this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Hell no.
My state reps office told me we shouldn't join the national grid because... " If another area has an emergency we'd have to share our power."
He basically wigged out when I said that's fine, THAT'S THE POINT.
Edit for context this is in TX we basically have our own shitty grid for anyone not aware people froze to death in modern society when our grid failed...
They're not actually worried about sharing power, they don't want to be subject to additional federal regulation.
In this case, the issue is business interest in politics, not our weird toxic individualism.
Well and the "solution" touted by other offices was the setup a low interest loan getup for gas and oil to setup more power plants. You know, but not renewables.
The hand out is blatantly obvious.
If you're talking extra plants for redundancy when power fluctuates, there's really now way to do that with renewables. Maybe giant battery stations, but that's about it.
Presumably your asshole rep is dead against this kind of thing?
"The gas and electric markets in Texas are lightly regulated and highly competitive, which has pushed companies to deliver energy at the lowest possible cost. But it also means that many companies were ill-prepared when the mercury dropped. To save money, they had skimped on winterizing their equipment. As a result, gas lines across the state—which has about 23 percent of the country’s reserves—quite literally froze. The spot price of natural gas soared to 70-times what it would normally be in Minnesota, and gas utilities paid a hefty premium when they used the daily market to match demand."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/houston-based-utility-wants-minnesotans-to-pay-for-texas-deep-freeze-problems/?comments=1&comments-page=1