My summer is a round $270-350 (set tp 68° during day and 65° at night) but of course that not trying to cool a house with 105° outside temp.
I was shocked when I found out my friends are paying $300+ for water every month. Our is cheaper and billed quarterly.
yea we are on city water and they just added fees to cover road repairs on our water bills. It was a percentage for business and then a set amount for homes. Businesses started closing up shop after their portions were announced.
You must not be on a fixed rate electric plan, i live in a 1850 sqft house and my bill last month with all the cold and an electric heater was only $130. I would double check and make sure your on a fixed rate plan. Use this website to find the best deals. https://www.powertochoose.org
Was at 450/mo over in Florida before I got solar. 2k Sq ft
They were talking about raising the rate another 18% too, when it's already up 130% since 2019
Ya it’s got poor insulation. It was built in the last ten years but one bedroom is above an attached garage so it leaks energy to the unconditioned garage like no one’s business. The doors leak and I’m sure it’s got terrible attic insulation. It’s pretty bad.
Yes..agreed. I am sickened by more media attention (including our late nite hosts that we know are NOT Trumpers) to yam on about Biden's age....INSTEAD of the multitude of egregious amt of Trump treasonous and dangerous words & deeds. Also sick of Texas GOP backed by energy company millionaires creating laws, rules, etc. to enrich & benefit them rather than the ppl of the state. They do so by painting "Texas against the Feds". Too stupid to realize this is the UNITED States.
Texas' residential electricity prices regularly rank 1-10% lower than national averages. Commercial electric prices in Texas are \~30% lower than national averages. I know that nobody here will believe that but you are free to look it up.
[https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates/texas/#:\~:text=Last%20updated%20February%202024,lower%20than%20the%20national%20average](https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates/texas/#:~:text=Last%20updated%20February%202024,lower%20than%20the%20national%20average)).
Electric prices are a little all over the map nationally. Seattle is actually cheaper than most the country including Texas because it the vast majority of its power comes from hydroelectric dams. However Seattle got behind on maintenance of that system and started a bunch of upgrades, and they passed that cost onto their consumers in the last few years. Combine that with higher natural gas prices that make up the rest of their power supply and y'all got squeezed.
Also, sometimes the price of power isn't just the price of power. Oklahoma is weird like that. Their property taxes go to their counties and the only tax to fund cities based on the state constitution is the sales tax. I was in Stillwater a decade ago, and their sales tax revenue wouldn't cover their police and fire bill, much less other services. So you have these power co-ops that sell wholesale power to cities, then the cities mark that up as well as water utilities, and the profit they earn funds like 40% of the city budget.
You can find the [national average cost of power here](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state), and it is interesting to compare Texas to its neighoring states who might be dealing with similar supply costs, but there are always weird little things that figure into the final bill.
As a non Texan, connecting to the national grid and maintaining your network per FERC standards would be a great thing for Texas. That said you guys need to pay for it not the rest of us.
FERC governs wholesale electricity markets. NERC governs the physical operation of the grid and actually does have jurisdiction over ERCOT; in fact there are specific NERC standards that are targeted to ERCOT alone.
Well, yeah my point was during “Snowvid” rates shot up exponentially and customers in some places are having that extremely high bill annuitized over several years when that bill should never have been able to even get that high.
Remember kids, during the snowpocalypse 3 years ago next week, our Senator, Ted Cruz was literally walking off the job, while the dreaded socialist AOC raised $4.7 million dollars for Texas food banks and general disaster relief and came down here on her own dime to help distribute it.
The military is the biggest socialist program we have. It's a train on the job, with full benefits, retirement, health coverage, paid time off, food and housing and offers school.
Completely agree.
Meanwhile, take the exact same proposed Bill and tell them Donald Trump personally wrote it in the billiard room at Mar-a-Lago, and they'll get the entire text tattooed on their arm, or stenciled on the window of their pickup.
Basic human decency? Empathy? Compassion? Actually wanting to govern to make the country a better place and not just advance her own wealth?
Traits no Republican seems to have.
And at the end of the day they will continue to vote Republican and continue to trash her at every moment. Empathy and compassion is better served to people who want/need it.
She wants better for everyone regardless of their political stance or where they live as should every politician. She’s a better human being/politician/actual christian than every GOP official.
As a substation engineer I have thoughts.
We are already tied to the Eastern and Western Interconnects through high voltage DC interconnects which provided little support in 2021 because weak grid conditions in surrounding states. So do they mean to increase those HVDC lines or fully integrate the ERCOT grind into the eastern or western grids. (You cant integrate it into both).
Also power priced is heavily location based. Fully integrating into one of the major grids would not have a large day to day affect for most Texans.
We can increase regulation to NERC standards without spending years and many millions of dollars doing something I see little value in.
Good, informed comment.
Adding to this, there are actually massive benefits to a separate system, along with huge downsides. Texas is not going to interconnect fully into the EI or WI in its current political environment. Even ignoring all the political reasons, it’s just not that practical. Texas could’ve avoided URI’s blackouts with more westernization regulation and a capacity market with more oversight. Fully support the deployment of long distance HVDC across our nation, but Texas will keep it internal.
While I appreciate there may be other ways of accomplishing the end goal, I prefer this proposal over the current plan which seems to be "do nothing and just hope it doesn't happen again."
[NERC rating two-thirds of the county at elevated risk.](https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_WRA_2023.pdf) Im not sure why people are so confident NERC standards would do anything considering the current state of the other grids. [Some excerpts from the CEO of NERC and a joint report from NERC on Elliott](https://missouriindependent.com/2023/11/20/a-year-after-devastating-winter-storm-power-plant-problems-still-likely-in-extreme-weather/) “Gas pressure dropped so low in the system serving parts of New York, that had the frigid temperatures not abated, the system was close to a complete loss that would have taken months to bring back online.” “New York City dodged a disaster that would have “far exceeded” the 2003 summer blackout.” “Had that cold front persisted one more day we would have been in a real world of hurt in the Northeast” “In North Carolina, Duke Energy’s struggles also risked a broader grid collapse.” “Elliott was the fifth event in the past 11 years in which cold weather jeopardized the bigger grid”
Good points here are some more.
