such good journalism! I live in houston. when I moved into our house we had big plans to get solar. the permitting was really hard (though i partially blame the contractor for that). We have solar panels and a battery back up. We have it set up so that during the day our house runs on solar and at night it runs our our battery. we definitely send more energy to the grid than we use from the grid.... but centerpoint seems to be metering us so we get credits for the solar, but our home usage is metered based on what our home is using, not what we are getting from the grid. i.e. it seems like we are getting billed for the energy that we created and stored in our battery. I've downloaded the 15 min increment data from centerpointe, downloaded the spreadsheet data for similar time periods from my battery app and my inverter app. My husband works as an engineer in the space industry, and I used to own my own business - so neither of us are slouches in excel and math. the math isn't mathing. so in addition to it being prohibitively expensive to get solar in texas... our old address in brooklyn NY would pay for itself in 5 years, and here with more sun and more power outages it would pay for itself in 20 years according to https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/ we also are not able to get the full benefit of selling back to the grid - all while the grid kind of needs our energy and our back up energy. there are so many energy plans to choose from in texas, they are hard to parse - and they recently got rid of the instrument that was easiest to assess the difference between plans for your energy use. and since all of the plans have to use the centerpoint meters, i feel we are kind of screwed no matter what we choose. Centerpoint seems to think there is nothing wrong with the way we are being metered. in any case, i'm thankful to have the battery back up because it basically meant we were never fully without power during the hurricane or for the days after.
additionally, I follow the doug lewin Energy Capital Substack. He had some interesting intel about what got us to this point in texas where we COULD be a real leader in the green transition if the republican leadership allowed it to be so.
also, i'd love for you to do an article about what is the Railroad Commission (RRC), and maybe the courts too to follow how some of the downballot races affect climate change. Railroad commission has NOTHING to do with railroads in texas since 2010. they are in charge of pipelines and drilling, but no one has ever heard of it and they think it's about railroads.
Beneath all of this is our fundamentally corrupt political system that uses the term "lobbyist" as a euphemism for legalized bribery. If money is indeed speech, it's quite clear who speaks with the loudest voice in our society.
My home is in West Michigan but I spent a year (mid-2021 to mid-2022) in Houston. The differences, besides the obvious difference in weather, were profound. In Michigan, signing up for electricity service at my new home (2018) was a 5 minute process on the utility's website. In Houston, it took a minimum of an hour just to determine how the complex "free enterprise" system worked, after which I had to research multiple electric providers to determine which one might have provided the best service for the lowest cost and risk (basically, none). Since my service period was for less than 12 months, I had the choice of paying several hundred dollars up front for a guaranteed rate, or risking an outrageously high electric bill should Houston suffer another weather crisis like the one a year earlier. Thankfully, I made it through the year without such an extreme event.
Laissez-faire and let the buyer beware, eh? Give me our good, old fashioned "socialist" utility any day where a group of citizens gets together to determine whether a rate increase is fair, whether spending on CEO pay or "lobbying" is warranted, and whether the utility is acting on the best interests of its investors AND the community it serves. When a company is only guided by profit motives, we can be certain that such quaint notions as environmental concerns or fairness to customers will always, always take a back seat to higher profit.
Excellent article Arielle! I want to add that it isn't just lobbying Centerpoint does, they are also actively investing into climate delay themselves by working to grow their gas customer base and building new pipelines to support that growth. Money that could be spent on climate proofing their grid.
"Shortly after unveiling a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions from CenterPoint’s direct operations during its 2021 Analyst Day, the utility’s executives at the same meeting told analysts they expect to add 800 miles of new gas pipeline annually."
So now I am actually curious which utilities are working to wind down their gas customer base and which ones are working to increase. And to maybe try and get these utilities to understand they are actually making a bad investment bet by investing in growing their gas business. Might do it myself if I have some free time.
I have a son who lives north of Houston with his family. They just finished a huge remodel on their house before Beryl came through and learned the hard way that contractors there are very untrustworthy.
Case in point; As part of their remodel plans, they had a generator system installed because of the constant storms and frequent power outages. The contractor never tested the new system. So, when the power went out, my son had to scramble to get someone to make the connections so they could turn the lights on and so on. It took nearly two days to get all parties on board, according to my son.
The real story here is that, if you live in Texas, and can afford it, you need to have a backup power system because the private utility companies will fail you.
When I lived in central Texas (2015-2020) I had a solar system installed for my main power source. I have repeated that on my new house on the east coast. I do not want to be dependent on private utilities to provide my electricity. I am okay with them as a backup but choose to take control of as much of my utilities as I can. I don't trust the U.S. infrastructure for anything anymore.
This is only going to continue to get worse as the U.S. economy continues to decline. If you want to keep the lights on, you need to take care of yourself now. My biggest concern now is making sure I have a dependable potable water source. If I have electricity and water, I can manage the rest.
I think this is THE BEST journalism substack on energy and climate. Thank you both for your work.
Thank you!!
