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What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
- daenney 6y agoChoice quote from the article: “The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. “It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.”
- Finnucane 6y agobut it is unpossible that a free capitalist market could provide an ungood result.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't do this here. We're looking for curious conversation, not ideological battle (which tends to be an angry kind of boilerplate). https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- falcolas 6y agoWhich confuses me, as it follows a statement about how energy has been deregulated. Of course, deregulation would also reduce some of the incentives for maintaining preparation for "100 year winter" storms. Much like how hospitals reduced the number of beds based on their average case loads, not the uncommon-but-not-unheard-of peaks.
- masklinn 6y ago> "100 year winter" storms It’s like the third time in 30 years.
- da_big_ghey 6y agoThis is the first time since the eighties that we have had weather this cold. Edit: why u booing me? I'm right!
- pixl97 6y agoWhat happened to 2011?
- da_big_ghey 6y agoWe didn't have a situation like this, though it was a close call power-wise.
- windthrown 6y ago"100 year" is shorthand for probability. In reality, these are storms that have a 1% chance of occurring in any given year.
- masklinn 6y agoMaybe they were back in 1950. But this happened in 1989, 2011, and now 2021. And things are not going to get better.
- roughly 6y agoHow's the line go? If a coin comes up heads twice in a row, that's normal. If it comes up heads ten times in a row, it's abnormal. If it comes up heads a hundred times in a row, it's probably not a fair coin.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- shortandsweet 6y agoCan't really say it's a regulation vs deregulation issue. I've worked for both and it's incredibly difficult to get anyone to do anything other than a broke fix. Once something breaks or someone dies, that's when it's taken seriously. I wish I had a problem statement and a solution to go with it.
- maxerickson 6y agoIn the US, licensed hospital beds are pretty heavily regulated. https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/con-certificate-of-need-state-laws.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/con-certificate-of-need... And then Medicare won't pay any old place for services (which is something that would impact many potential hospital sites).
- amluto 6y agoThis regulation utterly defies economic common sense. It’s like saying that, if we allow too many people to sell groceries, the cost of groceries will go up. That’s not how a functioning market works. Of course, medicine in the US is not a functioning market.
- maxerickson 6y agoThat's right.
- falcolas 6y agoTIL. That's... it makes sense in one fashion (keep health care cost reasonable (reasonable health care costs in the US… kek)), but it utterly defies the idea of being ready for disasters.
- korethr 6y agoThis confused me as well. In the article, there's the criticism that by not being allowed to charge for electricity what it cost to generate, producers have fallen behind on maintenance of their plants. But I don't see how that follows from deregulation. When I think deregulation, I think something more akin to, "Alright boys, you're on your own. Ya'll will live and die by your ability to profitably generate the power people need and want, and deliver it how they need and want. Don't get lazy now, or some whippersnapper will buy your infrastructure for pennies on the dollar after they bankrupt you because all your customers went for their better customer service." Not being allowed to charge actual cost of production strikes me as something that would come of price controls, which are a kind of regulation, not deregulation.
- snowwindwaves 6y agoOr somebody cheaper can generate since they didn't bother building their plants to withstand low temperatures so the more expensive plants to run go out of business or lose that expensive to maintain ability and then here we are
- gruez 6y agoOr maybe it hasn't been deregulated enough? From the article >Wholesale electricity sold are near the $9,000-per-megawatt hour maximum in power markets across the state Monday as the system struggled to meet demand, according to ERCOT. Why bother spending millions on preparing for a once in a century event when your upside is capped? This is further compounded by the wholesale rates not being passed to consumers, which removes a lot of backpressure from the system. If turning on the heater costs $100/hr to run you're going to find alternatives (eg. co-habiting with your inlaws).
- toast0 6y ago> Why bother spending millions on preparing for a once in a century event when your upside is capped? This is further compounded by the wholesale rates not being passed to consumers, which removes a lot of backpressure from the system. If turning on the heater costs $100/hr to run you're going to find alternatives (eg. co-habiting with your inlaws). If it's a once in a century (or once every 10 year) event, consumers aren't going to pay $100/hr to run their heater. They're going to refuse to pay the bill.
- gruez 6y ago>They're going to refuse to pay the bill. ...and subsequently get their electricity cut off in a few months for non-payment? Besides, it isn't too hard to impose a cap on the rate you pay and requiring a credit card to be on file if you want to lift the limit. In other words, by default the maximum rate you'll pay is $2/kWH, but if you have a credit card on file you can put in whatever rate you want. If the wholesale price goes above the maxmimum rate you can pay your electricity gets cut off. If the utility thinks the rate is too high and you aren't going to pay, they'll pre-authorize your card for the amount. At that point they can let the credit card company/banks worry about chasing after the customers.
- Talanes 6y agoEspecially given the household dynamic I see most, where only the person who actually pays the energy bill is actually considering the cost of heating. Compound that with the fact that, unless utility billing has changed a lot in the last decade (I haven't been a master tenant in a while), people won't see how much more expensive that power is until after they've used it.
- dekhn 6y agosimilar situation in california, too.
- vondur 6y agoMaybe having more nuclear power plants instead of wind would have helped? It sounds unrealistic for the energy generators to sell electricity at a loss over a 10 year period. It would be nice to see some of the data that the professor is referring to.
- masklinn 6y ago> Maybe having more nuclear power plants instead of wind would have helped? No. Most of the missing production was not wind, and several nukes went out (unclear whether that was because the grid was dying though). What would have helped was proper standards (avoiding emergency being much of the reason why Texas still has its own grid) and properly winterising. The wind thing is just a bullshit excuse, the vast majority of the missing generation is in fossil power plants. Even with half the turbines frozen over (which still has to do with Texas’ lack of proper winterization, those things work fine in Canada, Washington State, Montana, etc…) wind performed above expectations for the period.
