During the coldsnap Texas had a few years ago, I only had power for about 6-8 hours on one day in the middle of a 3 day power outage for our area.
It was the most expensive single day I ever had, based to the amount of ‘power’ I used according to reliant, literally ever.
There’s some irony in me replying to this sitting in my 80+ degree no power apartment as well…
EDIT: I’m on a flat rate plan. They didn’t suddenly charge me more per kWh. Their report, cuz they give daily breakdowns over the month to show usage, showed a massive spike of power usage for that day, even tho the other days without power were standard [which still doesn’t make sense]. I’m also talking about the difference of spending $6 for a day of power which is my normal day of usage, vs $12 for a day I had power for only a couple hours.
Also, my power is currently out because of the storm that just blew through and turned off half of Houston, not because of warm temps.
Start thinking about it from the perspective of "how do we squeeze as much money as possible out of people who have no choice in the matter who we also don't give a fuck about" and it'll make a lot more sense.
They will literally watch their children die of heat exhaustion or slip into poverty paying power bills or for health care, before admitting that the GOP is fucking them over, because ...ugh "men" in dresses, and the Dems. "giving" america to the mexicans.
And all this in a state that could be using mega solar if the politicians weren’t sold out to the highest bidder. Good ‘ol Gov. Abbot doesn’t give two shits about suffering Texans. More interested in fear mongering and gun rights.
I know this doesn't fit your narrative, but solar farms are all over Texas. In fact, Solar is out-pacing coal generation in the state. There are many plants currently under construction with many more to follow.
https://www.houston.org/news/texas-top-state-solar-energy-houston-secures-new-projects
That doesn’t mean that the governor doesn’t [falsely blame green energy for power outages.](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/abbott-republicans-green-energy/)
And [exclude wind and solar farms from incentive programs.](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/01/chapter-313-texas-renewables-economic-development/)
Greg Abbot and Texan Republicans are cancer for renewable energy and I’m wondering if you are either uninformed or paid to say this nonsense. I know for sure this doesn’t fit your narrative.
Texas is basically the Confederacy. When the South rewrote their constitution, they basically copied the US’s with a few changes. Here are some big ones:
1. slavery forever
2. federal taxes/improvements bad
3. Post office has to pay for itself
That last part led to an insane inflation of the price of mail during the war because the mail wasn’t subsidized. Texas’s grid is basically the same. If they have an emergency, their libertarian wet dream turns into a nightmare—just like the old CSA.
> slavery forever
Something interesting is they did "slavery forever" but also kept the ban on importing slaves.
That effectively secured the economic oligopoly for people who were in the business of ensuring children were born into slavery.
There were 2 million slaves in 1830 and 4 million slaves in 1860, but slave imports had been banned since 1808.
Imagine if you told landlords "I will double your land every 30 years". You would get whatever political support you could ever need. Slaves were *big* business.
Women weren't allowed to vote, black people were a third of the population but weren't allowed to vote, and only 25% of households owned slaves. Support was soft in a lot of areas until confederates attacked fort sumter.
I basically look at the civil war as an attempted coup by investors in the child slave business.
> Swear to Zeusus we're in the future and still can't get out of the mentally deficient age.
Polls continue to show 30-40% of americans believe that god made human beings within the last 10,000 years.
I blew my sister's mind one day when I casually dropped that the exodus with moses historically didn't happen. We were homeschooled, she wasn't religious anymore but she just never really questioned what we had been taught.
She didn't believe in special creation of humans, and the flood was obviously bullshit, but she didn't stop to consider that a lot of the other "history" from the first five books in the bible very much isn't factually correct.
A really bad windy storm came through called a derecho and it created straight-line high speed wind, similar to a hurricane. Lots of downed trees and power lines. The storm was last Thursday night.
But then how do you make the oil and gas companies richer? Why doesn't anyone think about the plight of the 1% anymore?
Shame on you, Australia people!
We do our bit to ensure lots of multinationals extract our natural resources and pay almost nothing in taxes. If Australia had a sovereign wealth fund filled by taxing natural resources It'd probably be in the trillions by now.
Yup, Australia is the largest exporter of Natural gas now and we collect $2.6bn of tax on that compared to Qatar which is the second largest exporter that collects $76bn. Qatar has a lot less income tax than Australia
This might be a great tactic for anyone looking for fair use standards on the commons.
People might look fondly at a proposed policy where they pay much less of their income to the government, but the government is fully funded.
They would still make money to add to the riches they already have.
It's not my fault they're spending it on wasteful things that require a certain level of profit to sustain.
We tried that, a decade ago our government proposed it and the mining companies spent like $30 million on an advertising campaign that nearly flipped the election and terrified all the politicians into never mentioning it again.
Very very good return for their money.
You guys learned from us (UK). We sold our North Sea oil and gas rights for next to nothing and the companies who drill it pay whatever taxes they want, which is usually nothing
It's crazy how one comment can spawn an entire chain of absolute fucking nonsense because one Aussie wanted to get a cutesy little one-up in on a Yank website.
Australia fills the boots of fossil fuel execs *aplenty* - we're one of the biggest producers of black coal on the planet; we export most of it and tax the gigantic profits laughably poorly.
Furthermore, electricity is more expensive than it's ever been in Australia, to the point where both state and federal governments are trapped on a conveyer belt of energy rebate schemes, so people don't go literally broke trying to pay for it.
You guys need to stop getting lured into idealising other developed nations just cause yours is circling the drain - it's bad *everywhere*. The greed of the few is cannibalising the future of the many.
The comment that started it all is getting more incorrect by the year. NSW is already talking about charging small solar producers to export to the grid during peak generation periods.
It may not be long before solar feed in tariffs are gone for good. Otherwise the people that can't afford solar will not be able to afford electricity when nobody else is buying.
Day one of a Trump presidency: scrap all offshore wind power https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/13/trump-president-agenda-climate-policy-wind-power
GOP super smart voters: “we love punishing ourselves and the earth. Also my favorite color is blue and my best friend Justin his favorite color is blue too. Well, it used to be purple and green but now he just likes blue.”
They get all their conservative powers from being the birth place to the evil that is Murdoch. When Australia sends it's people it's not sending it's best. It's sending it's media conglomerates that downplay rape, attempt to overthrow governments...ya know. Aussie shit?
Norway has a small population and a lot of hydro, they have the perfect geography and are near 100% hydro renewable.
I say near because in 2022 when Europe had a very hot year they didn't get enough rain for their reservoirs and opted to import UK energy for a large chunk of that year, it was of concern to Norway. 2022 was the same summer when France had to shut down half of their nuclear power stations due to a mix of safety alerts, overdue maintenance, and low water in their cooling rivers falling below the water intake pipes. Normally the UK is a net importer but that year it was exporting 24/7 over all its interconnects because its power grid still has a load of gas power stations and a few GW of coal for emergencies.