Thank you Julie!!
such good journalism! I live in houston. when I moved into our house we had big plans to get solar. the permitting was really hard (though i partially blame the contractor for that). We have solar panels and a battery back up. We have it set up so that during the day our house runs on solar and at night it runs our our battery. we definitely send more energy to the grid than we use from the grid.... but centerpoint seems to be metering us so we get credits for the solar, but our home usage is metered based on what our home is using, not what we are getting from the grid. i.e. it seems like we are getting billed for the energy that we created and stored in our battery. I've downloaded the 15 min increment data from centerpointe, downloaded the spreadsheet data for similar time periods from my battery app and my inverter app. My husband works as an engineer in the space industry, and I used to own my own business - so neither of us are slouches in excel and math. the math isn't mathing. so in addition to it being prohibitively expensive to get solar in texas... our old address in brooklyn NY would pay for itself in 5 years, and here with more sun and more power outages it would pay for itself in 20 years according to https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/ we also are not able to get the full benefit of selling back to the grid - all while the grid kind of needs our energy and our back up energy. there are so many energy plans to choose from in texas, they are hard to parse - and they recently got rid of the instrument that was easiest to assess the difference between plans for your energy use. and since all of the plans have to use the centerpoint meters, i feel we are kind of screwed no matter what we choose. Centerpoint seems to think there is nothing wrong with the way we are being metered. in any case, i'm thankful to have the battery back up because it basically meant we were never fully without power during the hurricane or for the days after.
additionally, I follow the doug lewin Energy Capital Substack. He had some interesting intel about what got us to this point in texas where we COULD be a real leader in the green transition if the republican leadership allowed it to be so.
also, i'd love for you to do an article about what is the Railroad Commission (RRC), and maybe the courts too to follow how some of the downballot races affect climate change. Railroad commission has NOTHING to do with railroads in texas since 2010. they are in charge of pipelines and drilling, but no one has ever heard of it and they think it's about railroads.
Beneath all of this is our fundamentally corrupt political system that uses the term "lobbyist" as a euphemism for legalized bribery. If money is indeed speech, it's quite clear who speaks with the loudest voice in our society.
My home is in West Michigan but I spent a year (mid-2021 to mid-2022) in Houston. The differences, besides the obvious difference in weather, were profound. In Michigan, signing up for electricity service at my new home (2018) was a 5 minute process on the utility's website. In Houston, it took a minimum of an hour just to determine how the complex "free enterprise" system worked, after which I had to research multiple electric providers to determine which one might have provided the best service for the lowest cost and risk (basically, none). Since my service period was for less than 12 months, I had the choice of paying several hundred dollars up front for a guaranteed rate, or risking an outrageously high electric bill should Houston suffer another weather crisis like the one a year earlier. Thankfully, I made it through the year without such an extreme event.
Laissez-faire and let the buyer beware, eh? Give me our good, old fashioned "socialist" utility any day where a group of citizens gets together to determine whether a rate increase is fair, whether spending on CEO pay or "lobbying" is warranted, and whether the utility is acting on the best interests of its investors AND the community it serves. When a company is only guided by profit motives, we can be certain that such quaint notions as environmental concerns or fairness to customers will always, always take a back seat to higher profit.
Excellent article Arielle! I want to add that it isn't just lobbying Centerpoint does, they are also actively investing into climate delay themselves by working to grow their gas customer base and building new pipelines to support that growth. Money that could be spent on climate proofing their grid.
"Shortly after unveiling a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions from CenterPoint’s direct operations during its 2021 Analyst Day, the utility’s executives at the same meeting told analysts they expect to add 800 miles of new gas pipeline annually."
https://energyandpolicy.org/centerpoint-energy-net-zero-pledge/
So now I am actually curious which utilities are working to wind down their gas customer base and which ones are working to increase. And to maybe try and get these utilities to understand they are actually making a bad investment bet by investing in growing their gas business. Might do it myself if I have some free time.
Thank you again!
I have a son who lives north of Houston with his family. They just finished a huge remodel on their house before Beryl came through and learned the hard way that contractors there are very untrustworthy.
Case in point; As part of their remodel plans, they had a generator system installed because of the constant storms and frequent power outages. The contractor never tested the new system. So, when the power went out, my son had to scramble to get someone to make the connections so they could turn the lights on and so on. It took nearly two days to get all parties on board, according to my son.
The real story here is that, if you live in Texas, and can afford it, you need to have a backup power system because the private utility companies will fail you.
When I lived in central Texas (2015-2020) I had a solar system installed for my main power source. I have repeated that on my new house on the east coast. I do not want to be dependent on private utilities to provide my electricity. I am okay with them as a backup but choose to take control of as much of my utilities as I can. I don't trust the U.S. infrastructure for anything anymore.
This is only going to continue to get worse as the U.S. economy continues to decline. If you want to keep the lights on, you need to take care of yourself now. My biggest concern now is making sure I have a dependable potable water source. If I have electricity and water, I can manage the rest.