- sokoloff 6y agoWhat is "proper winterizing" for a state where the 99th percentile design temperature is mostly 25-30ºF? Properly sized heating systems should run 24 hours a day when the temps are well below the design temp. If almost all of those systems are electric (because they are simple and cheap to install and don't get a ton of use), you get a lot of constant demand for electricity. Smart load-shedding (to dump large 240VAC loads in rotation) would allow the grid to survive these periods, while keeping houses livable but chilly. I agree the wind excuse is (almost entirely) BS. Some amount of production is offline all the time, at least enough that you have to design for that.
- maxerickson 6y agoThe power infrastructure is also failing from the cold. Some big fraction of that could probably be prevented for cheap.
- roywiggins 6y ago
- dang 6y agoRecent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26137893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26137893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26146945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26146945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144560
- zests 6y agoThank you
- kbar13 6y agois this the wakeup call that texans need to acknowledge that climate change isn't a coastal elite type thing, and that it affects us all and requires investment from all of us? imo texas is in a great spot to capitalize on the shift to green tech. they have strong engineering talent, large investments from the energy sector. car manufacturers are already clamoring to be the next to go fully electric. get your leaders in line and cash in on the trend, and save the world in the process! or go the way of detroit when oil demand tanks...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nickysielicki 6y agoGive me a break. Actually, the whole reason for this series of outages is because Texas took the bait and installed a bunch of solar and wind instead of taking the safe route and doubling down on coal. Peak energy consumption in Texas is almost always in summer when there's a lot of AC units running -- which just happens to be when solar and wind work best. They gambled on green, paid the price in the past few days, and you're sitting here on the internet saying that they're a bunch of rednecks who don't understand science or climate change. Pretty rich. This is a black swan event -- this is the coldest it's been in over 100 years. edit: to be clear about what I'm claiming, I'm saying that if Texas invested in coal instead of making the large investments they made in solar and wind, this never would have happened. I don't see how anyone can dispute that. This is not the time to be gloating about green energy.
- masklinn 6y ago> the whole reason for this series of outages is because Texas took the bait and installed a bunch of solar and wind instead of taking the safe route and doubling down on coal. That’s an outright lie. The vast majority of the missing production is in fossil plants. Wind only accounts for about 20% of nameplate capacity, and has been performing above expectations for the period. And that’s with Texan wind being as un-weatherised at the rest (hint: when wind turbines work just fine in Montana or Washington State, if they freeze over it’s not because they’re wind turbines).
- the_duke 6y agoThis whole episode also reminds us how far we are from going 100% renewable. In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious. I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we have to rely on for the foreseeable future.
- gambiting 6y agoHow exactly does it show that? From my understanding Texas has an awful(below 20%) percentage of renewable sources.
- ianai 6y agoTFA says it’s grid is mostly natural gas and wind. There seems to be lots of misconceptions in this thread and not a lot of information. Nuclear would have been fine throughout this.
- ashtonkem 6y agoApparently one of the nuclear turbines went offline because the turbine was exposed to the open air (for cooling during the summer) and some of the sensors triggered a shutoff of the turbine when they detected unexpected temperatures. Another case where systems misbehave when they’re exposed to circumstances outside the expected range.
- stonlyb 6y agoNuclear relies on water for cooling, which froze in at least one plant.
- jeffbee 6y agoI think it's fair to say that their top two energy sources are natural gas and coal, although "mostly natural gas and nuclear" would also be fair, in its own way. https://www.utilitydive.com/user_media/diveimage/ercotmix.png https://www.utilitydive.com/user_media/diveimage/ercotmix.pn...
- brohoolio 6y agoDid the utility companies ask for voluntary reduction in power consumption ahead of time? We had a situation here where extreme weather and a natural gas pumping station that exploded caused real problems in our natural gas supply. The utility asked everyone to lower their consumption by turning their heat down to 65. Luckily, that was the extent of the rationing.
- abhisuri97 6y agoThere have been calls from our utility company asking people to conserve energy and a lot of messaging on the local news.
- slenk 6y agoMy companies office volunteered to power off so we got to all work from our homes. That was only good for those of us still with power, though.
- teraflop 6y agoTechnically yes, but they went from "stage 1" alerts (voluntary conservation) just after midnight on Sunday night, all the way to "stage 3" (rolling blackouts) by 1:30 AM. https://twitter.com/ERCOT_ISO/status/1361197991659503618 https://twitter.com/ERCOT_ISO/status/1361197991659503618 https://twitter.com/ERCOT_ISO/status/1361215084010352644 https://twitter.com/ERCOT_ISO/status/1361215084010352644
- tpmx 6y agoAfaik, the way abnormal situations like these are handled in northern Europe is that the grid suppliers have agreements with the very large industrial consumers (think aluminium smelters) who agree to shut down immediately when the grid frequency goes below a certain trigger level. The way I understand it, this is useful both in time-critical emergencies (like keeping the grid at 50 Hz when a nuclear plant suddenly goes offline for some random safety reason) and when things are moving a lot slower, like during periods of extreme colds and extreme electicity demand from heating houses. So, this approach is useful in removing the need for rolling blackouts, at least until demand reaches some very extreme level, but it does require ahead of time investments in shutdown agreements. Perhaps Texas hasn't been in this extreme situation before, and they simply don't have enough industrial shutdown agreements in place?
- magnawave 6y agoThe result was "an electrical island in the United States," Bill Magness, CEO of ERCOT, said. "That independence has been jealously guarded, I think both by policy makers and the industry." https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/16/texas-power-grid-why-state-has-its-own-operated-ercot/6765007002/ https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/16/texas-power-... Maybe it’s time to rethink that. HaI has an interesting take on something similar: Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo88zA5nq4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo88zA5nq4Q Running your own grid seems cool Texas style, until you have a regional problem and have no where to turn.
- pkulak 6y agoHow hard can it be to have your own grid, but also have inputs on the edges to draw from? Or would that no longer be independent?
- wnevets 6y agoRegulations probably.
- gitgreen 6y agoThe latter. They do not want federal regulation. For the pedantic TX does have connections to other grids but the capacity is so low that it wouldn't have mitigated this event and is under whatever threshold is set for federal oversight.
