Texas

[Spider!]

We never lost power in our little neighborhood that's in the middle of hospitals, treatment plants, and a new substation from hurricane Harvey.

No one had water yesterday, with just trickling the day before. It has started trickling in again this afternoon. People were going to the neighborhood pool to get water to flush toilets. I had collected a few large containers of rain and snow/ice to use.

We have a generator for hurricanes. It didn't sound very promising for having enough gas to run it with this storm.

[DocsMachine]

I was in Texas years ago, and while I was there, they had a nasty ice storm in the middle of January. Cars off the road everywhere, wreckers couldn't get them because most of them were stuck, too, police couldn't patrol because they had exactly one 4WD vehicle (reserved for trips off into the boonies) and basically the entire city was shut down.

I've told people for years, that if I'd had so much as a pair of ice skates, I could have robbed about a dozen convenience stores and gotten away with it.

Doc.

[Sharkytrav]

In North Austin. Things were cool for like 8 hours with the 4-8" of nice snow. Then reality set in and the utilities showed us how we should really be feeling. Really shitty for another couple days. Things seem better today. Been boiling snow from off the picnic table for drinking and capturing roof melt for flushing toilets. City water may not be right for another couple days but the 99 4Runner has proven itself on the roads so we are confident that we can make food and new water appear one way or another.

Sure wish I was a legislator with no pressing responsibilities to my constituents at the moment so I could fly down to Cancun to get away from this MiNoR iNcOnVeNiEnCe.

[chrislognshot]

i will give you tip on how this came about. my dad does work for fema. he other people working for fema sent letters and went down to talk to them about this issue. my pops does lose prevention, he help them set up letters and other people that went do there to talk to state. they gave plan what to do so this would not happen. and guess what they did not want to weather there stuff. so if this where to happen all pipes and other stuff be weather prof for it. all republican's and state official did not want to follow that plan since came from other part. also said this would never happen. the state as whole did not want to listen to experts or other people. state does not like be told what to do or run it. they want gas only and do not care for green energy or any other way to get power with gas. also not setup to have other ways too. since only way power grid to run is by gas only. set up that 80% run by gas. with people buy gas can not generate money. the have law where power grid can only run of gas. can not have any other type energy company's to power the power grids since only % can be use to power up power grid. and number so low. they can not make money if did.

[flyweightnate]

It's very hard to balance fiscal conservatism and risk conservatism. The latter can cost quite a bit, and only matters once every generation. Unfortunately, now is that once.

[Sharkytrav]

I thought this was a thorough article. Lots of blame to go around- ERCOT, TXPUC, Governer's Office, Legislators. What other areas do and differences in the systems. Timeline at the end of the unfortunate progression.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-f...es-11613777856

Hard to say if the general public was made aware of the risks, how Texans would have voted to proceed.

With increasingly more frequent "Once in a generation" events happening, it feels like time for everyone to reevaluate their situations and preparation for contingencies. I downloaded the Bethesda Fallout mobile game to help plan my future bunker. Are loot boxes going to be a federally run program or state run? Tesla is in town now so maybe power suits will be third party?

[Spider!]

I think they consider "once a generation" every 20-30 years, so everyone gets to see these things a few times in their lives. Wheeeee.

[Sharkytrav]

I was born in November of 83 and my kid was born in October last year, so my parents kept sending me updates on how the apocalyptic winter stats matched up. They had a little moment when the number of consecutive hours below freezing this year surpassed the old record from 83.

Not looking forward to this record being broken and I at least hope we have decided to prepare better for it when the time comes.

[Spider!]

We've certainly had similar events in various locals before, but I do not recall them being as wide spread. Kind of like the drought we had that covered the state a while back.

When Texans can't drive away from a disaster, they get worried.

[chrislognshot]

We've certainly had similar events in various locals before, but I do not recall them being as wide spread. Kind of like the drought we had that covered the state a while back.

When Texans can't drive away from a disaster, they get worried.

the state of texas did no want to weather prof all stuff when told to by other groups within gov they said take hike we are okay. when people that are in charge of gird said we do not want to spend that high amount to weather prof the stuff texas congress did not push it, say it all good.

[flyweightnate]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/ask-an-engineer/

Here's another look at it.

Part of this issue is that Texas has a grid larger than some entire nations; other grids don't have enough capacity to help. With the rapidly dropping temps and the local building codes, outdated heat pumps, etc, the state consumed as much power in those four days as was typical for a month. To transfer the necessary terrawatt-hour from elsewhere in the country would require an $84B grid overhaul.

I think it's human nature to point fingers and blame (typically, political opponents), but the more I read, the more I see how massive this problem was.

[Jordan]

[Trueblue]

We have plenty of those in Michigan, too. Easily identified by stoopid tall lift kits, very wide offset wheel kits, modified loud exhaust systems, and plenty of stickers. Not a single one of them is an ORV sticker though. Certified Mall Crawlers.

[ford]

Insanely annoying week. I'd be less annoyed if I thought anything will be done to prevent these blackout events from happening in the future.

[martix_agent]

I imagine the only solution is to vote in people who are willing to make changes, to leave the state. Which I find VERY frustrating.

[flyweightnate]

It looks like the best way to fix it is to reduce peak demand, somehow. Despite the narrative, if the grid were at 100% operation, generation still would have fallen short, requiring blackouts - not as many, but still some.

The best spot to start? Probably rebates for heat pump units that can handle 0F ambient. The demand curve went absolutely crazy on Monday, because anyone with electric heat was half as efficient at those temps.

Gotta be honest, I never really understood all the ONCOR rebates until now. Suddenly, paying customers to change their demands makes more sense.

[ford]

It looks like the best way to fix it is to reduce peak demand, somehow. Despite the narrative, if the grid were at 100% operation, generation still would have fallen short, requiring blackouts - not as many, but still some.

I haven't dug into data enough to suggest this is right or not without also going into some politically motivated tangent. I will just say this:

Every year in recent memory the Texas grid struggles in summer when it's hot in Texas, often reduced to rolling blackouts. Keep in mind, while 'cold' is a new phenom in Texas, 'hot' is not. Every year we, tax paying, utility paying customers grit our teeth and deal with it. As Texas tries to sell itself as a tech hub wanting more and more companies to move operations here they cannot allow this trend to continue.

Judgement needs a fighting chance over process and again, I don't see any changes in process coming.

[flyweightnate]

That's a good observation - I haven't experienced blackouts yet, in Dallas.

That said... I'm an engineer. I look at data, to improve process, via judgement. So I'm focusing on the data; data says with perfect distribution, capacity would still be a problem. So via TOC, I'd start there.