Texas Grid Operator Warns of More Blackout Threats
Updated, Thursday, 4:45 p.m.:
Trip Doggett, the chief executive of ERCOT, said in a press call that the magnitude of the shortfall in backup power "was not expected," and the surprise was due to a large, planned new coal plant being unavailable.
Also, reactions to the ERCOT report are rolling in. Texas Competitive Power Advocates, a group representing power plant operators and other electric companies, said that the report showed the importance of "proper pricing signals" to facilitate investments in new plants. But Randy Moravec, the executive director of the Texas Coalition for Affordable Power, issued a statement ...
Comments (5)
Merryl Redding via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Especially if the Obama's EPA is successful in reducing our power plant output, as they intend. Mr abbott has been fighting for the state's power companies & citizens.
namoyer
ERCOT, populated by a bunch of overpaid oxymorons, is just big f**king waste of time and $$$. Coal plant owners/operators are just a bunch of whiney polluters. Clean up, or repower with abundant, clean, natural gas from TX. Power generators have just gamed the deregulated power system, and screwed over consumers. Must require every TX generator to maintain at least 10% spinning reserve, and build more new, high efficiency combined cycle poweplants. The TX Lege and Perry ought to be wired up, and shocked periodically into sense!
EyesOfTX
The reality is that Texas needs more power generation to be built, and quickly, and that the mindless fealty by state officials to this fake de-regulated market consistently fails to produce the "market signals" necessary to get more capacity built.
San Antonio and CPS Energy are about to begin taking bids on a new, clean, 800 MWH combined cycle natural gas plant to replace the old coal-fired JT Deely plant. CPS is able to do this because it is a city utility that has the ability to recover its costs through a rate case. Meanwhile, the rest of Texas is held hostage to a fake "free market" that artifically props up bad actors who refuse to clean up their old plants and subsidizes non-viable, unreliable and non-competitive wind farms that do not produce power at the times of day it is most needed.
This behavior, friends, is the definition of insanity.
Rudy Gonzales
This new coal plant not being available should have been planned as well as the positioning of the current units available and online now b eing properly notified to keep stand-by operations at-the-ready. ERCOT continues to fail miserably in their duties to the Texas population. The new C oal plant previously written about was kept off line with the permission of ERCOT to make a point to the EPA, falsely! The new EPA rules were known prior to finishing and start-up, but was allowed to stay off-line by the Governor and Attorney General of Texas to make a point to the courts as they planned to sue over EPA rules. As a result ERCOT is playing with the politicians in Austin against the EPA and clean air people and Texas residents. This is what you get in a one party state!
John Burton via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It's helpful to have some historical perspective. Dirty utilities have forecast economic doom and blackouts every time the EPA has ever issued an air or water regulation. Every time! And every single time, they've been wrong. As EPA chief Lisa Jackson is fond of pointing out, in its 40-year history, the Clean Air Act has never yet caused an electric reliability problem. I suppose it's possible that dirty utilities are right this time and independent analysts are wrong, but as a guiding heuristic, "dirty utilities are full of self-serving sh*t" has proven pretty reliable.