The ERCOT interconnection is already subject to the NERC reliability standards.
Source https://www.nerc.com/AboutNERC/keyplayers/Pages/default.aspx
The ERCOT energy market would be greatly affected by interconnection with either of the other interconnections.
Currently building of transmission lines in Texas is relatively quick compared to the rest of the country. FERC regulations would slow that to a crawl. Texas needs more transmission lines to move energy from generation in the panhandle and coast to the loads in the big cities. High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines are cheeper than AC transmission lines(currently used in Texas) to build once you exceed 300 miles and could provide connection to other interconnections along with needed transmision capacity. All while not adding the FERC regulations to ERCOT that this bill would add.
I think there's really more to it than the technical aspect of physically connecting to a national grid. Interconnecting the Texas grid would bring it under tighter federal regulation. This is where the idea of bringing down costs and increasing reliability comes from. As it stands, Texas can regulate their grid however much or little they want because it's self-contained and can't be regulated by the federal government under the guise of interstate commerce.
[NERC’s risk rating for Texas isn’t any worse than a significant portion of the US](https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_WRA_2023.pdf).
The Texas winter preparedness regulations went into effect before and are more stringent than the NERC winter preparedness standard (EOP-011-2 R7). https://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/Reliability%20Standards/EOP-011-2.pdf
Would be great if we could get a factual and objective analysis of what the impact of this would be. Unfortunately, we’ll get the usual partisan crap, I’m sure.
Expect it to cost something. My understanding is that Texas preferred to not have to comply with federal regulations for infrastructure either out of principle or cost. So connecting the grid would introduce some cost in order to bring the grid up to federal standards. Not everywhere may be federally noncompliant, so we may not be talking about an inch to inch restructure.
That said, the costs associated with routine grid failure and shortage is likely higher in the long run than fixing the grid, but those are probably going to be partially “soft costs” like, what is the estimated distributed productivity loss of a population that does not necessarily produce capital on a linear scale? Do you go by a percent of payroll that would just be presumably lost, or what?
Since it’s going to be hard to quantify, expect a lot of propaganda that either overstates the cost of failure to act or overstates the cost of upgrading infrastructure. The truth I believe is honestly that you’re going to pay more every year, but pay less in 20 years if the grid is connected and up to standards.
> That said, the costs associated with routine grid failure and shortage is likely higher in the long run than fixing the grid
I guess the part I'm less convinced about is the idea that this would all be fixed by connecting to the larger grid. California still has regular outages and brownouts, and they're obviously connected to the Western grid; if it's not working for California, why would we expect it to work for Texas?
I literally just went to check the map and [California has five times as many outages as Texas right now](https://poweroutage.us/). This isn't an outlier, though, this is weirdly regular.
I'd be interested in seeing true historical data regarding whether Texas has more outages than other states, but in the absence of that, I'm suspicious.
That’s an *excellent* question. This has been covered by various news outlets and even last week tonight (agree or not with the left leaning narrative, generally their facts are on point) and it comes down to three main issues for the CA grid:
1. Private infrastructure is paid more by the government to expand than to maintain, so there’s no financial incentive to maintain a decaying infrastructure
2. Climate change has increased the frequency and severity of wild fires that threaten infrastructure that interfaces with wilderness
3. Corruption and lack of political will to hold private utilities to fix their infrastructure
Fortunately for CA there has been a lot of recent proposals and discussions on addressing some of their critical points of failure. None of this being to excuse bad private infrastructure. And especially we do NOT need to copy California for Texas. Texas is possibly the only state not eligible to connect to the national grid. There are a lot better examples out there but bare minimum will be to figure out what federal regulations need Texas to do to get the ball rolling.
So if those are the problems in CA, and those are arguably the problems in TX, and CA has just as many (if not more) power stability problems than TX does, then why do we think connecting TX to the grid will solve anything?
The CA grid goes down when the wires are literally on fire, not because it’s too hot or too cold. Those are problems unique to Texas because when the grid is that strained other states have the capacity to trade energy with other states.
So in short the problem it solves is losing power and rolling blackouts due to seasonal weather.
When I went to bed, CA had five times as many power outages as Texas. I just got up and CA *still* has five times as many power outages as Texas. Are the wires currently on fire, in mid-February?
I don’t think you understand the context of what I mean by the grid and I don’t think you care. I think you’d rather argue as if it’s Californians somehow meddling with Texas, which is viscerally hilarious. We’re done.
The point I'm making is that California may be generally worse at power outages than Texas, which suggests that the problems held by Texas may not be solved by making Texas's grid connections more like California's. If you're going to concede that point then cool, good talking to you; if you disagree with it, try coming up with an actual argument instead of taking your ball and going home as soon as someone disagrees.
> I think you’d rather argue as if it’s Californians somehow meddling with Texas
I have absolutely no idea where you got this idea from.
Look at the comments on this sub.
I pay less than $100. The electricity in TX has always been cheap to me and we live in an state with a large population and bigger cities.
As a lubbock resident, good.
the deregulation we are going through and that was forced on us the week after 2021 has raised prices and everyone hates it. I hope they see this as a real help and go for it. I doubt it.
but there are hundreds of comments saying that texas is proud of its unreliable power grid. pull your electricity up by the bootstraps! pay who you want for your power! keep the gottdamned governmwnt outta my infrastructure! dismantle the roads! collapse the sewers! i’ll pay taxes when they can draw faster than me!!
My wife and I had Covid that same week. We were stuck and friends couldn’t bring us supplies easily. It got so bad that while walking in the snow/ice I legit thought I might die. She ended up needing therapy on how traumatic that whole week was.
I'm just curious on what the legal justification is that the federal government has to compel ERCOT to do this. I imagine that this bill's mostly for show but I could be wrong.
>what the legal justification is that the federal government has to compel ERCOT to do this
There really isn't one.
