Blackouts Cascade Beyond Texas in Deepening Power Crisis

[Stormspellz]

I don't understand how homeowners of Texas are mad at the energy companies for not being prepared for winter of this nature....while they sit there in their houses....not prepared for winter of this nature.

You can't be mad at an entity that was just as foolish and cheap as you were.

Now poor people and those who rent might have the right to gripe as they are limited as to how they can prepare.

Maybe i am jaded for having lived in New England in one part or another for all my life from the Canadian frozen boarder to the Summer hell of NYC suburbs.
Never lived without a space heater and a generator, even got one now for the apartment.
If I had to use it I can tie it off on the AC box, its a small one to run a heater or AC unit. Granted that is all its going to run

its because those energy companies bribed lobbied the republican party to deregulate and privatize the system in the name of greed so they wouldn't have pay for silly things like things that would of prevented their current issue

[Rasulis]

Austin and Travis County area first emergency workers say they are being flooded with calls requesting medical services and reporting broken water pipes amid severe winter weather in the region.

Captain Darren Noak, a spokesman for Austin-Travis County EMS, said the emergency crews have received more than 1,200 calls for service as of 9:30 p.m.

The worst is still to come when the weather starts to warm up and the frozen pipes unthaw.

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I don't know if it's much better in CA, I'm not as familiar with all our providers and shit and PGE is absolute utter dogshit of the highest order (linemen are great dudes usually, corporate can stick their face in a meatgrinder). But like...god damn, that's just a priceless comment given the political leanings and views of the current Republican state and their Federal Reps.

CA is mixed bag in my opinion. Obviously we have plenty of horrible stories about PG&E. On the other hand, I have had no complaint about SDG&E other than the highest price per kWH in the country. However blackouts are almost unknown. We moved to the back county in 2012 and have had only one blackout since then.

The company also actively work on undergrounding their lines. In the back county they have been rapidly replacing their wooden power poles with metal poles. We did our solar installation ourselves and they made the process easy. When we add powerwall last year, the Tesla installer told me that in his experience SDG&E is one of the easiest agency to work with.

The operator of the Texas electric grid no longer expects all service to be restored in the state by Tuesday night, saying it could take days for enough power plants to be up and running.

Ouch.

Crude output has now fallen by about 3.5 million barrels a day or more nationwide, they said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Before the cold snap, the U.S. was pumping about 11 million barrels a day, according to last government data. Production in the Texas’s Permian Basin alone -- America’s biggest oil field -- has plummeted by as much as 65%.

Operations in Texas have stumbled because temperatures are low enough to freeze oil and gas liquids at the well head and in pipelines that are laid on the ground, as opposed to under the surface as practiced in more northerly oil regions. The big question now is how quickly temperatures return to normal.

Now that's cold.

Venezuela-backed Citgo Petroleum Corp. has told its suppliers and customers that its Corpus Christ, Texas, refinery won’t be able to receive or deliver crude and refined products after a historic cold snap caused major disruptions to operations.

The company is in the process of assessing damage and evaluating a restart time for the 167,000 barrel-a-day refinery, according to a force majeure notice seen by Bloomberg. Part of the refinery experienced operating issues and unplanned unit shutdowns due to freezing weather and third-party supplier outages, according to the latest regulatory filing.

Olin Corp., Indorama Ventures and other chemical producers are shuttering plants along a 150-mile stretch of the Gulf Coast as gas shortages and icy temperatures hinder operations.

Such shutdowns are not without danger -- Olin’s Blue Cube plant in Freeport, Texas, suffered a leak from a valve as crews were winding down operations, resulting in ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride emissions into the atmosphere, according to a state regulatory filing. Indorama alerted authorities and neighbors that it would be burning off excess gases frequently while it worked to suspend operations at its complex in Port Neches, Texas.

What a mess.

[Freighter]

while they sit there in their houses....not prepared for winter of this nature.

Who expects it to get this cold in Texas though?

[Logwyn]

What I'm really enjoying it all the talk about how it's all Green energy's fault for the power issues in Texas.... When the officials keep saying Texas is an oil/gas state and all of that infrastructure when down.

[Zan15]

That's a really bad take you're having there.

Even the fact that we need generators in New England speaks volumes about just how shit our infrastructure is.

Even something as basic as actually burying the power lines would go a looooooong way to solving many of the issues we're having in the North.

.

It would end up costing each homeowner way more than an generator, thus the reason why it never happens.
Burying around here in the richer north western towns is nothing but a headache. they have to bring in huge generator trucks to power complexes till they can dig it up and fix it.

