Hey little buddy, how's the independent grid working out for you?
Jesus Christ.
Texas: Big government is evil!
Also Texas: Big government, the climate change weve been denying is boiling us please save our freedom grid
I want a book that's just passive aggressive notes signed by Jesus
"Bet it all on the Steelers huh? Bet your wife is going to be real happy about that.
-Jesus Christ"
"Oh you sure showed that group of children who's boss yes sir.
-Jesus Christ"
As a lib, I feel so owned.
I'm glad I live in Washington state with our cheap renewable energy.
You are kind of owned, since these red states fucking up just means that more of your tax money will go to saving these idiots from themselves through federal aid
As another fellow Washingtonian, I'm getting pretty tired of subsidizing willful stupidity.
Red states are a luxury we can't afford anymore. They need to pull themselves up by their freedom bootstraps and start turning a profit, or the spigot turns off.
honestly it's not willful for a lot of residents there because of gerrymandering instead of redistricting.
Texas actually does better in the renewable energy front than you may expect.
A quarter of the state's energy is produced through wind and solar. The biggest bottleneck preventing more wind adoption is the capacity of transmission lines up and the lack of energy storage.
The advantage of natural gas is that it can be dry up pretty much anywhere and isn't dependent on weather.
The biggest problem Texas has right now regarding energy (and housing costs, and inflation, and municipal planning, and traffic, etc) is its extremely rapid population growth.
Yes, the heat wave is historic and ERCOT is awful, but even in perfect weather the grid is being stressed from the sheer number of people and businesses moving here
Don’t forget natural gas lines can freeze. Remember Ted Cruz going to Cancun? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Are you idiots Great Again yet?
hey the rest of the american grids are fine. Texas didn't want to follow certain governemnt regulation so they made their own grid.
I was talking directly to the women hating, book banning, brown people fearing , maga-loving, selfish ignorant racists that vote in Texas.
I remember my parents planning to retire to Texas about 10 years ago, I told 'em "that state's going to be unlivable b/c of climate change pretty soon, don't buy land there".
They're Republicans so pish-tosh. They have spent weeks this summer essentially unable to be outside anywhere.
Retiring somewhere where you can be burned by the pavement if you fall over? That's an interesting choice.
Maybe stop electing Republican orcs and your state will improve.
I'm trying so hard... I swear, our ballot boxes should be called wishing wells to better curb my hopes...
The problem is Texas Democrats and those who'd stand against Republicans don't vote. I don't feel like digging out the exact numbers, but the 2022 gubernatorial race shows it best. Abbott got nearly 80% of the votes Trump did in 2020. Beto got 60% of the votes Biden did. Republicans show up, Democrats don't. Until that changes. nothing in this state will change.
Wow, I'm so shocked that Democrat turnout is depressed in *checks notes... states that go out of their way to gerrymander so only the Republicans can win, and use authoritarian tactics and putting Yes Men in key positions, have laws like it being illegal to give water to people standing in the voting line, and in general violently repress their Democratic constituents.
Gee I wonder why those votes might be depressed! It certainly has nothing to do with a system that has already been rigged against them! /s
Being real though, that's purposeful on the part of Republicans. They want Democrats to lose hope. Makes their job easier.
Voter suppression is big in Texas.
If only there was some kind of energy source that worked best during intense sunlight.
Aaahhh, the free market economy at work without limits, without government planning, regulations, or interference.
Government regulations bad! It means we can't squeeze our customers, we can't fuck up on an hourly basis, we can't be dicks!
And in before the commies start... No. Bad dog! Get out with your "we need to become Communist hippie communes!" comments, please
We need to put reasonable rules and limits to a capitalist system. Regulate big companies, regulate infrastructure, tax the rich, use the money for social platforms
I'm with the commies on this one. We need to nationalize utilities like energy distribution. No reason to have a profit seeking entity in charge of necessities like electricity.
In all fairness, Texas has an incredibly weird, idealistic, view of the value of market forces and their government utterly fails in its job as a result.
It's not just power lines. It's everything. They distort their market on ideological lines and then assume that's the best case.
As a former Texan this breaks my heart. Alot of innocent and less well off people will suffer due to entrenched corruption.
I moved away because of this exact kind of shit.
They have an excess of energy (too much sun) but the grid is close to collapsing (too much cooling). Maybe install more solar power?
The problem is ideology. The Texas power grid is the end state of neo-liberalism taken to the extreme.
The belief that natural monopolies should be privately controlled with minimum regulations has lead to this. A power grid run for maximum short term profit with minimum investment. The grids poorly maintained, because that doesn't make money. The grid is unfit, because implementing designs that cover the extremes is expensive. The price is excessive because the state is ideologically unwilling to intervene.
Many Texas leaders (and other Taxans) see any energy source that's not oil and gas based as "part of the radical liberal agenda."
I work in Solar Construction and Texas is our fastest growing market right now.
Good thing they got rid of all those pesky regulations or the poors would be using the power.
Oh, again?
EMERGENCY!
YOU ARE IN TEXAS!
oh my God!
Wasn't the whole point in investing in oil in Texas to keep the energy prices low?
How is that working out for em?
Actually, pretty well 99.9% of the time. And if a few people die here or there in a freeze or heatwave, well they shoulda use some of those electricity savings on a generator or something.
^ How the conservatives in Texas feel about the situation
People will soon be living in Texas no power year around when they throttle you and charge you thousands for power every month of the year because either A) ITsSS TWOooh HAaAWwTT or B) TtThEEee GGRiiIdD IIsSSnnTT Winterized. What a joke
Meanwhile in reality:
Texas is 1st in the nation in renewables (thanks Obama).
3000Mw battery storage averted this emergency, and there’s a ton more of that on the way (thanks Biden).
Look, this is super misleading information and I keep seeing it repeated. They're first in the nation in total electricity generation from renewable sources, but that's mainly because of how big they are. If you look at what percentage of their consumption is from renewable sources, they're not even in the top ten.
The reason Texas is #1 in renewables is actually Rick Perry, bless his heart. He pushed for a massive expansion of wind generation capacity back in the early 00s and was instrumental in building high voltage transmission lines between west Texas wind and the more eastern population centers. He would be drummed out of today's Republican party
Texas power prices soared 20,000% Wednesday evening amid another brutal heat wave.
Makes sense. I'm told everything's bigger in Texas.
This has been going on for years now. I feel bad for those that suffer there because of this, but if you choose to willingly live there when you have the means to leave, I don't feel sorry for you anymore. It's the ones unable to leave that I truly feel bad for, those that don't have any other choice.
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