Analysis: Texas power outage leaves officials working political angles

Re:Analysis: Texas power outage leaves officials working pol... by xenadu02 on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @08:09PM (#26174161)

Texas has taken a very "free market" approach to regulating electricity. I lived there during de-regulation and whatever else happened it didn't lower the price of electricity very much. In my opinion it was an excuse to line some pockets.

At any rate there has been zero investment in grid interconnects which could have been much more helpful. ERCOT only has the capacity to source sub-1% of load over the interconnects which is not meaningful. That's one of the ultimate failures in my mind: A relatively small investment in HVDC interconnect upgrades would have allowed the grid to import power - especially from the US Western grid which has not been impacted the way some parts of the US Eastern have.

ERCOT is fairly toothless as well. I'm not sure they bothered to issue any requirements for weatherproofing prior to the freeze but they wouldn't be able to do much about it if the generating plants refused to comply. And the Texas Railroad Commission regulates Natural Gas. And by "regulate" I mean let them do whatever they like.

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Re:Analysis: Texas power outage leaves officials working pol... by bryanlarsen on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @08:40PM (#26174412)

How fully was it de-regulated? An advantage of regulation is that it generally shields you from lawsuits. If you follow the rules, you generally can't be successfully sued for negligence. If there are no rules more of the responsibility falls on the courts. If things were fully deregulated the producers should be hit with some massive lawsuits from the families of those who died.

IANAL.

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Re:Analysis: Texas power outage leaves officials working pol... by bcrosby95 on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @08:43PM (#26174438)

There have been no investment in grid interconnects because ERCOT does not want to abide by federal regulations.

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Re:Analysis: Texas power outage leaves officials working pol... by bryanlarsen on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @08:45PM (#26174452)

There are (small) interconnects, yet ERCOT is still not federally regulated.

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Re:Analysis: Texas power outage leaves officials working pol... by bcrosby95 on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:27PM (#26175799)

These are small, and so far the courts have ruled those small interconnects do not open them to federal regulation. There were lawsuits back in the 70s over this.

Mess with the status quo too much and that could change. If they want to continue to avoid federal regulation, it's in their best interests to not invest heavily in interconnect.

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