Texan Brinksmanship

I found it gratifying that Leonard Hyman and William Tilles, writing at OilPrice, had much the same reaction that I did to the power and related water problems that people in Texas struggled with last week:

We have just witnessed the damage caused by poorly designed energy grids—rolling blackouts, skyrocketing electricity prices, people sleeping in their cars and in one insulated room to keep warm. At the same time a weaponized right wing media swings into action blaming wind turbines and the green new deal for Texas’s energy woes. There is a pattern here. These are variants of stories told after California’s forest fires and resulting power outages. But we see no easy end of power outages that have plagued electricity supply in recent years while adverse weather events seem to get more frequent and impactful. (See Figure 1.)

But this is the bottom line. In a way an electric system is like maintaining a car. Spend adequately on repairs maintenance etc. and reliable performance is reasonably assured. Or one could skimp repeatedly on maintenance, save a lot of money over the years and take one’s chances on vehicle reliability. The electric system in Texas was built it appears around the latter proposition. Their reserve margins are the lowest in the country (about 8%). And this is the third time the electric system failed to perform adequately in winter (1989, 2011 and 2021). Our point here is that any system that consistently fails in this manner regardless of the governance regime is designed that way— despite claims and protests to the contrary. This is a big problem for any region because an increasingly digital economy requires highly reliable electricity service. And what is being provided at present in ERCOT is anything but.

They go on to suggest that the problems will only become worse as people buy more electric vehicles which depend on plentiful, reliable electricity.

I was astonished at the figure they cited for the reserve margin of Texas’s electrical energy system. 8%? Really? Keep in mind that the ERCOT system is almost entirely self-contained. That’s a lot more confidence than I would have. I guess that’s the confidence it takes to be a Texan.

4 comments… add one
  • TastyBits Link

    I think the confidence is derived from a belief in the omnipotence of free-market solutions.

    The article is pretty good, but the reality is probably a lot worse. Now that OilPrice.com has gotten over the Peak Oil fad, it is now into the green energy fad.

  • steve Link

    What I said all along is that they went cheap so I largely agree with this. This wasn’t really a surprise event since they have had outages before, just not this long. If you are not going to winterize and you arent going to have reserves it costs lots less but you will lose a few lives and face some big costs from property destruction. Needing reliable electricity in the age of the internet is another issue I hadn’t really thought much about.

    Steve

  • Piercello Link

    Sadly, Texas got its next 1895 winter this year.

    Is Rhode Island prepared for the next 1938 hurricane?

    Is California prepared for the next 1862 pineapple express?

    Is Miami-Dade prepared for the next Andrew?

    Modern technology infrastructure is so much younger, even than our RECORDED meteorological extremes of just the past 150 years, that it boggles the mind how fragile things really are at this point.

    And that’s just the weather!

    Somehow, we have got to rediscover how to solve joint problems by working together.

    Somehow.

  • Drew Link

    Wind production plummeted. NatGas production picked up most of the slack. The facts are in. It shouldn’t be surprising.

    Designing for worst case, if applied to all human endeavors would bring the country to a grinding mess. Its nothing but a diversionary argument.

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