- afavour 6y agoIt would be independent from a practical point of view but from a regulatory one it would become subject to federal regulations, which is the real reason Texas keeps theirs separate.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- autoditype 6y agoFrom the articles I've read they do: > Even today, ERCOT is also not completely isolated from other grids — as was evident when the state imported some power from Mexico during the rolling blackouts of 2011. ERCOT has three ties to Mexico and — as an outcome of the "Midnight Connection" battle — it also has two ties to the eastern U.S. grid, though they do not trigger federal regulation for ERCOT. All can move power commercially as well as be used in emergencies, according to ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark. A possible sixth interconnection project, in Rusk County, is being studied, and another ambitious proposal, called Tres Amigas, would link the three big U.S. grids together in New Mexico, though Texas' top utility regulator has shown little enthusiasm for participating. https://www.kvue.com/article/weather/texplainer-why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/269-be61fb6f-11ce-4201-b2d2-4f40fd8ff510 https://www.kvue.com/article/weather/texplainer-why-does-tex...
- svnpenn 6y agoDallas suburb here (Las Colinas). No power since Monday 6am. I had to get room at holiday inn. I actually got the room yesterday, but the hotel lost power after an hour, so I had to go back home and sleep in 5 degree apartment. Don't believe anything you read about "rolling outages". It's only rolling, if you define that as "out until it's not freezing anymore".
- rconti 6y agoIndoors??
- pault 6y agoYes, there were sub zero temperatures in Dallas last night.
- maxnoe 6y agoHow badly are your homes insulated that you get internal=external temperature in mere hours???
- KMag 6y agoIt has been a day or two, right? (Former Minnesotan, now living in Hong Kong, so slightly out of it, but familiar with -20F/-30C and occasionally -40F/-40C.) I think enough air circulation to avoid your breath causing mildew everywhere will mean without a ton of thermal mass, your house is going to get within a few degrees of the daily high within a day or two.
- tclancy 6y agoShut off your heat for a couple of days and report back.
- ineedasername 6y agoIt's been going on for a lot more than just a few hours.
- 6y ago
- terse_malvolio 6y agoThis is only a problem because we haven't figured out a good way to store electrical energy.
- leoh 6y agoThat's not really true. The grid has worked just fine for decades. We also do have "good" means of storing electrical energy, they're not as economical as just running at sufficient capacity and managing the grid properly.
- gitgreen 6y agoTexas had blackouts due to extreme cold as recently as 2011. The findings from the investigation after that event were ignored and we are now seeing a repeat of it exactly 10 years later. It has not worked "just fine" for decades.
- epistasis 6y agoWe have great ways of storing electricity, it's just that they're only getting built right now, and they're getting cheaper so fast that waiting a few years will get you a 30%+ discount off the price. There are currently 17GW of batteries in the ERCOT interconnection queue for the coming years, for a grid that's only ~80GW. The ERCOT of 2025 will be massively different from the ERCOT of 2021, and it's going to mean a lot less gas, a lot more storage, and a lot more solar.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoGW is a unit of power, it’s not a unit that energy storage capacity can be measured in.
- epistasis 6y agoYes of course, that's trivial. Grid connections are measured in power, not in energy units.
- rtx 6y agoAmerica stop heating your houses, buy thik blankets and sweaters. Earth can't take it anymore.
- thehappypm 6y agoI get the sentiment but it’s just not useful to tell people not to heat their homes. Fly less. Go veg. Downsize. But asking people to freeze? You sound like a lunatic.
- s0rce 6y agoYou could have a better insulated and much smaller home, but clearly this person has never lived in <30F weather, you obviously need to heat your home to have any modicum of comfort. Its unconformable if you are well prepared and healthy, life threatening otherwise to young, old and infirm.
- alacombe 6y agoGood luck not heating your home when it -15C or below outside.
- gregimba 6y agoCurrently in ATX we haven't had power for over 24 hours, wood fireplace is saving the house from completely freezing but the whole city of Austin needs to evaluate how they setup their critical infrastructure to allow for rolling blackouts instead of having parts of the city with power and parts without for the entirety of an outage.
- jeffbee 6y agoRolling outages work when you need to shed 1% of your load, not when you need to shed 80% of it. If Austin is down to critical loads only (hospitals or whatever) there may not be anything left to rotate.
- epage 6y agoFrom what I hear, only about 40% are on non-critical circuits. There is room for improvement.
- gregimba 6y agoThis is essentially the crux of the problem, multiple friends/and coworkers are staying in islands of power that have been interrupt free due to proximity to Fire/Police/Hospitals and others have been without power for extended periods of time, if 60% of a grid is essential you can't roll non essential loads because simply maintaining the critical loads takes up 100% of capacity. More granular control could significantly help alleviate this issue which is specific to Austin Energy.
- brundolf 6y agoThere are non-critical loads all over that were never interrupted (my neighborhood, north edge of ATX). It's pretty arbitrary. Even worse: for about the first 24h there were (largely uninhabited!) commercial buildings all over the place that were fully lit up. We're talking skyscrapers. Even some unfinished skyscrapers. I think they've finally begun to address those. The charitable interpretation is that it was simply a massive failure of coordination.
- i_am_proteus 6y agoLots of folks in these comments seem to want to use this event to litigate wind vs. solar vs. gas vs. nuclear vs. coal, but it seems like, across the board, power generation facilities in Texas were simply unprepared to operate in such low temperatures. All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates.
- jdkee 6y agoSolar panels don't work well under a foot of snow.
- ckemere 6y agoThe people down the street from me in Houston are currently powering their house with their solar panels, actually. They were able to loan their generator to their neighbor. We had to abandon our house.
- tmotwu 6y agoLast year, I went on vacation to Alaska. Me and my friends airbnb'd an off-grid home/cabin in Talkeetna, about several hundred miles north of Anchorage. It was powered entirely on solar panels on the roof and right by the house. Water from the rivers. Granted, it had a wood stove, like most cabin/homes are in the north. Just want to chime in and say that renewables are absolutely very prevalent in colder, remote climates.
- snowwindwaves 6y agoit isn't that big a deal to run a fridge and some led lights on solar pAnels. As you identified heating and cooling are the big energy users.
