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THREAD: Today's awful electricity situation in Texas is also economically interesting, and says something about our political and social problems as well. https://twitter.com/AlyssaMGoard/status/1361319451526909953?s=20 1/8
Texas has its own electric grid, separate from rest of the US and not subject to federal regulation. This is normally a point of pride. Today it is problematic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection 2/8
Extreme low temps statewide are both raising demand and reducing supply. Many wind turbines are shut and natural gas pipelines run slower. ERCOT, the agency that manages the grid, has ordered local utilities to stabilize usage with rolling blackouts. https://twitter.com/ERCOT_ISO/status/1361265260217446402?s=20 3/8
But instead of the 40 minute target, many people lost power overnight and have now been dark for hours with temps well below freezing. It appears continued high usage prevents utilities from rolling to next group. https://twitter.com/austinenergy/status/1361303903355174913?s=20 4/8
Here's the economics. This is a "collective action problem." We can help our shivering neighbors with very small sacrifices: just turn down your heat a few degrees. But other than pure kindness, no one has incentive to do that. So it doesn't happen. 5/8 https://twitter.com/fredcantu/status/1361306113283653633?s=20
Such situations are where credible leadership matters. Officials should be able to explain why shared sacrifice is necessary and convince most people to cooperate. This was also true with the simple measures, like wearing masks, needed to control the coronavirus. 6/8
But instead we have a governor whose top priority has seemingly been to keep bars and restaurants open, and mayors who go on vacation to Cabo while their cities suffer. 7/8
When 1) leaders don't lead by example, 2) much of the public lacks empathy for neighbors and 3) market incentives fail, bad things follow. That's where we are now. Hope everyone stays warm. 8/8
UPDATE: Houston's mayor gets it. https://twitter.com/SylvesterTurner/status/1361281038916362241?s=20
This is getting worse. My little electric co-op has gone from a 12,300 meter outage last night to almost 100,000 now. Unclear how many of those are the (non) rolling blackout vs other problems. Ours is still on, for now. https://twitter.com/PedernalesCoop/status/1361143822294605826?s=20
So in Austin, sounds like they are keeping some people dark in order to maintain power to "critical loads" like hospitals. https://twitter.com/statesman/status/1361341102402514950?s=20