You can't seriously demand people living in the South to invest in winterizing their personal property for emergencies what might occur once every decade or more.

.

When i owned a home i lost power maybe a dozen times in 13 years. Did not stop me from being prepared with a generator.

Infrastructure on the other hand is meant to be designed with emergencies like this in mind, simply because it's 1 infrastructure 2.cheaper to maintain than fix.

.

not extreme once in a half centry type situations. how do you get the people of texas to spend 250 billion dollars to upgrade their system for something that happens this often??

You're basically asking people living in the mountains to flood proof their homes. Could it happen? Sure. Is it likely? No.

well its almost impossible to flood proof your home, i've learned that the hard way. Water always finds a way.
Oh and people living on the mountains have to worry about snow melt and flooding all the time depending on where they live.
Live in the edges of the adirondack mountains in NY....

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Who expects it to get this cold in Texas though?

Who expects a huricane to drop power in new england for weeks? Its happened.

[Rasulis]

What I'm really enjoying it all the talk about how it's all Green energy's fault for the power issues in Texas.... When the officials keep saying Texas is an oil/gas state and all of that infrastructure when down.

Per Texas Tribune.

Texas largely relies on natural gas for power. It wasn’t ready for the extreme cold.

Failures across Texas’ natural gas operations and supply chains due to extreme temperatures are the most significant cause of the power crisis that has left millions of Texans without heat and electricity during the winter storm sweeping the U.S.

From frozen natural gas wells to frozen wind turbines, all sources of power generation have faced difficulties during the winter storm. But Texans largely rely on natural gas for power and heat generation, especially during peak usage, experts said.

Officials for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages most of Texas’ grid, said that the primarily cause of the outages on Tuesday appeared to be the state’s natural gas providers. Many are not designed to withstand such low temperatures on equipment or during production.

By some estimates, nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures, while freezing components at natural gas-fired power plants have forced some operators to shut down.

Demand for electricity during the weekend cold front far exceeded what the Electric Reliability Council of Texas predicted for a winter storm. ERCOT implemented blackouts early Monday morning to reduce demand as low temperatures forced more power sources offline than expected.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. While he said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis — at least one nuclear power plant has partially shut down, most notably — the natural gas industry is producing significantly less power than normal.

“Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now,” Webber said.

More than half of ERCOT’s winter generating capacity, largely powered by natural gas, was offline due to the storm, an estimated 45 gigawatts, according to Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT.

The outages during this storm far exceeded what ERCOT had predicted in November for an extreme winter event. The forecast for peak demand was 67 gigawatts; peak usage during the storm was more than 69 gigawatts on Sunday.

It's estimated that about 80% of the grid’s capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or six gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.

Woodfin said Tuesday that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, is offline and that 30 gigawatts of thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy, is offline.

“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Woodfin said during a Tuesday call with reporters.

Abbott likely wanted to investigate ERCOT because they make him look bad with that interview.

[Zan15]

What I'm really enjoying it all the talk about how it's all Green energy's fault for the power issues in Texas.... When the officials keep saying Texas is an oil/gas state and all of that infrastructure when down.

inital reports were they suffered some dips in generation so of course republicans decided to use it as a focal point of attack on silly liburals.

Sad part is wind is still producing more energy then planned this winter by a large amount.
Its natural gas that is really the problem right now.

But it too late for the enviromental haters

[Sorensen]

I live in Sweden and if we would lose power for an extended amount of time I'd have to get to another building that has another system to distribute heat than my current one. My apartment has dipped down to 18c a few times this winter even though the radiators are so hot that you can probably sustain burns if you keep your hand on them. It's very uncomfortable to touch them even briefly due to how hot they are and my apartment still has dipped to 18c.

Is that supposed to be cold, I have my house set to 62f, or about 16C in the winter just turn it up in the morning or if I get cold later.

[Adam Jensen]

As a native New Yorker I will forever have a special place of hatred in my heart for red state "fiscal conservatives" who constantly moan about "Democrat cities" while their entire fucking states are kept financially viable by the tax money of those "Democrat cities". Like, fuck you, just fuck you.

"Fiscal conservative" is either a rare or extinct breed now. Most the politicians who claim to be one tend to increase spending through pet projects and tax cuts . . .

"Fiscal conservatives" under Trump spent 1.9 trillion dollars on a tax cut.
"Fiscal conservatives" under Bush sent us to a war that has so far lasted nearly 20 years and cost hundreds of billions every year.

"Fiscal conservatives" come from red states that are deep in debt and taking in more federal money than blue states.

There might still be fiscal conservatives out there but I sure as hell can't name one.

