Michael Giberson During part of the electric power emergency in the ERCOT region of Texas last week, the ERCOT system imported power from Mexico to reduce the extent of the blackouts needed to keep the ERCOT grid operating. The interconnections between ERCOT/Texas and Mexico are relatively recent. The summary of the March 2009 meeting of …
Michael Giberson Scott Sumner wrote, “On or about December 1978, the world’s ideology changed,”explaining that “this quotation from Joan Robinson did not seem insane in 1977”: Before the last Korean war in 1950, the North was home to most of the country’s heavy industry. As late as 1975, its income per head still exceeded the …
Michael Giberson The new Jan./Feb. 2011 issue of the Electricity Journal is now available, and it contains the usual range of interesting things to consider. Take, for instance, the article “Rede?ning Renewable Portfolio Standards: The Value of Installed Renewable Capacity.” The article observes, reasonably so, that some sources of renewable power can dependably generate power …
Michael Giberson Among the complications caused by the cold weather last week, short supply of natural gas throughout much of the southwest United States. Reports indicate some gas wells were freezing up and loss of electric power to gas production systems, but more of the problem was loss of power to natural gas pipelines. And, …
The Natural Gas That Didn’t Come in from the Cold Read More »
Michael Giberson In WIRED, Jonah Lehrer reports on how Toronto geological statistician Mohan Srivastava discovered a flaw in a lottery scratch-off game. As a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day …
Better Living Through Applied Statistics: Cracking Scratch-off Lottery Games Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Yesterday the Wall Street Journal featured an essay from Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto, focusing on the socio-economic roots of the current protests against the authoritarian Mubarak government. De Soto’s work on the debilitating consequences of the lack of property rights for individual prosperity and economic growth is outstanding, and he has been …
Michael Giberson In other commentary on ERCOT’s rolling blackouts: “Some Companies Made Millions Off the Texas Blackouts.” While Texans suffered rolling blackouts yesterday, some power generators were enjoying windfall profits. Starting around 5 a.m., prices in the wholesale market surged to the market cap, $3,000 per megawatt-hour, and stayed there, off and on, until around …
Texas Observer: Some Companies Made Millions Off the Texas Blackouts Read More »
Michael Giberson Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal included a story on HOT lanes and other ways commuters can buy through congestion, “American Idle: On the Road.” One excerpt: In the early years of the nation, entrepreneurs built toll roads, offering travelers a faster carriage ride in return for money. Now, the concept of the toll road …
Michael Giberson [Note: This item was originally posted at MasterResource as: “Texas Power Outages: A Preliminary Analysis (Cold snap brings failure–isolated ERCOT an issue)“] Wednesday morning, ERCOT, the power grid operator for much of Texas, called upon local distribution companies to cut power to blocks of consumers on a rotating basis. The rolling outages were a …
Cold Snap Brings Rolling Power Outages to Texas; is Ercot Policy of Isolation at Fault? Read More »
Michael Giberson Among the casualties of yesterday’s rolling blackouts in the ERCOT power system was a Texas A&M University conference dedicated to helping solve global energy challenges. Via the Texas A&M News and Information Service: Texas A&M System Gearing Up To Help Solve Global Energy Challenges COLLEGE STATION, Feb. 3, 2011—The Texas A&M University System …
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