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My billing periods run from middle of month to middle of month. So the Snovid period was split between bill ending in Feb and bill ending in Mar. My Jan bill was $113, Feb $115, and Mar $117. Each of those is about $10 more than same periods in 2020, but about the same as 2019 and much less than 2018 (I have no idea what was going on in 2018).

There’s a guy in Austin, who is not “of Austin“ if you catch my drift, has a nice blog post compiling analyses of the recent Snovid event.

https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=47349

Cliff’s Notes as I understood the articles:

Solar and wind have been subsidized so they are cheaper than electricity from reliable sources like gas and coal. And presumably nukes. So there’s no Incentive for the operators of reliable energy sources to improve their plants, or even replace them when the old ones go off-line permanently.

Part of the subsidization is that solar and wind or not required to pay for any grid reliability improvements like reliable energy producers are. For example they are not required to maintain battery farms so that they can send power during low sun and low wind nor maintain backup gas generators. I know from other reading that there are battery farm projects being attempted near the wind farms, But they are still in the early experimental stages and depend on subsidies from the feds.

Wind power was producing at 2% of its capacity during the Snovid. There were a lot of wind turbines that froze, but even without that there was not much capacity expected from the wind farms that week anyway.

Because of the price differences between “green“ electric energy and reliable electric energy, the margin between what the entire grid can produce and what the customers demand has narrowed significantly. As old Reliable power plants went off-line permanently there was no economic or regulatory incentive to replace them.

During the February to April time period Electrical demand in Texas is traditionally lower, so that’s when many plant operators take their plants off line for maintenance. They can’t be brought back online immediately, so that reduced the margin even more.

ERCOT Reacted too late to the initial spike in electrical demand causing Reliable energy plants to trip off-line because of the sudden excess demand on their capacity. There are big industrial users of electricity who have agreed in advance to be taken off line in the case of events like this, but ERCOT didn’t make that happen soon enough, among other things. Those plants that tripped off line were not designed To be immediately brought back online.

I don’t think we should have all our energy sources in one basket, be at “green” or oil or gas or nukes. We should have a variety of sources, but those sources it all have to be some basic requirements to keep the grid up. It’s time for wind and solar to stop being treated as a Favorite child and required to stand on its own 2 feet. That’s gonna be unlikely with the Democrats in charge of the federal government but maybe Texas can move that direction if her legislature has enough guts. Which I’m not optimistic about.

So the board of my electric company (Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative, GVEC) met yesterday and decided they will not raise the rate for now "at this time" although they did have to buy electricity at the $9 rate for awhile.