[Torched]

Plumbers are gonna have a field day with all the burst pipes down there in Texas lol.

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I live in Sweden and if we would lose power for an extended amount of time I'd have to get to another building that has another system to distribute heat than my current one. My apartment has dipped down to 18c a few times this winter even though the radiators are so hot that you can probably sustain burns if you keep your hand on them. It's very uncomfortable to touch them even briefly due to how hot they are and my apartment still has dipped to 18c.

If power was gone for an extended amount of time, it would get very cold.

Then your flat has some garbage insulation if it drops down that low even with heaters on, here I can turn off all heaters and it won't go below 20c for days.

[minteK917]

And that is why important utilities cannot be private. No electricity is now life threatening. Private companies have no incentives to upgrqde their system until its already broken. Also dont even spread the lie about competitive and prices in texas. The place in north american with the lowest cost per kW/h is with nationalized electricity since the 70s, is mendated to provide electricity at the same price even if you live in the middle of nowhere and still manage to be run on surplus.

[Flarelaine]

wow just looked at the temperature in Houston and I don't think I've ever seen it that cold in Newcastle. For context we're about equal latitude as Moscow and further north than any major Canadian city

... but you also have the Gulf Stream.

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The effects of anthropogenic global climate change have been measurable for going on something like 70 to 100 years. The debate was never about whether it was happening, among scientists.

I've seen a bloody Victorian article discussing how burning all that coal will heat the planet.

Of course, people respected science back then.

[gondrin]

https://twitter.com/MaTTFLaMMaBLe/st...35892839743489

Update: Apparently the former mayor of Colorado City, Texas, has resigned after telling people that the taxes they pay to local and state governments and the money they pay to their utility companies apparently don't mean they are entitled to *checks notes* anything at all.

Guess his wife got fired because he's an insufferable asshole. Hope she doesn't get any unemployment, SHE SHOULD TAKE AFTER HER HUSBAND AND PULL HERSELF UP BY HER BOOTSTRAPS AND NOT EXPECT A FUCKIN GUBMINT HANDOUT.

Stay safe y'all, if you've got a fireplace put that to good use.

Oh, the irony of that formal mayor calling foul on people threatening his life when he did the exact same thing with his previous post to the citizens of the town he was a mayor of. While I don't agree with threatening his family for his stupidity, he is going to learn a very hard lesson. He best go live out in the middle of nowhere and be armed to the teeth because people, especially in Texas, don't like to be threatened with their lives.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I live in Texas and work for an engineering firm that designs electrical infrastructure for in state utilities and beyond so I got some fair insight and yes, we have know about it for years.

The #1 problem is an entity know as ERCOT which is suppose to be the central command center for the state. So when things like this happen they coordinate energy resources and keep the local utilities/cooperatives/cities in the loop of these things and keep them working together. Now once upon a time this was a professional service ran by people that cared about 1 singular thing, and that was keeping the lights on. So they would maintain extra generation, insure maintaince, and be educated to the point of understanding how to fix it if things like this happen. Over the years it became very politically motivated to shift from that to keeping prices low.

Why are low prices important? Elections for one. Thier new political masters don't get reelected if prices go up. So ERCOT shifted from power generation and flow control to a marketplace for power. So in a way energy resources became a stock market of sorts. Buy low and sell high and as we know the richer areas get more influence over time and thus can squish the little man. Another reason is this is how Texas baits big corporations to the state. Because they can rebate, provide what they call "capital credits" to create free line extensions and express feeders to places like Tesla (not knocking Tesla they are just a current example) factories so they don't have to worry about any of this MOST the time and on top of that give them CHEAP power. In return they of course line the politicians pockets, provide jobs, so the shit gets a little layer of dirt over it and no one usually cares.

So what are these "capital credits"? Well it's the state requesting electrical service (that cannot be refused) to local utilities/cooperatives/cities. It works like this. The state says "do this" and the company says "we don't have the funding" and the state then says "no problem here is a loan" and the money goes over and the project gets built. Now this in the past was good. Progress was made and the system was extended so it was win win. But growth got to record numbers for decades in a row. So these loans piled up. So many in fact a lot of utilities/cooperatives/city power companies could pretty much ONLY pay the loans because they had so many. So this lead to cutting maintaince. Then personal. They are at the point of price increase or letting it rot and the political power at the top decided rot. Price increase means they don't get reelected. So maybe the state could give some loan forgivness? Well then the state loses a big chunk of change that would mean taxes would have to increase. But the state also refuses to do that so companies get to the point of no matter what they do a political body stops them because a rate hike or tax hike isn't allowed under the current political powers because getting reelected is all that matters and the can gets kicked down the road with more loans that only makes the problem worse.

