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It's cold AF, this southerner doesn't do cold. At 50 degrees it's fucking cold for me. I can count in one hand how many times I've seen snow at my home my entire life.
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It's been over 48 hours without power, it's fucking cold inside my house. I have a generator but no electric heaters. I've never felt the need to have them. Stores are wiped cleaned so can't find one either.
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It's so fucking cold that multiple pipes have already burst flooding my first floor. I didn't flood during Harvey and the 52 inches of rain that came with it but this freeze flooded my home.
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To the northerners that say oh that's just light sweater weather. Our infrastructure isn't designed to handle this cold. Kinda like where you're from, the infrastructure might not be able to handle 100+ degree weather for over two months straight, or 15 inches of rain in a single weekend. Our infrastructure is built for that, not prolonged subfreezing temperatures.
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Fuck ERCOT
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I'm "essential" so still have to work and do my best to take care of the family from work.
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I love Texas
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Trump is the legitimate president.
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Why am I making this post? Green energy is cool and all but it will never replace fossil fuels. To anyone that says solar and wind power are the future, just look at this fucking mess.
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I'm not waiting for the government to save me. My dad came over to my house and helped me clean and fix the pipes. My neighbors are helping me out with water, I'm helping them by letting them charge their phones and flashlights. I fired up the grill and my neighbor brought over deer meat that was going to go bad.
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Don't turn off my fucking gas centrepoint. The fireplace is the only heat that I have.
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Stay warm pedes, some of you have it way worse than I do.
Sorry I'm rambling.
You can't just build generation facilities for back up power in the ERCOT market. The wholesale power cost structure will not support even the fixed costs. There was a time in Texas when G&T's built peaking plants for back up power to support extreme whether conditions such as what we are going through right now and also during extreme heat waves that cause the real time settlement prices to spike. The highly subsidized solar and wind projects are keeping peaking plants from ever being built. When subsidized wind farms can sell their power on the ERCOT for -$1 at a profit, how can a a fossil fuel peaking plant compete? They can't, and that's why Texas will experience more load shedding events like this in the future.
Perhaps the problem was stated before ERCOT came into being.
No one said correcting a mistake would be easy.