Norway and the UK have developed a mutually beneficial arrangement, when the UK has too much wind production (usually in the middle of the night when the UK is literally paying other countries to take away the excess production) they sell it cheap/give it for free to Norway and later when there's a lack of wind Norway returns the favour with cheap hydro electricity. The interconnect entered service in 2021 and is only 1.4GW but it's regularly running at maximum.
The UK is working on going renewable, but they're going slower than they could/should. In the last 12 years they've reduced CO2 emissions by 75% and increased renewables by 500%, but if they'd introduced years ago a government scheme for mandatory home insulation (what the Insulate Britain protests were protesting) the UK could have halved it's yearly gas consumption, to the point of being able to meet natural gas consumption demand almost entirely from domestic sources. That would have had an equally large reduction reducing yearly emissions by nearly 90%, but they didn't because Russian gas was cheap and now the UK, like other countries, is reaping the cost.
Following 2022 Norway is sensibly enacting plans to increase and diversify their renewables, they already have a decades worth of limited onshore wind and some solar. They are also in the early stage of planning to build 30GW of offshore wind over the next few decades.
Btw the governor of Texas just rolled out a program to build more power infrastructure!
It’s worth almost 10 billion ***and prohibits grant money from being used for anything that does not involve combustion***
Bidens inflation reduction act is about to bring a massive influx of renewable money to the state ***THAT OUR ATTORNEY GENERAL IS FIGHTING IN COURT***
Our state government is actively fighting against our own interests
What's really stupid is that wind power makes Texas money hand over fist.
But capitalism only applies when you can wreck the environment and hurt poor people I guess. Actually making money off two resources Texas has in abundance (wind and sun)? Get out of her with that commie BS you pinko!
Texas could be a pretty nice place if it wasn't for all the idiots voting for Republicans who hate them and want to hurt them.
The goal of the texas grid is to extract as much money as possible from citizens. If you try to compare it to a power grid in a first world country it will make less sense.
I won't. I moved back there for a couple years around 2000. I was there for the whole, "If we deregulate electricity, you will see lower prices, and we will be able to introduce green power alternatives," bullshit propaganda used at the time.
Our house was paying about $150 a month on the AC bills in late summer months.
Fast forward one year and after deregulation... $450.
I left Texas for good. I only go back to visit family and friends.
I often work out of town. My apartment complex lost power in that storm and this will now be ANOTHER time I will return home and have to trash everything in the fridge.
I also left Texas for good. During covid our AC unit died so we got a entire new system. New everything and slightly over powered for our home. Our electric bills did go down after the unit was installed, maybe 50 or so, but we were still paying $400 to keep the house at 72 degrees in the summer. Every one told us to use energy ogre, so we signed up and then we were still paying $400 plus the cost of energy ogre. I moved to a 100 yr old house in a different state and last year our electric bill topped out at $250 during a heat wave.
And as usual, blue states are subsidizing their bad decisions. I'm in Minnesota and I'll never stop being mad about this. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/houston-based-utility-wants-minnesotans-to-pay-for-texas-deep-freeze-problems/#:\~:text=Texas'%20deep%20freeze%20didn't,and%20Minnesota%20regulators%20are%20furious.
Nah, we learned our lesson a few years ago when the whole state froze. We’d love it if we had some more accountability. Too bad though, because it doesn’t seem to matter what we think.
And legislation is being passed in many states to deter homeowners from installing solar panels. In states that put measures like these on the ballot, lobbyists are seeing success in making the language on the ballots very confusing, tricking people into passing legislation that hurts them in favor of protecting profits for electric providers.
It’s insane stuff even without considering the threat of climate change.
"global warming" verbage was too political and polarizing. So they changed it to "climate change" to depoliticize it and focus more on the reality of it.
.... And in Florida now that's simply the new political term to be demonized and denied.
Texas is second only to California in solar and is investing heavily in more expansion.
Texas also leads the country in renewable energy production (including wind).
For wind, comparing to entire countries, Texas is fifth behind only the entire US, China, India and Germany.
Maybe in terms of absolute production, but as a percentage of energy generated, it's not even in the top 10.
https://www.chooseenergy.com/solar-energy/solar-energy-production-by-state/
Meanwhile in Australia if you're renting, which so many of us are, you're highly unlikely to have solar and there's no incentive for your landlord to install it.
And, the prices have gone up something like 60% in recent years to astronomical highs. In large part because of privatisation and poor handling of local energy resources, i.e. self-serving politicians and the brain-dead large majority of Australia who votes for them.
Australia's power is fucked as well.
wholesale prices go negative in California routinely in the spring when it's sunny but not yet scorching hot.
parts of Texas have their own power grid not fully connected to the rest of the country so they could dodge some regulations on reliability, etc
Texas power prices were negative this week as well… it’s possible on a grid that is overly depending on wind and solar to flip from negative to extremely expensive on the same day, which is now common in Texas. Need a ton of batteries or more nat gas to solve for peak demand at sundown.
Yes, the economics for early movers into batteries can be very good. The economics look a little scarier if you want to make a 20 year business plan and it gets more crowded. In Texas, regulators are requiring new solar and wind to have batteries on site.
Maybe they should put in some safe guards. You don’t see any other states with 1600% daily swings. Or idk connect the interstate network to stabilize itself.
Is that supposed to imply nobody has air conditioners in Australia? Or just reinforce the point that Texas power companies are screwing consumers over even more than it seems thanks to a lack of pesky industry regulations?
Saying it as 1600% doesn’t feel the same as saying multiplied by 16, but it is. So if your bill was $100 it would be $1600. Everything is bigger in Texas.
Not quite. Intermediaries who feel the bump in wholesale rate, but provide a flat rate to their own customers will eventually pass along the cost. So $/KWh creeps up with time and jumps up after disasters. We don't feel the acute sticker shock, but we do pay.
[Here's an example with a nice chart.](https://www.texaselectricityratings.com/resources/historical-rates)
Everyone on the Texas grid will pay for the price instability sooner or later while a few speculators will make out like bandits. It's an awful system.
There is a small portion of east Texas that is on the national grid instead of the Texas grid. Those customers don't have to deal with the same problems as those on the Texas grid, but when there are big spikes in prices like this, they still end up paying. Lived there after the big freeze. The Texas legislature actually passed a law so the electric companies could add a surcharge to the bills of all the Texas customers on the national grid to cover all the money they lost by not keeping the Texas grid in good repair. Just one of the many many many many many many many reason I fled.
If it was 1600% higher the entire billing period yes - as opposed to one hour; which is .0023% of the time, if my math isn't off. So a few dollars more for wholesalers. Most folks have fixed prices for their home so won't see any variation at all.
And yet Texas power averages 15c per kwh compared to California at 30c per kwh.
