Texans told to conserve power this weekend.

[CastletonSnob]

It's a little after 4, and so far, there hasn't even been a hint that my house is about to lose power.

I think my family is going to be OK, at least for today.

[Breccia]

I think I'm going to be OK, at least for today.

Good, because apparently it's 100+ out there.

I do wonder how many of these incidents it will take for the people, the businesses, and/or the government of Texas to do something about it. I will not cheer such action -- you don't get praise for fixing the problem you yourself caused.

[Kaleredar]

Good, because apparently it's 100+ out there.

I do wonder how many of these incidents it will take for the people, the businesses, and/or the government of Texas to do something about it. I will not cheer such action -- you don't get praise for fixing the problem you yourself caused.

My guess is that they won't do anything about it, and will instead blame Biden for illegal immigrants or whatever.

[Breccia]

My guess is that they won't do anything about it, and will instead blame Biden for illegal immigrants or whatever.

Well after one or two incidents, yes.

I'm guessing it would take more than yet another record-breaking summer with multiple heat fatalities during blackouts to change their mind, too. Texas' reaction to killing themselves with heat would likely be the same as Teaxas' reaction to killing themselves with COVID. It would take a serious sustained blackout, summer or winter, with not only hundreds of lives lost but at this point also damage to multiple large businesses. It must be harder to run server farms in a state that has power almost 90% of the time, for example.

I would prefer Texas to have already learned its lesson with the beating it's taken so far. But we all know that didn't happen.

[Rasulis]

Good, because apparently it's 100+ out there.

I do wonder how many of these incidents it will take for the people, the businesses, and/or the government of Texas to do something about it. I will not cheer such action -- you don't get praise for fixing the problem you yourself caused.

My daughter has been living in TX for 10 - 12 years now. Last time she came to see us, she commented that "summers in Texas are getting longer and hotter." She was here in August, and she had to borrow my wife's coat.

[Breccia]

"summers in Texas are getting longer and hotter."

Yes, it's like climate is changing, or something.

[Breccia]

Looks like the worst is over. I'm not seeing a lot of blackouts and I'm not seeing any significant casualties.

This article from Friday however pointed out a few things. One, apparently six power plants just "fell off". Two:

Record temperatures have pushed up demand for air conditioning, contributing to soaring wholesale prices this week. The call for residents to conserve came after prices soared to more than $4,000 per megawatt hour (MWH) in Houston briefly on Friday afternoon, from less than $6 MWH earlier.

Now of course that's one location and "briefly". But you know things are going poorly, when prices spike several dozen thousand percent in one day.

[Zan15]

My guess is that they won't do anything about it, and will instead blame Biden for illegal immigrants or whatever.

just like baby formula they will claim Biden is sending power to illegals instead of US citizens!!!

Giving huge corporations and state govt failures a huge pass... again.

- - - Updated - - -

Looks like the worst is over. I'm not seeing a lot of blackouts and I'm not seeing any significant casualties.

This article from Friday however pointed out a few things. One, apparently six power plants just "fell off". Two:



Now of course that's one location and "briefly". But you know things are going poorly, when prices spike several dozen thousand percent in one day.

good thing they didn't actually fix that price gouging problem they had the last time.

[Breccia]

just like baby formula they will claim Biden is sending power to illegals instead of US citizens!!!

Yeah my surviving AL relatives have been posting exactly that.

"Why is Biden taking all our white children's baby formula?"
"Oh? Show me the E.O. or law he signed to do that."
"BENGHAZI!"

No, really, they're still posting Benghazi stories from 2018.

[Zan15]

Yeah my surviving AL relatives have been posting exactly that.

"Why is Biden taking all our white children's baby formula?"
"Oh? Show me the E.O. or law he signed to do that."
"BENGHAZI!"

No, really, they're still posting Benghazi stories from 2018.

at least they moved on from her emails.....

[Bakis]

Privatized grid with a Soviet upkeep and when the shit hit the fan they will somehow make a case for federal emergency funding

[Rasulis]

We are still in May. Peak heat in TX will be around June/July/August/September. I think we will see one very hot Texas summer. Actually, we will see very hot California, Arizona and Nevada summers also. The US will have one scorching hot summer. Unless you live within 2 - 3 miles of the Pacific Ocean in Northern California and Pacific Northwest where the water temperature stays at 40 to 50 degrees.

