“Although intended to counteract the problems caused by an earlier violation of property rights—the legalized monopoly status that utilities gained under ratebase regulation—the forced opening of the grid was itself a violation of property rights.”

“In the wake of a liberated electric grid based on property rights and private ownership of the rights-of-way, the imaginations, ingenuities, and profit motives of scientists, engineers, and financiers would produce all manner of possibilities.” (Raymond Niles, below)

Raymond C. Niles is one of those people who has “forgotten more than I know.” His insights from 13 years ago in electricity history and policy (one of his many interests in political economy) ring loud in the wake of the Great Texas Electricity Blackout of February 2021.

I recently came across Niles’s May 2008 essay, “Property Rights and the Crisis of the Electric Grid,” published in The Objective Standard.…

“Our winters are getting sick, and we know the reason why. It’s global warming, it’s rising temperatures, and that’s the only logical explanation for what’s happening.”

– Amato Evan (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) before the American Geophysical Union (Fall 2018), quoted here.

False science based on climate models is part of the complicated story behind the Great Texas Electricity Blackout of February 2021. As I posited in “U.S. Winter Outlook: Cooler North, Warmer South” (NOAA’s prediction bust):

Enter climate models, the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and politics. And a very bad result for the South this winter. The lack of weatherization in Texas for traditional power plants, in particular, might well have been influenced by the climate narrative of warmer winters.

And with winter fading, and a snowy winter at that, it is worth revisiting the false alarm of snowless winters in the U.S.…

“Other than desperation, why would the commissioners have increased electricity prices to the point that Texans paid more for electricity in one week than they had for the last three years combined?…. At the heart of the PUC’s decision seems to be a belief in theoretical market constructs over actual markets.”

“At the time, the new PUC chairman, Arthur D’Andrea, noted, ‘I think we all expected that when we were in load shed we would be at $9,000.’ In other words, the commissioners did not care what market prices actually were. They were going to impose their vision on the market, regardless.”

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is a government agency advertised as a ‘nonprofit corporation.’ It is also a government planning agency, not a free-market institution, under the thumb of state legislators and regulators.…

“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.…