The cause for the Texas blackout comes from decades of a system that was meant to optimize profits by encouraging providers
not to plan for emergencies or provide any more power than is needed under usual circumstances. That system depends on tight spots in the market to generate spikes in pricing. It’s supposed to operate by generating “inconvenience.”
Here’s
The New York Timesproviding some insight on the thinking of those involved.
That design relies on basic economics: When electricity demand increases, so too does the price for power. The higher prices force consumers to reduce energy use to prevent cascading failures of power plants that could leave the entire state in the dark, while encouraging power plants to generate more electricity.
“It’s not convenient,” Professor Hogan said. “It’s not nice. It’s necessary.”
It’s “necessary” not because that provides the best service to the most customers, or because that ensures the greatest level of safety in the case of emergency. It’s necessary because that’s the best way to generate maximum profits from the system at a cost of “inconvenience” to those left in the dark.
But while a professor of global energy policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School can afford to be honest about how the Texas system is working exactly as designed, the Republican politicians who put this system in place—along with conservatives nationwide who would like to use this as a model for every system everywhere—don’t want the public looking too closely at how this sausage is being
not made. That’s why they’ve launched a national “Look, over there!” campaign to point the finger at wind energy. Even though that energy is the one component of the system that’s actually
working better than expected. Solar power is running
slightly below projections, but only by a small amount.
The big windy lie campaign began on Monday morning, with
Fox Business journalist Steve Moore touting oil stocks and introducing the framing that other Republicans would take up for the remainder of the week.
Perhaps it’s appropriate that on the day when everyone can say something good about Rush Limbaugh, Republicans are again working hard to push a big lie. As has been seen so many times in Donald Trump era of Republicanism, the big lie is best...
www.dailykos.com
Profits for the few, at the expense of the many. A scam that has been going on for to long, has now been exposed as never before thanks to the internet, that has effectively killed right wing propaganda, and will be totally rejected as an economic system sooner than the scammers anticipated.
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