- - - Updated - - -

Texans did not heed ERCOT call to conserve power.

ERCOT said demand peaked at 70,804 megawatts (MW) on Tuesday and will rise to 71,505 MW on Wednesday.

Tuesday's high broke the grid's 70,703 MW record for the month of May. Below the all-time high of 74,820 MW set in August 2019. However, that's peak summer energy usage. ERCOT forecast continued economic growth would boost peak demand to 77,317 MW this summer. ERCOT expect to have around 91,392 MW of power resources available this summer.

- - - Updated - - -

ERCOT biggest challenge this summer may be the thermal limit of their transmission line. Every transmission line has a thermal limit at which point the line begins to sag as it overheats and eventually burn down if the temperature gets too hot. The limit depends on numerous factors such as loads, temperature, wind speed, and solar radiation. A combination of record-breaking heat and transmission load may push Texas transmission lines pass their thermal limit.

[Breccia]

A combination of record-breaking heat and transmission load may push Texas transmission lines pass their thermal limit.

It sounds like you're describing the August 2003 Northeast blackout, a disaster big enough to have an energy.gov investigation. While it's commonly known the first lines were broken by tree branches, it's less commonly known those lines wouldn't have broken if they hadn't been softened by exactly what you described. Then, when extra load was put on remaining lines, they also softened and broke. 50 million people were cut off, and thousands upon thousands of people were stranded in NYC subways.

Two years after that, federal policies were enacted to keep this from happening again.

But...um....because Texas, the US energy grid is basically split into three parts: East, West, and Texas. I'm legit not sure if the EPAct of 2005 actually affects Texas, which seems to be a self-contained state situation. The previous blackout was a wake-up call but not for the reason you describe:

The state’s electricity reserves, which are tapped to prevent emergencies, were already depleted. The problem wasn’t just surging demand. Power plants all across the grid were shutting off, incapacitated by frozen equipment and a dearth of natural gas, the primary source of fuel.

I'm not going to stand behind Texas Monthly but this article seems pretty well-written a year later, and does factually describe how the state has done little to nothing to fix those direct issues (such as failing to winterize power plants). Therefore, there's no reason to believe they've solved the problem you've described, either. If Texas is lucky, Texas already bought high-thermal-threshhold lines because Texas knows the temperature there is between "snake's ass in a wheel rut" and "Hell". But I don't think they did. I think ERCOT is working on a minimum safety standard and, let's face it, Texas' rules suck donkey balls, as we've seen for years.

A decade earlier, in February 2011, temperatures in Texas plunged into the single digits, and ERCOT instituted rolling blackouts that affected 3.4 million homes and businesses (but for only a matter of hours, rather than days). David Dewhurst, a Republican who was then the lieutenant governor, blamed a lack of “winterization and preparation.” Weeks later, the Legislature held a hearing on the blackouts, and Troy Fraser, a Republican state senator representing the Twenty-fourth District, demanded, “How are we going to make sure that doesn’t happen again?”

Spoiler alert: they didn't.

And yes, we've been talking about prices.

As a result, Texans spent an exorbitant amount on electricity during a week in which most of them couldn’t get much electricity. For the entirety of 2020, Texans paid $9.8 billion to keep the juice flowing. On February 16 alone, they spent roughly $10.3 billion. Costs for the month of February totaled more than $50 billion.

The bill for this pricing disaster is coming due. The Legislature approved the issuance of what will likely end up being about $5 to $6 billion in bonds to pay back some of these costs. That form of borrowing creates an obligation of about $200 for every adult and child in Texas.

As we have proof Texas didn't move on a problem when they had ten years and federal encouragement (not sure if mandate) to fix it, there's no reason to believe they'll fix the problem you're talking about before it's happened.

I'll spare everyone the details of temperature and MW since even after twelve minutes and an unsweetened Pure Leaf I wasn't able to find an exact answer anyhow. But I will say, while I hope at least some Texas utilities took much-needed care of some lines, I believed they winterized, not summerized, the lines. What you're talking about will most likely happen, like you said, with high temperatures for several days (to "prime the pump" of lines overheating), followed by an ugly, ugly spike.

It's May 18. The temperature average in Dallas is 84 or so, and due to go up to...well, the temperature of this thread, honestly, and stay there till September.

