OK. I have seen a lot of attempted dunking on Texas...red state bad, bad government, etc...because of the electricity issue in this record cold. So, I am going to do a thread here. I am no engineer, but I want to point out some obvious facts. 1/n

This is a natural disaster of large proportions. At no time in recorded have this many Texas counties been below freezing for so long...ever. We are prepared for short stints, not an ice age. It snowed on Galveston island and much of the state is covered in snow and ice.
This chart shows electricity production since Feb 4. Note the large share from wind prior to the cold snap. Texas typically does not use as much electricity in winter, so gas plants are typically offline and have smaller reserves of gas.
But as the cold hit, renewable production fell by as much as 93%. Gas plants fired up and easily met the ERCOT stress test levels initially, but electricity quantity demanded was rising, so was gas for heating. Eventually, there were shortages of gas that led to a drop in prod.
Why shortages? Because gas producers were contractually obligated to export gas all the while residential heating demand was rising as well...hence Gov Abbot's order. It provides more cover for force majeure contract breakage.
But here is another view. I pulled the Midwest PP data from EIA for 2/7 and the same for ERCOT. See a difference? The same northerners who are dunking on TX rely HEAVILY on coal and gas for base generation. So if there is a govt failure here, it is OVER-reliance on renewables.
This is not to say that wind caused this issue. It did not. It is a complex problem of energy balancing. But to pretend that somehow wind wasn't part of the issue here is crazy. This graph shows the deficit created by wind that had to be covered by gas before meeting inc demand.
Far too early for a complete post mortem (in fact we are still in the middle of it). But it should be CLEAR that solar and wind cannot be relied upon for base generation. Can it be a vital part of the mix? Absolutely.
Texas politics have a lot of issues. This isn't really one of them. Like any other natural disaster, we need to learn from this but we cannot do it if everyone is just interested in scoring snark points. /end

More from Government

Typically excellent piece from @dsquareddigest The exponential insight is especially neat. Think of it a little like fishing...today you can’t export oysters to the EU (because you simply aren’t allowed to), tomorrow you don’t have a fish exporting business (to the EU).


The extremely small minority of people who known anything about this who think that Brexit will be good for the City make a number of arguments which I shall address in turn...

1. They need us more than we need them. This is a variant of the German carmakers argument. And we know how that went...Business will follow the profit opportunity and if that has moved then so will the business...

And what do we mean by us / we. We’re not talking about massed ranks of Euro investing / trading etc blue blooded British institutions.

Au contraire. We’re talking about the London based subs of US, Asian and indeed European capital markets players...As soon as they think the profit opportunity has moved then so will they...it’s a market innit...

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"I really want to break into Product Management"

make products.

"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."

Make Products.

"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."

MAKE PRODUCTS.

Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics –
https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.


There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.

You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.

But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.

And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.

They find their own way.