Looks like the City of El Paso is backing away from funding an investigation into why the power went out during the winter. Apparently paying somebody a million bucks to tell you "It was really cold," isn't a smart thing.
I know everyone wants "justice" because they lost power for 45 minutes during a cold snap, but life doesn't work that way. You would only add insult to injury by funding a study into the matter with your own hard earned money. It doesn't help that the only firm they found to do the study was a firm already hired by the electric company. I can pretty much tell you how that was going to turn out.
With that said... If the city council does go out and find their own "independent" firm, the results will be just as predictable. The "independent" firm will sit down with council members and city staff and ask them how they would like the final report to read. They will then go and write the report accordingly and submit it to them. You see, there's no such thing as an "independent" firm when someone is paying them to produce an outcome.
The bigger picture here is a fight over rates. I would hope that the city council wouldn't spend a million to save me pennies... or worse give the electric company a reason to raise my rates again. Remember, if the study makes infrastructure improvement recommendations, the electric company is going to go to its rate payers for the capital. The "rate payers" are all of YOU! You might remember city council's wish to go "solar" and the electric company's happiness to comply in exchange for a rate hike. You can wish in one hand and... well you get it.
I caution everyone in El Paso that you can get into a "lose lose" situation very quickly here if you aren't careful.
I will stick with my gut feeling that a few rolling blackouts under extreme conditions aren't all that bad. I also consider that all of Texas experienced the same problems we had. Is it ideal? No. Is it worth higher rates and lots of wasted tax dollars to reestablish the blame squarely where it was before? No.
City Council needs to think before they doing anything further on this subject.
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