Generators failed to winterize, might have withheld power, experts say

Failure to plan = plan to fail. It really comes down to this - how important is it to have reliable power? Electricity is what allows us to exist in our modern world - it is in no way a nicety or luxury. Without it, we have no water, no sanitation. No gasoline. Without gasoline, we have no food supply. In the winter we die from hypothermia. In the summer we die from hyperthermia. Our essential services - hospitals, first responders, law enforcement, collapse without it. The power grid is simply too important to be left to "the invisible hand of the free market" - because that invisible hand doesn't care whether we live or die.

I'm not advocating that the government take over our energy sector - that's a recipe for disaster - but what I am advocating is firm regulation. Just as your car has to meet certain basic functional requirements to be allowed on the road, power plants and the power grid need to have minimum requirements imposed on them by regulators with the teeth to enforce them. And among those minimum requirements should be the ability to withstand a [censored] winter storm.

We need to return our power grid to a regulated oligopoly. The rate payers are worse off since deregulation. It worked here previous to GW Bush deregulating it, and in other states it currently works well. De regulation is a fail and this last week is proof positive of that!

Deregulation and a bureaucracy running it is never going to work. ERCOT is a bureaucracy that wants more money or power, They say they can't force producers to produce more but can force distributrs to cut deliveries???