Re:Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design
by cortesoft on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @07:31PM
(#30266934)
> We don't have the collective power to save everyon
Except we do? We have plenty of resources if they were distributed more evenly. In this particular example, other states are able to provide energy during rare events because they did not choose to go with a pure market based system. They aren’t on the verge of collapse.
Re:Texas power crisis revealed flaw in market’s design
by magicalist on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @07:33PM
(#30266942)
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
by Retric on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @07:33PM
(#30266952)
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
by PaulHoule on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @07:31PM
(#30266931)
Back before electricity deregulation we were paying more for electricity but in the process of rate setting we were looking at it from a systems perspective in which reliability was considered holistically.
(The lower rates were not just from ‘efficient markets’ but also it being possible for high cost producers such as steam turbine coal fired power plants to go bankrupt in the fracked gas age w/o bankrupting the whole utility.)
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 it doesn't care about our sense of ethics.