So now that I've Internet for a day, I've had a chance to do some reading up on what caused the power outages in Texas. And it's a combination of things.

In essence, Texas chose lower prices over regulations. Rather than do what literally every other state in the country has done, Texas decided to go it alone so they wouldn't have to be subject to federal regulations.

Rather than do what everyone else does and work with other states for scenarios where high demand can allow states to draw power from the grids of other states, Texas wanted to go it alone.

And they trusted this power with the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas. Two issues with that.
1. It's obviously not reliable.
2. Of the 13 board members, 5 don't live in Texas.

And to be clear, while the Governor of Texas isn't a board member, the governor overseas the board. So while Abbot is throwing his passengers under the bus, he's driving the bus.

Anyhoo, the reason that Texas didn't want to join other states is that to do so would mean that they'd have to face federal regulations. Regulations that exist for minor reasons like ensuring that things like this don't happen.

Texas electricity market is chaos. You have a gazillion different providers all trying to get the same customers. But they're middle-market guys. The power producers sell to the companies and the companies sell to the consumers.

It's kind of like cable where you get these "introductory rates." And then after a year your rates balloon and then your bill explodes one month. (We once had a $1,000 bill.)

So customers keep swapping from company to company to get the lower rates and the companies low-ball intro offers to get new customers.

And what falls behind is investments in infrastructure or doing little things like weatherizing. Profits are prioritized over security or quality of service. And when it comes to utilities, the priority SHOULD BE on service.

So what happens is when you get the "perfect storm" (pun intended) of calamity, you have terrible support when it's needed the post.

We have a combination of things.

1. The record cold weather put an increase on demand. It's important to realize that Texas homes aren't designed to keep cold out. They're designed to keep cold in. My home has an HVAC system where the furnace is in the attack and the heat is blown out through the ceiling.

Not ideal if you think about it. Heat rises. So the blowers blow the heat out but it only goes part way down before it goes back up. I have 9-foot ceilings and I used a thermometer to figure out that there's an 8-degree difference between my ceiling and my floor.

And if I set my thermostat to 68, the temp at where my head is at in my recliner is 64. Up north you heat from the floor up. Down here, you heat from the ceiling down because the HVAC is built to cool, not heat.

That means there's a greater demand on electricity, even if you're using natural gas to heat like me. Even worse if you use electric heating like many do.

2. The freezing rain and snow slowed down every aspect of our infrastructure which wasn't winterized because winterizing wasn't "profitable." Literally prioritizing HUMAN LIVES over money was just a bad idea to the energy companies.

(Note: They aren't mutually exclusive. They could have still made money AND winterized. They just couldn't have made AS MUCH money.)

3. Again because we weren't regulated, Texas was living "paycheck to paycheck" metaphorically. There was no reserve of gas or oil for an uptick in case something like a record winter storm came along. ERTOC says they didn't have enough warning to prepare for this.

That's why you have reserves. For when you don't have warning!

4. Even though supply was down, Texas was still EXPORTING natural gas to other states (CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!). Gov. Abbott finally banned sending gas to other states today AFTER several Texans have gone 2 or 3 days without any power or heat during a record cold spell...

BECAUSE THERE WASN'T ENOUGH GAS!!!

5. We wouldn't join our grid with other states because to do so would mean having to face federal regulations which have "forced" Texas to do things like "winterize" and keep reserve supplies.

It would have cut profits, which would have AGAIN, still been profits, but not as MUCH profits. If we could join our grid to other states then we could get power from them right now. But NOOOOOO, we couldn't do that because money is far more important than human lives.

To whit: This whole war against regulation is a sham. Regulations exist because of things like this. And now our fearless ex-governor Rick Perry is out there saying that we have to be willing to die so that we don't have a regulated energy market.

WELL I DON'T AGREE!!!