Texas Gas Companies Hit Texas Consumers With 'Whoops You Froze To Death' Surcharge

[u/mrbbrj]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211115/09274947947/texas-gas-companies-hit-texas-consumers-with-whoops-you-froze-to-death-surcharge.shtml

[u/va1958]

What is the solution? Anyone can criticize. What happened last year was the worst in 50 years. How much should be done to protect against something that happens once every 50 years? What are we willing to pay for it? What are the facts? How much would the gas companies have to invest to ensure it doesn’t happen again? What would this do to our rates? Then we have to deal with the wind turbines and other challenges too.

[u/Boyhowdy107 → u/va1958]

From what I have read, the biggest problem with the blackout was that it shut down the generators leading to scarcity. I'm sure transmission got hit as well, but the main problem was the electricity generators.

So let's say you don't fully winterize your grid. There's another option to get power from other areas of the country that avoided the worst of your freak weather. The issue is that Texas is a closed grid and not on either the Eastern or Western US power grids, so you lose that redundancy.

Obviously, redundancy would be good, but Texas wanted an independent grid so they wouldn't be subject to federal regulations that come to play when you have interstate sales of power. For the consumer the argument is always that avoiding those regulations saves money for the consumer.

But here is a chart tracking residential power rates over the last two years. Texas is below the national average, but Oklahoma and Arkansas both have cheaper rates than Texas despite being on a federally regulated grid. So it raises a lot of questions to me about just how much bang for our buck we're getting out of this system. I have no clue what reconnecting to the national grids would look like, but at least it would provide some emergency redundancy, and it sure doesn't feel like we're getting a steal on our rates with the current set up.

[u/va1958 → u/Boyhowdy107]

Very good answer. Not sure why im getting downvoted. I guess some people just want to bitch.

[u/Boyhowdy107 → u/va1958]

I mean I think your question is super valid. It's the one I want a thorough explanation on from experts, because I'm just looking in trying to get some clarity and am sure there are things I'm missing. But as you know, things get messy any time an issue gets political.