In this context, I wouldn't be interested in averages. Their systemic issues dealing with extreme weather (winter and summer) are pretty well known. The average reliability rates aren't going to necessarily show these events.

The average reliability rates cited (via US News rankings) explicitly exclude such major events. From the methodology page:

Minutes of Power Outages: The number of minutes of power outages the average customer experiences in a year, excluding major events. (U.S. Energy Information Administration; 2022).

> systemic issues dealing with extreme weather (winter and summer) are pretty well known

No they aren’t. They’re often repeated, but they aren’t true.

Texas had a catastrophic “grid failure” in 2021. It hasn’t had any actual issues since. There have been no power outages due to “grid failure” since that one event. The past couple winters and summers have seen several situations where the grid operators have issued warnings, but these warnings are completely normal and are part of the process to inform power producers to not go offline, etc. In software terms, it’s basically the equivalent of “it’s going to be a busy day today, try to avoid doing any deployments to prod unless they’re really necessary”.

Just like the train derailments last year, and the airplane issues this year, the media loves to use the fervor around a single bad event to then create big headlines about every similar event.

Back to the software example, imagine if every big shopping holiday there was an CNN headline of “Amazon told its developers they cannot deploy to prod today. Amazon is worried about an outage!!” And because the layperson doesn’t know any better, they fall for it. But in reality, it was business as usual.

Over a million people lost power in Texas just about one week ago, an issue that continued to impact hundreds of thousands of people days after the event. Hundreds of thousands lost power for multiple days last winter as well following another cold snap. Those are two events I can recall by memory - one because it's so recent, the other because I was personally impacted by it.

Do other states regularly have multi-day outages that impacts hundreds of thousands of people? I know California has at times with wildfires, but other than that? Are these issues below the line for being considered "systemic"? I'm actually asking, not refuting using question marks.

>Do other states regularly have multi-day outages that impacts hundreds of thousands of people?

Yes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Sandy_i...

Sandy was relatively weak when it hit the East Coast. Most Texans wouldn't blink an eye at a category 1 with 80 MPH winds. That's the same wind speeds as the storm that hit Texas a few weeks ago and knocked power out.

… so it did blink?

Who is it? And no, Texans just shrugged.

Both of those events were due to localized weather events that destroyed local power infrastructure (specifically, storms that destroyed overhead power lines). These are things that have not to do with federal regulations, which is the topic of this thread.

And yes, other states have this problem as well. See https://poweroutage.us/about/majorevents.

This is a pretty weak argument. I am not sure how the grid was supposed to prepare for the most recent storm.

I'm not making an argument, I have no "position" that I'm advancing.

I've seen the headlines, I was asking for clarification on what made those different. I do think "storm preparedness" is not a category that should be excluded from consideration given their occurrence is also systemic (and may increase due to climate change), but I'm also open to how these outages differ from more systemic outages. The difference that makes sense to me is that federal regulations - the topic at play here - wouldn't have impacted these situations at all. Makes sense.

I don't believe you can fully prepare a grid for winds bringing down trees and residential/transmission lines. That's the distinction. The winter outage could have been handled better both from preparation and from the crisis management.

> I don't believe you can fully prepare a grid for winds bringing down trees and residential/transmission lines

No, but perhaps you can have better plans for responding to such events, different staffing practices, temporary measures of some sort, etc.

That wouldn't affect the number of people who had power outages which is the metric mentioned earlier

Well the problem was not a temporary loss of power, it's how long their power stayed out.

> Texas actually has roughly average electric grid reliability compared to other states [...] having substantially below average electricity costs

The Texas grid is better compared to a third world country. It works great except when there is an emergency or any sort of edge case. Reliability numbers miss the context of a transmission line failing when it is 68 degrees and sunny vs a natural gas line freezing up when its -7 and everyone needs electricity to not die.

Pricing is handled exactly the same way: its $0.12/kWh when things are normal, but jumps to $7.00/kWh as soon as there is an emergency. Normal states split the difference and charge something like $0.14/kWh all the time so that when you're forced to run your heater 24/7 to stay alive you don't have to sell your car to pay your power bill.

I'm afraid you've been reading too many sensationalist headlines. You are completely able to get a stable rate for power in Texas. No one is forced to choose a rate that can spike to $7/kWh.

In fact power in Texas is cheaper on average than many other places in the US (including NYC, where I live). This is partially because Texas is the energy center of the US, with abundant wind, solar, and oil/gas.

The Texas grid is the opposite of a third-world country. The engineering and operations groups at ERCOT are extremely competent, even if the PUCT sometimes forces them to make stupid decisions.

> You are completely able to get a stable rate for power in Texas. No one is forced to choose a rate that can spike to $7/kWh.

Yes, everything is fine if you have money and can choose. Other states explicitly ban these types of pricing models because they are predatory and can result in the people who are most price sensitive ending up in financial ruin.

I have no doubt that ERCOT has some good people working there. At the macro level however Texas makes isolationist decisions like not engaging in interstate energy sales agreements because they would subject the energy industry in the state to more federal regulation.

You might be interested in reading the final report of the 2011 incident, where ERCOT agreed that having appropriate capacity to the Eastern and Western interconnects would have mitigated most of the problems. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/Reportonthe...

There are fixed rate and variable rate electricity plans in Texas.

With fixed rate you are on a 6-36 month contract where your rate is fixed typically around the $0.12/kWh you mentioned above.

Variable rate plans change the rate month to month but has never been near the $7.00/kWh you're claiming https://shellenergy.com/Historical-Rates

Griddy was the company that hit the headlines who sold at live wholesale prices as you used electricity had 29k customers and is not how the typical electric company in Texas works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy_(company)

> Griddy was the company that hit the headlines [...]

Yes, most sane well regulated places don't allow things like this to exist in the first place.

We can tell with your third world country comment that you have bias but at least get your information correct.

The pricing scheme you describe was true for a company that no longer exists, for a type of pricing that is no longer allowed. The number of customers were in the minority.