“The physical operation of the grid can be separated from the economic decisions of what power is generated, transmitted, and sold at wholesale or retail in terms of quantity, cost, and price.”

“Mistakes by ERCOT or the PUCT or Texas legislature make my point–this is a planning failure, not a market failure. Not physics but economics. A historian is weighing evidence about this either being a market or government failure. It is a government failure writ large.” (Bradley, below)

Electricity is different. Power flows must the centrally managed. Ergo, regulators and politicians must manage the grid.

WRONG. The physical operation of the grid can be separated from the economic decisions of what power is generated, transmitted, and sold at wholesale or retail in terms of quantity, cost, and price. Companies themselves, vertically and horizontally integrated, what might be called electricity majors, is the opportunity cost of the present regulatory regime.…

One of the barbs tossed around frequently on Twitter last week — more wistful than angry — was that we’d all be better off if H-E-B took over the Texas power grid. (Houston Chronicle, below)

Government grows from crises. In the wake of the Great Texas Blackout, the foregone reliability path of greater market reliance–a true free market absent state and federal regulation and regulators–deserves serious debate.

For students of crises in free societies, the Texas power debacle offers another example of civil society stepping up where government is unable or unwilling to do so. As noted in “It’s Not Getting Any Better’: Undergrads in Texas Contend with Snow, Power Outages,” The Harvard Crimson (February 19, 2021):

[Molly] Martinez [of Dallas] added that Texas residents turned to community organizers for assistance during the storm due to the government’s failures.

“After a winter storm in Texas earlier this month left the state’s residents to contend with widespread power outages and skyrocketing electricity prices, William W. Hogan, the architect of the state’s energy market system and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, said … the state’s electricity market had ‘worked as designed’ given the conditions.”

“One Texas resident … now owes $16,752 for his energy bill, wiping out his savings. Hogan acknowledged in the Wednesday interview that such situations are ‘terrible.’ Still, he argued the end result could have been much worse.”

– Kennedy School Professor Who Designed Texas’s Energy Market Defends Skyrocketing Prices Following Winter Storm,” The Harvard Crimson (February 26, 2021).

“‘I feel like a caveman,’ said Alexander D. ‘Alex’ Kontoyiannis ’23, describing his experience studying for his organic chemistry midterm Tuesday night.