As some might have heard, we had a bit of a power outage last week in Texas. While this gave many people a much needed two minutes of hate on the Lone Star, more rational people understood that some type of logistical failure had occurred. But since Governor Perry was busy getting his hair cut in California, the executive level of the state scrambled as our grid crawled further and further over a barrel.
Now two interesting items are coming out of this fiasco, basically that certain power plants were down due to maintenance while others had not properly winterized their plants. Sure this was a once a decade event for the land of the blazing sun, but last I checked most power plants are built to last decades.
So obviously Texas has a plan in place that is so dumb that if it was bacon it wouldn't even sizzle. Especially if you range is electric.
But as with most things in our Era of Barrel Hair, it is actually much worse.
I guess Perry is back in Texas, because he has himself a big ol' speech tomorrow. I bet he broke his arm patting himself on the back for missing last week's bad newscycle, but the writing is on the wall.
Since he spends all his time pretending he has a chance to President, and not to mention all his grooming, he has let Texas go to hell in a hand-basket, and lets business interests run the greatest show on Earth.
It's like he forget the whole citizens' interest in lieu of some type of payment, maybe in the form of campaign contributions. I figure they rolled up so many wheel burrows that Ol' Barrel Hair did something really stupid. Or have his cronies as confused as goats eating their own astroturf.
And so we have it.
An Interview With the CEO of the Texas Grid
by Kate Galbraith, The Texas Tribune
http://www.texastribune.org/...
TT: I know you all are saying that the list of generators that failed — plants that failed — can't be made public because that's confidential market information under market rules. What is the competitive issue there? I get that there are market rules, but I think one could make a pretty good case that the public has a right to know who and what caused our power to go out during freezing temperatures.
Doggett: Well, we'll be working with the market monitor and the commission and the Legislature to work through what information we can make available to help in that effort. What immediately presents a conflict for us is that our protocols prevent us from publicly disclosing information related to outages. It perhaps could allow other power plants that are running to impact offers if they were aware of the status of other resources across the grid.
You can't publicly disclose information related to the outages due to market reasons? Gee, I guess I am stupid as the day is long, because I thought a free market would mean a free flow of information about said market, making it free and all. I guess "free" is a sliding scale, a scale probably having something to do with money.
So there we have issue one, the public, which is dependent on this infrastructure, is going to be left literally in the dark when it fails.
TT: [Regarding] the generator list not being made public — this could play into some people's concern that ERCOT is at least in some significant part run by the generators, who make their own rule, and this is an issue. How would you respond to that?
Doggett: Well, I would say first of all that ERCOT's primary responsibility here was ensuring reliability of the grid and avoiding any widespread outages across the state. So our focus certainly was on getting the grid in a reliable state without any concern with which specific owners of resources, or which specific resources, were facing the forced outages. I think I would look more to the independent market monitor to look into those details and investigate whether there was anything inappropriate occurring.
Doing a great job with your primary responsibility, there Trip. I guess I could say you were Trippin'. I mean, I hear you clucking Trip, but I'd rather put socks on roosters than find your nest of incompetence. The chickens, Trip, they are a roosting.
Unless they need a heat lamp in the coop last week, of course.
So moving on parsing this sparse logic:
"So our focus certainly was on getting the grid in a reliable state without any concern with which specific owners of resources"
So you were looking at the grid, but not the parts of the gird? Is that right? Maybe you can show us all how to cut off our noses to spite our faces as well. But at least you know you need an independent monitor to do your job, we can all agree that is the way forward.
Because you know, say I was a dude who owned a power plant. Say I didn't winterize it because I was not only dumb, but greedy. Wouldn't I just fail to wrap my pipes knowing that would drive up energy prices? Cuz wouldn't a fella like me make a mint off such a thing?
I mean, this is Texas. Some folks here ain't above pissing in the pot and selling lemonade.
TT: Does ERCOT have the authority to order the power plants to get their act together and prepare properly for winter? And if not, who does — because there's obviously an argument one could make that the less maintenance you do on a plant, the more money you could stand to make, in theory. What can be done to require better maintenance of plants in Texas?
Doggett: One thing that I will be looking at is to see if ERCOT may play a stronger role in perhaps reviewing plant winterization procedures. And perhaps looking for affidavits from the power plant owners to certify that their plants have been winterized prior to winter weather occurring. I think that's an example of something that we will potentially propose to improve our ability to ensure that they're ready for the cold weather.
Perhaps reviewing plant winterization procedures? My goodness, does this mean you can't even inspect these plants? Have we deregulated our power infrastructure to the point we are now depending on pinky swears from corporations?
Do you get to make any decisions there Trip? Like maybe which collar you get to wear while being the lap dog of business interests?
And perhaps an affidavit saying power plants winterized? Yeah, leaving them to self-regulation is working out wonderfully for us so far, so let's get the shovels out and dig ourselves deeper.
The best part is you will only promise to potentially propose this very idea!
Texas bless it Trip, you just dumb or a lackey?
This is just more than a few bubbles off plumb and goes against the very free market you constantly parade around. If there is no open information, lead by a cabal of power plant owners, against the public's interest, that is not a free market.
I am not sure we even got a word for something so stupid, and this is Texas. Maybe our grid has been Perry-down to size.
Considering the cost of power went up 100 times normal, and Lord knows that will be passed on to the consumer, and we will never know why because of apologists like Doggett here, there is no reason not to loot the citizens of Texas if you are a power plant owner.
I mean, if we keep going alone to get along with all of Perry's failed policies and failed cronies, we might run out of water next, instead of just power.
Oh wait...
Mandatory Water Restrictions For El Paso Extended Until Further Notice
Car Washes, Laundromats Told To Close Immediately By Water Utility
http://www.kvia.com/...
Oh my...