Many Denton customers were stuck with astronomical electricity bills under the green power “choice” plans.
Denton, Texas, population 140,000, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, received national media attention for its $9,000 per megawatt hour ($9.00 per kilowatt hour) electricity price spike during the February 2021 Texas Freeze power crisis.
Although not reported by the media as such, it was an unintended consequence of naive green dreams and “environmental justice” gone wrong.
“Green” Energy Planning
Home to two universities and a junior college, Denton is a Progressive Left city that:
Ed.Note: The growing burden of renewable energy on the power grid is near or at maximum levels in some key states such as California and Texas. A product that was once ‘firm’ is now precarious with central planning by regional transmission organizations (RTOs) or Independent System Coordinators (ISOs). Expect a reliability index to be introduced for state-by-state analysis as the cancer grows and spreads.
“The declining effective load capability for grid-connected solar and hydro (for summer 2021) is primarily due to the shifting of peak loads to later in the day due to behind-the-meter solar generation, and declining hydro energy expectations, respectively” – – California Independent System Operator (ISO), Summer Loads and Re-Assessment 2021
…“Doublespeak – takes the form of euphemism or softening primarily to make the truth more palatable.
Ed note: Power shortages in California in 2020 and Texas in 2021 have exposed the limits to renewable energy for a reliable grid. The post below complements prior analysis here and here.
“The apparent difference between SDG&E [no blackouts] and PG&E [blackouts] can be attributed to the greater proportion of decentralized green power cooperatives in PG&E’s service area that relied on a greater percentage of green power.”
The anti-energy environmental lobby concluded that natural gas-fired power plants failed during California’s blackouts last summer and should be phased out. But empirical investigation reaches an opposite conclusion, questioning the future of dilute, intermittent energies.
Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and the California Environmental Justice Alliance in the article “Gas Is Failing in California: Time to Move On” (Utility Dive: April 16, 2021) accuse the Wall Street Journal and gas “industry voices” of fear-mongering about renewable’s role in the state’s blackouts during the region’s southwest summer heat wave of 2020.…