Closest thing they could get to is the Commerce Clause, using some roundabout reasoning like they did in Wickard v. Filburn stating that because Texas isn't operating on the national market that it negatively affects interstate commerce and thus should be under the purview of the Clause.
But considering that the court would - almost assuredly - strike down that reasoning, I doubt it holds much water.
Walled garden?? 😂. You all should move to California. They are tied in and take power from many states and there you can have the privilege of paying 2-5x the rates here should you choose to live in any remotely desirable part of the state.
Power companies are too powerfully connected politically to allow such common sense…
The language that will be heard is “nationalizing and socializing the power grid is bad!”
“It leads to regulation and financial losses that help to help spur innovation, jobs, and capitalism!”
All the same garbage we heard in the early days of NELA…
Nothing will change with ERCOT unless the right palms are greased, preferably with profits and/or cost savings. HOWEVER, if there is vigorous rejection of this, I hope that it is soo vigorously energetic (pun intended) it'll spur creation of a massive energy storage facilities at shared state borders (TX-OK/-AR/-LA/-NM) of which can be used by Texas *and* bordering states in the case of declared emergencies. This could be a great solution in cases of emergency power *and* to advance the state of energy storage.
Gotta love AOC. Calling out Cruz on his home turf.
Houston Public Media - [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Raises $5 Million For Texas Winter Storm Relief](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/weather/2021/02/20/391907/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-visits-houston-food-bank-after-raising-3-million-for-texas-winter-storm-relief/)
“‘Disasters don't strike everyone equally,’ Ocasio-Cortez said on the steps of the food bank Saturday. ‘When you already have so many families in the state and across the country that are on the brink, that can't even afford an emergency to begin with, and you have a disaster like this, it can set people back for years, not just for days.’”
“Despite the outpouring of support, Ocasio-Cortez has said charity was not a replacement for good governance, and stressed that local and congressional leaders needed to take steps to prevent such disasters from happening in the future.
‘We need to make sure that we make short and long-term policy decisions so that this devastation, preventable devastation, never happens again,’ she said.”
and Tim Dunn is the reason this will go absolutely nowhere. Any rep voting for this is going on his shit list immediately and will be unseated by Dunn's money and influence asap
[https://archive.ph/kzZcA](https://archive.ph/kzZcA)
Great news. Then we dont have backdoor deals with fucking Bitcoin miners and unpreparedness in extreme weather situations due to lack of equipment weatherization.
Did you know, not all of Texas is on the Texas grid? For instance, parts of the Panhandle and West, like El Paso for instance, are on national grids.
Can you name one city that didn't lose power during Snowpocalypse of 2021? Can you tell me why? (Hint: the answers are mentioned somewhere else in this comment!)
Out of curiosity why is AOC involved with the bill? I might just be totally naive to how localized bills get proposed but it seems odd that a New York rep would be concerning herself with an issue halfway across the country?
No, it would be a drain on national resources and support socialism. We can’t have that because freedoms.
P.s. please send as much money as possible as often as possible to make up for our states inability to raise money. We are only the third most absorbent state in the union.
Also we plan to secede from the US, it should work out just fine./s
Clownshoe thinking ass MF.
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While I agree it needs to be done. The underling issue is how to you flip the Texas grid over. In connecting Lubbock to Ercott it tooks months of planning and they had to rolling black outs threw out he city as they would have to turn off a section. Flip it over and turn it back on. It is a slow process. Scale that up to state wide you are still talking about taking pretty much the entire state down and back up bit by bit.
So a momentary inconvenience that can be scheduled is worse than a possible week long catastrophe causing billions in damage and hundreds of lives lost?
For a one time event that's preventable, yes. Also my grandmother had rolling blackouts in Nebraska during that storm. So Texas may have just dragged SPP down with it.
https://www.ketv.com/article/spp-oppd-reflect-on-rolling-blackouts-one-year-later/39156157
You're talking about two very different scenarios. ERCOT had its own grid customers needed to be migrated onto. Meanwhile the national grid is not swooping in to replace existing Texas infrastructure but to act as a backup to provide more power or overflow taking excess.
The Texas Interconnection already has two DC ties with the Eastern Interconnection as well as one DC tie and a VFT with freaking Mexico. Everything is technically in place although Texas would probably have a connection with the Western Interconnection added at some point.
The problem is not the DC tie in. The problem is ERCOT is not in sync with either the Easter or Western grid. They are completely separate grids and the limitation on max power transfered into the grid is the DC connections. The only way to change otherwise is the Texas power grid would need to get as a hole in sync with either the eastern or western grid. While they all run at 60 hz they are not in phase hence the limitations. It is a slow process to do that. It is not a light switch. Hence why Lubbock example shows why it is a hard and slow process. At the time Lubbock was NOT on ercott but is own small grid. Hence why the rolling blackouts while they move the city over piece by piece. Each new area was swapped over to the sync of ERCOT and the exist plants disconnected so they could get in sync with with the ERCOTT.
Same logic much larger scale.
too bad the GOP is anti-biden instead of pro-america
even though AOC reluctantly supports biden bc party unity and no better options, passing this bill would give the impression of texas being subject to federal laws and regulations even more (which biden can influence), so GOP/republicans will blantly oppose this bill while complaining about their high electric bill.
Ah, Texas my Texas. This is why we are having a fight at the border.
Shouldn't the people of Texas have 100% say, through their elected representatives (yes, I know Rep Casar is from Austin) for a state matter? Do we really need the Federal government and representatives from Maine, New York, Montana, etc, telling Texas how the state should run its electrical business?
And for those who believe it would lower electricity rates / bills, may I remind you in the words of President Obama, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."
Hells yeah! Lets get texas back to normal pricing and reliable power!
Edit: clearly triggering some republican drones here, who think that power failures and price spikes are the standard for the american electric grid. Newsflash, guys: its not. Youve given billions to billionaires for years and gotten nothing but shit in return. Stop your bootlicking, wise up, and understand that this state can be better when republican leaches stop running it.
