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Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

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Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#51

Post by 542458 »

deadmutex wrote: post #27
Warrenio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every home that uses electricity for heat is a mission-critical site when it's 0 degrees F outside. Kids froze to death in their own beds.

> Kids froze to death in their own beds. Wow, that sounds horrible. I tried googling this since I hadn't heard about this before. I came across one 11 year old who his parents claimed died of hypothermia. However, the autopsy revealed that his death was due to carbon monoxide. Source: https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/conroe-police-autops...

I’m not aware of any cases beyond that one - however, that case is still due to the failed electricity grid. When power went out and homes began to freeze, Texans fired up cars and generators to keep heat around. Harris county alone saw almost 600 cases of CO poisoning during the blackout.

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#52

Post by magicalist »

anonporridge wrote: post #35
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this leaves for potentially unethical situations like vulnerable populations who cannot afford batteries or winterized electricity. Im thinking someone disabled living on disability probably can’t afford premium electricity bills even if they need to maintain their lifesaving and expensive equipment yknow?

There's still a dark balancing act going on. We don't have the collective power to save everyone, and if we overextend ourselves trying to do that, then there is a risk that the whole system collapses for everyone, or partially collapses and causes more pain than might have happened without spreading ourselves too thin. We obviously need to struggle to make a good world for everyone, but nature is fucking brutal and…

This is a platitude ignoring the actual facts of what went on. Producers of natural gas and electricity didn't implement the winterization mechanisms they needed to, in spite of the rest of the country doing so and decades of recommendations to do so. No one required them to do it, though, so they didn't.

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#53

Post by Retric »

anonporridge wrote: post #35
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this leaves for potentially unethical situations like vulnerable populations who cannot afford batteries or winterized electricity. Im thinking someone disabled living on disability probably can’t afford premium electricity bills even if they need to maintain their lifesaving and expensive equipment yknow?

There's still a dark balancing act going on. We don't have the collective power to save everyone, and if we overextend ourselves trying to do that, then there is a risk that the whole system collapses for everyone, or partially collapses and causes more pain than might have happened without spreading ourselves too thin. We obviously need to struggle to make a good world for everyone, but nature is fucking brutal and…

The grid is a tiny fraction of our economy but the economy is extremely dependent on it. Ensuring the Texas grid could survive a winter storm costs less than 1% as much as even a single large scale blackout in cold weather. The difference is simply who needs to pay.

Grid operators only see the costs they don’t see the benefits thus an inefficient allocation of resources is guaranteed.

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#54

Post by cortesoft »

anonporridge wrote: post #45
nexuist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to cut off industrial and commercial sites first, which draw the most power anyways, and keep residential zoning online as much as possible. The economy can take a break for one day.

Depends. Some industrial customers like datacenters have strict availability agreements with customers and won't be able to accept prolonged cutoffs. Forcing non residential customers like these to curtail their use would likely end up driving the industry (and corresponding tax revenue) elsewhere. But what you're talking about does already exist, and it's called demand response, https://www.energy.gov/oe/activities/…

If people are freezing in their homes, then damn any availability agreement a datacenter has.

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#55

Post by maxerickson »

bcrl wrote: post #38
maxerickson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your first paragraph about Texas specifically or something? Utilities in most places are pretty heavily regulated. In like that last 20 years we have had ~0 gas outages and probably less than 10 days of power outages here. The weather event in Texas had the problem of being rather extreme, but it sure wasn't unimaginable or anything like that.

10 days worth of power outages in 20 years is not something to brag about. I lived in Toronto where we had maybe 1 hour of power outages in 5 years (my Linux box had >485 days of uptime on wall power with no UPS until I had to move). Well, that was until the 2003 blackout hit and took out power for 24+ hours.

It's not a brag, it's a data free guess intended to not be wrong low.

A transformer at a substation that serves much of the town blew up a few years ago causing a several day outage, so it definitely isn't a few hours. They had rolling black outs in place in less than a day and had power back in less than 3 days (there was not a spare on site).

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#56

Post by klyrs »

deadmutex wrote: post #27
Warrenio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every home that uses electricity for heat is a mission-critical site when it's 0 degrees F outside. Kids froze to death in their own beds.

> Kids froze to death in their own beds. Wow, that sounds horrible. I tried googling this since I hadn't heard about this before. I came across one 11 year old who his parents claimed died of hypothermia. However, the autopsy revealed that his death was due to carbon monoxide. Source: https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/conroe-police-autops...

This report shows 8 minor deaths, approx 2/3 of total deaths were hypothermia, but doesn't show a cause/age breakdown

https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news/updates/SMOC_FebWinterStorm_...

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#58

Post by spamizbad »

burlesona wrote: post #4

This is classic “efficiency” vs “antifragility.” There are some things that are okay to ocassionally fail, and for those it’s often good to pursue efficiency. But for something critical like electricity, the market all decided - with good financial justification - that it would be more profitable to just let the system fail occasionally than to be hardened against long-tail events. In systems engineering if we want t…

What I don’t understand about the Texas electricity market is that, despite how “free” it is, price per kwh isn’t terribly competitive compared to more tightly regulated states - having the highest average residential rates in the West South Central region: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#59

Post by Panzer04 »

kerblang wrote: post #11

Not very informative. Both gas & electric markets did payout MASSIVELY to those who had resources because the pricing absolutely exploded by well over 10,000%. The Brazos Electric Co-Op went to bankruptcy court (ongoing) because they ran up a multi-billion dollar bill over the course of the week because they didn't want their fucking customers to freeze to fucking death . If there's such a thing as financial rape, th…

If you don’t raise prices, many people/companies will senselessly consume excess electricity they don’t need. Thus, you get power outages instead of merely high prices.

That being said, it’s not like most people have a real-time monitor of electricity prices so those that can will actually reduce consumption.

Ultimately, in a constrained system, either you raise prices (and ensure availability, at expense) or fix prices and ensure scarcity for those unfortunate enough to suffer it (Ie. Rolling blackouts, no fuel at the gas station, etc)

Re: Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

#60

Post by _-david-_ »

jackson1442 wrote: post #36
tomohawk wrote: post #29

Energy in Texas, like everywhere else in the US, is heavily regulated. They can't just raise rates or borrow money whenever they want. These decisions are regulated and political. So there is a set amount of income coming in to improve things and repair things and to pay off debt. They were required to build out wind power. Probably a good thing in the big scheme of things, but that takes money away from other priori…

You suggest that these problems would be faced everywhere. So why is Texas the only one experiencing them?

Didn't we see the same issue in Oregon or Washington (I can't remember which) at the same time?
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