- 8note 6y agoMiles north of anchorage? How many hours of sun were you getting? 3? 1?
- u678u 6y agoNot many people are talking about home solar but its a real problem. Its nice to have your own solar power and then use the grid only when you need it. However that means you need idle power plants and transmission 90% of the year just for those cold un-sunny days. If power prices are regulated its a mugs game. I see bans on home solar coming. Maybe if you can disconnect from the grid with batteries it solves the problem too - but those people would be suffering right now. If you downvote me please tell me what is wrong and if you have ideas on how to solve the problem.
- ckemere 6y agoHome solar saving the day for my neighbors in Houston today, actually.
- u678u 6y agoI'm not saying its bad for the people with solar, I'm saying everyone else suffers because of the people with solar.
- dawnerd 6y agoThat's an incredibly bad take.
- barbacoa 6y agoElectrical codes require grid-tie solar inverters to shut off if the utility power fails.
- dawnerd 6y agoNo, they're just not allowed to export, you can still generate.
- extrapickles 6y agoYou only have to shut off if you don't have the ability to disconnect yourself from the grid. Automatic switches are fairly expensive ($500-2k), so unless you also have battery storage, you generally opt out to save money.
- WorkingDead 6y agoWhat a horrible article. First, Texas has its own independent grid as a matter of physics. Electricty travels at the speed of light so a continuous grid from coast to coast would get out of sync on phases just by travel distance. Texas just happens to be physically in the middle and large enough to have trouble by being supplied by either east or west grid. Second, ERCOT manages when utilizes can take assets out of commission to do maintenance. Texas peak demand is in the summer so if you have to take a power plant off line you do it in the winter. So there are a lot of utility assets under maintenance outages right now. One top of that reduced capacity, not all equipment is prepared for ice storms because it doesn't really happen here. Several gas pipelines in the state are having freezing issues causing the gas price to spike. ERCOT controls rates so if gas prices spike and utilities are forced to sell power for less than it costs to make, they would rather shut down and did until ERCOT stepped back in and let them charge real rates. People on variable rate power contracts are now basically screwed this month. And finally, the wind farms are not handling the ice well. Somee have frozen or iced up enough to be out of commission and the rest are operating at severely reduced capacity. So basically a varatiy of these went wrong and everything will be back to normal in a few days, but ERCOT has some work to do to make sure this doesn't happen again.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoYou know you can shift AC phase, right? That “out of sync” article doesn't seem right.
- 8note 6y agoIf you've got tooling to do it efficiently at scale, you could make a whole ton of money
- arberx 6y agoTo your first point, it's not about supply, it's about borrowing during periods of scarcity. There are plenty of wholesale markets that are "in the middle". Texas simply chose to not be apart of it. https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/us-electricity-grid-markets https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/us-electricity-grid-markets
- tyingq 6y agoIt was posted as it's own story here, but it's mildly fascinating to watch the demand versus supply figures from Ercot. And the demand, I assume, doesn't include those places currently without power. http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_conditions.html http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_condi... As I post this, demand is 99+% of supply, and the outside temps are dropping.
- zamadatix 6y agoI read ERCOT predicted "real" demand was estimated to be at least 75 MW at one point Monday. I imagine it's not much better with everyone needing to reheat their entire homes now either.
- worker767424 6y agoThe Texas-only grid was definitely part of it, and should be a lesson to people who thought the lesson from Covid is "do more locally." No, having stronger, longer distance connections is what makes you more resilient, at least when there are local problems.
- yellow_postit 6y agoAgree on the point about Texas extreme stance on having their own power grid. I don’t known if there’s enough micro grids in Texas to determine how well, or not, they worked in these conditions.
- fastball 6y agoIt's not that extreme. Texas is huge. Having it's own grid is not some support of excessively-local craziness.
- yellow_postit 6y agoYes it’s a huge area but the Texas interconnection[1] has a long history of fierce protectionism from other parts of the national grid. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
- 29083011397778 6y agoYou're describing why Texas having its own grid isn't localized insanity, but for the uninitiated, it still seems like insanity. Why not connect (and be able to draw from) other grids?
- VintageCool 6y agoIf Texas were more connected to other grids and transmitting above a certain threshold of electricity across state lines, they'd become subject to federal regulations. They might have to ensure that their electrical system was built to handle a 10-year cold weather event, and that would cost money. This way, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can write a report after the 2011 Texas cold snap that took down the Texas power grid. FERC can recommend that companies which generate or distribute power be required to verify that their systems are weather-proofed before every winter and before every forecasted cold snap. And Texas can simply ignore it.
- gregw2 6y agoWhat went wrong is that the Texas legislature which owns Texas-specific grid process to avoid interference from the Feds didn't figure out how to also ensure Texas generator companies got compensated for weatherizing (and ensuring it was done). How many of the 24+6 recommendations from the NERC/FERC review of last time this happened in Texas (hint:2011) were taken up by the legislature or those at ERCOT they delegated responsibility to or the power generation providers? https://www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/ea/ColdWeatherTrainingMaterials/FERC%20NERC%20Findings%20and%20Recommendations.pdf https://www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/ea/ColdWeatherTrainingMaterials/... The eye opener to me from skimming the 2011 recommendations is that there was no explicit rating/SLA for a power plant's acceptable temperature operating that could be used by planners for assessing the risks of an upcoming weather event by policy planners. It'd seem pretty basic to be able to ask "How many plants do we lose when temperature drops below X"? Dunno whether they fixed trying to create such a basic measurement for Texas plants, but it doesn't seem like it. If you want to know some of the specifics about what "winterization" means in practice for a power plant including natural gas ones, you can read some of the details in that report. It's kinda interesting.
- gregw2 6y agoAnecdote: All 7 developers in my Houston team (semi-geographically scattered in the city) lost power; half for >24 hrs (it's 10-25 degrees F here for the last 2-3 days). Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. (I haven't found clear findings on what determines whether your fireplace net-warms or net-cools your house in super-cold weather (by sucking heat out of adjacent rooms and pulling cool air from the outside and sending hot air up your chimney). Pointers welcome.)
