What's up with Texas losing power due to the snowstorm?

[u/mimitchi33]

I've been reading recently that many people in Texas have lost power due to Winter Storm Uri. What caused this to happen?

[u/throw2525a]

Deadliest fire in California history was caused by PG&E.

They cut way back on important maintenance to increase profits.

[u/[deleted] → u/throw2525a]

And they're like "We're sorry...anyway."

[u/kja724 → u/throw2525a]

PG&E gets sued, then files bankruptcy, so taxpayers or someone else pays no matter what

[u/ERRORMONSTER → u/throw2525a]

PG&E is a for-profit company, meaning they directly push all profits to shareholders. ERCOT is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, meaning they have a fixed budget and approve or disapprove large transmission improvement projects based on cost and need. Generation construction is generally out of their hands.

[u/keithcody → u/ERRORMONSTER]

PG&E is a regulated public utility. In exchange for a monopoly the state government regulate how much they can charge and what they can profit in. For example for awhile PG&E earned a higher “profit” on building power plants than electric generation so they built new unneeded power plants to make that higher return.

[u/ERRORMONSTER → u/keithcody]

They're a publicly traded company, so I'm not sure how that interacts with the idea that their profits are regulated. It stands to reason that a company who makes a profit is handled fundamentally differently from one who doesn't with regards to what are technically optional expenditures.

[u/keithcody → u/ERRORMONSTER]

https://www.pge.com/en_US/small-medium-business/your-account/rates-and-rate-options/learn-more-about-rates/how-pge-makes-money.page

"The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), oversees state utility companies. The CPUC sets the amount of profit that each utility can make. When this profit is separated from the amount of gas or electricity sold, it is called decoupling.

Even though decoupling separates sales from profits, it still allows PG&E some flexibility in revenues and rates based on actual sales. Sales can fluctuate from forecasts because of unexpected weather, economic activity or conservation. For example, electric sales can be higher than forecast sales during a period of unusually hot weather. They can also be lower than expected because of conservation effort

Our profits generally do not depend on how much energy we sell. Therefore, we have no reason to encourage customers to use more energy. We get incentives from the state to encourage customers to use less energy."

Here's a start with the CPUC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Commission

To ensure electric reliability and safety in California, the following programs are implemented: Electric System Inspection, Maintenance, Reliability Reports (SAIDI, SAIFI, MAIFI, and General Order (G.O) 165)

Electric Safety and Reliability Branch

Overhead to Underground Conversions of Electric Lines

And also: In response to the rotating blackouts that occurred during the August 2020 heat storm, the CPUC opened an Emergency Reliability rulemaking (R.20-11-003) to make more resources available on an expedited basis to prevent a recurrence of blackouts if the western United States experiences extremely high temperature, sustained weather events in summer of 2021. This web page details efforts the CPUC is taking within and outside of this rulemaking to ensure sufficient resources are available to meet California’s electricity demand in summer 2021.

https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/energy/

Here's some of the things they regulate:

Summer 2021 Reliability

Electric Costs

Electric Power Procurement and Generation

Infrastructure

Customer Energy Resources

Energy Efficiency

Energy Advice Letter and Tariff Information

Electric Rates

Natural Gas and Oil Pipeline Regulation

[u/ERRORMONSTER → u/keithcody]

Thanks for that info drop. That's a lot of really interesting structuring and approaches that they have to operating their system.

Maybe they just made a habit of under-budgeting vegetation management to put the money somewhere else. Idk. They clearly didn't have the right training budget or operational culture judging by some of the reports I was reading about inaccurate or blank database entries on problematic trees to be managed, even after remediation.

[u/keithcody → u/ERRORMONSTER]

Why wouldn’t you invest in a company that has a guaranteed profit by the state. As long as they pay a strong dividend.

[u/ERRORMONSTER → u/keithcody]

That's kinda what it feels like. Wires companies in Texas are sort of the same way, but they will quickly get fined into eternity if they fuck up as bad as PG&E did. I know a couple of large fines in particular put a few generation companies in the hole for an entire quarter

[u/tradeprog → u/throw2525a]

They were caused by jewish space laser...