“Colorado utilities seek temporary price hikes to cover sky-high costs from February deep freeze — Regulators will take testimony before deciding on proposed increases”
ignornant BS ... it normally gets REALLY cold in Colorado every winter for a few weeks, like minus 20 for several days and nights in a row, and this on the Front Range, and not just in the mountains ...
30-40 years ago this happened almost every winter, but the winters have been pretty mild compared to that for the last couple of decades, but in the long term, this past winter wasn’t exceptional at all, so if utilities were really “caught off guard” as they claim, then they haven’t been paying attention ...
the irony of course is that these utilities are all now probably being run by government “educated” fools worried about long term so-called “climate change”, yet are actually so short sighted that they can’t even view trends over the previous few decades, and this in a business where it’s crucial to anticipate and provide for energy needs that are guaranteed to fluctuate from year to year and decade to decade, sometimes wildly, meaning that energy needs themselves are guaranteed to sometimes wildly fluctuate over the decades, and that SHOULD be planned for!
Who would have known? It gets cold in Colorado in the winter. Shazzam.
The whole country’s natural gas costs skyrocketed during the the feb freeze. This is due to supply and demand as well as shortages due to Texas gas grid going down for nearly the whole storm. Texas is by far the largest gas source in the Middle American gas grid system. Colorado being on the same grid. Texas gas producers didn’t listen when we industry professionals told them in 2011 to harden the well heads, the gas liquid separators the Y gas separation plants and most importantly back up the electric gas compressor stations with natural gas or diesel back up power sources. The natural gas grid operators FLAT OUT IGNORED the industry professionals and our recommendations for purely profit motives. When Texas gas grid went down it took.60% of the gas supply off the market in a few hours time of course the market reaction is record prices that is the market signal to cut consumption. The fact is had the Texas RRC who runs the gas grid followed the recommended course of action in 2011 the gas grid would have stayed running and the whole.shortages avoided. It was the epic failure of the RRC and the Texas gas grid when it froze up as we told them it would in subzero temps that caused not only the blackouts but also the record fuel costs. More than half of the power plants off line in the blackouts were natural gas turbine plants who simply could not get the fuel they needed due to frozen well heads and liquid separators. Texas monthly did a dang fine write up about it with all the fact check and double check and then backed up by ERCOT report to the Texas legislature they just released. The gas grid had an epic totally preventable failure period full stop.