- tw04 6y ago>I don't think any lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. I'm curious how they didn't lose heat. Any furnace built in the last 30 years, even gas, has an electronic control board in order to ensure it doesn't accidentally turn on the gas without a functioning pilot light and/or heating element (which would blow up your house). No electricity = no heat, regardless of natural gas supply. I've got about a dozen coworkers in Texas, they've all been without power (which means no heat) for two days now. The power comes on long enough to at least warm their houses up to 50ish degrees before dropping back out so they're not completely screwed but I know they're scared.
- ipv6ipv4 6y agoA social political decline is what happened and continues to happen. When California encountered power issues, it was easier for Texas politicians (and many of their followers) to espouse malicious soundbites about Commifornia than to empathize, offer support and self reflect on what lessons can be learned and applied locally. Now that Texas is reaping its own fruits of decades of anti-"other side" politics and political mismanagement it's all too easy for whatever "other side" to treat Texas with the same derision and malice instead of empathy and support. The government run Texas grid is ill prepared because the responsible parties are more interested in playing division politics than in governing. Cold and snow are not novel, it's not a technical problem.
- BurningFrog 6y agoAs a Californian, it is also very easy to espouse malicious soundbites about our self inflicted dysfunction...
- ausbah 6y agothe weather patterns induced by climate change are novel though
- stephencanon 6y agoNovel, but predictable (and, indeed, they were predicted decades ago, which should have given plenty of time to prepare).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- azernik 6y agoThey make weather extremes more common, but those weather extremes have always existed.
- enraged_camel 6y agoNo, the extremes not only get more frequent, but also more intense.
- cccc4alll 6y agoNuclear is the cheapest, cleanest, safest form of electricity generation. Do some research into who pushed FUD propaganda about Nuclear industry, (Big oil) and who paid off the shrill environmental FUD lobby, (Bug oil). Nuclear power is used safely in aircraft carriers and submarines for decades. It's time to build more nuclear power and build the cleaner, safer, cheaper electrical energy future.
- jeffbee 6y agoNot much discussion here of the fundamental problem: why is Texas so energy intensive? In the last decade ERCOT energy generation has expanded 20%, which is much faster than the population of Texas has grown. Why? Just gigantic, detached houses for everybody? I think this is why people say the California housing crisis is such a calamity for the environment. A person in Texas consumes 150% more energy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- s0rce 6y agoWow, that surprised me. Current demand is 45GW in Texas vs. 24GW in California. Over double per capita.
- rconti 6y agoWell, yeah, the populated areas of Texas happen to be insanely cold right now at this moment we've cherry-picked, and the populated areas of California happen to be.. checks thermometer between 55-65f right now. (Bay Area, Sacramento, LA, San Diego). Also, Texas heating is HEAVILY reliant on electricity (heat pumps), since they're used as air conditioners in the summer. Presumably this means CA has a lot more forced air natural gas, like my house. Of course, I keep hearing ads encouraging me to replace my polluting "methane gas" furnace with a clean, efficient electric heat pump....
- s0rce 6y agoI didn't think about heat pumps that makes sense. I had electric heat pump for heat when I lived in WA state. Worked well with cheap hydro power.
- StillBored 6y agoYas, there are heat pump systems designed to work at fairly low temps. Those aren't the ones they install in TX, where its just a cheap reversing valve on a stock R410 system. AFAIK they don't even necessarily have aux heat (my mother's in FL didn't) and even if they do, after a decade or two it might not even work and no one would know.
- thehappypm 6y agoTexas is so so so overwhelmingly single family homes. How do these folks not have generators? This is supposed to be independent rootin’ tootin’ Texas.
- naebother 6y agoAnyone have break down of which areas had their power cut for how long?
- zamadatix 6y agoIt's still ongoing for millions at the moment but there was a nice map in https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/02/16/texas-weather-power-outage-rolling-blackouts-leave-millions-dark/6764764002/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/02/16/tex... for this morning.
- Ecto5 6y agoIt will be interesting to see which communities had their power cut and which were barely affected
- hotsauceror 6y agoThere was a rather morbid photograph on one of the local news sites the other night of Austin looking south along I-35 during the rolling blackouts. The East Side was more or less pitch black. The west side - downtown, the capitol, the stadium, the Frost Bank building etc - was lit up like a Christmas tree. The east side was created by redlining policies put in place 100 years ago, and is where much of Austin’s lower income population lives. It wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive statistical analysis but it was a pretty stark photo.
- pault 6y agoAbout half of Austin has been out for 42 hours now. Source: I’m one of them.
- naebother 6y agoThat's ridiculous. I always thought the point of rolling blackouts was to make sure no one area was without power for too long.
- 6y ago
- dwt204 6y agoThis is what happened...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evjMjpd4PNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evjMjpd4PNM
- 8ytecoder 6y agoI've lived through years of load-shedding. The biggest difference was we were entirely decoupled from the system - well/handpump, gas cylinder, overhead tank to store water, ..etc. It's not by choice - we just can't rely on any of the city provided services. Even today, homes are built with an overhead tank and anyone who can afford it has a UPS capable of powering the home for a few hours under load or a few days if used sparingly.
- daniellarusso 6y agoMy municipality is planning to replace the majority of the water supply infrastructure this spring, so I am planning for extensive outages and boil-water advisories. I plan to have a water tank or two with several hundred gallon capacity and a pump to service the house. I would be curious to see a recommendation for a whole home UPS.
- unethical_ban 6y agoWhere is this?
- hahahahe 6y agoCan someone explain how the ninth largest economy in the world where it is dominated by the largest energy companies in the world failed so miserably? This is all self-inflicted.
- bassman9000 6y agoSimplistic, but: http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/181766/IntGenbyFuel2020.xlsx http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/181766/IntGenbyFuel20... 1/4 of the mix is wind, and turbines were frozen. Maintenance in extreme condition not done, because either they didn't think it was needed, or because they didn't want to pay for it.
- woeirua 6y agoNot true. Stop spreading misinformation.
- Bud 6y agoIn a word: greed.
