Today’s broadcast show was intended to broadcast on 2/22/2021. For technical reasons, it was not broadcast until today.
This program was recorded on SUNDAY, February 21. Due to Covid-19, shows are being prerecorded beginning March 13, 2020 and until further notice. We miss our live call-in participants, and look forward to a time we can once again go live.Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig(@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show airing live every Monday from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My co-host and Editor is Andrew Ferguson.
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For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:
An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend t become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)
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INFORMATION YOU CAN USE TODAY AND IN THE COMING DAYS
Government and NGO assistance: Is there any? How do I get it?
FEMA announced federal emergency aid has been made available to Houstonians who suffered uninsured property damage as a result of the severe winter storm. Register online at https://www.disasterassistance.gov/
Disabled Texans can reach out to the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies for resources and information. The organization can be contacted via email at info@disasterstrategies.org or at the 24/7 disability and disaster hotline at 800-626-4959, which provides assistance to disabled people, their families and other people seeking assistance with disaster-related needs.
PRICE GOUGING CAN BE REPORTED TO:
TexasAttorneyGeneral.GOV/CONSUMER-PROTECTION– Consumer Protection: We protect Texas consumers by accepting complaints, filing civil cases in the public interest and educating Texans on how to spot and avoid possible scams. If you spot price gouging or experience unfair or unlawful business practices, please file a complaint online or call our Consumer Protection Hotline at 1-800-621-0508.
The Harris County Attorney’s Office is fighting price gouging during this weather emergency.
It is illegal for a company to sell or lease fuel, food, medicine, lodging, building materials, construction tools, or other necessities at an exorbitant or excessive price during a state of emergency.
Make sure you submit a detailed description of your complaint —the more details you provide the better for us in reviewing the complaint. Important details include:
Name and full address of the business against whom you are filing a complaint;
Date that you purchased or attempted to purchase an item from the business;
Brand and type of item you purchased or attempted to purchase;
Price of the item you purchased or attempted to purchase;
The name(s) of individual(s) you spoke with at the business; and
Receipt or picture of item and price if available;
Once we receive your complaint, you will receive a confirmation email. The Harris County Attorney’s Office will review your complaint and, if appropriate, take civil action to protect the public interest.
Greg Abbott said he and other state leaders are working fast to find solutions for homeowners and renters facing steep electricity bills after a winter storm left many Texans without power for days.
After Abbott convened what his office described as an “emergency meeting” Saturday with lawmakers to discuss the issue, the Public Utility Commission on Sunday met to sign two orders, including one that would direct energy providers to temporarily stop disconnecting customers from power or water because they have not paid.
The commission also signed an order to stop companies from sending invoices or bill estimates to customers “until we work through issues of how we are going to financially manage the situation we are in,” commission Chair DeAnn Walker said.
“Disconnect for non pays cannot occur on a Sunday and that’s why we’re acting today at this hour… trying to stop any from occurring tomorrow,” Walker said before the three-member commission approved the orders.
Both Abbott and the commission’s meetings come as more Texans are reporting receiving exorbitant electric bills despite not having power during the storm. One Texan, according to The New York Times, received a $16,752 electric bill. Not every resident will see the spikes in their bills.
Abbott, speaking during a news conference Sunday in San Antonio, called the recent spike in energy bills “the top priority for the Texas Legislature right now” and said lawmakers were working on a bipartisan basis to help address the issue. …
Later this week, House and Senate committees will convene to investigate how outages happened and what roles entities like the Electric Reliability Council of Texas played in those power failures.
“Thursday begins the questioning of the stakeholders involved to find out if anything went wrong, what went wrong, who’s to blame and, more importantly, what solutions moving forward we can do as a state Legislature … to make sure this absolutely never happens again,” said state Rep. Craig Goldman, a Fort Worth Republican who chairs the House Energy Resources Committee, during an NBC-DFW interview that aired Sunday.
“Texans, if you lost the food in your fridge/freezer & have homeowners or renters insurance, call your insurer. Almost all policies have a food replacement provision. There’s no deductible & payout is typically fast. My insurer pays up to $500 for food loss. Take pics of what you throw away in case they want them. Don’t forget to account for the cost of replacing sauces, salad dressings, condiments, and other items that stay in the fridge for a long time.”
