Unreliable Grid

The power situation that we now face is horrible, and it is not over yet. Our grid is still on life support and the next few days are critical. There will be investigations and hearings to determine who dropped the ball and allowed this to happen. The truth is nobody dropped the ball, our government has been setting us up for years for this situation through replacing a reliable grid with an unreliable one. How have they done that? By funding renewables through government subsidies. Many people do not realize there are some wind generators who are able to break even all the way down to nearly -$30/mw; that is right $30 below zero. Through government subsidies our government has created an artificially low-priced power market. In order to build a system that is dependent on renewables the true price of these renewables have to be hidden from us; we are now seeing the true price. Because of these artificially low prices we have seen coal generation, natural gas generation, and baseload generation in general retired. We have replaced a very reliable grid with one that is not even conducive to building natural gas peaking generation because emission requirements as well exponential financial risk, due to our government picking winners and losers, makes the rate of returns on generation low single digits, if that. It has become a market with no true predictability of future revenues. A deregulated market is good; government interference in that market, through subsidies, destroys the value that comes from deregulation. Over the next months you will hear much about the fossil fuel plants that have tripped offline during this event, and that has to be looked into and investigated, but the short answer is these companies with generation have to work on a shoestring maintenance budget due to the efforts of some in our government to try to completely destroy the fossil fuel industry, including reliable generation. As you hear those speak of how fossil fuels failed us remember this, over this event fossil fuel and nuclear generation has supplied over 90% of the electricity generated; I know for a fact over the 14th and 15th it was 91%. During the times when ERCOT was most stressed, late night and early morning hours, there was 0% of solar generation available. California has already accepted rolling blackouts due to their government forcing their system into renewables, is Texas and the rest of our nation willing to do that as well. When you vote and you get ready to check the box for a candidate that promises to destroy the fossil fuel industry in order to create "good paying renewable jobs", this is what you are voting for. So who is to blame? All of us, because we have allowed our government, whether we voted for them or not, to be taken over by people who are more interested in socialist political ideology and the special interest agendas than they are the strength of our nation and the well-being of our citizens.