- njdullea 6y agoI'm so cold
- bassman9000 6y agoCan we now add the profusely mentioned weatherproofing to the solar/costs? Because nuclear works better at 0°, at no added costs.
- zamadatix 6y agoShould always include what's needed in the deployment and cost modeling, including whatever is needed so the South Texas nuclear plant doesn't have to shut off the reactor due to the extreme cold. The problem here is not being prepared for the cold not the choice of energy production method.
- 8note 6y agoA Nuclear plant went down due to the cold, so you need to add weatherproofing to it, too
- mikesabbagh 6y agoIt is surprising that windfarms are freezing. Here in Quebec, we have windfarms that have more than 6 months a year of snow and temperatures much below the freezing point. How can they freeze? they dont use water or gaz or oil. It is only a fan and dynamo. Did water seep inside and freeze it?
- s0rce 6y agoDifferent choice of lubricants? I have no idea really, I also read they have wind power generation in Antarctica so its not a fundamental problem just a result of certain design/engineering choices.
- nrmitchi 6y ago> just a result of certain design/engineering choices I think this is the point. Things are engineered for the environment which they are expected to operate, and to be optimized for those environments[0]. I would not expect a wind turbine that operates (and is designed to operate) in Antartica to not fail (potentially catestrophically) when operating in 100 degree Texas heat, [0] One could (and should) argue that these systems should take climate change and more extreme weather events into account, but that is a political problem more-so than an engineering problem.
- sjg007 6y agoCars operate across a spectrum of climates... no reason your power plant should not.
- bendbro 6y agoThe same model of car physically exists in multiple climates. A powerplant (usually) doesn't.
- billh 6y agoA car is engineered to operated in multiple climates through the use of specific fluids designed for the operating temperatures of the climate they are used in. Further, power plants operate on error margins significantly more narrow than your average consumer automobile. The temperatures, pressures and mechanical stresses are orders of magnitude higher.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoI just got power back a couple hours ago. What happened is that they finally started to cut power away from business and industrial users. Empty ass Downtown was lit up like an Xmas tree yesterday, and so was dell, ibm, and so on. It’s a scandal San Antonio was able to do rolling blackouts, Austin really messed them up
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- newbie789 6y agoCan somebody explain as if I were a kindergartner why exactly natural gas is down by such a large amount in the state? Did the pipes freeze? Does natural gas not burn efficiently in snowy conditions? How will raising the spot price dramatically help with these physical conditions of the pipelines/other power production/distribution apparatus in such a way that providing power becomes available more quickly (if at all)? [1] Has Texas never had weather like this in 350ish years and there was no reasonable justification for preparing for something like this? [1]https://mobile.twitter.com/jmontforttx/status/1361703554789031937 https://mobile.twitter.com/jmontforttx/status/13617035547890...
- ceejayoz 6y agohttps://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... > The systems that get gas from the earth aren't properly built for cold weather. Operators in West Texas’ Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil fields in the world, are particularly struggling to bring natural gas to the surface, analysts said, as cold weather and snow close wells or cause power outages that prevent pumping the fossil fuels from the ground. > “Gathering lines freeze, and the wells get so cold that they can’t produce,” said Parker Fawcett, a natural gas analyst for S&P Global Platts. “And, pumps use electricity, so they’re not even able to lift that gas and liquid, because there’s no power to produce.” > Texas does not have as much storage capacity as other states, experts said, because the resource-laden state can easily pull it from the ground when it's needed — usually.
- newbie789 6y agoSo, to answer my specific questions 1. So basically, this is the worst winter in the history of Texas to such an extent that nobody could have possibly predicted this? That sucks. 2. Can you answer my question about the spot price increase? What does that accomplish in immediate terms? As a sub-question, the article that I'm asking about says that electricity generators haven't been able to make money for over a decade. Why have they been providing this for free (or worse at a loss!) for so long? That sounds like some top-notch philanthropy! Is this an issue of the private company providing electricity at a loss statewide for so long that they can't stand the financial hit of maintaining their systems when strained for more than a couple days?
- TedShiller 6y agoCold weather. It’s not always someone’s fault.
- woeirua 6y agoNo, it really is someone's fault this time. Texas has had these events occur multiple times in the past, and they had grid failures in almost the exact same way. This happened because the Texas legislature decided to put their head in the sand and avoid doing what was necessary to ensure that their grid, and subsequently their constituents, would be safe in these kind of storms.
- sjg007 6y agoI think solar panels and power walls are clearly the future. You have some issue with the snow but maybe the wall helps you get through it.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoIt's in the headline: "Texas"
- jostmey 6y agoI would say the situation is getting bad. Many of my colleagues don't have heat. Water pipes are bursting everywhere. I never imagined this would happen in Texas, which from my observations was well run compared to other places I've lived
- zamadatix 6y agoPipes bursting has absolutely got to suck right now. No power, no water, probably not the greatest of roads still, and getting everything fixed is going to take quite a while.
- bouncycastle 6y agoI wonder if this is related to bitcoin mining? (https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-farms-in-texas-offline-from-winter-storm https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-farms-in-texas-offli...) Sure, they claimed that they turned it off, but there will always be someone who doesn't turn it off, especially when the bitcoin prices are going up astronomically. Rising electricity price doesn't matter. Also, they hold up the "floor price" for electricity and push it up, meaning that electricity prices will never be cheaper.
- zamadatix 6y agoEven if all of the bitcoin mining in the world happened in TX and 0% of them shut down it'd still just be 1/4 the normal power draw in the state (121 TWh vs 429 TWh), far less than the demand increase due to the cold or current production/demand gap.
- bouncycastle 6y agoStill keeps the floor price of electricity up as some would probably not bother turning off in the case of an astronomical bitcoin price. (Read the article Yahoo, they are in fact keeping some on!) Also I'm assuming 429 TWh is when it's at full capacity. You have to quote the number for the current crippled capacity for a fair comparison.