Contractors:What do you do for rebuilding and insurance?
Disaster Area has been declared by Feds.
Beware of price gouging from contractors, which may become a Federal crime (See Items 1C and 1D)
Try to use referrals from friends, neighbors and past reliable sources.
Be wary of out-of-state contractors
Don’t pay in advance
Try to use licensed contractors
Reputable Contractors should have verifiable proof-of-insurance
Check references if possible.
Have them present receipts for any reimbursements.
Pay as work is completed in “milestones”.
Try to make sure contractors adheres to local codes (which may require actual permits)
Materials
New plumbing: what materials? (PVC, Copper, PEX, something else?)
Insulate the new hot/cold pipes. Insulate existing pipe to the maximum extent
If you’re in an old house with no insulation or poor insulation, use this repair work as an opportunity to properly insulate any exterior walls you expose.
Slab vs. piers
Water heater:
Insulate heater and pipes
WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY?
Small government vs. effective government
You get the government you pay for.
You don’t always get what you pay for, but you never get what you don’t pay for.
THE ERCOT STORY
TX old infrastructure, legacy reckless deregulation, secessionist tendencies, profit-motivated mismanagement of Texas energy supply and production
Unfortunate convergence of events
ERCOT has sovereign immunity and can’t be sued?
ERCOT chose not to buy power in advance because of rising powers.
Nat GAS PRICES FLEW UP
ELECTRIC PRICES FLEW UP
My experience with “POWER TO CHOOSE”
Profit motive.
Weatherization optional, not mandated
Feeding secessionist/self-sufficiency tendencies
Political self-interest, willful ignorance (infrastructure, climate change, even ignoring current weather forecasts (!!)
Q4 – Does my in-home water treatment system provide enough protection?
No! The Department of Health does not encourage residents to rely on home treatment units. It is recommended that you use boiled (and then cooled) water or an alternate source such as bottled water that is certified for sale in New York State.Most in-home treatment devices are not designed to remove pathogens, and should not be relied on to protect you during a boil water event. Even treatment units that are designed to remove pathogens may not do so all the time unless they have been properly maintained. Common home treatment devices that have limited or no ability to remove pathogens include: carbon filters; water softeners and other ion exchange units; sediment filters; chlorine removers; and aerators.
Q5 – What if I have a reverse osmosis treatment unit on my faucet or house?
A properly operating reverse osmosis (RO) unit can remove pathogens, including viruses, bacteria and protozoa. However there are many units available to the public through hardware stores and elsewhere, not all of which can be relied upon to remove pathogens. Furthermore, RO units must be diligently maintained to assure effective treatment. If you are at all uncertain of the capabilities of your reverse osmosis unit, do not rely on it to remove potentially harmful pathogens. Instead, you should use boiled (and then cooled) water or water from an acceptable alternate source.
Water filters (including Reverse Osmosis) are not a substitute for boiling
HOW DO YOU PREP FOR THE FUTURE?
What’s being done to prevent the big freeze apocalypse in the future”
Politics
Biden’s federal aid without vengeance
Political prospects in Texas in next series of elections: Will Republicans be held responsible?
Federal grid integration
Infrastructure modernization and upgrades
Renewables
Not just a Texas problem. It’s a national problem too. Most built in the 1950s-60s.
Public utilities or heavy regulation
HURRICANE PREP IS A STARTING POINT.
KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE AND REMIND YOURSELF WHAT YOU HAVE: Take A Real Or Mental Inventory (And Keep It Up To Date)
Know Where Stuff Is: You Don’t Want To Dig For It In The Cold And Dark
Bottled water.
Camp stoves or barbecues with adequate fuel (propane, charcoal, or whatever)
In one of the first legal efforts attempting to hold Texas’ power grid operator accountable for catastrophic outages this week, a lawsuit filed in Nueces County on Friday blames the Electric Reliability Council of Texas for ignoring decades-old safety warnings, among other failures.
The case is likely to test ERCOT’s claim to sovereign immunity, a legal shield that guards government entities from claims. The protection is now under review by the Texas Supreme Court. At least one other lawsuit tied to the state’s power loss has been filed against ERCOT by a man in Fort Bend County recovering from COVID-19. …
Whether ERCOT, a nonprofit corporation that functions somewhat like a government agency, can be successfully sued is likely to be a legal issue.