ERCOT quickly became the administrative body that managed the price of power. Because the loan situation got so out of hand they had to regulate use that artificially keeps demand down and makes it appear supply is high. So they roll blackouts even on sunny 70 degree days for price. So why isn't this news all the time? Well it stays out of the cities. It stays away from wealthy areas outside of cities. Basically poor areas eat it. Often around the boarder where a lot of immigrants live. So they had no real platform to complain from. Thier city, state, and federal reps are all bought and sold on it so they can get reelected.

Why is it a problem now? Well, an event finally came along that broke the system. ERCOT was put into a position of having to raise costs to generate more power or do nothing and just shut people off to keep the status quo going. They choose the ladder. Understand this right now. They could dump more fuel into plants to get most people back on. Yes, rolling blackouts might still need to happen. Sometimes the math doesn't work out. But they would be quick 45 min outages that roll between areas. Not 2 day shell outs that piled up. They refused to do this so KWh prices wouldn't get to high, so the prices don't get passed down, and people didn't get reelected. It got so out of control that the blackouts finally hit the money. Cities started to blackout. Rich areas outside of cities started to blackout. Suddenly panic set in at ERCOT and the politicians and what you are seeing now is two political bodies carefully dancing around each other trying to assign blame but still keeping the system in place so once this blows over they can get back to what they only care about. Getting reelected. So we will probably see some firings of middle management at ERCOT. Maybe a step down from the top. All with big pay outs. Then a political investigation, some findings, and by then time has passed and the rug will be lifted up and it will all be swept under it. We will have all moved onto the next hot take scandal and this one will be forgotten.

Just how it works sadly.

[Kotuthan]

Is the Texan, American Government even doing anything to help? I see nothing about it on the news reports.

Some Advice from someone who lives near the Alps. Hang up Carpets on the Walls. They help insulate a room.
Also check for Mold. Once all that Ice, Snow starts melting Houses who are not designed for Snow often have the stuff leaking in, once the thawing starts.

[Belize]

Is the Texan, American Government even doing anything to help?.

Abbott went on Cucker Tarlson to whine about people being mean to him, and uh... No yeah that's it.

TBH I'd almost prefer then Texas Gov not doing anything, they can really only make things worse.

[szechuan]

Idiotic Trumpers like Tucker Carlson are blaming Wind Turbines for the Crisis, even though there are alot of ways to prevent Wind Turbines from Freezing.

[Beazy]

Rich areas outside of cities started to blackout.

You know someone fucked up when Southlake and Preston Hollow lose power. Preston Hollow is literally called "Billionaires Row".

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Idiotic Trumpers like Tucker Carlson are blaming Wind Turbines for the Crisis, even though there are alot of ways to prevent Wind Turbines from Freezing.

In TX, Wind is only producing like a quarter of our power. So it might be to blame for like 200k outages (thats like a small town in TX, not even a city), but what's to blame for the other 1.3 million?

Tuck is trying to pull the ol` "Alex Jones" " tell the truth in the first part of your sentence, and lie/mislead in the last.

[Draco-Onis]

You know someone fucked up when Southlake and Preston Hollow lose power. Preston Hollow is literally called "Billionaires Row".

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In TX, Wind is only producing like a quarter of our power. So it might be to blame for like 200k outages (thats like a small town in TX, not even a city), but what's to blame for the other 1.3 million?

Tuck is trying to pull the ol` "Alex Jones" " tell the truth in the first part of your sentence, and lie/mislead in the last.

Also keep in mind wind power works in cold weather, the reason wind power in Texas is frozen is because the republicans cheapened out and didn't get the heated carbon blade. They have been gutting the state's infrastructure for decades instead of upgrading it to handle things like thing because they don't believe in science.

[Beazy]

Also keep in mind wind power works in cold weather, the reason wind power in Texas is frozen is because the republicans cheapened out and didn't get the heated carbon blade. They have been gutting the state's infrastructure for decades instead of upgrading it to handle things like thing because they don't believe in science.

That is one of the major reasons TX doesnt want to be part of the national grid, it wants to cheap out things that are regulated federally when you hook up. Some of it makes sense, and some of it is insanity.

Like, I understand why the windfarms in TX dont have heated blades, we get snow/ice once a decade, why invest 1.2 billion on 2 days every 10 years? But then look what happens ~ temps get all Canadian up in this bitch n all the sudden, that 1.2 billion investment doesnt seem like a bad idea, and if you believe in climate change, it seems pretty mandatory. IMO.