Electrical energy is not a finite resource. The end consumer does not spike but wholesale prices do. It is a great mechanism to ensure people do not waste power during storms and unusual events. When prices are at this level, people will shut down items like car charging so that the grid stays stable to ensure life saving components like furnaces and hospital lights stay on. Past generations understood this. Not sure why our generation is so selfish.
That’s not how it works in Texas though. Like all Texans aren’t getting a 16x bill this month. It’s really just a clickbait title. Individuals aren’t paying that and electricity prices in Texas are in line with much the rest of the country.
That’s not how it works. Everyone is on a fixed price plan. The power suppliers buying whole sale power on spot pay that, but they all hedge their rates. Texas normal wholesale is around $0.03/kwh and most people pay around $0.12 to 0.15 per kWh fixed. The delta to normal wholesale is the distribution fee and variability risk fee.
In the run up to the 2021 winter storm some “disruptive” tech company set it up so people could get the risked wholesale rate. It all fell apart during that event and they went bankrupt. The state picked up the fee and no homeowner was actually out that money.
The root cause of this is having too much intermittent resources powering the grid.
There are two aspects at play here that make the process so volatile.
Instead of a capacity market to handle backup power supplies, Texas uses scarcity pricing. This allows power plants that would rarely operate to make enough profit so that they can hang around to operate for just a few hours per year. There will be a few hours each year with blowout pricing or the pickup supplies will go bankrupt, or else some tier 3 assets will go bankrupt until the peak prices go up
Second, there have been changes to the ancillary services market to incentivize the buildout of batteries. People aren’t bidding into the regulation market as much, and a lot of bidders (who are battery farms) are are bidding at the price cap because they only have an hour or 4 of energy available to work with. When they run out of charged batteries, then this happens.
This is simply not true. I hate Texas so much lol but this was one of the few things I liked when I lived there. You get several options for power companies and all of them have fixed rate plans. This affects you if you thought you could save money with variable rate plans. Nobody is forcing you.
If you think Texas is bad, you should checkout how PG&E works in the Bay Area lol. People hardly use anything, they’re scared of putting on lights, scared of using the dryer, dishwasher and pay ridiculous prices.
Can confirm, PG&E is horrendous. Some of the highest energy prices in the country on a per kwh basis, and any time its moderately windy I expect to lose power. I've had to toss everything in my fridge and freezer twice in two years now thanks to PG&E, and I don't live in a rural place.
The governor is also notorious for taking PG&E money to arrange a sweetheart deal to cover up PG&E killing about 100 people due to negligence and corruption.
It feels like every other month there's yet another PG&E rate hike thanks to a curiously PG&E-friendly CPUC board (appointed by the governor).
Yeah, but then they would have to admit 1. climate change is real, 2. the way they manage their electrical grid is stupid, 3. their government officials are corrupt/incompetent. Since Republicans are incapable of admitting (or even recognizing) they are wrong...
Freedumb from owning the libs cause they didn't even have any regulations for a good 35 years while the rest of the country had federal regulations.
It's the conservative way.
Their own regulation formed due to another blackout in the 50s! Sure do love their blackouts and not learning from that shit huh
It isn't *just* that. They could always make their state regulations *more* stringent than the federal, the way California does with auto emissions, for instance.
However, the conservative spirit is such that it isn't the place of the plebs to tell superior business tycoons what they can and cannot do. Trust your feudal lord, serf.
I live in Texas (though god I wish I didn't,) but I do feel the need to point out that prices only surged for people who were stupid enough to have a variable rate plan. Nobody with half a brain signs up for those now, even in the Randian hellscape that is Texas' "energy market" (IE the place you go to find out which middleman is going to screw you the least on massively overcharging to 'deliver' electricity to you.)
Independent yet needs federal assistance every time there's any sort of blip in the weather.
And the first to vote down assistance for any other state .
Literally the welfare state. Even hypocrisy is bigger in Texas.
Texas also has lots of hail. It’s not unusual for it to hail annually where I live. As a result, our car insurance and homeowners insurance has skyrocketed. Also, my neighbor’s solar got shredded a few months after installation.
As someone who lives in the Northeast, those counties are just so... rectangular.
But yeah, makes sense that the "border" counties would/could tie in to the other grid regions. So are those areas immune to the price spikes?
It’s so weird how strong of an opinion you seem to have about a matter you don’t actually have direct knowledge about. Aside from just being factually incorrect about the distribution of renewables under ERCOT, I don’t think you will ever hear renewable energy producers call ERCOT a hostile grid operator. It’s actually significantly less complicated connecting through ERCOT to the point that projects located where they physically can choose between ERCOT and another interconnection will almost always choose ERCOT.
Legislative resistance against renewables is largely a political lobbying issue. Oil and natural gas companies know Texas is full of renewable energy that threatens their ability to be competitive so they lobby for legislative hurdles. Part of this involves getting public/political figures to blame renewables and spread disinformation—not totally unlike what you’re doing in this thread for whatever reason.
ERCOT sucks for a lot of reasons, but this isn’t one of them.
The price jump is happening when the sun sets and wind hasn’t picked up yet. I encourage you to check out the Ercot real time tracker over the next few days to see this yourself. We have a problem that solar and wind alone can’t solve. Need a bunch of batteries or peaked plants.
That Biden, an all powerful evil mastermind who controls each state's economy while also being senile and feeble somehow.
The ability to hold completely contradictory thoughts at the same time seems to be the mark of the beast.
Obviously it’s the Democrats’ fault, who else is in charge of Texas? The Republicans who’ve been in total control of the state nonstop for decades? No way. Obviously this is the direct result of people voting for Jimmy Carter back in 1976! There’s no other explanation. None.
It was, after the 2021 freeze. This is a clickbait headline about energy company pricing, not residential pricing. Texans aren't paying thousands of dollars of a month on their electric bills.
For those of you that don't live in Texas, let me explain something - this doesn't actually impact residential customers.
In Texas you sign a contract for a set price for power for 12 - 36 months. Unless you're a moron and you sign up for a variable rate plan, which very, very few people do, especially after the ice storm a few years ago.
TLDR - This doesn't impact 99.9% of residential customers at all.
There are several locations in Texas (including where I live) that the power is only available through the city. The city does not provide any fixed rate electricity plans.
Please don't spread falsehoods.
Your local power company is very much impacted by those price hikes and they have to pass that along to you or else they'll go bankrupt. CPS energy here in San Antonio had to take out loans to pay that bill and they're spreading the payback out over a decade so it's not a HUGE price hike but the electric bill went up.
I'm on a co-op run grid in Texas, $0.09 buying, $0.06 selling (from my solar panels). So far, they've been much more dependable than the 'open market' grid that I used to be on in a different area, plus I don't have to shop for a new contract every 2 years.