Can Texas be sued for its own negligence?? (a question of sovereign immunity)?
Law suits of:
ERCOT
Utilities
Power Generating Companies
Energy Executives
GOVERNMENT AND UTILITY INFO MUST BE BETTER AND MORE CURRENT
Texas failed to deliver state vital emergency information during storm
As millions of Texans fought to survive brutal winter weather without power and water, Greg Abbotttold residents Wednesday to search for emergency warming shelters on Google and to call 311 for additional assistance.
The only problem: Many people lacked internet access, cellphone service and the ability to watch the governor’s press conferences. When the power went out, the state suddenly lost the ability to provide essential information to people desperately in need of help.
“Telling people to Google it is not OK. It’s the result of non-imaginative or non-planning in general, and it’s very, very unfortunate,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, a senior research scholar for Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “And I think there needs to be some accountability for why they hadn’t made the infrastructure more resilient, and also why they hadn’t planned for a situation where the power’s out.” — Duncan Agnew
Texas’ track record won’t make it easy to winterize energy infrastructure
Energy experts said that in some cases, retrofitting plants to withstand cold could be extremely difficult and expensive in Texas. Many of those plants already skimped on such upgrades due to the infrequency of prolonged and widespread subfreezing temperatures in the state. That’s despite a 2011 winter storm that also caused power outages.
Building new winterized infrastructure, though, often adds little to the overall cost of a new project, experts say.
“Our planning is based on outdated weather patterns, and if you use outdated weather, you never expect to freeze,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. — Erin Douglas
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner on Sunday called on the state of Texas to pay for the enormous electric bills that scores of Texans reported after severe winter weather knocked out power and rose energy prices.
Frigid conditions last week caused major grid failures and skyrocketing demand that left millions of people without heat and electricity. Now, as power resumes for most of Texas, some households face utility bills as high as $10,000.
“For people getting these exorbitant electricity bills and having to pay to repair their homes, they should not have to bear the responsibility,” Turner said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Those exorbitant costs should be borne by the state of Texas and not the individual customers who did not cause this catastrophe this week.”
Abbott … said food supply shortages at grocery stores would soon be resolved, now that road conditions are safe for deliveries. Abbott said he suspended state regulations to get more delivery trucks on roads to help deliver food and supplies at a faster rate.
… Critics have charged that the Abbott administration’s response to the storm has at times resembled the government failures after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. As of Sunday, more than 14 million Texans were under orders to boil their water before drinking it or did not have water. Across the state, neighbors lined up at municipal spigots for water, melted snow to flush their toilets, and lined up for food at poorly stocked grocery stores.
The anger was palpable, with petitions circulating online demanding the resignations of Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who briefly escaped the cold by flying to Cancún. Citizens across the state posted angry memes on social media about the governor, crafting basketball-sized snowballs they wanted to aim at him and superimposing “Where is Greg Abbott?” over a hellscape. …
The country is divided into three grids: one covers the eastern U.S., another the western states and then there is the Texas grid, which covers nearly the entire state.
The reasons Texas controls its own grid, the journalist Kate Galbraith observed in a Texplainer piece for the Texas Tribune in 2011 have to do with the same theme that colors so much of Texas’ history and public policy: a distrust of federal interference.
The predecessor for ERCOT was formed in the 1930s, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with regulating interstate electricity sales.
“Utilities in Texas were smart and made an agreement that no one was going to extend power outside of Texas,” Donna Nelson, who served as chair of the state Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT, from 2008 to 2017, said in an ERCOT promotional video about the history of the grid.
“By eschewing transmission across state lines, the Texas utilities retained freedom,” Richard D. Cudahy wrote in a 1995 article, “The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection.”“This policy of isolation avoided regulation by the newly created Federal Power Commission, whose jurisdiction was limited to utilities operating in interstate commerce.” …
Even today ERCOT, which was formed in 1970, remains beyond the reach of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates interstate electric transmission. …
At least some members of the 24-member board live outside of Texas, a fact met with outrage in some quarters this week.
“I’m filing legislation this session requiring all @ERCOT_ISO officers and directors to be Texas residents,” state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “Completely ridiculous and unacceptable that current ERCOT Board Chair lives in Michigan!”
