• 1 Post
  • 39 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 19th, 2023
  • cloud_herder@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•Poland confirms US has frozen military aid to UkraineEnglish
    10·
    4 months ago

    Pffftft get bent. Providing military gear to Ukraine that was destined to be disposed of for reaching its end of life by sitting on a shelf doesn’t really cost the US much, other than on an accounting ledger. It’s either on the balance sheet as “N number of ATACMS valued at $X were disposed of for $Z (cost of disposal)” or “N number of ATACMS valued at $X were provided to Ukraine at a cost of $W (cost of shipping)”. Which end up being roughly the same.

    Regardless the munitions are gone and off the books. Both outcomes mean US arms producers get to make more missiles — which is money spent within the US on US jobs.

    So, who gives a shit? Let Ukraine defend themselves while Russia expends money and soldiers. Ya Muppet.

  • cloud_herder@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•How do Texas residents afford electricity during high-demand?
    261·
    1 year ago

    I’ve done lots of tech projects within the retail energy industry in Texas - this is the right answer.

    To expand a little bit:

    Retail energy providers (REPs), like NRG, ClearSky, Just Energy, etc. make their money by forecasting the amount of energy that will be needed as far in advance as possible and purchasing that amount from power generators like CenterPoint and marking it up a few cents. The farther out, the cheaper they can get it. I’ve helped build forecasting engines for a few that ingest historical usage data from meters (all meters in Texas are smart meters), weather data, and others to use machine learning to forecast how much individuals will need and aggregate it together to help the energy traders make better informed trade decisions farther out.

    If they mess up or an unforeseen event happens and they don’t have enough energy bought for that time segment (forgot the term for a window of time they use), they have to go to the spot market which is where the prices fluctuate and can be many many multitudes higher than the rate the customers are contracted to pay.

    In a storm scenario or a freeze, it can be thousands of times more expensive because demand is so high and supply is so limited. This is when REPs go bankrupt if they don’t have the cash on hand.

    There are also insurance plans that the REPs pay for that cover very specific conditions for different types of events or outages that can kick in to cover the huge costs they would otherwise incur on their own buying electricity at that spot rate. I’ve known a few that were only able to stay operating because someone a few years prior had bought an insurance policy that covered said weather event.

    Griddy died because of the ice storm in Texas a few years ago and the huge costs people incurred. I actually met with their CIO the year prior as part of a technology assessment of their stack. Nice guy.

    Edit: also you can largely thank Enron and Rick Perry for deregulating Texas’ energy - which directly led to the terrible “performance” of the Texas grid during the winter storm Uri in 2021. Same for Enron in the constant blackouts in California in the early 2000’s.