Some call BS on yesterday's rolling blackouts across Texas

McBlogger has an interesting conspiracy theory:

(F)actor in the most recent capacity report which showed the state with adequate generation capacity through 2014. Suddenly, because of weather conditions which we’ve known about for days, there is an issue? How many generators have been effected? Given our excess of capacity and the massive increase in wind generation, it’s gotta be one hell of an outage to cause us to have to suffer rolling blackouts. Such an outage could realistically only be intentional ...

Think I’m crazy? Remember that CA’s problem in 2001 was caused by engineered capacity constraints, which created an artificial demand/ supply imbalance that enriched energy traders. Can anyone honestly look me in the eye and tell me my theory is crap?

Didn’t think so. No, it looks like Perry has found a very nice way to pay back campaign contributors without too many questions.

UPDATE – We’ve also received word that not long after Perry’s press release, ERCOT terminated rolling blackout activity in Houston metro. Wanna bet the generators suddenly jumped up capacity?

UPDATE TWO – Dewhurst says it’s all about a broken pipe (sure) and low gas pressure (whatev). That gas pressure one I find particularly funny since the compressors at the feed can be adjusted.

He's got more there that I left out of the above excerpt on the TCEQ authorization to exclude facilities from penalty for exceeding clean air standards during the "emergency".

Houston media picks up the scent from another angle ...

"It particularly troubled me because both ERCOT and generators had so much advance notice,” said PUC commissioner Ken Anderson. “It's not as if this weather was a particular surprise."

So it was a surprise that 50 power generating units statewide went down. The last time Texans encountered rolling blackouts (April 2006) only seven generators were lost.

"The number is unprecedented, and that is one of the questions that the commission is going to need to look at," Anderson said.

Another question the Public Utility Commission will tackle: Why ERCOT didn't follow protocol in sending out that electricity reserves were running critically low.

The PUC received one advisory at 3:20 a.m. Wednesday, but the next update it got from ERCOT came at 6:05 a.m. -- nearly three hours later, when the rolling blackouts were already underway.

Steps in the middle were missing --like alerting the media – 11 News was not forewarned as required, and 11 News viewers were not either.

"We need to know why, and if the reasons aren't good, and if they don't deal, relate to reliability, then it's not acceptable," Anderson said.

While a formal investigation won't likely begin until the bad weather has cleared ERCOT may face some tough initial question as early as Thursday morning at regularly scheduled meeting of the PUC.

Is this another benefit of deregulation? In a privatize-everything environment, is the invisible hand of the free market fingering us? Is it credible that the generating plants in North Texas actually have uninsulated water pipes, causing equipment to be shut down? It's possible that maintenance has suffered because they've laid off a bunch of laborers, I suppose. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost ...

Mexico came to our rescue, thank goodness. Cue the "illegal electricity" snark.

So is this just smoke or is there a fire here? Many Texans who shivered yesterday would crave having the heat no matter which it happens to be.

Texas Vox has more.

Update: Fort Worth state rep. Lon Burnham wonders if the market was manipulated (a la Enron in California, as McBlogger speculated in the top link above).

GOP's redistricting plans are pushed to the back burner

Kos notes that with too many irons in the fire -- repealing the Affordable Healthcare Act, killing Social Security, impeaching that damn socialist communist Obama --  the Republicans are letting redistricting slide down the priority list. Via the DNCC, Noah Rothman at Campaigns and Elections:

Having made significant state-level gains in the 2010 elections, the GOP appeared to be in a prime position to influence the decennial process of congressional redistricting. But, as the process gets underway in a series of first-round states, including New Jersey, Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana, some party insiders are concerned that Republicans have failed to amass the funding necessary to capitalize on their advantages. 

In particular, the insiders point to the lackluster performance of Making America’s Promise Secure (MAPS), a Republican 501(c)(4) founded in 2009 in part by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to assist in the GOP’s redistricting efforts. (Costs related to redistricting have in the past been covered by the RNC through “soft money” donations, though these were banned by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms early last decade.)

On January 12, Nathan Gonzalez reported in Roll Call that MAPS has gone quiet in recent months. He quotes Brad Todd, a National Republican Congressional Committee consultant and founder of On Message, Inc., to the effect that Republican priorities shifted in 2010 to immediate electoral gains, leaving planning for redistricting in the lurch. “There was a conscious decision to win elections,” he told Gonzalez. “People got tired of paying lawyers.” With the RNC extremely short on cash, Republicans face a significant funding problem just as the redistricting efforts in first-round states are ramping up.

Reported also from June of last year by Politico ...

Outmaneuvered by the GOP during the last round of redistricting a decade ago, Democrats appear to have an early advantage as the two parties gear up again for the expensive and high-stakes battle over redrawing state legislative and congressional districts.

“I do believe that the Democrats are much better organized at this stage,” said Ben Ginsberg, a top Republican election lawyer. 

More recently -- as in a couple of weeks ago -- from Hotline On Call:

Even though Republicans made historic gains at the state level in 2010 that gave them unprecedented control over redistricting, they are currently lacking a unifying organization to lead the process.

And the absence of such a group is starting to cause alarm in Republican circles.

One such Republican is former NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds. Reynolds is particularly invested in redistricting because he helped spearhead the GOP's efforts in 2010 that netted Republicans nearly 700 new seats in statehouses across the country at the Republican State Leadership Committee. Reynolds directly oversaw the RSLC's REDMAP program, the group's primary fundraising arm.

Despite those gains, though, Reynolds said the GOP is in something of holding pattern without an organization dedicated to raising money and focused on redistricting.

"I've been surprised that I didn't see the party yearning for some sort of outside effort to get the map-making up and going," Reynolds told Hotline On Call. "Normally instead of having the party pay for that, someone on the outside would take that initiative and I haven't seen that leadership."

It's more than just a money problem and a lack of focus by the national organization. They're also hamstrung by circumstances beyond their control. Here in Deep-In-The-Hearta redistricting is under mandatory Department of Justice review to assure that there are no deleterious effects to minority representation. And the difference between  the 2003 redistricting legacy of Tom DeLay and this year's is as vast as the gap between Eric Holder and Alberto Gonzales.

The Republican-dominated state legislature is also distracted with Rick Perry's emergencies, of course. Oh well, he can always call a special session.

But the red tide of 2012 swept so many GOP freshmen into office in Austin as well as Washington (Canseco, Farenthold) that there just aren't enough Republican voters to protect all of them. So some are bound to get screwed over by their new district maps. This inherently assumes, however,  that Democrats of all stripes -- young voters, disaffected progressives, and especially Latinos -- return to the polls in 2012 in numbers that can overcome a still-vigorous TeaBagger uprising. Sadly, that's no safe assumption.

With so much attention focusing on this rather glaring overlook, can they get it in gear and get after it on this project?

I'm guessing they'll start making up some ground very soon. But they just won't have the kind of success securing their grip on rulership that they have in the past.