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January 6, 2025 6 mins
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, it's our official Center Point theme song. Seven
to twenty two is their time here on Houston's morning
news sound We've we've heard all this before, but we've
got Centerpoint Energy actively monitoring severe cold weather in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana,
and Ohio or the course of the coming days even worse,
for example, in Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and Ohio than it

(00:23):
is here. It's going to get a little bit colder.
I don't know if there are grids in better shape
than ours. I'm sure the one in Ohio is because
they're used to the gold weather. Doctor ed Hurst joins
us erg fellow at the University of Houston. We sound
like a broken record with this, doctor Hurst, because we
talk about this every time winter comes around and we
get a cold snap, and here we go with a
gold snap, and nothing has really changed since the last

(00:44):
time we talked about a gold snap.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
That's absolutely right. In fact, let Lee talked about this
in twenty twenty one, following the freeze February twenty twenty one,
also known as Yuri. Yeah, it was obvious if we
did not add power plant to the grid, we were
going to be in more precarious position year after year
after year going forward, and well here we are. Ericat

(01:08):
had said before Yury that there was a five percent
chance of rolling blackouts. It's the storm hit with freezing precipitation,
and today that's an eighty percent chance. And that's because
we do rely upon the wind. Right now, it's generating
more than fifteen thousand megawatts, which is a healthy shot

(01:29):
for the current demand. That's about twenty almost twenty five
percent of what we're using today at this moment. But
we need the coal plants, We need the gas plants
and the nuclear plants. We haven't made the transition to renewables,
and it's going to take a few years to do that,
and by few, I mean probably ten before we get

(01:49):
the batteries there that we need. The coal plants average
fifty five years in age at this point. The natural
gas plants average more than thirty years. And nobody's building
new ones on the grid. The governor and the Lieutenant
governor have tried and tried, and nobody wants to build
brand new power plants just to lose money.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Right, Yeah, that's the bottom line. That's the same problem
that we've had. But at the end of the day,
the r and URCAT is reliability, right, so it's their mission,
it's their job. Or rovidis with a reliable energy sources,
So what do we do.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
To They don't have a way of doing it. Urkut
doesn't make the investments. You know, the California Independent System
Operator they California is a grid operator, actually went out
and contracted for five thousand megaats of natural gas generators,
which they put online within two years and that's really

(02:45):
improved the reliability across California. But Texas for some reason
has not wanted to do that.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well, I think they want the private sector to handle it, right,
But the problem is is the current business model does
not allow for enough profit for the private sectors. You
said to make that investment.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
That's it exactly. And so you and I can't contract
to with center Point or with RG or Distra because
it's so fragmented today. In the old days, you and
I here in Houston, we had Houston Lighting and Power,
and Houston Lighting and Power understood how many customers there

(03:23):
were in the area and what they would need to
have on a hot summer day or a cold winters day.
And so our bill during the year actually reflected the
fact that they had spare capacity and we were paying
for that. Today, the model doesn't allow consumers to actually
pay for spare capacity. If we do that, then we're

(03:43):
doing that on our own, such as AGB has had
to do. They've installed backup generators at all their grocery
stores because on the first case, Centerpoint was so unreliable.
In the second because Urkot across the state is so unreliable.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Well, it certainly been a boom for generators. Sales make
kind of don't you wonder who owns the generators these days? Right?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well, well that's the sponsor of your show. Uh, you know,
but that's that's a rich man's solution. Uh. You know,
if we go without power, as we've seen for example
during Barrel and that was that was a last mile issue,
that was a distribution issue with with the wires, and

(04:26):
the fabric of society breaks down pretty quickly. Traffic lights
go out, water systems go down. Uh. It's very difficult
to operate without electricity in the twenty first century. And
no one, no one in this you know, in Austin,
is really taking this with a degree of urgency that's required.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Okay, Well, as we know, they have a tendency to
to make it more urgent when it actually happens, then
they're getting all the complaints and then it just kind
of goes to the back burner again. Is this something
that can only be fixed? I hate to say, because
I don't believe in things being fixed necessarily by government.
But does the government need to get back into the

(05:05):
power business in order to fix the problem.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Well, the government isn't in the power business. I mean,
this is not a regulated grid. This is a government
operated grid. You know Chief Justice Nathan Heck who has
ruled that URCATT is an arm of the state. This
is one hundred percent government operated. The government decides how
much electricity to buy during the day, It decides the
price and the wholesale market. It uses an old style

(05:30):
Russian input output computer model, an algorithm. I mean, this
is one hundred percent government control. And it's essentially the
same as a you know, pick a government agency that
goes out and buys pencils or office shares or office supplies.
That's what the State of Texas is doing for us

(05:50):
every minute of the day with our electricity grid.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
All right, Well, we're not making any progress yet, but
man if we keep complaining. Thank you, Sir, appreciated Doctor
ed HRRS Ergy Fellow at the University of Houston, seven
twenty eight
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