Idk it’s a problem still for the people that were charged ten thousand dollars for a week’s worth of electricity, especially if they had automatic withdrawals.
Comment on Texas becomes leading test ground for small nuclear reactors
ramble81@lemmy.zip 8 hours agoI know that’s a funny quip and it was true in 2021, but it hasn’t been a problem since that event 5 years ago. Fun fact, Texas is actually the largest producer of wind energy in the nation, and they’re also building out massive solar farms.
The reason most people don’t hear about it, is it’s being done by the same oil and gas companies that are raking in the money. They’re just diversifying their portfolio so they continue to make money.
hector@lemmy.today 5 hours ago
ramble81@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Frankly that’s the customers fault. It’s like taking out an ARM based mortgage. You’re gambling that the rates will stay low and then bitch if they spike. The people that were affected opted in to a variable rate plan to take advantage of lower commercial prices, then started botching when it spiked. Coupled with automatic withdrawal meant they thought “it would never happen to me!”
hector@lemmy.today 4 hours ago
Victim blaming. Deregulation of energy always leads to less service for more money, from Enron to now. Especially in texas.
I can’t imagine defending a group that through their own greed failed to do their job and responded by overcharging a thousand times their victims. Talk about losing any credibility.
ramble81@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
No, it’s called making an informed choice. Down in South Texas that variable rating wasn’t even an option because our energy provider doesn’t do that. So what happened? Absolutely nothing. The provider ate most of it.
Where that happened is in Dallas, where there are at least 4 separate utility providers that you can shop around for. And of those 4 they have different plans including fixed rate plans. I.e. plans where your bill wouldn’t have shot through the roof.
So it very much was a customer issue, and didn’t happen to everyone. No one was forced to chose those plans.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
We’ve been spared any serious natural disasters affecting the grid during that time. No major hurricanes. No big freeze.
The worst event was the 2024 derecho, and that definitely knocked out power here and there. But it was high enough above the treeline to really wreck infrastructure at the ground level.
I’ll note that a huge increase in wind and solar capacity means we aren’t exposed to the same kind of economic pressure from five years ago, either. The '21 freeze came, in large part, due to gas power plants locking up when they were needed, because they hadn’t been weatherized. With less acute demand issues (that’s to new green energy) we haven’t been in a position where gas plants could casually wait for prices to spike before turning on.