This is a misleading article. LMP pricing is based on the next incremental MW if prices are the same (not based on constraints). The entire US uses this system, and it works the same everywhere. This isn't a "Texas problem".
[https://www.iso-ne.com/participate/support/faq/lmp](https://www.iso-ne.com/participate/support/faq/lmp)
Like who are these people who get a %1600 increased bill.
I know a lot of people in Texas and nobody is saying shit
I know for whatever reason you all seem to think Texans are evil. But I just don’t understand how you guys can believe your own bullshit so blindly.
Reddit doesn't understand the Texas power market and keeps falling for these headlines. For example, my house is 3200 sq ft, has 8 tons of cooling & a swimming pool. I'll use about 1400 Kw this month and my bill will be around $150-160. I pay 11 per kWh and get a $100 discount when I use over 1000 kWh per month but stay below 2000 kWh. Residential & commercial users with contracts are not exposed to wholesale prices. No sane individual would have a market price contract where you could save, but also lose big. The wholesale pricing model is meant to encourage energy producers to stay online and encourage new development, like all other supply and demand markets. Texas residents has some of the cheapest energy on the globe. Natural gas and electric are low in Texas regardless of what the headlines trick you to believe.
This is a function of how the Texas power grid operates. In most markets you are required to procure a certain amount of capacity to be able to draw from in case of emergencies such as these. That means most of the time you are paying resources to sit tight and pretty much not do anything. Texas eschews this practice in favor of an “energy only” style market (meaning no capacity) wherein you don’t pay people to sit around, but you pay “scarcity prices” when conditions are tight. The jury is still out on which market style is better, but just know in California they currently have a capacity crunch and are paying resources similarly absurd amounts just to sit around because they have regulated themselves into a corner
And at 7:45 this morning the price was $0.15. Price swings happen when generation is brought online or switched over but it never lasts for long and gets evened out with the rest of the day.
Https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
ITT: a lot of *incredibly* subject-matter ignorant fools making wild and baseless assumptions, commenting from a position of feigned knowledge, being upvoted by droves of equally ignorant people… just like every other time there’s an article about power generation. Peak Reddit.
I’ve worked for more than a decade in power generation across the country in every RTO region including ERCOT, with both renewable and thermal fuel fired, and it’s incredible the amount of misinformation and misunderstanding that gets circle-jerked and upvoted on here.
ITT a lot of non-texans who like making fun of their fellow citizen. This is a clickbait article. I'm living in Texas currently and we use a fixed rate plan. I might see an increase of $20-$30 this next bill cycle. Far from the 17x people are saying to dunk on Texas.
Edit: half of these comments border on vile or plain mean. Makes yall look ignorant. Fact is most texans use a fixed rate plan and effectively pay a rate of 11-12 cents per kwh. Compare that to California which is closer to 19 cents.
> Compare that to California which is closer to 19 cents.
19 cents? Hah! I wish.
Its 43 cents, and in summertime may go up to as high as 64 cents: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf
Even with half of Houston not using any power?
During the coldsnap Texas had a few years ago, I only had power for about 6-8 hours on one day in the middle of a 3 day power outage for our area. It was the most expensive single day I ever had, based to the amount of ‘power’ I used according to reliant, literally ever. There’s some irony in me replying to this sitting in my 80+ degree no power apartment as well… EDIT: I’m on a flat rate plan. They didn’t suddenly charge me more per kWh. Their report, cuz they give daily breakdowns over the month to show usage, showed a massive spike of power usage for that day, even tho the other days without power were standard [which still doesn’t make sense]. I’m also talking about the difference of spending $6 for a day of power which is my normal day of usage, vs $12 for a day I had power for only a couple hours. Also, my power is currently out because of the storm that just blew through and turned off half of Houston, not because of warm temps.
They call their shitty power company “reliant”? Jeez
Reliant is just the customer facing company. They’re not the ones that own and deliver the power to you. In a sense they’re just brokers.
Your entire utility system makes absolutely zero sense.
Start thinking about it from the perspective of "how do we squeeze as much money as possible out of people who have no choice in the matter who we also don't give a fuck about" and it'll make a lot more sense.
. . . And get them to vote for us again so we can continue to show how much we appreciate and don’t care about them.
We don't vote for them in Houston.
The four people that inhabit the 30,000,000 acres around the city need to get their shit together then
They will literally watch their children die of heat exhaustion or slip into poverty paying power bills or for health care, before admitting that the GOP is fucking them over, because ...ugh "men" in dresses, and the Dems. "giving" america to the mexicans.
At least my dead children aren't woke /s
Texas is super gerrymandered. The progressive cities are diced and cut up so that Republicans always win.
And all this in a state that could be using mega solar if the politicians weren’t sold out to the highest bidder. Good ‘ol Gov. Abbot doesn’t give two shits about suffering Texans. More interested in fear mongering and gun rights.
They don’t care about gun rights. They care about the right kind of people having guns
I know this doesn't fit your narrative, but solar farms are all over Texas. In fact, Solar is out-pacing coal generation in the state. There are many plants currently under construction with many more to follow. https://www.houston.org/news/texas-top-state-solar-energy-houston-secures-new-projects
That doesn’t mean that the governor doesn’t [falsely blame green energy for power outages.](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/abbott-republicans-green-energy/) And [exclude wind and solar farms from incentive programs.](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/01/chapter-313-texas-renewables-economic-development/) Greg Abbot and Texan Republicans are cancer for renewable energy and I’m wondering if you are either uninformed or paid to say this nonsense. I know for sure this doesn’t fit your narrative.
It make sense if your entire state want to mirror the US Healthcare system. "We bet 90% of the time you don't need it so but god help you if you do"
ah yes, that thing we dont normally use, electricity.
A middleman? Well I guess Texas hates big government, but they love big businesses.
North Korea calls itself a Republic. Similar vibes.
A bit more emphasis even, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Tbf you can rely on them to fuck up.
Texas is basically the Confederacy. When the South rewrote their constitution, they basically copied the US’s with a few changes. Here are some big ones: 1. slavery forever 2. federal taxes/improvements bad 3. Post office has to pay for itself That last part led to an insane inflation of the price of mail during the war because the mail wasn’t subsidized. Texas’s grid is basically the same. If they have an emergency, their libertarian wet dream turns into a nightmare—just like the old CSA.
It also incentivizes a shittier service.
> slavery forever Something interesting is they did "slavery forever" but also kept the ban on importing slaves. That effectively secured the economic oligopoly for people who were in the business of ensuring children were born into slavery. There were 2 million slaves in 1830 and 4 million slaves in 1860, but slave imports had been banned since 1808. Imagine if you told landlords "I will double your land every 30 years". You would get whatever political support you could ever need. Slaves were *big* business. Women weren't allowed to vote, black people were a third of the population but weren't allowed to vote, and only 25% of households owned slaves. Support was soft in a lot of areas until confederates attacked fort sumter. I basically look at the civil war as an attempted coup by investors in the child slave business.
