What was the cost benefit analysis of winterizing for a once-in-30 years event?
Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?
Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?
Definitely the analysis is important but this feels like moving the goalposts to divert blame away from the known lack of winterization.
Edit: Getting off-track here, but “Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?” For the record, that 10% also buys you other perks, such as 47 human lives so far. To intentionally tug the heart-strings, check out https://www.google.com/search?q=texas+deaths where you can read about, for example, a little boy freezing to death in his home.
Have you seen the videos of hotels flooding after their pipes burst? Fixing that stuff isn’t going to be cheap at all. I would bet that those hotel operators are now going to spend a lot more fixing up their buildings than whatever reliable energy would have costed. Oh, and any damages building won’t be generating any profit until it’s fixed and everyone else is doing well enough to spend on discretionary items, which will take a while since every plumber is probably booked solid for months.
If the argument is “this went badly because of a lack of winterization because the costs were improperly considered”, I can follow that logic and agree. If the argument is “this went badly and this is an engineering problem for which cost-benefit analysis has no proper place”, I disagree pretty strongly.
That report, like this article, correctly identifies ERCOT's "energy-only market" as the underlying source of problems, in my opinion.
0. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-re...
To call it simply 3 extra days of electricity is a bit disingenuous I would think. There are massive downstream costs caused by this disaster, not even including the loss of life. How many apartment buildings will need to be torn down to the studs to remediate the water damage? How many buildings won't receive proper repair and end up with residents suffering from the health problems living in those conditions would entail? How much economic output/activity has been suppressed by a weather event that other parts of the country would have/did shrug off?
And to venture down my own political rabbit hole, how much of that hypothetical 10% extra cost of electricity could be absorbed if the utility was public and the share of funds that go to profit instead went to expansion and upgrade of the infrastructure?
No, cost-benefit-wise, it isn't: it makes more sense to buy a generator and have it handy. Even if you have to replace it every 10 years, you're still ahead. I'm not being entirely callous here, either: I live in Dallas and just lived through 3 days of intermittent power and heat and it sucked a lot. I'll be investing in a power generator in a few months (when they become available again). If half the homes in Texas had been able to switch to their own generators for a few days, the grid would have been able to sustain the remaining load.
The worse problem we have down here is water, and there's not a whole lot an individual can do about that: if we're going to collectivize the winterization of anything, I'd rather it be the pipes.
Definitely generators would have helped, but only to a point.
A state wide winter storm and sub-zero temperatures is pretty unheard of for Texas and so, yeah, things fell apart.
I'm also on a fairly major road in an exurban but not really rural environment. I'd probably feel differently if I were at the end of a country road in the middle of nowhere. I also don't have vulnerable people at home. The only thing I really worry about is my pipes. Other than that, I'll fire up the wood stove and get out the lanterns.
Some people have generators no matter what, but it seems a stretch to think you can't rely on your energy infrastructure a bit more than that.
The entire state of Texas was under a winter storm warning at one point. Texas is a very large state with significant differences in climate from North to South and West to East, having the whole state until a winter storm warning is unheard of.
Keep up with the maintenance; you'll probably want to try filling it with fuel, running it, and draining the fuel a couple of times a year.
Note: this is just for heating; don't plug anything else into the generator while you're heating---the peak startup loads make generators sad.
If you've got natural gas (uh, whoops) or propane, a whole-house generator would only be a few thousand more (not counting installation). (I've considered one, but we don't have either, which means either getting a propane tank and service or going with diesel, which has maintenance aspects.)
So the power companies saved a few million dollars and cost Texas a hundred billion.
This is a clear example of where an ounce of prevention would have saved a pound of cure.
edit: before anyone replies "but the water service failed!" then you turn off your water at the curb. and before you say "the city has to do that!" no they don't. You should have a key (from any hardware store) and know how to operate the valve.
Isn't this exactly what is missing?
Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?
It might well be, yes.
Regardless, how about .01% of the cost for an effective contingency plan? They didn't have that either.