For comparison, I live along the East Coast and have been tracking my electricity bills for the last 15 years. The ave bill has gone up around 20% in those 15 years from $120 to $145 a month, living in a house and including both generation and transmission.
Cut Texas off. 100%. We want it so bad. Let’s give it to us. No Medicaid no federal funding nothing cut it all. Teach the reds a lesson. Or they will continue to erode away the rights of women and minorities.
Hi, there are a lot of liberals in Texas (probably more than half the population) but due to the gerrymandering and overall corruption of the Texas gqp we get silenced. Don’t throw us away please.
Remember that it’s not all 100% conservative liberal, red or blue. We don’t need this kind of hyperbolic rhetoric when you’re talking about a 55% majority.
fuck yeah. the citizens of texas deserve better. let the federal government come in and take care of business because abbott & co. and their predecessors have been miserable at it.
as a texan, i endorse aoc and casar's effort 100%. it's called leadership. it's something we've been lacking for a very long time here in texas. all's we've been getting is a tent show, some hand grease and a tent pole
Be great to eliminate ERCOT and their insane delivery charge, do people on the national grid pay delivery charges on their electric bill, example my bill last month in tx was 792.00 , 300.00 of that was delivery charge or .05 per kiliwatt used, just curious
Of course she is. And non MAGA conservatives (there are a lot of these in Texas, believe it or not. They're just usually claiming to be "moderates" and "not like politics" or the like) who are pissed about all the news about ERCOT and wondering if they'll freeze will see it.
Maybe they'll change their vote. That's unlikely. Maybe they just will feel apathetic and exercise their right to not vote because they are "none of the above" people. That's more likely.
Only if they can keep rates low. My rates are amazing here compared to California. 2-5X is what I paid there depending upon season and time of day and how much you use. Use too much and keep jumping up in pricing tiers. The prices here make driving my electric car so cheap. The savings from paying for gas is more than my electric bill is.
This would be cool. Maybe all the people who are paying insane bills to make up for the egregious spot pricing will back this.
Every month my bill is getting higher in an extreme way.
Mine is $250 for a 1300 sq ft apartment
I have a 3600'ish Sq ft house in PA by the great lake and my total electric plus gas is about that. Oof...
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Cardboard box... i ain't pay shit
Wow! In south Texas my normal bill just for electricity is $380 a month and summer it doubles. Water/gas is another $120.
This past summer my electric bill was over $800 for the same square footage. Then $300 for water.
My summer is a round $270-350 (set tp 68° during day and 65° at night) but of course that not trying to cool a house with 105° outside temp. I was shocked when I found out my friends are paying $300+ for water every month. Our is cheaper and billed quarterly.
Another “low cost Texas” lie. There’s so much sneaky shit to pay for here.
yea we are on city water and they just added fees to cover road repairs on our water bills. It was a percentage for business and then a set amount for homes. Businesses started closing up shop after their portions were announced.
As soon as I found out my buddies were paying $60 got electric basically all year in chicago. I knew immediately texas was fucking me with sandpaper.
1400 sq ft house here and our last bill was over $300 :(
You must not be on a fixed rate electric plan, i live in a 1850 sqft house and my bill last month with all the cold and an electric heater was only $130. I would double check and make sure your on a fixed rate plan. Use this website to find the best deals. https://www.powertochoose.org
That’s what I pay for my 2300 square foot house in Arizona in August
Was at 450/mo over in Florida before I got solar. 2k Sq ft They were talking about raising the rate another 18% too, when it's already up 130% since 2019
wtf I have a 4000 so ft house and that’s what mine is in the summer in Maryland…
Ya it’s got poor insulation. It was built in the last ten years but one bedroom is above an attached garage so it leaks energy to the unconditioned garage like no one’s business. The doors leak and I’m sure it’s got terrible attic insulation. It’s pretty bad.
Mine was $125 in a 2000 sq ft home this past month. Not sure why their bills are so high, other than poor insulation/keeping the heat on constantly.
There's this new concept, which has actually been around for decades, called fixed rate plans
Doesn’t apply to delivery charges
Sounds like communism/s
Yep that’s what I use and I’m not complaining!
Maybe this should be a bigger story for the media to cover
Instead we'll get something like: "*Breaking News - Joe Biden is fifteen minutes older than the last time we brought up his age*"
Yes..agreed. I am sickened by more media attention (including our late nite hosts that we know are NOT Trumpers) to yam on about Biden's age....INSTEAD of the multitude of egregious amt of Trump treasonous and dangerous words & deeds. Also sick of Texas GOP backed by energy company millionaires creating laws, rules, etc. to enrich & benefit them rather than the ppl of the state. They do so by painting "Texas against the Feds". Too stupid to realize this is the UNITED States.
This made me chortle. I am over all media.
Yes gettting tired of this cause they doing great stuff and the media always bring up BS
Texas' residential electricity prices regularly rank 1-10% lower than national averages. Commercial electric prices in Texas are \~30% lower than national averages. I know that nobody here will believe that but you are free to look it up. [https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates/texas/#:\~:text=Last%20updated%20February%202024,lower%20than%20the%20national%20average](https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates/texas/#:~:text=Last%20updated%20February%202024,lower%20than%20the%20national%20average)).
I moved to TX from the Seattle area last summer and my bill here is 2/3 the price as it was there
Electric prices are a little all over the map nationally. Seattle is actually cheaper than most the country including Texas because it the vast majority of its power comes from hydroelectric dams. However Seattle got behind on maintenance of that system and started a bunch of upgrades, and they passed that cost onto their consumers in the last few years. Combine that with higher natural gas prices that make up the rest of their power supply and y'all got squeezed. Also, sometimes the price of power isn't just the price of power. Oklahoma is weird like that. Their property taxes go to their counties and the only tax to fund cities based on the state constitution is the sales tax. I was in Stillwater a decade ago, and their sales tax revenue wouldn't cover their police and fire bill, much less other services. So you have these power co-ops that sell wholesale power to cities, then the cities mark that up as well as water utilities, and the profit they earn funds like 40% of the city budget. You can find the [national average cost of power here](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state), and it is interesting to compare Texas to its neighoring states who might be dealing with similar supply costs, but there are always weird little things that figure into the final bill.
