“After a winter storm in Texas earlier this month left the state’s residents to contend with widespread power outages and skyrocketing electricity prices, William W. Hogan, the architect of the state’s energy market system and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, said … the state’s electricity market had ‘worked as designed’ given the conditions.”

“One Texas resident … now owes $16,752 for his energy bill, wiping out his savings. Hogan acknowledged in the Wednesday interview that such situations are ‘terrible.’ Still, he argued the end result could have been much worse.”

– Kennedy School Professor Who Designed Texas’s Energy Market Defends Skyrocketing Prices Following Winter Storm,” The Harvard Crimson (February 26, 2021).

“‘I feel like a caveman,’ said Alexander D. ‘Alex’ Kontoyiannis ’23, describing his experience studying for his organic chemistry midterm Tuesday night.

“Other than desperation, why would the commissioners have increased electricity prices to the point that Texans paid more for electricity in one week than they had for the last three years combined?…. At the heart of the PUC’s decision seems to be a belief in theoretical market constructs over actual markets.”

“At the time, the new PUC chairman, Arthur D’Andrea, noted, ‘I think we all expected that when we were in load shed we would be at $9,000.’ In other words, the commissioners did not care what market prices actually were. They were going to impose their vision on the market, regardless.”

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is a government agency advertised as a ‘nonprofit corporation.’ It is also a government planning agency, not a free-market institution, under the thumb of state legislators and regulators.…

“It’s unfortunate that the Georgetown [100 percent renewable] experiment went so quickly from being a success story to being something of a cautionary example,” said Adrian Shelley, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.

“Gore wasn’t available for an interview with E&E News last week to discuss the electric situation in Georgetown [Texas].”

It was supposed to be green and cheap, a 25-year fixed-price contract for solar and wind beginning in 2018. Instead, as one news story in October 2019 reported: “After losing tens of millions of citizens’ money on a green energy gamble, city officials are trying to escape their self-inflicted mess.” How? By filing a lawsuit against its solar provider Buckthorn Westex to cancel its 25-year contract. A countersuit by Buckthorn followed.…

Ed. note: This post, originally published at MasterResource in November 2012, is reposted verbatim for its relevancy now that wind power has two seasons of questionable output: freezing winter as well as stagnant summer. (Two updates are provided in brackets at the end of the article.) The ‘seen’ today is the frozen wind turbine; the ‘unseen’ is the gist of the post below: phantom fossil-fired generation capacity given the ruined economics from unfair competition.

“It is well known that Texas is undergoing a major challenge in maintaining resource adequacy due to improper price signals; less well known is that a significant portion of the problem can be laid directly on the doorstep of subsidies for wind generation.”

The federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), which currently provides a $0.022/kWh subsidy to qualifying renewables, is set to expire at year-end.…