- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- usa@lemmy.ml
Texas power prices soar 20,000% as brutal heat wave sets off emergency::On Wednesday evening, spot electricity prices topped $5,000 per megawatt-hour, up more than 200 times from Wednesday morning.
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Don’t worry everyone. The free market will take care of this for sure! Deregulated private companies always have the best interests of the consumers at heart!
I think that other comment was sarcasm
But how do we know? They didn’t use the sarcasm font!
And they will still continue to vote against their interests.
They absolutely deserve it, too. Dumbfuck Texans.
All these motherfuckers, including Abbott and every CEO sitting on ERCOT, need to go to prison for the rest of their goddamned lives. This is ALL market manipulation and price gouging. All of it.
Wait, I have seen that before. I have a déjà-vu
EDIT: so it’s 5$ kWh, current price in France is 0.2€ kWh for comparison. Makes a real point for energy-efficient computers/software!
so it’s a publicly traded commodity. are there texasmegawatts or what? are there less texasmegawatts then before? because if not, this is how it works. they gain capital, can cheaper lend capital, buy efficient texasmegawattsfacilities.
Because Texas refuses to connect its grid to the federal grid, yes, there’s effectively texasmegawatts, and they’re fucking expensive right now because the governor keeps refusing to let the power companies properly prepare for devastating weather.
Texas is connected to the Eastern (Florida to Canada) grid, the Western (Cali to Canada) grid, and a Mexican grid not part of the US/CA system via tie-ins. It is the only state in the continental US with it’s own grid, which was not a smart decision (cough cough feb 2021). The most outrageous part was that they could have bought power from Mexico, east, or west and import it via those tie-ins during Feb 2021 but chose not to. Power was out for millions for over a week in freezing temperatures. Fuck Texas. Fuck CenterPoint Energy.
Additional Information: Besides Texas, Quebec and Alaska have their own grids as well. Alaska is the only grid without any tie-ins.
… what?
Impossible. Isn’t Texas the richest, most developed place on earth?
Was I lied to???11!
At ERCOT’s request, the Biden administration declared a power emergency in Texas on Thursday, waiving some air-pollution rules so generators in the state could produce more electricity.
Why not just say “yes, but only if you promise to put in more clean energy, drop gas, and connect to say, I dunno, the fucking international grid, you fucking dumbasses?”
If you have the means, move out of the state before anything worse happens from your galaxy brain politicians, who would seem to rather kill you than see you have normal living conditions. Jesus.
No doubt that the climate science deniers of Texas will struggle on…
This state is such a shithole.
I don’t get it. Texans live close to the ocean, just go for a swim if it’s too hot.
Did you see ocean temperature off the coast of Florida reaching one hundred degrees? Cool off in a hot tub…
No wonder those dumbasses want to avoid federal rEgUlaTIon!
The solution is staring at them straight in the face. Unfortunately, they’re so utterly brainwashed that they’ll never even consider it.
5000$ ÷ 1000 kilowatts = 5 bucks a kilowatt jesus, In my area its 0.14 ¢ a kilowatt. I’m pretty sure the math is right.
What the actual fuck?!?
Don’t worry! I’ve read on the internet that an ice age is coming in a couple of years /s
So it is some between 2.5c to $5 kwh. Is this even possible? I scanned linked 2 pages could not find any price chart.
I am wondering if similar can happen in stock market, a penny stock no one is trading, you decide to buy/sell 1 share $10000 to yourself. Then suddenly every owner become millionaire? At least on paper, right, right? /s
What you’re describing is a pump and dump scheme. In any market where there is low volume, either in terms of units or value, it is possible that a wealthy individual buys a large enough share of the available item to make the price jump up a bunch. Then when other people buy to get in on the next bitcoin/NFT/GME craze, often motivated by person A, that first person can then sell to the next wave.
What is weird about the power grid is that A) electricity has to be used at the time of purchase so you couldn’t resell it and B) there are often power plants specifically for spikes in demand (called peaker plants) that rely on those moments to jump in and produce to make their profit, keeping things under control. However if you’re the Texas grid, which is isolated from any other electric grid, you can just ignore obvious signs that more power is needed and everytime demand spikes you make a bunch of profit and super promise you’ll fix it for the next time
Contrary to what clickbait articles lead you to believe these spikes are incredibly brief. https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprices
I’m really not sure how else an electrical grid is supposed to artificially encourage lowering demand than to fluctuate pricing. Lots of new appliances now can connect to the grid and shut themselves down temporarily when costs are high, this is an opt-in system that without pricing tied to it most people would ignore. If you need to use electricity at high demand time it had better be important.
And yes I realize in an ideal world every electrical grid would be 10,000% oversized and be able to handle infinite demand. That is unfortunately not the world we live in.
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