“ERCOT: Texas Was 4 Minutes and 37 Seconds Away From a Blackout That Could Have Lasted Months” (news headline)
ERCOT centrally plans the electrical current of generation, transmission, and substations serving approximately 26 million Texans, 90 percent of the state’s load. (below)
Yesterday’s post documented why the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is a government agency, not a private-sector institution. Nonprofit status and board “independence” cannot negate this de facto or de jure.
ERCOT, on cue from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), centrally plans a huge market. PUCT-ERCOT performs financial functions around the electrical current of generation, transmission, and substations serving approximately 26 million Texans, 90 percent of the state’s load. In terms of size, this composes 81,000 MW of generation (680 units), 46,550 miles of transmission, and 5,000 substations, representing 85 percent of the Texas market.…
ERCOT is chartered by government, directed by government regulation, and governed by government entities. Its funding is from a tax on electric consumers on each monthly bill. The fact that its board is ‘independent’ is a fig leaf, as is its status as a 501c4 organization.
There has been discussion a free-market circles about whether the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is a government agency.
The answer is provided by simple facts provided by ERCOT itself. That ERCOT is chartered as “a membership 501c(4) nonprofit corporation” should not put form over substance, certainly to political economists, not to mention analysts, media, and the general public. [1]
ERCOT is chartered by government, directed by government regulation, and governed by government entities. Its funding is from a surcharge (tax) on electric consumers’ monthly bill.…
“To think you are smart enough to control nature and you must force people … to obey? That is the same kind of despotic behavior we have seen out of the worst tyrants.”
– Joe Bastardi (quoted below)
A recent E&E News article, “Fringe weatherman advised Abbott before deadly Texas storm” (February 25, 2021), is the latest marginalization job on a “climate science critic.” Author Scott Walderman begins his piece as follows:
Days before a historic snowstorm crippled his home state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sought advice from an unusual source: Joe Bastardi, the go-to weather forecaster of Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The hit piece (against Bastardi, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Abbott) goes downhill from there with ad hominem.
Here are the Bastardi quotations in Walderman’s piece:
…By Bastardi’s telling, the conversation with Abbott wasn’t groundbreaking or controversial.