Texplainer: Why does Texas have its own power grid? – Basically, Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with — you guessed it — the feds. But grid independence has been violated a few times over the years — not even counting Mexico’s help during blackouts in 2011. by Kate Galbraith | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Feb. 8, 2011 Updated: Feb. 15, 2021
Why does Texas have its own electric grid? Texas’ secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas. …
ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. …
The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century. …
The Texas Interconnected System … had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. “Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s,” writes Richard D. Cudahy in a 1995 article, “The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection.” (Self-reliance was also made easier in Texas, especially in the early days, because the state has substantial coal, natural gas and oil resources of its own to fuel power plants.)
Even today, ERCOT is also not completely isolated from other grids — as was evident when the state imported some power from Mexico during the rolling blackouts of 2011. ERCOT has three ties to Mexico and — as an outcome of the “Midnight Connection” battle — it also has two ties to the eastern U.S. grid, though they do not trigger federal regulation for ERCOT. All can move power commercially as well as be used in emergencies, according to ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark. A possible sixth interconnection project, in Rusk County, is being studied, and another ambitious proposal, called Tres Amigas, would link the three big U.S. grids together in New Mexico, though Texas’ top utility regulator has shown little enthusiasm for participating.
Bottom line: Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with the feds.
Texas seceded from the nation’s power grid. Now it’s paying the price.The state’s unique electrical system worked well for decades — but it wasn’t ready for unexpected cold. By Julie A. Cohn | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | Feb. 17, 2021 at 9:11 a.m. CST. Julie A. Cohn is a historian of energy, technology and the environment, affiliated with both the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute and the University of Houston’s Center for Public History.
… The grid is shorthand for a collection of technologies owned and operated by thousands of entities — from government agencies to homeowners with rooftop solar panels. There are, in the contiguous United States, three major interconnected power systems: one covering everything east of the Rocky Mountains, one for everything west of the Rocky Mountains, one for Texas. The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are made up of multiple grid operators and dozens of smaller networks that serve power needs through continuous coordination, across state lines when necessary. In Texas, we have one grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), one control area, hundreds of infrastructure owners and lots of coordination to make it work. The casual use of the term “the grid” results in the common misconception that everything is under the control of, say, an electricity czar. But in the United States, even the federal government doesn’t have that role. When something goes wrong, as happened here this week, it’s a mistake to look in one direction for one culpable party.
In Texas, there are three things to remember: The power system that serves 90 percent of the state is intentionally isolated from the rest of the country, with the exception of very small ties that are used for limited power trades; our competitive wholesale power market offers scant incentives for investment in backup power; and Texas generally does not have winter storms like this one.
During World War II, America needed lots of power to build … war materiel. Power companies and the federal government focused on expanding interconnections among power systems as the fastest and cheapest way to meet defense needs. In 1941, Texas investor-owned utilities did their part by connecting into two networks serving the northern and southern parts of the state. Congress had already given the Federal Power Commission (now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) authority to regulate interstate power sales. Texas didn’t have any state-level regulation of power companies, and the utilities liked it that way. They also didn’t want federal regulation. So they were careful to avoid selling or buying power across state lines. With two time zones, every type of generating resource and lots of different kinds of customers, Texas utilities were able to achieve economies of scale and power-sharing efficiencies — all within the state’s borders.
In 1970, the Texas utilities formed ERCOT to comply with new rules established after the nation’s first devastating power failure — the 1965 Northeast blackout, which left more than 30 million people from Ontario to New Jersey without electricity for up to 12 hours. In 1981, ERCOT took over as the grid operator. Between 1996 and 2005, the legislature passed laws to create a competitive power market, increase renewables with hard targets and invest in new transmission infrastructure. These decisions created a very friendly environment for renewables, and as a result, Texas leads the nation in wind power and in renewables of all kinds. But the success of these initiatives hinged somewhat on the autonomy of the Texas grid: The state could set goals, foster investment and expand transmission without input from other state or federal agencies. In a sense, this is the beauty of ERCOT’s isolation.