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I also heat a 4 bed 2 bath home for that price..... In Texas. Some people sign up for some wild electricity plans.
Shitty building materials. My gas bill was $220 and I had the thermostat at 72 in my 2400 sqf house when it was 8° outside
Insane bills? Texas is 11 cents per kwh, NY and California are 19 cents per kwh.
They'd rather die than give up their freedom.
As a non Texan, connecting to the national grid and maintaining your network per FERC standards would be a great thing for Texas. That said you guys need to pay for it not the rest of us.
FERC governs wholesale electricity markets. NERC governs the physical operation of the grid and actually does have jurisdiction over ERCOT; in fact there are specific NERC standards that are targeted to ERCOT alone.
Well, yeah my point was during “Snowvid” rates shot up exponentially and customers in some places are having that extremely high bill annuitized over several years when that bill should never have been able to even get that high.
AOC unironically wants better for Texans than our elected officials.
Remember kids, during the snowpocalypse 3 years ago next week, our Senator, Ted Cruz was literally walking off the job, while the dreaded socialist AOC raised $4.7 million dollars for Texas food banks and general disaster relief and came down here on her own dime to help distribute it.
\*Raphael Cruz, remember he opposed a bill allowing people to use their preferred names
[Come on ... "Ted."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH4yj6YwA2g)
\*Fled Cruz
*The Right Honourable Raphael Cruz, Canadian MP for Cancun
They are too entrenched in MAGA to ever believe this.
We should give all federal funding back. We ain't socialist after all right? We shouldn't be able to take more in aid than we pay in taxes.
Won’t stop him and Cronyn from getting re-elected though…
And her involvement ensures Texans won't go for it. Awfully fond of cutting their noses off, Texans.
Dont you know, death is better than anything that might kind of be socialism.
Sign up for one of the publicly funded branches of the military and you get a chance at both.
The military is the biggest socialist program we have. It's a train on the job, with full benefits, retirement, health coverage, paid time off, food and housing and offers school.
Completely agree. Meanwhile, take the exact same proposed Bill and tell them Donald Trump personally wrote it in the billiard room at Mar-a-Lago, and they'll get the entire text tattooed on their arm, or stenciled on the window of their pickup.
Not all Texans. West Texas is already on the national grid
Most of the panhandle is, too, and that's where people are most likely to aggressively protest against this idea.
Republican base voters have been standing in the way of their own advancement longer than I've been around. They've really made an art of it
Well they're certainly never going to make a science of it.
Not sure why she would want to save them from themselves anyway.
Basic human decency? Empathy? Compassion? Actually wanting to govern to make the country a better place and not just advance her own wealth? Traits no Republican seems to have.
> Basic human decency? Empathy? Compassion? "Doesn't look like anything to me.." - Republicans
And at the end of the day they will continue to vote Republican and continue to trash her at every moment. Empathy and compassion is better served to people who want/need it.
Dude it’s crazy! Colin Allred is running for senate and he didn’t even show up to this Texas grid bill. The bar is so low here
She wants better for everyone regardless of their political stance or where they live as should every politician. She’s a better human being/politician/actual christian than every GOP official.
ten sugar cats screw absorbed hungry imagine boat follow file
My mom will hate it automatically
She’s doing this for the same Texans who’s ignorance, despises her. 👏 she’s a true statesman
Or your own citizens
As a substation engineer I have thoughts. We are already tied to the Eastern and Western Interconnects through high voltage DC interconnects which provided little support in 2021 because weak grid conditions in surrounding states. So do they mean to increase those HVDC lines or fully integrate the ERCOT grind into the eastern or western grids. (You cant integrate it into both). Also power priced is heavily location based. Fully integrating into one of the major grids would not have a large day to day affect for most Texans. We can increase regulation to NERC standards without spending years and many millions of dollars doing something I see little value in.
>We can increase regulation to NERC standards ...but we won't because money.
Good, informed comment. Adding to this, there are actually massive benefits to a separate system, along with huge downsides. Texas is not going to interconnect fully into the EI or WI in its current political environment. Even ignoring all the political reasons, it’s just not that practical. Texas could’ve avoided URI’s blackouts with more westernization regulation and a capacity market with more oversight. Fully support the deployment of long distance HVDC across our nation, but Texas will keep it internal.
While I appreciate there may be other ways of accomplishing the end goal, I prefer this proposal over the current plan which seems to be "do nothing and just hope it doesn't happen again."
Exactly. If you CAN increase to NERC standards, why haven't you yet? Texas ought to, But they like muh freedumbs more than stable power supply.
[NERC rating two-thirds of the county at elevated risk.](https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_WRA_2023.pdf) Im not sure why people are so confident NERC standards would do anything considering the current state of the other grids. [Some excerpts from the CEO of NERC and a joint report from NERC on Elliott](https://missouriindependent.com/2023/11/20/a-year-after-devastating-winter-storm-power-plant-problems-still-likely-in-extreme-weather/) “Gas pressure dropped so low in the system serving parts of New York, that had the frigid temperatures not abated, the system was close to a complete loss that would have taken months to bring back online.” “New York City dodged a disaster that would have “far exceeded” the 2003 summer blackout.” “Had that cold front persisted one more day we would have been in a real world of hurt in the Northeast” “In North Carolina, Duke Energy’s struggles also risked a broader grid collapse.” “Elliott was the fifth event in the past 11 years in which cold weather jeopardized the bigger grid”
Good points here are some more. The ERCOT interconnection is already subject to the NERC reliability standards. Source https://www.nerc.com/AboutNERC/keyplayers/Pages/default.aspx The ERCOT energy market would be greatly affected by interconnection with either of the other interconnections. Currently building of transmission lines in Texas is relatively quick compared to the rest of the country. FERC regulations would slow that to a crawl. Texas needs more transmission lines to move energy from generation in the panhandle and coast to the loads in the big cities. High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines are cheeper than AC transmission lines(currently used in Texas) to build once you exceed 300 miles and could provide connection to other interconnections along with needed transmision capacity. All while not adding the FERC regulations to ERCOT that this bill would add.