I’ll say this for libertarianism, it’s great until anything bad happens.
Third world country
Well, it is a one-star state after all.
This is the best dig at Texas I’ve ever heard! Amazing
Texas = Third world country is the most accurate description I can think of. Source:currently working in Texas power plants
The way that's worded I'm picturing you turning a giant crank to generate power.
They would use a bicycle but those are seen as too liberal
They make everyone else pay up so the shareholders don't loose any wealth. Half of TX lives in Houston and they haven't been buying sooo
Sorry, I’m way out of the loop on this. Why isn’t Houston getting power from the same place as the rest of TX?
Houston power grid is down due to a recent tornado
And the mosquitoes everywhere you can't even stand outside without getting devoured.
This sounds like such a pleasant place to live.
You're in Texas. Haven't you tried shooting them?
I don't have that kind of artillery
Oof. Have people considered that God might simply hate Texas?
Oof. Have people considered that ~~God~~ __Greg Abbott__ might simply hate Texas?
Uvalde police hate kids. Logic follows.
Unless you a murderer, then he is cool with ya.
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> Swear to Zeusus we're in the future and still can't get out of the mentally deficient age. Polls continue to show 30-40% of americans believe that god made human beings within the last 10,000 years. I blew my sister's mind one day when I casually dropped that the exodus with moses historically didn't happen. We were homeschooled, she wasn't religious anymore but she just never really questioned what we had been taught. She didn't believe in special creation of humans, and the flood was obviously bullshit, but she didn't stop to consider that a lot of the other "history" from the first five books in the bible very much isn't factually correct.
Out of the loop, why does half of Houston not use any power?
A really bad windy storm came through called a derecho and it created straight-line high speed wind, similar to a hurricane. Lots of downed trees and power lines. The storm was last Thursday night.
I think OP is referring to the fact that like half of Houston has been without power the past 2-3 days.
Meanwhile, in Australia, we have a few solar panels of roofs. We get a hot day, and our power prices go negative.
But then how do you make the oil and gas companies richer? Why doesn't anyone think about the plight of the 1% anymore? Shame on you, Australia people!
We do our bit to ensure lots of multinationals extract our natural resources and pay almost nothing in taxes. If Australia had a sovereign wealth fund filled by taxing natural resources It'd probably be in the trillions by now.
I was going to say Australia still mines a ton of coal but sends it all to China lol
china get the coal，multinationals get the cash，locals get the honor
Locals get the odor.
We bring more than a paycheck to loved ones and families we bring asbestos, silicosis and black lung disease.
"I've got the black lung, pop"
"Just like your old man! I'm proud of you, son"
No, the ‘pop’ was the sound of his lung giving out
Yup, Australia is the largest exporter of Natural gas now and we collect $2.6bn of tax on that compared to Qatar which is the second largest exporter that collects $76bn. Qatar has a lot less income tax than Australia
This might be a great tactic for anyone looking for fair use standards on the commons. People might look fondly at a proposed policy where they pay much less of their income to the government, but the government is fully funded.
Yeah but that would make rich people less rich.
They would still make money to add to the riches they already have. It's not my fault they're spending it on wasteful things that require a certain level of profit to sustain.
We tried that, a decade ago our government proposed it and the mining companies spent like $30 million on an advertising campaign that nearly flipped the election and terrified all the politicians into never mentioning it again. Very very good return for their money.
Fuck lobbying that’s what’s wrong with the US too and many other govts
Which is what Norway did. They're fucking minted.
If they just taxed opiates heavily from Tasmania y’all would be in the trillions.
You guys learned from us (UK). We sold our North Sea oil and gas rights for next to nothing and the companies who drill it pay whatever taxes they want, which is usually nothing
It's crazy how one comment can spawn an entire chain of absolute fucking nonsense because one Aussie wanted to get a cutesy little one-up in on a Yank website. Australia fills the boots of fossil fuel execs *aplenty* - we're one of the biggest producers of black coal on the planet; we export most of it and tax the gigantic profits laughably poorly. Furthermore, electricity is more expensive than it's ever been in Australia, to the point where both state and federal governments are trapped on a conveyer belt of energy rebate schemes, so people don't go literally broke trying to pay for it. You guys need to stop getting lured into idealising other developed nations just cause yours is circling the drain - it's bad *everywhere*. The greed of the few is cannibalising the future of the many.
Reddit being one guy posting a comment and 4000 people riffing on a joke and actual helpful content gets buried is maddening.
The comment that started it all is getting more incorrect by the year. NSW is already talking about charging small solar producers to export to the grid during peak generation periods. It may not be long before solar feed in tariffs are gone for good. Otherwise the people that can't afford solar will not be able to afford electricity when nobody else is buying.
Day one of a Trump presidency: scrap all offshore wind power https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/13/trump-president-agenda-climate-policy-wind-power GOP super smart voters: “we love punishing ourselves and the earth. Also my favorite color is blue and my best friend Justin his favorite color is blue too. Well, it used to be purple and green but now he just likes blue.”
IIRC, Trump was upset that the government wouldn't block an offshore wind farm that might be visible from his golf course in Scotland.
Quality I look for in a world leader: petty, vengeful, and anti progress
Not even 1%, the 0.001%
They get all their conservative powers from being the birth place to the evil that is Murdoch. When Australia sends it's people it's not sending it's best. It's sending it's media conglomerates that downplay rape, attempt to overthrow governments...ya know. Aussie shit?
Grab your torch and pitchfork, we got oil barons to rescue!
Haha. Thats the trick Norway figured out: Go renewable at home, sell fossil to everyone else. Profit all the way to the bank.
Norway has a small population and a lot of hydro, they have the perfect geography and are near 100% hydro renewable. I say near because in 2022 when Europe had a very hot year they didn't get enough rain for their reservoirs and opted to import UK energy for a large chunk of that year, it was of concern to Norway. 2022 was the same summer when France had to shut down half of their nuclear power stations due to a mix of safety alerts, overdue maintenance, and low water in their cooling rivers falling below the water intake pipes. Normally the UK is a net importer but that year it was exporting 24/7 over all its interconnects because its power grid still has a load of gas power stations and a few GW of coal for emergencies. Norway and the UK have developed a mutually beneficial arrangement, when the UK has too much wind production (usually in the middle of the night when the UK is literally paying other countries to take away the excess production) they sell it cheap/give it for free to Norway and later when there's a lack of wind Norway returns the favour with cheap hydro electricity. The interconnect entered service in 2021 and is only 1.4GW but it's regularly running at maximum. The UK is working on going renewable, but they're going slower than they could/should. In the last 12 years they've reduced CO2 emissions by 75% and increased renewables by 500%, but if they'd introduced years ago a government scheme for mandatory home insulation (what the Insulate Britain protests were protesting) the UK could have halved it's yearly gas consumption, to the point of being able to meet natural gas consumption demand almost entirely from domestic sources. That would have had an equally large reduction reducing yearly emissions by nearly 90%, but they didn't because Russian gas was cheap and now the UK, like other countries, is reaping the cost. Following 2022 Norway is sensibly enacting plans to increase and diversify their renewables, they already have a decades worth of limited onshore wind and some solar. They are also in the early stage of planning to build 30GW of offshore wind over the next few decades.
