("Cloud Application Security") that just blocks IPs based on country for no reason. https://www.imperva.com/why-am-i-seeing-this-page/

Well it's annoying for we rubberneckers, but presumably not for no reason. If your business literally only caters to people from Texas, why not decrease potential problem/attack/whatever vectors by dropping all other traffic?

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

#152

Post by WalterBright »

tzs wrote: post #94
WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the gouging laws only applied when disasters are declared. The gouging laws are stupid, anyway, as they simply ensure there's no gas to buy. Everybody is worse off.

In most disasters for which gouging laws would apply, won't the gas stations still run out even without such laws? The gas stations usually run out because the disaster stops transportation into the disaster area so the gas stations can't get resupplied.

What happened before the gouging laws was random people would fill 5 gallon jerry cans with gas and drive into the disaster zone and sell it out of the back of their pickup. They'd do other supplies, too. They'd appear on the scene almost immediately, sometimes days ahead of government relief.

But the anti-gouging laws put a stop to that, and now people are forced to wait for government relief.

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

#153

Post by chaganated »

imtringued wrote: post #141
chaganated wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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?

I wish you could have replied to his original comment. Perhaps he would have an answer.

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

#154

Post by Xylakant »

imtringued wrote: post #144
kortilla wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t see how that is a technology problem. The technology to run power grids that are resilient to cold temperatures exists, otherwise Canada, Alaska or any northern country wouldn’t have power. It’s just expensive and any player investing into cold-proofing their grid would have been priced out of the market in Texas long ago.

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

#155

Post by WalterBright »

taeric wrote: post #107
tzs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most disasters for which gouging laws would apply, won't the gas stations still run out even without such laws? The gas stations usually run out because the disaster stops transportation into the disaster area so the gas stations can't get resupplied.

This is an argument that feels right. However, you are just shifting first in, for biggest wallet. In large, I confess I am ok with that shift. But it really doesn't help more people. Or more at risk people.

> you are just shifting first in, for biggest wallet

Not shifting because there's no supply. The mosquito fleet of entrepreneurs driving in to make a buck selling gas, water, food, supplies, etc., disappeared.

Which would you rather do in Texas: watch your house slowly freeze and know you'll have 5 figures in freeze damage while waiting several days for the government to restore power, or buy a generator and a can of gas from a redneck who threw his own generator into his pickup with a can of gas and drove in from the next state to sell it to you for 3 figures?

> it really doesn't help more people

It really does help more people. Before the anti-gouge laws, there were always stories in the media about these people driving into disaster zones with supplies. But the media always demonized them, and so now they're against the law and you get to freeze.

Of course, there are good people who will still drive in and give away supplies, but they're a tiny fraction of the crowd that trucks supplies in to make a buck.

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

#156

Post by leoedin »

WalterBright wrote: post #76
Dylan16807 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what they got was no electricity when they needed it most. Yes. And what I'm saying is that it's a natural outcome of having a market. As far as I can tell you're arguing for "market pricing" but arguing against government interference in pricing, but I don't think you can have both of those at the same time. If the government doesn't intervene, most people will buy fixed-price electricity contracts instead of…

> you're arguing for "market pricing" but arguing against government interference in pricing Market pricing is prices not set by the government. By definition. > If the government doesn't intervene, most people will buy fixed-price electricity contracts instead of market-priced contracts. That's speculation. Even if true, it would be their choice. > Are you sure? They were being portrayed as victims in the news becau…

There is absolutely no possibility that the decision to black out a particular neighborhood was made based on the energy plans that individual houses were on. The fact some people on variable price plans had electricity is completely unrelated to that - their neighbours also would have had electricity.

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

#157

Post by imtringued »

Florinator wrote: post #56
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to exclude the market from the equation is for the state to have total control over the entire energy pipeline, from pulling natural gas out of the ground to the power plants to delivery. You can't simply mandate that energy prices will be a certain amount if the power plants still have to buy natural gas and other power sources from the free market. If you tried, the power plants would simply shut down…

I think you've just described Germany, which has the highest electricity prices in the world.

The electricity prices in Germany are growing faster than the cost of electricity. It's a counter productive tax structure at work, not a failure of renewable energy.

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

#158

Post by WalterBright »

kristjansson wrote: post #112
tzs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most disasters for which gouging laws would apply, won't the gas stations still run out even without such laws? The gas stations usually run out because the disaster stops transportation into the disaster area so the gas stations can't get resupplied.

The argument goes that if prices were unbounded above, demand would drop, and suppliers would move heaven and earth to deliver more to take advantage. No one fills their tank ‘just to be safe’ if the gas is $50/gallon; if they really could charge $50/gallon the oil companies would have private road clearing crews and tanker trucks outfitted like storm chasers? I don’t know. While such a policy might maximize economic…

Rationing and anti-gouging laws prevent supplies rushing in. A lot more people suffer as a result.

Rationing is particularly stupid because then the supplies are not going to those who need it, they are wasted on people who don't need it. WW2's gas rationing created a thriving (and very illegal) black market of people selling their gas rations they had no use for to people who did. A whole crime industry grew up around this, complete with drive-by shootings.

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

#159

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…

'That means more extreme weather. This has been understood since at least 1980.'

The article you provided spoke nothing of extreme weather. It only spoke of average temperature rise.

Temperature rise is not in dispute.

I like the more energy in the atmosphere theory, this would mean events like the suns poles flipping last year or solar events causing ionisation of the poles would also have the same affect increasing energy. Or even that magnetosphere of the earth has decreased by 6%. Which blocks cosmic rays and solar storms. Leading to more clouds being seeded.

It is not proven co2 causes extreme cold weather. It's a hypothesis.

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

#160

Post by robert_foss »

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #54
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…

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…

Having a power grid that is heavily reliant on burning fossile fules is a pretty absurdly bad externality too.
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