Other factors also contribute to the uniqueness of Texas’s power system. First, the state’s fleet of generators has been shifting gradually but steadily from coal-fired to natural-gas-fired and wind-powered plants. This winter, Texans are depending far more on wind turbines and gas-fired power plants than on coal. When temperatures dropped to all-time lows across the state, wind turbines that had not been winterized froze. So did gas-fired and coal-fired plants, taking out far more of the state’s generation capacity than we lost from wind.
Second, because of the way the state’s wholesale power market works, utilities have very few incentives to invest in backup power. The state does not say to a generator, “Please build us some extra backup power plants, and utilities will charge that cost to their customers.” Instead, the market allows a generator to charge excessively high prices when supply falls short — which, for an investor, could be a long shot. Under a 1996 state law, Texas generators bid prices for their power, and the lowest price wins. That means they rarely have extra money to set aside for investment in backup capacity or new generation. Texas could have included additional mechanisms to incentivize more investment in backup power, but the market hasn’t done that up to now. As a result, ERCOT’s backup power is lower than in most other areas in the United States. This week, demand for power far exceeded the available supply, leaving millions of us stuck in the dark and the cold.
How Texas’s independent power grid failed under pressure
Texas’s independent power grid was crippled under high demand and damaging weather after a historic cold snap hit the U.S. over Presidents’ Day weekend. (John Farrell/The Washington Post)
Now where shall we point our frigid fingers?
On Tape, Perry Quipped Texans Are “Thinking About” Secession – Rick Perry’s infamous flirtation with secession at an April 2009 rally is sure to get renewed scrutiny in a presidential campaign — but it turns out it wasn’t the first time the governor contemplated Texas leaving the United States of America. by Jay Root | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | 10, 2011, 5 AM
[When Gov. Rick Perry was] criss-crossing the nation in pursuit of the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, one of his most controversial utterances as governor — his flirtation with secession at an April 2009 rally on the steps of Austin’s City Hall — [got] renewed scrutiny from the national press. …
An obscure interview with Perry, posted on the internet … has resurfaced as part of a harsh video put together by a group of Texas Democrats who don’t want the Republican governor to be elected president. The Democrats found the interview on YouTube, originally posted in March 2009, and included it in a four-minute attack on Perry emailed to supporters last weekend. …
… [W]ell-known tech blogger Robert Scoble told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday that he remembers the meeting with Perry in the governor’s office in 2009. It’s clear from interviews, blogs and Twitter postings that the remarks were recorded nearly a month before the April Tea Party gathering, which helped launch Perry’s successful 2010 re-election effort. …
Texans have a “different feeling about independence,” Perry told the group.
“When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation,” the governor can be heard saying. “And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”
MIKE: Perry didn’t invent the idea of keeping Texas and the Texas power grid as separate from the United States as possible, but he obviously was not opposed to it. He was simply expressing a view that Republicans and Texas business people have long held, and still hold today. It is expressed in the creation of ERCOT, the continuation of ERCOT to the present day, and the philosophy of Texas as a State that shall be “separate but equal” with the rest of the Union. It’s this Rightwing and business philosophy, of Texas as an entity that keeps the United States at arm’s length, that must be fought at the polls whenever there is an election.
EDPR is the largest owner and operator of wind power in New York and the fourth-largest in the United States. Locally, in addition to Maple Ridge, it operates the Madison Wind Farm in Madison County. EDPR’s New York wind farms produce enough clean electricity to power more than 298,000 New York homes. …
“There are a variety of cold weather and anti-icing technologies that are used on wind turbines in the coldest regions,” [said Amy Kurt, senior manager of regional government affairs for EDP]. “These technologies help prevent the buildup of ice on turbine blades, detect ice when it cannot be prevented, and remove ice safely when it is detected.” …
The sensors can even tell which blades have ice on them and which ones don’t. When ice is detected, heating elements inside the blades turn on to melt the ice.
For safety reasons, the turbines are shut down while the heating elements melt off the ice, Kurt said. That way, there’s no chance of ice flying off spinning blades, potentially damaging the turbines or, worse, striking someone on the ground, she said. …
Once the ice is removed, the turbines are turned back on and the blades can safely spin in the wind again.
In Texas, wind turbines are not equipped with such de-icing packages because operators there never expected to need them, Kurt said.
“Turbines in Texas are built for the type of temperatures they usually get in Texas, where it’s 110 degrees, not 10 degrees,” she said. “It’s a cost thing.”
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig 