Blackouts Cascade Beyond Texas in Deepening Power Crisis

[Zan15]

Why was this such a bad load on the electrical infrastructure there? Don't a lot of these people in these states use a ton of air conditioning? in the summer? Do they have a lot of blackouts in states like Texas?

the load was not even that bad, but when you have 40% of the grid coming to a grinding halt.....your load max is much lower.

Put that on top of normal maintenece cycle which puts a lot of generation off line in the winter when they "thought" they could afford for them to be off line.

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Not read too much here but the front page but holy shit a lot of replies are dumb.

Yea we get it. Its colder where you are. You design for it because of that. Its unusual there and so they haven't designed for it. This is normal.

tidal waves and meltdowns are unusual too, but they plan for them and we've seen what happens when they cheap out on the "planning"

[Lynarii]

The problem is that this is more or less going exactly how they planned it from the start.

When things are going good, they reap the benefits of having no regulations or enforcement. And when the downsides crop up, they expect everyone outside of Texas to pay for it.

[Mayhem]

Not read too much here but the front page but holy shit a lot of replies are dumb.

Yea we get it. Its colder where you are. You design for it because of that. Its unusual there and so they haven't designed for it. This is normal.

When this happens every other year, I'd say it is normal.

[beanman12345]

Not read too much here but the front page but holy shit a lot of replies are dumb.

Yea we get it. Its colder where you are. You design for it because of that. Its unusual there and so they haven't designed for it. This is normal.

Yeah, we design for it, cause it's regulated. It's unusual cause texas got rid of all regulation back in the 90's. yes it is normal republicans are all idiots.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

In other news, Ted Cruz is taking a vacation in Cancun while people in his state are freezing

[pathora44]

In other news, Ted Cruz is taking a vacation in Cancun while people in his state are freezing

Cruz: "Ooooo sorry Texas, I know millions of you are without power and are freezing but I already paid for my plane ticket so I have to go. Just think while I am sitting on a beach in Cancun soaking in the sun I will be so wracked with worry I will only half enjoy my freshly made Mai Tai. Thoughts and Prayers Texas, Thoughts and Prayers."

[kamuimac]

Blackouts Cascade Beyond Texas in Deepening Power Crisis



Ouch. My daughter in Houston said that it will get even colder tomorow.

well .... this happens when you spend trillions of $ on launching wars and army instead on your country's infrastructure

i especially like the memes about how people are able to use renovable energy even in anctarctica but find it impossible in texas

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Cruz: "Ooooo sorry Texas, I know millions of you are without power and are freezing but I already paid for my plane ticket so I have to go. Just think while I am sitting on a beach in Cancun soaking in the sun I will be so wracked with worry I will only half enjoy my freshly made Mai Tai. Thoughts and Prayers Texas, Thoughts and Prayers."

i think that, since he's not there, the people of Texas should use his home as an impromptu homeless shelter.

[jonnysensible]

1 in 50 americans dont have access to clean water. what a fucking sad state.

[pathora44]

i think that, since he's not there, the people of Texas should use his home as an impromptu homeless shelter.

Talking about homeless shelter Joel Osteen stopped being a piece of shit and opened up his giant mega church to help out his fucking community. Maybe the world shame beating him on the head for leaving the people of Houston to drown so they didn't get the carpet of his megachurch wet during hurricane Harvey. Guy is a multi millionaire who pays zilch in taxes because he is a "church" but he has to be brow beaten with public shame to open up said church to help his community.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...s-15954561.php

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Talking about homeless shelter Joel Osteen stopped being a piece of shit and opened up his giant mega church to help out his fucking community. Maybe the world shame beating him on the head for leaving the people of Houston to drown so they didn't get the carpet of his megachurch wet during hurricane Harvey. Guy is a multi millionaire who pays zilch in taxes because he is a "church" but he has to be brow beaten with public shame to open up said church to help his community.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...s-15954561.php

Yeah, I remember hearing about him a few years back during the hurricane.

[Biglog]

Always blows my mind that masses of people fall for Joel Osteen's bit. There is a definite disconnect and hypocrisy with many Christians today that have an incredibly distorted view of what the religion is, even at a fundamental level. It's been a by-product of Christianity evolving from traditional "steeple" churches to the large corporate progressive churches like Joel Osteen's. They appeal to younger adults because it seems much more progressive and remove a lot of the more ceremonial activity from church service, and sermons are more like website advice than an old school sermon.

But I have a lot of doubts about how much actual Christian study is really done at those churches. Beyond the Christian Rock music, fancy big screens, and plastic looking "preacher" constantly seeking donations...you compare what is taught in the bible to the behavior of their members and you realize it's far more of a social club than church.

It's really mind blowing that clergyperson can look at a religion that's basic fundamental tenets that were expressed by the person who's name is in the religion, who taught leading a simple life, helping the poor and downtrodden, washing the feet of the people society disdained, etc. can rationalize that with living in a mansion and locking out people in need. Anyone who's read the bible (new testament, not cherry-picking discipline lines on how to treat your wife from 2000 BC) even at a Sunday school youth level has to know that the actions of a church like Joel Osteen's aren't any more Christian in reality than a Walmart.

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On Texas, this event btw isn't really something that wasn't entirely unforeseen even 20 years ago. Texas is the one that decided they wanted their own power grid that they could "do better", and save money by not having to winterize the grid since they were on their own. When that was done, many people warned about the risk of something like this happening either by an unusual freeze (cough), or a problem in the Texas grid that left them with less resiliency than other states sharing grids.