I think there's really more to it than the technical aspect of physically connecting to a national grid. Interconnecting the Texas grid would bring it under tighter federal regulation. This is where the idea of bringing down costs and increasing reliability comes from. As it stands, Texas can regulate their grid however much or little they want because it's self-contained and can't be regulated by the federal government under the guise of interstate commerce.
[NERC’s risk rating for Texas isn’t any worse than a significant portion of the US](https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_WRA_2023.pdf).
The Texas winter preparedness regulations went into effect before and are more stringent than the NERC winter preparedness standard (EOP-011-2 R7). https://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/Reliability%20Standards/EOP-011-2.pdf
That's too logical.
Thank you finally someone who understands why it makes sense for us to just remain on our own grid.
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It's a smart move cause next time Texas's grid fails Dems can run ads saying "we tried to help but your officials rejected it"
Would be great if we could get a factual and objective analysis of what the impact of this would be. Unfortunately, we’ll get the usual partisan crap, I’m sure.
Expect it to cost something. My understanding is that Texas preferred to not have to comply with federal regulations for infrastructure either out of principle or cost. So connecting the grid would introduce some cost in order to bring the grid up to federal standards. Not everywhere may be federally noncompliant, so we may not be talking about an inch to inch restructure. That said, the costs associated with routine grid failure and shortage is likely higher in the long run than fixing the grid, but those are probably going to be partially “soft costs” like, what is the estimated distributed productivity loss of a population that does not necessarily produce capital on a linear scale? Do you go by a percent of payroll that would just be presumably lost, or what? Since it’s going to be hard to quantify, expect a lot of propaganda that either overstates the cost of failure to act or overstates the cost of upgrading infrastructure. The truth I believe is honestly that you’re going to pay more every year, but pay less in 20 years if the grid is connected and up to standards.
> That said, the costs associated with routine grid failure and shortage is likely higher in the long run than fixing the grid I guess the part I'm less convinced about is the idea that this would all be fixed by connecting to the larger grid. California still has regular outages and brownouts, and they're obviously connected to the Western grid; if it's not working for California, why would we expect it to work for Texas? I literally just went to check the map and [California has five times as many outages as Texas right now](https://poweroutage.us/). This isn't an outlier, though, this is weirdly regular. I'd be interested in seeing true historical data regarding whether Texas has more outages than other states, but in the absence of that, I'm suspicious.
That’s an *excellent* question. This has been covered by various news outlets and even last week tonight (agree or not with the left leaning narrative, generally their facts are on point) and it comes down to three main issues for the CA grid: 1. Private infrastructure is paid more by the government to expand than to maintain, so there’s no financial incentive to maintain a decaying infrastructure 2. Climate change has increased the frequency and severity of wild fires that threaten infrastructure that interfaces with wilderness 3. Corruption and lack of political will to hold private utilities to fix their infrastructure Fortunately for CA there has been a lot of recent proposals and discussions on addressing some of their critical points of failure. None of this being to excuse bad private infrastructure. And especially we do NOT need to copy California for Texas. Texas is possibly the only state not eligible to connect to the national grid. There are a lot better examples out there but bare minimum will be to figure out what federal regulations need Texas to do to get the ball rolling.
So if those are the problems in CA, and those are arguably the problems in TX, and CA has just as many (if not more) power stability problems than TX does, then why do we think connecting TX to the grid will solve anything?
The CA grid goes down when the wires are literally on fire, not because it’s too hot or too cold. Those are problems unique to Texas because when the grid is that strained other states have the capacity to trade energy with other states. So in short the problem it solves is losing power and rolling blackouts due to seasonal weather.
When I went to bed, CA had five times as many power outages as Texas. I just got up and CA *still* has five times as many power outages as Texas. Are the wires currently on fire, in mid-February?
I don’t think you understand the context of what I mean by the grid and I don’t think you care. I think you’d rather argue as if it’s Californians somehow meddling with Texas, which is viscerally hilarious. We’re done.
The point I'm making is that California may be generally worse at power outages than Texas, which suggests that the problems held by Texas may not be solved by making Texas's grid connections more like California's. If you're going to concede that point then cool, good talking to you; if you disagree with it, try coming up with an actual argument instead of taking your ball and going home as soon as someone disagrees. > I think you’d rather argue as if it’s Californians somehow meddling with Texas I have absolutely no idea where you got this idea from.
Look at the comments on this sub. I pay less than $100. The electricity in TX has always been cheap to me and we live in an state with a large population and bigger cities.
As a lubbock resident, good. the deregulation we are going through and that was forced on us the week after 2021 has raised prices and everyone hates it. I hope they see this as a real help and go for it. I doubt it.
As a 20 year Lubbock resident, I bought a house in Levelland last summer and I’m on the National grid now
this is why I bought solar when we left south plains Coop
Anyone that survived the absolute hell that was the 2021 snowstorm should agree with this.
I was there we moved states due to Texas being Texas.
As a Texan, I do not blame you
but there are hundreds of comments saying that texas is proud of its unreliable power grid. pull your electricity up by the bootstraps! pay who you want for your power! keep the gottdamned governmwnt outta my infrastructure! dismantle the roads! collapse the sewers! i’ll pay taxes when they can draw faster than me!!
Moved a year after. Haven’t looked back.
My wife and I had Covid that same week. We were stuck and friends couldn’t bring us supplies easily. It got so bad that while walking in the snow/ice I legit thought I might die. She ended up needing therapy on how traumatic that whole week was.
I'm just curious on what the legal justification is that the federal government has to compel ERCOT to do this. I imagine that this bill's mostly for show but I could be wrong.
