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 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 [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 Last week the Texas PUC approved routes for the northwesternmost link in the CREZ transmission expansion, choosing one of the longest of several possible transmission routes in order to avoid crossing parts of Palo Duro canyon. The canyon is the nation’s second longest and includes a state park. None of the routes would …
Texas Transmission Route to Avoid Crossing Scenic Canyon Read More »
Michael Giberson Below are charts showing data on ERCOT West zone power prices for the 2009 and for 2010 January-September with a focus on negative prices. The charts were derived from data provided through the ERCOT website, on their “Balancing Energy Services Market Clearing Prices for Energy Annual Report” page. These charts were prepared in the …
Negative Power Prices in Ercot West: 2009 and 2010 Through September Read More »
Michael Giberson The Houston Chronicle reports the growing interest in Texas in still-expensive solar power: Surely some wiseacre is on record observing that there are two things Texas has plenty of: hot air and hot sun. But Texas may eventually have the last laugh. The state, which already leads the nation in turning wind into …
Michael Giberson In the current issue of Regulation, Tim Brennan reviews Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story, edited by Andrew Kleit and our own Lynne Kiesling. After a lengthy introduction discussing how deregulation came to the electric power business (mostly it hasn’t, but parts of the industry have been reorganized), Brennan gets down to the book …
Review of Kiesling and Kleit (eds.) Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story Read More »
Michael Giberson Current and anticipated changes in the patterns of electric power production and consumption drive the demand for new transmission lines to help get lower-cost power from generators to consumers. The biggest changes in power production have come from growth in renewable power supplies, so the expansion of transmission is seen as critical to …
Is Texas Crez a Model for Getting Transmission Lines Built Elsewhere in the Country? Read More »
Michael Giberson A story by Purva Patel in the Houston Chronicle does a reasonably good job explaining the upcoming shift from a zonal to a nodal market design for the ERCOT market in Texas. It is a complicated matter and hard to convey to non-specialist readers. (In fact, even some specialists appear confused about parts …
Nodal Pricing Coming to Texas Wholesale Power Market Read More »
Michael Giberson Texas did it again, it achieved it’s target for new renewable power generation capacity years ahead of schedule. And so, of course, as it becomes increasingly obvious that the Texas Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is essentially irrelevant to growth in wind power, the Texas RPS is increasingly held up as a success and model …
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