Coal and nuclear -especially nuclear- are base load fuels. Gas is peak load fuel.
Base load fuels are those that are slow to start and ramp up.
Gas prices spiked because Xiden and cold. Pair that with regulated electricity prices and you have gas fired plants offlining to avoid losing money. Add the frozen wind turbines to this picture and you have a real problem.
I hear ERCOT just allowed spot pricing for electric power, which means those gas plants can come back online. It also means we've no idea what we'll be getting billed at the end of the month -- could be thousands of dollars for all I know, but it's better than dying, so on the whole it's the right decision, even if some will call it "price gouging".
I wouldn't yet say this was "planned", but there's a lot of people in regulatory agencies making bad decisions that they know are bad decisions, so then in a way all disasters caused by bad regulatory planning / rules / rulings are "planned".
Coal and nuclear -especially nuclear- are base load fuels. Gas is peak load fuel.
Base load fuels are those that are slow to start and ramp up.
Gas prices spiked because Xiden and cold. Pair that with regulated electricity prices and you have gas fired plants offlining to avoid losing money. Add the frozen wind turbines to this picture and you have a real problem.
I hear ERCOT just allowed spot pricing for electric power, which means those gas plants can come back online. It also means we've no idea what we'll be getting billed at the end of the month -- could be thousands of dollars for all I know, but it's better than dying, so on the whole it's the right decision, even if some will call it "price gouging".
I wouldn't yet say this was "planned", but there's a lot of people in regulatory agencies making bad decisions that they know are bad decisions, so then in a way all disasters caused by bad regulatory planning / rules / rulings are "planned".