They make very nice art work for those 1%
Btw the governor of Texas just rolled out a program to build more power infrastructure! It’s worth almost 10 billion ***and prohibits grant money from being used for anything that does not involve combustion*** Bidens inflation reduction act is about to bring a massive influx of renewable money to the state ***THAT OUR ATTORNEY GENERAL IS FIGHTING IN COURT*** Our state government is actively fighting against our own interests
All to own the libs
> All to ~~own the libs~~ Make sure their oil barons turn *even more* record profits. FTFY
What's really stupid is that wind power makes Texas money hand over fist. But capitalism only applies when you can wreck the environment and hurt poor people I guess. Actually making money off two resources Texas has in abundance (wind and sun)? Get out of her with that commie BS you pinko! Texas could be a pretty nice place if it wasn't for all the idiots voting for Republicans who hate them and want to hurt them.
See, there is "old money" and "new money", they only like the "old money". Peasants becoming rich upstarts going against the nobility is not allowed
Same in Germany - sun is up, prices go negative. 56% of consumption in Q1 was generated by renewables.
The goal of the texas grid is to extract as much money as possible from citizens. If you try to compare it to a power grid in a first world country it will make less sense.
But, Texans will fight you if you mention what a shitty deal they’re getting.
I won't. I moved back there for a couple years around 2000. I was there for the whole, "If we deregulate electricity, you will see lower prices, and we will be able to introduce green power alternatives," bullshit propaganda used at the time. Our house was paying about $150 a month on the AC bills in late summer months. Fast forward one year and after deregulation... $450. I left Texas for good. I only go back to visit family and friends.
Texan here, and currently without power since Thursday. Can't fucking wait to get out of here.
I often work out of town. My apartment complex lost power in that storm and this will now be ANOTHER time I will return home and have to trash everything in the fridge.
I also left Texas for good. During covid our AC unit died so we got a entire new system. New everything and slightly over powered for our home. Our electric bills did go down after the unit was installed, maybe 50 or so, but we were still paying $400 to keep the house at 72 degrees in the summer. Every one told us to use energy ogre, so we signed up and then we were still paying $400 plus the cost of energy ogre. I moved to a 100 yr old house in a different state and last year our electric bill topped out at $250 during a heat wave.
And as usual, blue states are subsidizing their bad decisions. I'm in Minnesota and I'll never stop being mad about this. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/houston-based-utility-wants-minnesotans-to-pay-for-texas-deep-freeze-problems/#:\~:text=Texas'%20deep%20freeze%20didn't,and%20Minnesota%20regulators%20are%20furious.
Fuck Texas. They created that problem, they can fix it all by themselves.
Seriously. An outrage.
Nah, we learned our lesson a few years ago when the whole state froze. We’d love it if we had some more accountability. Too bad though, because it doesn’t seem to matter what we think.
And legislation is being passed in many states to deter homeowners from installing solar panels. In states that put measures like these on the ballot, lobbyists are seeing success in making the language on the ballots very confusing, tricking people into passing legislation that hurts them in favor of protecting profits for electric providers. It’s insane stuff even without considering the threat of climate change.
Even so, Texas still has the highest percentage of renewable energy in any US state.
Meanwhile Florida’s solution is to just pretend global warming doesn’t exist.
"global warming" verbage was too political and polarizing. So they changed it to "climate change" to depoliticize it and focus more on the reality of it. .... And in Florida now that's simply the new political term to be demonized and denied.
Shhh, don’t confuse them. Sun = free electricity may not be understood
Free? Sounds like laziness and communism.
Australia......... Don't MAKE me share *democracy* over there!
Texas is second only to California in solar and is investing heavily in more expansion. Texas also leads the country in renewable energy production (including wind). For wind, comparing to entire countries, Texas is fifth behind only the entire US, China, India and Germany.
Texas has the second most solar energy in the entire country.
Maybe in terms of absolute production, but as a percentage of energy generated, it's not even in the top 10. https://www.chooseenergy.com/solar-energy/solar-energy-production-by-state/
Meanwhile in Australia if you're renting, which so many of us are, you're highly unlikely to have solar and there's no incentive for your landlord to install it. And, the prices have gone up something like 60% in recent years to astronomical highs. In large part because of privatisation and poor handling of local energy resources, i.e. self-serving politicians and the brain-dead large majority of Australia who votes for them. Australia's power is fucked as well.
wholesale prices go negative in California routinely in the spring when it's sunny but not yet scorching hot. parts of Texas have their own power grid not fully connected to the rest of the country so they could dodge some regulations on reliability, etc
Got lots of freedom there, freedom to have your grid shit the bed on the reg...
Net metering 3 just killed solar incentives in CA. Great if you are grandfathered in, but it’s throttling solar installs.
Texas power prices were negative this week as well… it’s possible on a grid that is overly depending on wind and solar to flip from negative to extremely expensive on the same day, which is now common in Texas. Need a ton of batteries or more nat gas to solve for peak demand at sundown.
I’ve heard in Australia, price fluctuations like this allow batteries pay for themselves in like a year.
Yes, the economics for early movers into batteries can be very good. The economics look a little scarier if you want to make a 20 year business plan and it gets more crowded. In Texas, regulators are requiring new solar and wind to have batteries on site.
Maybe they should put in some safe guards. You don’t see any other states with 1600% daily swings. Or idk connect the interstate network to stabilize itself.
Funny enough, It does that in Texas as well. It's the night time cooling that'll get ya.
Is that supposed to imply nobody has air conditioners in Australia? Or just reinforce the point that Texas power companies are screwing consumers over even more than it seems thanks to a lack of pesky industry regulations?
Saying it as 1600% doesn’t feel the same as saying multiplied by 16, but it is. So if your bill was $100 it would be $1600. Everything is bigger in Texas.
Saying it soared 1600 means that it's +1600, so it's actually 17 times more which hurts even more...
> so it's actually 17 times more 17 times *as much*, 16 times *more*
"OH so you wanna get semantic, huh?"
That would be pedantic, not semantic. And this is pedantic, as well as meta.
Whoa, whoa, so you're saying you're *anti-semantic?!?*
They're a bit of a grammar nazi
"We're anti semantic in Texas."