- zamadatix 6y ago429 TWh is average yearly usage, current "crippled" usage is 77% the yearly average usage, so 100% worldwide bitcoin usage would only account for ~1/3 the current "crippled" power delivery. Worldwide mining would have to pull a hell of a lot more than ~1/4 (of TX) of ~1/10 (TX of the US) ~1/7 (US of world) to be setting the price floor of electricity. http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load note some figures are in power (watts) and energy (watt hours)
- bouncycastle 6y agoStill, that's a lot of electricity that could have been warming houses.
- whatever1 6y agoFor some reason the supply of gas to houses is unaffected. So those with on-line natural-gas-powered generators are fine.
- chasd00 6y agoMy sister lives in Rockwall and she’s been without power since Sunday with no service expected until Friday. I’m in Dallas and thought I made it through unscathed. Power and inet have been stable with gas furnaces doing their best. However today at about 430pm a water pipe burst in an exterior wall. I shut off the water, found the break, cut a hole in the wall all set to repair. I get to home depot and they closed early! Closing a hardware store early during a major weather event seems wrong to me. I called a couple plumbers but they’re booked for weeks (not surprising)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pier25 6y agoBecause of what happened in Texas, the higher demand of gas affected electricity generation in Northern Mexico which has been without electricity too. As as I understand it, not only the price of Gas wet up 5,000% but also there were shortages. The federal government has started doing electricity cuts in most Mexico to control the gas reserves and distribute energy to the Northern states. Edit: Here is an article about this in English: https://www.8newsnow.com/news/international/mexico-suffers-another-day-of-rolling-blackouts-due-to-storm/ https://www.8newsnow.com/news/international/mexico-suffers-a...
- texasbigdata 6y agoOne of my smartest Austin friends predicted the outages by watching nat gas spot prices as early as last friday. Weird world
- sjg007 6y agoNext time you need to buy nat gas futures.
- skybrian 6y agoSpot prices are up dramatically. Futures seem to only be up slightly. Maybe a natural gas supplier that was prepared could have done something, but could an investor have profited from this without being able to do physical delivery?
- zozin 6y agoSounds like traders predicted the outages.
- HNfriend234 6y agoMexico is smart though because they have LNG import terminals. There is an incoming LNG carrier coming in less than 24 hours which will restore their power.
- 6y ago
- autotune 6y agoI got caught in the storm and have been without power 24 hours and counting. Thankfully there is a hotel downtown that has their own power generators for the same amount of time that I've been staying at and have been staying safe. My thoughts and prayers to those without power who have not been able to find shelter in these trying times.
- synergy20 6y agoPlan B: 1. generators, generators with plenty oil. 2. satellite internet 3. water tank or large container 4. food for two weeks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- doggodaddo78 6y agoIn an apartment in Austin 78702. 47 F / 8 C inside, 22 / -6 outside. Power out for 2 days now, while west across I-35 has always had power. There's some baloney they're feeding us about "complicated critical loads" while huge swats of hotels and office buildings have power (I can see from north to south since my unit overhangs the frontage and has windows all over, and elevated enough to see over I-35). My fridge food is in a cardboard box outside with a shower curtain liner around it. Water still working, and there are no plans according to the water company to interrupt service. There's no hot water (which IIRC, condemns a building) because the apartment's water heater needs electricity. I'm out of battery bank capacity and might have to leave the area. Appears it will go on until Friday or Saturday, so 5-6 days total.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jeffrallen 6y agoBon voyage. Stay safe.
- turtlebits 6y agoMaybe its time for people to stop treating electricity like essentially an unlimited cheap resource and instead something they consciously try not to waste. I've been working in an off-grid office where I am limited by solar and battery capacity and it really puts into perspective what really needs to be plugged in all the time and how much running a large appliance affects capacity. Maybe electricity should be sold in blocks that have to be refilled, set daily/monthly quotas or limit current draw. Or even just significantly raise "2nd block/high usage" kWh prices.
- zamadatix 6y agoI think most would rather pay an e.g. +10% premium for the plants to handle more extreme conditions once a decade than think about what has to be plugged in all day every day.
- pixl97 6y agoThe generator will take that 10% as profit and not invest, then when the disaster happens they'll beg for public money and even higher rates.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoIt's quite easy to mandate providers have certain winterization requirements, lots of other power grids do it. For that matter, it's exactly why insurance is so tightly regulated, because government wants to ensure companies have the resources to handle rare but predictable events.
- Johnny555 6y agoI'd be surprised if they will. If provider A is selling power at 10 cents/KWh and says that they can handle a once every decade cold spell, and provider B is selling power at 9 cents/KWh and isn't taking cold weather precautions, I'd bet that most people will use the cheaper provider. They'll tell themselves that if the extreme event happens again, they'll switch to another provider, or they'll tough it out, or get a hotel or whatever, then they'll be in this same situation where there's no where to go and no where else to buy power from. It needs to be mandated so all power producers incur costs to handle the weather.
- throwawaymanbot 6y agoTexas style capitalism.
- TrumpsHandler 6y agoBut you got cheap taxes
- lightgreen 6y agoExpensive taxes don't help either. California had blackouts in 2020.
- pomian 6y agoI keep thinking, that from an engineering standpoint, maybe it's better to look at: What went right? Look at all the processes that worked, and continued to work in spite of high demand and stress. Those are the systems that should be studied, copied, and understood.
- kingaillas 6y agoThat doesn't scale because physical infrastructure can't be "copied" as easily. It's better to fix what failed (everything from "use winterized oil for wind turbines" to "insulate above ground pipes" to "better granularity on local power grids" to "better insulation for homes" to "don't have steam turbines at nuclear power plants in the outside air"). Basically TX doesn't required electricity generators to cold-proof their assets so they fail. That's the low regulation low cost route.
- Pokepokalypse 6y agoconservatism
- cbmuser 6y agoThe blame doesn’t lie on the power grid but on the power sources. Texas has only four nuclear reactors, it should have many more as only nuclear is able to deliver power under virtually all weather conditions (yes, I know that South Texas 1 tripped but that was due to a false alarm). It’s because of renewables and gas power plants that electricity became scarse. Many wind turbines in particular froze because of the low temperatures. The situation in Texas reminds me of the situation during a blizzard in East Germany 1978/79 where all lignite-fired power plants came to a hold due to the lignite freezing while the two nuclear power plants delivered electricity without any problems.
