Texan Lt. Governor Dan Patrick blames constituents for giant electric bills: "Read the fine print"

Yes gaming is regulated which of course has nothing to do with THIS gambling on future wholesale energy cost. Yes when signing up it is clear they are subject to the rise and fall of wholesale prices and why their AVERAGE rate will be lower.

Why do you make out Texas energy users to be total helpless idiots?

 

You do know there is a difference between transmitting electricity and and transporting oil and gas?

 

While not an advocate of variable rate mortgages the interest is limited in how much rates can go up year to year, so no it is not going to magically increase from $1200 - $2000. And yes you should have an emergency fund and include monies for an sudden temporary cost of the WHOLESALE electricity you are buying else sign up with a FIXED RATE provider.

 

It's REAL simple, if you can't budget for a sudden temporary increase in the cost of WHOLESALE electricity then DON'T contract to purchase it. And yes without those profits no one would invest in energy companies and there would be no capital to build the plants and transmission systems and maintain them.

And I noticed you got "the children" into it since you can't refute the facts or defend those who made a conscious adult decision you most now make the appeal to emotions. How about the "family dog" and "grandma". Are they next?

 

It's absolutely true and the government does interfere and does not allowe the markets to work during such times when vital resources are scarce there will be fewer of those vital resources. "Gouging" means that instead of 5 people each buying 20 rolls of toilet paper at $1 each when toilet paper becomes a scarce commodity 100 people can buy one each at $4 each. It also means someone 500 miles away will have the incentive to buy 20 generators at $500 a piece drive to the disaster area and sell those 20 genators for $1000 each and 20 people now have a generator which otherwise would not be there. Gouging serves a PURPOSE in such cases and if the person doing the selling prices what they are selling too high then the market will say NOPE.

 

How did they make out like bandits exactly. What record profits, got a link?

 

It's FULLY spelled out in their agreements and they KNOW why their average rate will be lower than a fixed rate company and the risk THEY ASSUME.

 

You don’t seem to. We have never lost electricity because it’s too cold. And our state ( third coldest) still uses the same mix of fossil fuels and renewables that Texas does. It’s the utilities that are RESPONSIBLE for their own fuels. Are you saying Exxon was at fault because “ they” couldn’t provide fuel to Texas because it was too cold but still manage to deliver it to ALASKA. Nope....wrong.

 

They are REGULATED WITHIN THEIR STATE just as the utilities within my state are regulated by STATE regulations and the STATE Public Services Commission.

 

It’s also real simple that Texas formed their own in state grid to avoid federal regulations. If they had remained connected to the west grid, power sharing would have kept service going to their customers. Of course they also would have been required to harden their system for cold weather and avoided stealing money for less service.

 

Power companies ELECTRIC, transmission line transmit electricity. Gas companies provide gas through pipelines. And other than that I have no idea what is the point you are trying to make. Exxon does not provide natural gas or electricity and I don't think there is a lot of home heat being generated by fuel oil furnaces in Texas. And I have no idea which state is your state but if you have a link which proves your state has never lost electrical power I'd love to read it else I'll remain skeptical of your claim.

 

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Apparently, what happened in Texas is not restricted to Texas.

Search the news and you will discover electric and/or natural gas consumers in other states are also worried their bills will greatly increase.

 

You are confused obviously
Your state has to conform to federal regulations because it power shares with states on the same grid.
Texas does not. I guarantee, your state is either the west or east grid if it isn’t Texas. I guarantee also, that your power will survive the conditions that Texas had with only possible local problems due to down trees, and th grid would have prevented any massive sustained loss of power. Case closed.

 

"The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons, but can also draw some power from other grids using DC ties. By not crossing state lines, the synchronous power grid is in most respects not subject to federal (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) regulation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas...eral Energy Regulatory Commission) regulation.

And the other systems did not have spare power to provide they were also going through the freeze.