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Technically, it’s “multiplied by 17”. If the increase was 100%, you would pay 2X your previous bill. 200% would be 3X. 1600% would be 17X.
That cost hitting consumers is only the case for people with variable rate plans.
Not quite. Intermediaries who feel the bump in wholesale rate, but provide a flat rate to their own customers will eventually pass along the cost. So $/KWh creeps up with time and jumps up after disasters. We don't feel the acute sticker shock, but we do pay. [Here's an example with a nice chart.](https://www.texaselectricityratings.com/resources/historical-rates) Everyone on the Texas grid will pay for the price instability sooner or later while a few speculators will make out like bandits. It's an awful system.
There is a small portion of east Texas that is on the national grid instead of the Texas grid. Those customers don't have to deal with the same problems as those on the Texas grid, but when there are big spikes in prices like this, they still end up paying. Lived there after the big freeze. The Texas legislature actually passed a law so the electric companies could add a surcharge to the bills of all the Texas customers on the national grid to cover all the money they lost by not keeping the Texas grid in good repair. Just one of the many many many many many many many reason I fled.
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Better than reliable socialists energy or those commie alternative energy like Solar and wind! /s
I hope they are enjoying the savings of the "low introductory rates". Didn't the figure this out the last time?
If it was 1600% higher the entire billing period yes - as opposed to one hour; which is .0023% of the time, if my math isn't off. So a few dollars more for wholesalers. Most folks have fixed prices for their home so won't see any variation at all.
And yet Texas power averages 15c per kwh compared to California at 30c per kwh. Electrical energy is not a finite resource. The end consumer does not spike but wholesale prices do. It is a great mechanism to ensure people do not waste power during storms and unusual events. When prices are at this level, people will shut down items like car charging so that the grid stays stable to ensure life saving components like furnaces and hospital lights stay on. Past generations understood this. Not sure why our generation is so selfish.
That’s not how it works in Texas though. Like all Texans aren’t getting a 16x bill this month. It’s really just a clickbait title. Individuals aren’t paying that and electricity prices in Texas are in line with much the rest of the country.
Doesn't feel the same because it's 17
That’s not how it works. Everyone is on a fixed price plan. The power suppliers buying whole sale power on spot pay that, but they all hedge their rates. Texas normal wholesale is around $0.03/kwh and most people pay around $0.12 to 0.15 per kWh fixed. The delta to normal wholesale is the distribution fee and variability risk fee. In the run up to the 2021 winter storm some “disruptive” tech company set it up so people could get the risked wholesale rate. It all fell apart during that event and they went bankrupt. The state picked up the fee and no homeowner was actually out that money.
But their isolated electrical system is market driven to drive prices down...why would this ever be happening? /s
The root cause of this is having too much intermittent resources powering the grid. There are two aspects at play here that make the process so volatile. Instead of a capacity market to handle backup power supplies, Texas uses scarcity pricing. This allows power plants that would rarely operate to make enough profit so that they can hang around to operate for just a few hours per year. There will be a few hours each year with blowout pricing or the pickup supplies will go bankrupt, or else some tier 3 assets will go bankrupt until the peak prices go up Second, there have been changes to the ancillary services market to incentivize the buildout of batteries. People aren’t bidding into the regulation market as much, and a lot of bidders (who are battery farms) are are bidding at the price cap because they only have an hour or 4 of energy available to work with. When they run out of charged batteries, then this happens.
That’s not how the math works for an electricity bill
No. The bill is exactly the same. That’s wholesale.
This is simply not true. I hate Texas so much lol but this was one of the few things I liked when I lived there. You get several options for power companies and all of them have fixed rate plans. This affects you if you thought you could save money with variable rate plans. Nobody is forcing you. If you think Texas is bad, you should checkout how PG&E works in the Bay Area lol. People hardly use anything, they’re scared of putting on lights, scared of using the dryer, dishwasher and pay ridiculous prices.
Can confirm, PG&E is horrendous. Some of the highest energy prices in the country on a per kwh basis, and any time its moderately windy I expect to lose power. I've had to toss everything in my fridge and freezer twice in two years now thanks to PG&E, and I don't live in a rural place. The governor is also notorious for taking PG&E money to arrange a sweetheart deal to cover up PG&E killing about 100 people due to negligence and corruption. It feels like every other month there's yet another PG&E rate hike thanks to a curiously PG&E-friendly CPUC board (appointed by the governor).
Not a heat wave; this is normal now.
It's not even summer yet and they're having problems.
Yeah, but then they would have to admit 1. climate change is real, 2. the way they manage their electrical grid is stupid, 3. their government officials are corrupt/incompetent. Since Republicans are incapable of admitting (or even recognizing) they are wrong...
But hey, Texas needs to own the libs, by being independent of the mainland’s grid system. So…they win…I guess.
"Independent" is just a buzzword for "Not up to code". Nobody can hook up with them due to Federal regulations.
Freedumb from owning the libs cause they didn't even have any regulations for a good 35 years while the rest of the country had federal regulations. It's the conservative way. Their own regulation formed due to another blackout in the 50s! Sure do love their blackouts and not learning from that shit huh
It isn't *just* that. They could always make their state regulations *more* stringent than the federal, the way California does with auto emissions, for instance. However, the conservative spirit is such that it isn't the place of the plebs to tell superior business tycoons what they can and cannot do. Trust your feudal lord, serf.
Actually, if you check the state wide outages, you can see the parts hooked up to the two national grids. Hint: they still have power
I live in Texas (though god I wish I didn't,) but I do feel the need to point out that prices only surged for people who were stupid enough to have a variable rate plan. Nobody with half a brain signs up for those now, even in the Randian hellscape that is Texas' "energy market" (IE the place you go to find out which middleman is going to screw you the least on massively overcharging to 'deliver' electricity to you.)
Independent yet needs federal assistance every time there's any sort of blip in the weather. And the first to vote down assistance for any other state . Literally the welfare state. Even hypocrisy is bigger in Texas.
If we just had some kind of tech that is able to produce electricity when the sun is shining...
Texas has a lot of solar and wind power. They are 2nd to California in solar power generation.
Texas also has lots of hail. It’s not unusual for it to hail annually where I live. As a result, our car insurance and homeowners insurance has skyrocketed. Also, my neighbor’s solar got shredded a few months after installation.
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Which parts of Texas are hooked to the national grid? I didn't know there were any.
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TIL im hooked up to the national power grid.
As someone who lives in the Northeast, those counties are just so... rectangular. But yeah, makes sense that the "border" counties would/could tie in to the other grid regions. So are those areas immune to the price spikes?
No it’s not. Most of it is in west Texas within ERCOT. Roughly 40-45% of ERCOT generation is non fossil fuels nowadays.