So this is precisely why pipes are bursting, wind turbines aren't turning, etc. in Texas where that isn't happening in colder parts in the rest off the country. We have 2 feet of snow on the ground, colder here than Texas, and pipes are fine, and wind turbines are turning just a-ok.

Kind of ironic that Texas did this to themselves. They saved themselves a little money not winterizing their grid for the past 20 years, but that was a conscious cost-decision with some risk. And despite many in the Texas energy industry that thought it was a great idea, it turns out that isolationism and saving a few pennies by not winterizing the energy grid for Texas wasn't such a good idea after all.

[Shadowferal]

Calls for Texas governor to resign as he blames power outages on wind and solar

Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy, such natural gas and oil and nuclear, as well as solar and wind," Gov. Greg Abbott said in an appearance on "Hannity" Tuesday night. "Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid. And that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis."

Abbott was far from the first Republican to deploy such blatantly false talking points in response to the ongoing crisis in Texas, which has left at least 10 people dead. But the governor's decision to appear on Fox News and attack a policy that has not even been implemented as Texans resorted to burning their belongings to keep their children warm was viewed as yet another example of his failed leadership.

[wunksta]

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has made significant progress overnight restoring customer power, although some outages still remain throughout the state.

Energy emergency conditions remain as the grid operator and transmission owners work to restore the remaining customers that are without power.

"We’re to the point in the load restoration where we are allowing transmission owners to bring back any load they can related to this load shed event," said ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin. "We will keep working around the clock until every single customer has their power back on."

Customers that remain without power likely fall into one of these three categories:

• Areas out due to ice storm damage on the distribution system
• Areas that were taken out of service due to the energy emergency load shed that need to be restored manually (i.e., sending a crew to the location to reenergize the line)
• Large industrial facilities that voluntarily went offline to help during this energy emergency
Transmission owners are assessing how many customers are affected at this time.

While there is no additional load shed occurring at this time, a little over 40,000 MW of generation remains on forced outage due to this winter weather event. Of that, 23,500 MW is thermal generation and the rest is wind and solar. It is possible that some level of rotating outages may be needed over the next couple of days to keep the grid stable.

http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225742

[bladeXcrasher]

Talking about homeless shelter Joel Osteen stopped being a piece of shit and opened up his giant mega church to help out his fucking community. Maybe the world shame beating him on the head for leaving the people of Houston to drown so they didn't get the carpet of his megachurch wet during hurricane Harvey. Guy is a multi millionaire who pays zilch in taxes because he is a "church" but he has to be brow beaten with public shame to open up said church to help his community.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...s-15954561.php

Meanwhile, mattress mac was opening all his furniture stores as warming shelters. The guy is a literal saint for the city of Houston.

[Belize]

Meanwhile, mattress mac was opening all his furniture stores as warming shelters. The guy is a literal saint for the city of Houston.

Charity from businesses is not a viable long term solution for a dysfunctional government.

IMO, everyone on the ERCOT board, and any Texan politician that doesn't support joining the main U.S. grid and weathering the infrastructure needs to be tossed in the furnaces of the nearest power plant. At least they'd be useful for the first time in their lives.

[wunksta]

There are still tons of people with broken pipes that are without water even if power is being restored.

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Charity from businesses is not a viable long term solution for a dysfunctional government.

IMO, everyone on the ERCOT board, and any Texan politician that doesn't support joining the main U.S. grid and weathering the infrastructure needs to be tossed in the furnaces of the nearest power plant. At least they'd be useful for the first time in their lives.

Abbott may have some sacrificial lamb but I doubt there will be any serious consequences. Maybe Beto and others will run again in 2022 and bring this up again. Although voters seem to have a short memory.

However, if there was some kind of price fixing/manipulation happening, that could turn into a larger scandal.

[bladeXcrasher]

Charity from businesses is not a viable long term solution for a dysfunctional government.

IMO, everyone on the ERCOT board, and any Texan politician that doesn't support joining the main U.S. grid and weathering the infrastructure needs to be tossed in the furnaces of the nearest power plant. At least they'd be useful for the first time in their lives.

Unfortunately, the Republicans ensured there would not be any support of such actions for a while in Texas.

[szechuan]

If this happened in Alaska, Chicago, Canada where they would be unprepared for snow, but Texas? Lol dude..

This is yet another huge Catastrophe that Republican/GOP/Trumpers are Responsible for.

There are plenty of States that have invested and prepared for Extreme Climates.

What is currently happening in Texas is completely the fault of Republican Texans and the Greedy Utility Companies.

California doesn't have time for that, or Universal Health Care, Cali also decided to gut any possibility of organized labor or labor rights.

Because PG&E would rather pay fines then spend money on Maintenance and Fix Infrastructure. If you want to hold PG&E accountable then you'll need Big Government and Heavy Regulations, While Republicans are constantly blaming Communism and Socialism.

[Milchshake]

There are plenty of States that have invested and prepared for Extreme Climates.

What is currently happening in Texas is completely the fault of Republican Texans and the Greedy Utility Companies.



Because PG&E would rather pay fines then Maintenance and Fix Infrastructure. If you want to hold PG&E accountable then you'll need Big Government and Heavy Regulations, While Republicans are constantly blaming Communism and Socialism.

Not surprising, Californian conservatives have completely memory-holed Gov. Pete Wilson deregulating the state's energy sector back in 1996, the Electric Utility Industry Restructuring Act.