[cubby]

We are still in May. Peak heat in TX will be around June/July/August/September. I think we will see one very hot Texas summer. Actually, we will see very hot California, Arizona and Nevada summers also. The US will have one scorching hot summer. Unless you live within 2 - 3 miles of the Pacific Ocean in Northern California and Pacific Northwest where the water temperature stays at 40 to 50 degrees.

- - - Updated - - -

Texans did not heed ERCOT call to conserve power.

ERCOT said demand peaked at 70,804 megawatts (MW) on Tuesday and will rise to 71,505 MW on Wednesday.

Tuesday's high broke the grid's 70,703 MW record for the month of May. Below the all-time high of 74,820 MW set in August 2019. However, that's peak summer energy usage. ERCOT forecast continued economic growth would boost peak demand to 77,317 MW this summer. ERCOT expect to have around 91,392 MW of power resources available this summer.

- - - Updated - - -

ERCOT biggest challenge this summer may be the thermal limit of their transmission line. Every transmission line has a thermal limit at which point the line begins to sag as it overheats and eventually burn down if the temperature gets too hot. The limit depends on numerous factors such as loads, temperature, wind speed, and solar radiation. A combination of record-breaking heat and transmission load may push Texas transmission lines pass their thermal limit.

Record breaking heat in May...with only, what? Six more months of summer in that heat-infused state? People are going to die, and the racist fucks in TX are going to blame the brown people. Business as usual as the climate collapses and the authoritarian party takes more control.

[Rasulis]

I'll spare everyone the details of temperature and MW since even after twelve minutes and an unsweetened Pure Leaf I wasn't able to find an exact answer anyhow. But I will say, while I hope at least some Texas utilities took much-needed care of some lines, I believed they winterized, not summerized, the lines. What you're talking about will most likely happen, like you said, with high temperatures for several days (to "prime the pump" of lines overheating), followed by an ugly, ugly spike.

It is a dynamic calculation between load (MWH), temperature and heat from the solar radiation. Wind is also a major factor. As the lines sag from expansion, they develop slack allowing for more play during heavy wind event.

[Poopymonster]

We are still in May. Peak heat in TX will be around June/July/August/September. I think we will see one very hot Texas summer. Actually, we will see very hot California, Arizona and Nevada summers also. The US will have one scorching hot summer. Unless you live within 2 - 3 miles of the Pacific Ocean in Northern California and Pacific Northwest where the water temperature stays at 40 to 50 degrees.

- - - Updated - - -

Texans did not heed ERCOT call to conserve power.

ERCOT said demand peaked at 70,804 megawatts (MW) on Tuesday and will rise to 71,505 MW on Wednesday.

Tuesday's high broke the grid's 70,703 MW record for the month of May. Below the all-time high of 74,820 MW set in August 2019. However, that's peak summer energy usage. ERCOT forecast continued economic growth would boost peak demand to 77,317 MW this summer. ERCOT expect to have around 91,392 MW of power resources available this summer.

- - - Updated - - -

ERCOT biggest challenge this summer may be the thermal limit of their transmission line. Every transmission line has a thermal limit at which point the line begins to sag as it overheats and eventually burn down if the temperature gets too hot. The limit depends on numerous factors such as loads, temperature, wind speed, and solar radiation. A combination of record-breaking heat and transmission load may push Texas transmission lines pass their thermal limit.

Crypto miner go brrrFWOOSH.

[Rasulis]

I just had to post this. The high today was supposed to be 76. We may hit 70. Although I doubt it. Anything over 75 is a heat wave.

[Breccia]

Wind is also a major factor.

Yeah, it would have to be. Sudden winds can tear down lines, constant winds will still pull on softening ones.

[Fugus]

I just had to post this. The high today was supposed to be 76. We may hit 70. Although I doubt it. Anything over 75 is a heat wave.

Where are you at? I am hitting 91F today and just got home to my dad's homes air conditioning going out. Told him to come over but he wants to stay home. Hoping to get it fixed before too long. Man's on a walker and the heat kills his strength but stubborn to the end.

89F as we speak.

[Rasulis]

Where are you at? I am hitting 91F today and just got home to my dad's homes air conditioning going out. Told him to come over but he wants to stay home. Hoping to get it fixed before too long. Man's on a walker and the heat kills his strength but stubborn to the end.

89F as we speak.

That's awful.

We live in Inner Sunset, San Francisco. Just north of UCSF, and south of Golden Gate Park. The high today was only 65. Well below the forecasted 76.