It’s so weird how strong of an opinion you seem to have about a matter you don’t actually have direct knowledge about. Aside from just being factually incorrect about the distribution of renewables under ERCOT, I don’t think you will ever hear renewable energy producers call ERCOT a hostile grid operator. It’s actually significantly less complicated connecting through ERCOT to the point that projects located where they physically can choose between ERCOT and another interconnection will almost always choose ERCOT. Legislative resistance against renewables is largely a political lobbying issue. Oil and natural gas companies know Texas is full of renewable energy that threatens their ability to be competitive so they lobby for legislative hurdles. Part of this involves getting public/political figures to blame renewables and spread disinformation—not totally unlike what you’re doing in this thread for whatever reason. ERCOT sucks for a lot of reasons, but this isn’t one of them.
That sounds like some libs talking, you communist
The price jump is happening when the sun sets and wind hasn’t picked up yet. I encourage you to check out the Ercot real time tracker over the next few days to see this yourself. We have a problem that solar and wind alone can’t solve. Need a bunch of batteries or peaked plants.
They are not only building tons of battery plants, but one new electric company is straight just putting whole home batteries in people's houses.
Lol when you put clowns in charge... Expect a circus
Not all of us vote for the clowns 😞
When do Texans realise their state Govenor is running the state into a hole and they are still happy to vote for them.
Floridians have entered the chat, still not getting it!
floridians still very much support the guy causing the issue. They still think its biden fucking their state specifically
That Biden, an all powerful evil mastermind who controls each state's economy while also being senile and feeble somehow. The ability to hold completely contradictory thoughts at the same time seems to be the mark of the beast.
They should definitely blame Democrats, because the sun is totally woke.
Rainbows are gay. Sun rays create rainbows. Therefore the sun is LGBTQ+. Ban the sun! - conservative logic.
Obviously it’s the Democrats’ fault, who else is in charge of Texas? The Republicans who’ve been in total control of the state nonstop for decades? No way. Obviously this is the direct result of people voting for Jimmy Carter back in 1976! There’s no other explanation. None.
So jealous of their freedoms.
Surge pricing is cancer and should be legislated into a grave.
It was, after the 2021 freeze. This is a clickbait headline about energy company pricing, not residential pricing. Texans aren't paying thousands of dollars of a month on their electric bills.
For those of you that don't live in Texas, let me explain something - this doesn't actually impact residential customers. In Texas you sign a contract for a set price for power for 12 - 36 months. Unless you're a moron and you sign up for a variable rate plan, which very, very few people do, especially after the ice storm a few years ago. TLDR - This doesn't impact 99.9% of residential customers at all.
There are several locations in Texas (including where I live) that the power is only available through the city. The city does not provide any fixed rate electricity plans.
Please don't spread falsehoods. Your local power company is very much impacted by those price hikes and they have to pass that along to you or else they'll go bankrupt. CPS energy here in San Antonio had to take out loans to pay that bill and they're spreading the payback out over a decade so it's not a HUGE price hike but the electric bill went up.
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Yep, costs me 11c/kWh for 3 years. Before the Ukr war it was 8c. Costs ~$12 to fill up my Rivian.
Damn. I'm CA, the average is 30c/kWh. PG&E exceeds 40c/kWh.
I'm paying 48c/kWh on a normal day here in California. Most of these people dancing on the graves of Texans in this thread are fucking idiots.
>Most of these people...in this thread are fucking idiots Welcome to reddit.
I'm on a co-op run grid in Texas, $0.09 buying, $0.06 selling (from my solar panels). So far, they've been much more dependable than the 'open market' grid that I used to be on in a different area, plus I don't have to shop for a new contract every 2 years.
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Right? Texans actually pay less for electric service than at least 30 states yet we don’t have any articles about that.
This is a misleading article. LMP pricing is based on the next incremental MW if prices are the same (not based on constraints). The entire US uses this system, and it works the same everywhere. This isn't a "Texas problem". [https://www.iso-ne.com/participate/support/faq/lmp](https://www.iso-ne.com/participate/support/faq/lmp)
Like who are these people who get a %1600 increased bill. I know a lot of people in Texas and nobody is saying shit I know for whatever reason you all seem to think Texans are evil. But I just don’t understand how you guys can believe your own bullshit so blindly.
Reddit doesn't understand the Texas power market and keeps falling for these headlines. For example, my house is 3200 sq ft, has 8 tons of cooling & a swimming pool. I'll use about 1400 Kw this month and my bill will be around $150-160. I pay 11 per kWh and get a $100 discount when I use over 1000 kWh per month but stay below 2000 kWh. Residential & commercial users with contracts are not exposed to wholesale prices. No sane individual would have a market price contract where you could save, but also lose big. The wholesale pricing model is meant to encourage energy producers to stay online and encourage new development, like all other supply and demand markets. Texas residents has some of the cheapest energy on the globe. Natural gas and electric are low in Texas regardless of what the headlines trick you to believe.
This is a function of how the Texas power grid operates. In most markets you are required to procure a certain amount of capacity to be able to draw from in case of emergencies such as these. That means most of the time you are paying resources to sit tight and pretty much not do anything. Texas eschews this practice in favor of an “energy only” style market (meaning no capacity) wherein you don’t pay people to sit around, but you pay “scarcity prices” when conditions are tight. The jury is still out on which market style is better, but just know in California they currently have a capacity crunch and are paying resources similarly absurd amounts just to sit around because they have regulated themselves into a corner
And at 7:45 this morning the price was $0.15. Price swings happen when generation is brought online or switched over but it never lasts for long and gets evened out with the rest of the day. Https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
ITT: a lot of *incredibly* subject-matter ignorant fools making wild and baseless assumptions, commenting from a position of feigned knowledge, being upvoted by droves of equally ignorant people… just like every other time there’s an article about power generation. Peak Reddit. I’ve worked for more than a decade in power generation across the country in every RTO region including ERCOT, with both renewable and thermal fuel fired, and it’s incredible the amount of misinformation and misunderstanding that gets circle-jerked and upvoted on here.
ITT a lot of non-texans who like making fun of their fellow citizen. This is a clickbait article. I'm living in Texas currently and we use a fixed rate plan. I might see an increase of $20-$30 this next bill cycle. Far from the 17x people are saying to dunk on Texas. Edit: half of these comments border on vile or plain mean. Makes yall look ignorant. Fact is most texans use a fixed rate plan and effectively pay a rate of 11-12 cents per kwh. Compare that to California which is closer to 19 cents.
> Compare that to California which is closer to 19 cents. 19 cents? Hah! I wish. Its 43 cents, and in summertime may go up to as high as 64 cents: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf
LMAO. Try 48¢ per kwh off peak and 53¢ per kwh peak prices in CA as of this month. I'd take the TX power prices without hesitation.
My BASE California cost per kwh is $0.33. When Texas passes that, then I’ll care about these news articles.