I think it's most common in unincorporated areas.

Unincorporated areas are strange ducks.

I'm in unincorporated Denton County and we get zero county services but have the pleasure of paying the county a hefty property tax rate.

For years the neighboring towns police depts used to hand out tickets like they were candy, stupid stuff like 1 MPH over the limit.

One day someone realized, ****, we are unincorporated, they have no jurisdiction and their tickets are unenforceable.

Every stop sign, speed limit sign, traffic light was just "a suggestion" None of them had any legal teeth so people just stopped paying tickets.

Once the cops realized their revenue stream had dried up they disappeared.

All hell broke lose and the main road turned into the Indy 500.

The Water Board that manages municipal services had to draft a contract that conveyed enforcement powers to the County Sheriff to get things back under control.

That is true. The MUD districts are actually tiny tiny governments.

What's with the outrageous bills I'm hearing about? Thousands of dollars for the electricity used during this time? Is that real?

It's a demand / supply market.

As demand increases so do the price tiers per MWH.

Typically we have a supply capacity of around 75,000 MWH.

It was predicted that demand would start to eclipse supply hence the recommendations to cut back on any unnecessary use including unplugging unused electronics because even in an off state they do draw some minor amount of parasitic energy. That's how bad it was getting, that electronics that were off but still plugged in could create a large enough cumulative draw to impact demand.

But we never really got into that last bit of capacity when the grid starting falling apart and we lost 30,000 MWH of supply instantly and demand was already exceeding what was left.

That immediately put us into the tier where price went to $9,000 per MWH.

Average price per MWH is under $100.

It seems what happened is ERCOT did not initially go to $9k rate but were instructed by TPUC, the state agency that oversees it, to do so.

TPUC's justification was "we needed to encourage suppliers to release capacity"

I have two take aways there.

Suppliers needed to bring facilities online and the increased rate was an incentive for them to incur those costs.

or

The Black Swan, suppliers held back capacity waiting for the higher prices to come into play.

Probably a mix of both.

Here's the other part of the problem.

In summer our electric use increases cause, it's hot.

Electricity generating plants are largely gas fired.

In the winter electricity use drops off and residential gas use goes up because most homes use gas for heat.

That reduces the available gas supply to the electricity providers but no one cares because they don't need it.

Now toss in single digit temps and electricity demand is going to spike but gas supply to meet the demand is not available because residential gas supply takes precedence.

Here's the stupidity of that donut hole.

It takes electricity to operate gas fired residential HVAC systems.

So you are giving residents a priority for gas so they can keep the heat on but can't provide the electricity to run their heating systems.

Giving water to a drowning man comes to mind.

TX only has capacity for one spike or the other, not both at the same time.

What my years usage looks like for gas vs electricity.


Gas
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1614010408.jpg

Electricity
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1614010408.jpg

That was only for certain folks that signed up with a certain electric company. The company charged the customers the wholesale price for electricity which is great under normal circumstances, but when the price went nuts, those folks that signed up got screwed.

I'm not so sure about that.

CoServe has already told us our rates will be going up to deal with the additional cost they incurred.

They are being very vague about what they paid for supply which leads me to believe they don't have contracts with caps.

For now they are telling us Feb and March rates won't increase while they "work out" how to pass on the cost without bankrupting their customers.

Being a Co-op they don't have a ton of extra scratch just lying around.

Maybe they are looking into whether or not they can long term finance the debt.

But it's going to cost us, how much and for how long remains to be seen.

And before anyone says it's my fault for using them, they are my only choice, I have no other option.

This will be interesting to see what happens to retail companies that don't own generation. Many could go under if the state doesn't step in to limit theirs and the consumer's losses.

A company like NRG Energy which owns a retail company, Reliant Energy, also owns many power plants in the same generation area. So the thinking is when wholesale prices are high, generation makes money and when wholesale prices are low, retail makes money so the corporation is hedged against losses.

Fortunately I had this for power outages during hurricane season. Never dreamed it would come in handy to run my gas HVAC.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1614019719.JPG

Moving to Austin this summer and building a new house.

We have the "must have" list.

Instant hot.
Radiant floors.
Whole home gas fired generator, possibly with propane back up, need to check code on the propane back up.
Possibly some solar. We have neighbors who have solar and Tesla cells and they were fine the whole time.

The electric co-ops were formed by the Rural Electrification Act in 1941. Prior to the formation of the electric co-ops most rural areas HAD NO ELECTRICITY..... If you get power from the co-op you are a member/owner. If they have a good year you will possibly get a rebate for your ownership part. I have been a user / member of several electric co-ops over the years and have always been very happy with them. Their rates were always very competitive and I assume still are? The board of directors of the co-op are elected by the general membership at annual meetings.

Many rural operations (i.e. cotton gins, grain elevators, etc.) were at one time farmer co-ops. All the farmers in the area used the cotton gin and were essentially part owners of it.

This is the electric co-op which provided power to my grandparents farms in the 1940s and our farm in the 1950s and on and is still going strong.

https://taylorelectric.com/

You forgot 'snowmobile' :D

Propane backup isn't a code thing, except for the tank. You have to have two supplies AND someone to switch the generator from Propane to NG and back. In a Briggs & Stratton 20kW, this requires removing the back of the unit and turning a valve. On a 48kW unit, it is a valve in the front. On a 12kW unit, you have to change the jet in the carb.

Any electric heat (Radiant Floor is usually electric) is bad juju with a generator. They can suck up most of your power.

One of my clients (one with 48kW generator) called that the generator shut down on underspeed (overload). As we talked, she admitted that they did not go with heat pumps. She has 4 air conditioners which would have added up to about 16kW as heat pumps. She has 4 electric resistant coil furnaces at 12kW each. And it was cold. I told her to cut 2 of them off at a time and she should be fine.

Remember, Solar does not work when the grid goes out, unless you have a battery based system. But you cannot hook up a backup generator to a Power Wall. And the Powerwall has about 12-14kWh of storage. My house will use ~20kWh of electricity a day with no one home (refrigerators, file servers, automatic lights and other assorted junk). On a cloudy day, 10kW of solar might produce 20kWh of electricity for your use and for storage in the battery.

I guarantee you a Mi-Grid system with a 20kW generator, same PV Wattage and more battery storage is cheaper than equal Power Walls.

Yep. My father grew up about 25 miles from Oklahoma City. It wasn't until the 1950's that the farm had electricity. They used kerosene lamps (Coleman type), wood or kerosene stove and lots of gasoline power appliances (washing machine, milking machines). It was almost 10 years after he left home (College, Army, etc.)

I was and am not really concerned about all those nitpicky details.

I know a guy in Houston who knows all that **** who I was going to hit up for the design.

:D

Because TEXAS.

By not connecting to the East or West Grids, they do not fall under the Federal FERC regulations. Our Federal government regulates Interstate Commerce, not internal state Commerce, or it is supposed to be that way.

I'm not sure if being connected to the National Grid would have helped. Some parts of Texas are not part of ERCOT and they went down too. The crisis actually affected 15 states. But the focus is Texas.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1614038768.jpg

Seems like socialism by the farmers and for the farmers. Pretty cool concept and seems to have worked for a long time.

Good job PARFing it up.

What's part about that? Every single one of us belong to a co-op of some sort by choice.