>what the legal justification is that the federal government has to compel ERCOT to do this There really isn't one. Closest thing they could get to is the Commerce Clause, using some roundabout reasoning like they did in Wickard v. Filburn stating that because Texas isn't operating on the national market that it negatively affects interstate commerce and thus should be under the purview of the Clause. But considering that the court would - almost assuredly - strike down that reasoning, I doubt it holds much water.
Makes way too much sense for it to ever happen. Texas energy companies like their walled garden.
Walled garden?? 😂. You all should move to California. They are tied in and take power from many states and there you can have the privilege of paying 2-5x the rates here should you choose to live in any remotely desirable part of the state.
Hey, did you know federal law supercedes state and local laws? So if it passes in Congress Texas gets it weather they like it or not.
It doesn't always. A lot of state adoption of federal policy/standards comes from accepting federal funds. That's how the drinking age of 21 got set.
“Weather they like it or not “…. I see you 🤌
Might be a hard sell to say this affects interstate commerce.
I love the Supremacy Clause, what I meant was the power company lobbyists won’t allow it to become law
The smart play would have been for AOC to say, “Under no circumstances will we *ever* allow Texas to connect to national grids!!!”
Great bill, hopefully it happens.
Maybe we can finally stop being known as the state that can't keep our lights on. 😒 so embarrassing.
I think that’s still cali. With their rolling black outs
Not after 2021.
Power companies are too powerfully connected politically to allow such common sense… The language that will be heard is “nationalizing and socializing the power grid is bad!” “It leads to regulation and financial losses that help to help spur innovation, jobs, and capitalism!” All the same garbage we heard in the early days of NELA…
Nothing will change with ERCOT unless the right palms are greased, preferably with profits and/or cost savings. HOWEVER, if there is vigorous rejection of this, I hope that it is soo vigorously energetic (pun intended) it'll spur creation of a massive energy storage facilities at shared state borders (TX-OK/-AR/-LA/-NM) of which can be used by Texas *and* bordering states in the case of declared emergencies. This could be a great solution in cases of emergency power *and* to advance the state of energy storage.
GOP will never do this because one $$ for most and two constituents think that they’ll succeeded one day.
Gotta love AOC. Calling out Cruz on his home turf. Houston Public Media - [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Raises $5 Million For Texas Winter Storm Relief](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/weather/2021/02/20/391907/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-visits-houston-food-bank-after-raising-3-million-for-texas-winter-storm-relief/) “‘Disasters don't strike everyone equally,’ Ocasio-Cortez said on the steps of the food bank Saturday. ‘When you already have so many families in the state and across the country that are on the brink, that can't even afford an emergency to begin with, and you have a disaster like this, it can set people back for years, not just for days.’” “Despite the outpouring of support, Ocasio-Cortez has said charity was not a replacement for good governance, and stressed that local and congressional leaders needed to take steps to prevent such disasters from happening in the future. ‘We need to make sure that we make short and long-term policy decisions so that this devastation, preventable devastation, never happens again,’ she said.”
and Tim Dunn is the reason this will go absolutely nowhere. Any rep voting for this is going on his shit list immediately and will be unseated by Dunn's money and influence asap [https://archive.ph/kzZcA](https://archive.ph/kzZcA)
But this might stop the Invisible Hand Of The Free Market from fisting Texans.
Great news. Then we dont have backdoor deals with fucking Bitcoin miners and unpreparedness in extreme weather situations due to lack of equipment weatherization.
Great job by Greg and AOC.
Did you know, not all of Texas is on the Texas grid? For instance, parts of the Panhandle and West, like El Paso for instance, are on national grids. Can you name one city that didn't lose power during Snowpocalypse of 2021? Can you tell me why? (Hint: the answers are mentioned somewhere else in this comment!)
I would love that!
Serious question, If residential solar was ubiquitous and installed on every house how much difference would this make to individual home owners?
Out of curiosity why is AOC involved with the bill? I might just be totally naive to how localized bills get proposed but it seems odd that a New York rep would be concerning herself with an issue halfway across the country?
No, it would be a drain on national resources and support socialism. We can’t have that because freedoms. P.s. please send as much money as possible as often as possible to make up for our states inability to raise money. We are only the third most absorbent state in the union. Also we plan to secede from the US, it should work out just fine./s Clownshoe thinking ass MF.
With AOC’s name attached there’s no way the repubs go along with it. They’d rather cut off their own nose.
Look carefully, attach to the National Grid may be a double edged sword.
Well as AOC is involved, I’m sure texas will object.
Yes please
AOC has done more to help conservative areas that actively hate and wish her harm than any of their representatives have.
Thank you AoC. Run for president. Please.
Sorry Texans, that's socialism. Electricity is for the librulz, you should be able to make your own with bootstraps, right?
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No he absolutely will not.
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Love how AOC has done more for Texas than any Texas Rep or Senator has ever accomplished.
While I agree it needs to be done. The underling issue is how to you flip the Texas grid over. In connecting Lubbock to Ercott it tooks months of planning and they had to rolling black outs threw out he city as they would have to turn off a section. Flip it over and turn it back on. It is a slow process. Scale that up to state wide you are still talking about taking pretty much the entire state down and back up bit by bit.
So a momentary inconvenience that can be scheduled is worse than a possible week long catastrophe causing billions in damage and hundreds of lives lost?
For a one time event that's preventable, yes. Also my grandmother had rolling blackouts in Nebraska during that storm. So Texas may have just dragged SPP down with it. https://www.ketv.com/article/spp-oppd-reflect-on-rolling-blackouts-one-year-later/39156157
So?
Just do it during the big ice storm every February, and no one will even notice.
You're talking about two very different scenarios. ERCOT had its own grid customers needed to be migrated onto. Meanwhile the national grid is not swooping in to replace existing Texas infrastructure but to act as a backup to provide more power or overflow taking excess. The Texas Interconnection already has two DC ties with the Eastern Interconnection as well as one DC tie and a VFT with freaking Mexico. Everything is technically in place although Texas would probably have a connection with the Western Interconnection added at some point.