Ask an Engineer

Would things have worked out better in Texas if it weren’t on an electrical grid that is separate from the rest of the country?

Probably not, says Professor Wei-jen Lee of the University of Texas at Arlington, who answered questions with several of his colleagues in a panel discussion organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Lee, the director of the university’s highly regarded Energy Systems Research Center, notes that there was not enough capacity in the surrounding grids to have prevented the Texas blackouts even if the grids had been connected.

Doug Houseman, a grid-modernization expert at engineering-and-construction firm Burns & McDonnell, agreed. “Even if it had been connected, there would have been blackouts, because SPP [the Southwest Power Pool] and MISO [the Midcontinent Independent System Operator] had no excess [capacity], and Southwest [which is distinct from SPP] had only four to six gigawatts, but we were turning off ten-and-a-half gigawatts at that point.” Far from having spare power to share, adjacent grids were experiencing rolling blackouts of their own.

“Officially, there are three U.S. systems, but, in Texas, we like to say that there are two: The Texas system and the non-Texas system,” Lee says. “In reality, most such systems are in effect independent systems, regardless of whether they are connected or unconnected, from a macro-systems point of view. The size of the system in Texas is about 85 gigawatts, which is larger than a lot of countries in system capacity.”

In the 1990s, Texas undertook a study of what it would need to do to connect to the neighboring grids and what the effects of doing so were likely to be. And here’s a counterintuitive finding: That connection might very well have made the overall network less resilient. Because Texas produces a great deal of energy at relatively low cost, connection probably would have led to the early retirement of some generating capacity in the adjacent systems, which most of the time would have been able to buy power from Texas. If Texas were connected to the neighboring grids, it might very well have meant more widespread dependency on the very Texas systems that failed......

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/ask-an-engineer/

 

That’s really naive .
Exxon supplies 2. 7 billion. Cubic feet Feet per day..of NATURAL gas among other fossil fuels. Gas is fungible and Exxon Mobil distributes gas through other local companies. Get with the program and do some research h before you make questionable statements.

Exxon Mobile is the country’s BIGGEST SUPPLIER OF NAT GAS.

 

A lot of rambling to say exactly what I said. Texas avoids FEDERAL REGULATIONS by not belonging to an interstate power grid. That’s why they fk their customers. Make your responses shorter. I’m not going to read the rest. “Probably not” is a supposition, the fact is, they have cold weather problem because they are a holes who don’t believe in science.

 

I guess you’re infused on what regulations are. We have lots of federal regulations that are enforced by state agencies. Pollution, and roads and ELECTRICITY that flows from one state to another require it. I hope that’s understandable.

 

I expect that deniers from the Texas GOP and their supporters here will deny anything happen at all. The deaths were illusionary, just like the covid deaths

 

I do no such thing. Do you think the average resident knows how weather vulnerable the gas supply is or that the regulatory body can raise charging limits without notice?

 

Those customers had a choice. They are grown ass adults, and entered into contracts of their own free will. If they decided to gamble on the very likely chance of getting good rates against the highly unlikely chance of getting huge bills, that is the choice they were entitled to make. That they lost that gamble is of no consequence to anybody but those who took on that risk voluntarily. Nobody forced them, nobody put a gun to their head, they gave them an option, and it was that choice that bit them in the rear end.

C'est la vies. Or however that's spelled.

 

Before you doubt my claim, you need to read it more accurately.

 

What choice was that ? Move.

 

Case closed?? What case? I have read quite a few of your very repetitive posts on this thread, and I still have zero clue what your overall point is, aside from the fact that you live in the 3rd coldest state in the country and your power doesn't go out because of cold weather. Well, congrats. But who cares?

 

you guys still avoid the critical point. Texas can’t deliver power when it’s cold. That’s effin ridiculous. Keep wanting to talk about contracts. That’s your hang up.

 

Good point. With Texas school systems wanting science to be just an opinion , it’s doubtful any public schooled Texan can keep from being scammed.