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Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design

news.cornell.edu

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

#181

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #170
thomascgalvin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deregulation isn't about improving consumer outcomes, it's about improving profits. Expecting it to result in lower cost per kWh is a losing game.

What seems most remarkable to me is that we've got a fair amount of anti-free-market vitriol in the replies around here but nobody feels a need to provide any argument or evidence. The only person waving evidence around in this thread demonstrates that Texas has substantially lower electricity prices than the US average. And the article argues that there are edge cases where the market design could be improved. But I…

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by refurb »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #101
olliej wrote: post #99

Reducing end user prices is the claimed outcome explicitly made by conservative groups. Much like the claim that "reducing taxes" will reduce prices.

Yeah, those are called "lies".

It’s amazing to see comments like this on a technology focused website - an industry that has moved leaps and bounds due to competition and free markets.

I assume these commenters are either too young to have much life experience or young and idealistic without seeing how the world really works.

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

#185

Post by thephyber »

vorpalhex wrote: post #176
thephyber wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up in Texas, Texas history (not just of their electric grid) is crazy. The Alamo was about illegal immigrants from the USA fighting for the right to keep cotton-picking slaves in Mexican territory, then revolting when the Mexican military came to enforce the law. And it was a tactical loss for the revolution. It’s crazy that it managed to become a rallying cry.

You have over-simplified to the point of being incorrect. The Alamo is one of many battles during the Texas revolution which primarily occurred due to the move of Mexico to a centralized power instead of a federalized one. Texas had already endured a constitutional change, increased taxes, immigration being made illegal and changes in the legality of slavery. While Santa Anna blamed "illegal immigrants" heavily, he a…

And yet this revolution was still started by American settlers and other Americans that the settlers convinced to cross into Mexico.

I agree that Santa Ana was authoritarian, but the Alamo was not a symbol of freedom from authoritarianism. It was a rebellion which was only a relevant point because American settlers chose to live in Mexico and failed to uphold the contract with their new government: to limit slavery to their own properties and not to spread their Protestantism. Your interpretation of the situation was missing more relevant info than mine was.

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

#187

Post by Dylan16807 »

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #89
Panzer04 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pri…

This was absolutely not the problem during the 2021 winter storm. There was an absolute lack of power to be sold, at any price. Raising the spot MWH prices to 9 billion USD would have made no difference in what could be brought on-line, only how badly load serving entities were getting screwed. Empty office buildings all over the state that were lucky enough to be on critical circuits were beaming out lights the whol…

> There was an absolute lack of power to be sold, at any price. Raising the spot MWH prices to 9 billion USD would have made no difference in what could be brought on-line, only how badly load serving entities were getting screwed.

Under the system Texas uses, it's the promise of those huge payments that encourages people to build excess peaker plants.

If you remove them, and don't replace them with something better, then outages will become more common.

The reason they exist isn't to hurt load serving entities.

> amortizing the costs of that through rate increases for probably the next decade

That's a good thing. That's the good outcome. The better alternative to giant peak fees, which is paying for capacity, has the same result: the base price is a little higher.

The bad outcome is entities that can't just amortize over a decade or longer.

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

#188

Post by p_l »

refurb wrote: post #183
thomascgalvin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, those are called "lies".

It’s amazing to see comments like this on a technology focused website - an industry that has moved leaps and bounds due to competition and free markets. I assume these commenters are either too young to have much life experience or young and idealistic without seeing how the world really works.

Or maybe some of us are aware of huge amounts of public grants that went into building up the foundations of that industry till it could operate without induced demand. And many of us also are aware of different constraints impacting monopoly creation and how capital intensive areas behave differently.

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

#189

Post by refurb »

p_l wrote: post #188
refurb wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing to see comments like this on a technology focused website - an industry that has moved leaps and bounds due to competition and free markets. I assume these commenters are either too young to have much life experience or young and idealistic without seeing how the world really works.

Or maybe some of us are aware of huge amounts of public grants that went into building up the foundations of that industry till it could operate without induced demand. And many of us also are aware of different constraints impacting monopoly creation and how capital intensive areas behave differently.

Sure, the military bootstrapped the semi-conductor industry, but we’re a long fucking way from the 8088 processor - thanks to capitalism.

I mean for $1,000 I can have effectively a 1990’s supercomputer in my pocket. The government didn’t do that, greedy capitalists did.

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

#190

Post by Dylan16807 »

tzs wrote: post #111
Panzer04 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pri…

There's not really much functional difference from my point of view between my heater and oven and fridge and lights not working because there is no electricity at my place due to a rolling blackout, and them not working because I had to turn them all off because the price has spiked so high I can't afford to use them.

If enough people are reacting to the spiking price, then it will peak at a much lower level, one where you'd feel okay running perhaps half of your things.
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