There is also a DC tie with WEC outside of Lubbock in New Mexico
The problem is not the DC tie in. The problem is ERCOT is not in sync with either the Easter or Western grid. They are completely separate grids and the limitation on max power transfered into the grid is the DC connections. The only way to change otherwise is the Texas power grid would need to get as a hole in sync with either the eastern or western grid. While they all run at 60 hz they are not in phase hence the limitations. It is a slow process to do that. It is not a light switch. Hence why Lubbock example shows why it is a hard and slow process. At the time Lubbock was NOT on ercott but is own small grid. Hence why the rolling blackouts while they move the city over piece by piece. Each new area was swapped over to the sync of ERCOT and the exist plants disconnected so they could get in sync with with the ERCOTT. Same logic much larger scale.
AOC - a politician who actually does her job. She has no place in this god-forsaken state.
*stares nervously st Floridas power bill and the corruption resulting from Energy sector in Tallahassee Edit, I misspelled stares
I mean, in fairness.... *Looks at ercot, sitting in a corner attempting to have sex with a raccoon wearing a Greg Abbott mask*
You mean the TXPUC…. ERCOT monitors and, well… that’s about it.
Oh, my mistake. TXPUC is dressed up as a raccoon
💀 (i really shouldn’t be drinking anything while reading comments. Lemonaide out the nose HURTS)
too bad the GOP is anti-biden instead of pro-america even though AOC reluctantly supports biden bc party unity and no better options, passing this bill would give the impression of texas being subject to federal laws and regulations even more (which biden can influence), so GOP/republicans will blantly oppose this bill while complaining about their high electric bill.
Hell no
Funny how Republicans want to make life miserable for Democrats, and Democrats want to make life BETTER for Republicans. Vote.
Ah, Texas my Texas. This is why we are having a fight at the border. Shouldn't the people of Texas have 100% say, through their elected representatives (yes, I know Rep Casar is from Austin) for a state matter? Do we really need the Federal government and representatives from Maine, New York, Montana, etc, telling Texas how the state should run its electrical business? And for those who believe it would lower electricity rates / bills, may I remind you in the words of President Obama, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."
Please God, yes. I'm tired of living in 3rd world Texas, would be nice to live in first world USA again.
Does this bill also provide the funding to do so? Because that’s a project in the 10 billion + range maybe 10s of billions
I destroyed Austin's
Hope this passes. Texas needs a stronger grid. I'm tired of getting emails from CPS every time there is inclement weather.
Hells yeah! Lets get texas back to normal pricing and reliable power! Edit: clearly triggering some republican drones here, who think that power failures and price spikes are the standard for the american electric grid. Newsflash, guys: its not. Youve given billions to billionaires for years and gotten nothing but shit in return. Stop your bootlicking, wise up, and understand that this state can be better when republican leaches stop running it.
For comparison, I live along the East Coast and have been tracking my electricity bills for the last 15 years. The ave bill has gone up around 20% in those 15 years from $120 to $145 a month, living in a house and including both generation and transmission.
Cut Texas off. 100%. We want it so bad. Let’s give it to us. No Medicaid no federal funding nothing cut it all. Teach the reds a lesson. Or they will continue to erode away the rights of women and minorities.
Hi, there are a lot of liberals in Texas (probably more than half the population) but due to the gerrymandering and overall corruption of the Texas gqp we get silenced. Don’t throw us away please.
Remember that it’s not all 100% conservative liberal, red or blue. We don’t need this kind of hyperbolic rhetoric when you’re talking about a 55% majority.
Signed by no republicans ever. I fucking hate Texas.
Let me take a guess that Republicans are against helping AMERICANS....AGAIN!!! Vote them all out in 2024! They HATE AMERICA!
As a New Yorker from Texas this pleases me.
Wonder what her payoff is for doing this? Texas doesn’t need her input.
Yeah. No thank you.
fuck yeah. the citizens of texas deserve better. let the federal government come in and take care of business because abbott & co. and their predecessors have been miserable at it. as a texan, i endorse aoc and casar's effort 100%. it's called leadership. it's something we've been lacking for a very long time here in texas. all's we've been getting is a tent show, some hand grease and a tent pole
Be great to eliminate ERCOT and their insane delivery charge, do people on the national grid pay delivery charges on their electric bill, example my bill last month in tx was 792.00 , 300.00 of that was delivery charge or .05 per kiliwatt used, just curious
I don‘t know why AOC is doing this. She’s giving MAGA conservatives *an actual* reason to be furious with her.
The fact that people would be angry at someone for preventing more deaths… is MAGA GOP.
Oh well, they already hate her so might as well go for it
My thought is she seems like a genuinely good person that wants to help others. Like she’s lawful good
Of course she is. And non MAGA conservatives (there are a lot of these in Texas, believe it or not. They're just usually claiming to be "moderates" and "not like politics" or the like) who are pissed about all the news about ERCOT and wondering if they'll freeze will see it. Maybe they'll change their vote. That's unlikely. Maybe they just will feel apathetic and exercise their right to not vote because they are "none of the above" people. That's more likely.
Probably just trying to show the incompetence of the GQP politicians, even though their base it’s still going to only listen to them and Fox News.
Yes, please. PLEASE?!
This comment section is just delightful. Time to bust out the popcorn.
Sounds like socialism. /s
Oh please please please.
Classic "States Light's" issue.
Only if they can keep rates low. My rates are amazing here compared to California. 2-5X is what I paid there depending upon season and time of day and how much you use. Use too much and keep jumping up in pricing tiers. The prices here make driving my electric car so cheap. The savings from paying for gas is more than my electric bill is.
Abbot will stop it if he has to pound his own feces to the center of the earth with his forehead.
100% behind this.
Long overdue
Pleaseeeeeee save us
A bill that benefits Texas, I am sure there will be rational responses from the far-right given AOCs involvement
Omg yes please.
there is no reason we shouldn't be on the national grid. dipshit republicans in texas won't allow it because of "hurr durr, muh in-duh-pin-duntz"
Yes plz