You can't blame it all on deregulation when there has also been substantial opposition from the environmental lobby to prevent the construction of new generation facilities. Regulation is irrelevant when you can't build new plants anyway. And when new contraction is denied to you, then buying from other sources is the only way for a power company to satisfy their bottom line. If they go out of business, then we get no power at all.thankGod wrote:My power has been down twice also this morning.
Now, for my soapbox.
Since deregulation, there have not been any new power plants built in Texas AFAIK. There has only been companies established that broker power from existing facilities. Now with that said, there have been some generation stations, such as wind power, that have been built. However, this is not near enough for the amount of population growth and usage.
HL&P and others used to build power stations because they could make money off of them, but with deregulation and brokerage it's easier and cheaper to buy elsewhere and not invest in the needed infrastructure. Therefore we have state mandated rolling blackouts, and will continue to have the shortfall of energy that we need.
Having worked on 3 power facilities in Texas including South Texas Nuclear Project, this is only my 2 cents.
Regarding the topic at hand, we were blacked out from 8:40 to 9:10 this morning, but that's been all so far.