- pixl97 6y agoRenewables had nothing to do with this and performed better than expected. A nuke plant tripped off and natural gas production and de-watering froze starving the plants. The vast majority of capacity loss was nat gas.
- 0xy 6y agoNatural gas follows all rollouts of renewables, though. In fact I'm not even sure you can separate the two. Grids with renewables would absolutely collapse without natural gas. The only thing capable of replacing natural gas is batteries, which are extremely expensive and aren't exactly renewable, either.
- tomjakubowski 6y agoRenewables may create demand for more natural gas on the grid, but you seem to be saying also that if Texas hadn't expanded renewables, they wouldn't have built so many natural gas plants. What would they have built instead to supply their power?
- 0xy 6y agoThey *should* build more nuclear, but most environmental activists are staunchly against nuclear for misguided reasons.
- gego 6y agoI am always amazed how well the "market" regulates resilience... when, for example, regulators used the Wienerberger winter-proof brick with much better isolation as standard for building regulations in some regions of Europe with cold seasons, businesses and builders sued. Two years later, the same regulation helped people come through a cold winter... I fear it needs regulations for infrastructure resilience...
- fuzzfactor 6y agoThe market for home backup generators and batteries in Texas sure has been booming like never before. It might be worth following the money to see if there are decision-makers heavily invested in this type of thing.
- GiorgioG 6y agoThe incompetence of the Texas ERCOT is mind blowing. A relative works in a semiconductor fab in the Austin area. Apparently the utility gave the fabs an entire hour of warning that their power was going to be shut off. These plants can't shut down properly in an hour.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 0xbadcafebee 6y agoYou'd probably be more comfortable if you left your house and went winter camping. Surprisingly, it's not that difficult to stay warm while winter camping, you just have to be doing something: cooking, eating, exploring, talking. Learn neat skills like: keep your water in a cooler so it doesn't freeze; pee in a nalgene rather than go outside to pee, then keep the nalgene in your sleeping bag to retain heat; eating to stay warm; changing clothes to stay warm; covering your neck to stay warm; which clothes will actually keep you warm and which just look neat; what fabrics are best in winter; layering; what stoves work below freezing; how to stay positive ("hey, my toes still work!"); how to remove ice from your socks in the morning; how to keep icicles from forming in your tent; how to anchor a tent in a blizzard; how to find a tent in a blizzard; how to help your friend find his tent that blew away in a blizzard; how to pick snacks (two things that don't freeze hard: fat and alcohol); how to pick snacks so you don't need to poop often; staying hydrated and warm.
- masklinn 6y agoThat requires winter camping gear. Which you could use inside your home if you have it in the first place. It’s also a bit late to learn winter camping if you’re already stranded with neither electricity nor gear.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- williesleg 6y agoEverybody's so smart here! Wow!
- ourlordcaffeine 6y agoAt $9000 per MWh ($9 per KWh), you could connect your exercise bike to the grid and make nearly minimum wage if you're fit.
- joejohnson 6y agoFunny to see the replies to this comment I posted just 6 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26096563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26096563
- todd8 6y agoI'm sure that Texas could have prepared for this cold weather better. However, to be fair, its a rare for the weather to be this cold in Texas. Even in climates where there cold weather is common, cold weather disasters still happen. The 1998 North American Ice Storm caused power outages that lasted weeks. It affected Ontario, Quebec and Main. It left 4,000,000 people in Canada and 700,000 in Main without power for weeks. Twenty-five people died from the cold, 12 more from related flooding caused by Ice. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ic...
- putzdown 6y agoPlease help me understand this. Why is deregulation causing suppliers to be unable to charge enough to cover their costs? I should think that would be the opposite. “ Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, blamed the failures on the state’s deregulated power system, which doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving power plants... ‘For more than a decade, generators have not been able to charge what it costs them to produce electricity.’” How could that be correct?
- Matumio 6y agoNot an expert, but if it was a purely deregulated market, wouldn't you expect the cheapest supplier to win? The power grid is a shared medium, and you get a "tragedy of the commons" situation. Everyone profits from a resilient grid, but no single supplier has an incentive pay the cost to stabilize it for everyone else.
- seanalltogether 6y agoI don't know the specifics, but decreased regulation and increased competition can have the affect of a race to the bottom. Without regulation that imposes certain standards, you can't afford to protect your business against rare events because none of your competitors are doing it either.
- fuzzfactor 6y agoWhen HL&P owned the power plants, distribution infrastructure, and customer accounts there was concentrated incentive for better reliability and that's what we had. Now many deregulated retail providers hold the customer accounts, and depend on Centerpoint (now sole owner of power & gas lines only) to deliver from their third-party wholesale provider, who contracts with one or more generators for ultimate supply. Plus of course ERCOT is involved and has been intentionally configured to take blame for things like this so there's another entity to participate in the finger-pointing.
- whatever1 6y agoIf this happens once every 10 years, it means that each year there is 10% probability of happening. I would happily pay a 10% premium knowing that measures are in place to not let my family freeze to death when the temperature slightly drops.
- ziggypup 6y agoThe problem is simple really. Green energy can’t handle bad weather. Texas has made a huge green energy investment and fossil fuel energy sources have been on the decline since...2008. Atomic energy has also been demonized. While the article states that ‘Most of the power knocked offline came from thermal sources’ that is a number based on total wattage output, not total production sources, and those outages were caused not only by weather but by cascading failures related to wind sources. The article attempts to assert that the failures were due to lack of investment but truly the failures were caused by relying on wind energy that isn’t ready for prime time and will never be resilient enough in the face of dramatic weather events.
- xadhominemx 6y agoThis is factually incorrect.
- michelb 6y agoThis must be great for the Silicon Valley companies that are moving to Texas.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cbar_tx 6y agoI guess you can say it was because they didn't go all in on renewable energy but you can also say they weren't prepared for the inevitable result of the renewable regime's agenda. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37814 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37814