21 ms·

What 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 Te

• gregw2 6y ago
  Anecdote: 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.
    • mrfusion 6y ago
      My gas fireplace had a place you could put in D batteries to run it. Pretty cool feature if the power goes out.
      • koolba 6y ago
        Having grown up with wood fireplaces, the thought of having to change the batteries to turn it on is hilarious.
    • slfnflctd 6y ago
      I have a gas-only fireplace less than 20 years old that does not require power to function. There's a mechanical spark generator for lighting the pilot, but in colder months I keep the pilot on all the time. I believe the opening/closing of the valve for the gas to the main flame area is powered by a thermopile once the pilot is on.
    • gregw2 6y ago
      Good question. I am unclear about heaters but I do think some of them are out for some team members and you may be right on that. Ovens also are commonly gas but ones since 1990 require an electric light. But... stovetops which are gas do not require electronic ignition. The risk is of course carbon monoxide poisoning; hopefully you have such detectors as part of your in-home fire detectors. The problem is not so much the deliberate rotating blackouts who can get restored after a time, but large groups of people for whom power is out due to some other weather-related outage issue; there are large swaths of them in Houston at least according to the Centerpoint Energy outage map which distinguishes between the two (but does seem to be not the most timely updated data per various people I have talked to whose status has changed during today: http://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/ http://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/ )
    • monadic3 6y ago
      Gas heaters still require electricity for basic management. I'd imagine heaters have batteries for specifically this case. If they don't, it's frankly a miracle if we don't lose anyone, and someone needs to get prosecuted.
  • ip26 6y ago
    Gas furnaces need power for the circuitry & blower. My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder, but you can warm yourself with radiant heat while it burns. Freestanding wood stoves on the other hand are very capable of warming a large space.
    • dwohnitmok 6y ago
      > My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder Why is that? EDIT: Oh are you saying that the rate of heating provided by the fire is less than the overall rate of heat leaving the entire house?
      • jcims 6y ago
        No, the issue is that the draw of the heated air up through the flue creates a negative pressure inside the home, which gets made up through all the little nooks and crannies around the house. As a result, the room where the fireplace is will be warmer but the rest the house is typically colder.
        • dwohnitmok 6y ago
          Oh interesting. So you're saying it actually accelerates net heat loss to the environment?
          • jcims 6y ago
            Probably to a small extent but the more pronounced effect is the heat gradient. The rest of the house becoming quite a bit colder just sends you back to the fireplace, which is generally not a bad place to be, so overall it's not a major issue.
            • KMag 6y ago
              > so overall it's not a major issue ... unless the extra peripheral heat loss freezes pipes.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • foxtr0t 6y ago
    >Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. This is extremely problematic. Power going out for periods of time less than 48 hours is one thing, losing water from the utility is a problem 3rd world countries have. You sure these people's pipes didn't simply freeze. If its the utility, shame on Texas.
    • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      Even if your pipes didn't freeze, the upstream pipes could have frozen, or enough of your neighbors' pipes could have frozen, burst, and gotten thawed again, allowing water to flow freely out of the system.
      • tharkun__ 6y ago
        Funny you mention that. Quebec is used to cold weather. Aging infrastructure. There's not a single winter that you don't hear about water main breaks ;) Seen a few parking lot lakes myself over the years.
    • jcranmer 6y ago
      Having worked at a water treatment plant in the past: if the power is out for a sufficiently long time, then your water is going to go dry. The time it takes is dependent on the distribution system (and time of year, you consume about twice as much water in summer as in winter), but where I worked, it was about 12 hours. Also, we had no generators. Why? Because a) power outages of that length are extremely uncommon (2 in 70 years, IIRC) and b) the power draw of a large water treatment plant is insanely high. The water company was literally the largest consumer of power in the entire state, and turning on some of the pumps require the power company's permission because it draws that much power. It's not very feasible to keep a backup power system for such a large facility when the need for it is so very low.
  • hotsauceror 6y ago
    We had an incident early this AM and of the eight people we paged, only one had power. I’ve been without power, heat, internet, water, or septic more than 90 minutes at a time for two days. My house was 44 degrees this morning when I woke up. Sunday night we were without power or heat for seven and a half hours. Our DR plan didn’t really account for all of our staff being on the same power grid!
    • geoduck14 6y ago
      >Our DR plan didn’t really account for all of our staff being on the same power grid Yup. I hear you loud and clear.
    • arrosenberg 6y ago
      Remote workers just became a resiliency requirement for businesses.
      • tjr225 6y ago
        You would think so but there were rolling blackouts during the bay area/socal fire season last year and nobody seemed to change course. I wonder if it’s because a lot of companies in the Bay Area already had remote workers?
        • gtaylor 6y ago
          Those were fairly short and did not take out the entirety of the Bay at once.
      • bushbaba 6y ago
        It already was. 24x7x365 geo redundancy SRE and Ops teams is pretty common place. Texas was actually a preferred location as the time zone allowed both west coast and east coast work hours.
    • pault 6y ago
      I’m in Austin, without power for almost 48 hours now. There’s ice in my roommate’s bedroom. It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’m hearing that we won’t have power until Thursday at the earliest. I’ve gone beyond furious to just horribly depressed.
  • killjoywashere 6y ago
    My brother's house is currently 38°. Inside. Also, gas is not useful for a central, forced air system because it depends on the electric motor driving the blower.
  • sjg007 6y ago
    For natural gas you want a sealed one so effluent goes up the chimney but the heat radiates through the glass. But heat rises so you create convection. I think a fireplace is an 80% loss so for $10 spent you get $2 heat.
  • brk 6y ago
    A "decorative" residential fireplace typically won't do much to provide real heat. If you want something that will make a difference it is usually going to be a sealed unit or something a little more purpose-built. Still, when you compare the burner in the average small fireplace to what you have in a typical furnace, it becomes clear pretty quickly that a fireplace is not likely to be a heat source of much merit, and even if it did have a decent BTU output, it's unlikely to be evenly distributed around the house. tl;dr - a typical residential fireplace isn't an alternative to a furnace.
  • kelnos 6y ago
    In 1996 (or thereabouts), I lived in Maryland, and my family lost power for 6 days due to a snow/ice storm that took out a ton of power lines (water froze on them and the added weight pulled them down). We had no natural gas service, and our running water was provided by a well in the backyard that had an electric pump. So no electricity, heat, or running water for 6 days in ~20-30°F weather. (Fortunately we'd prepared by buying many gallons of drinking water, and filling up bathtubs and buckets with water earlier in the week.) We had two fireplaces in the house, one each in the living room and master bedroom, so we kept all doors closed and all slept in the master bedroom. They did a decent enough job keeping us somewhat comfortable while wearing several layers and winter coats at all times, and sleeping in sleeping bags and with extra blankets. (An oddity of our house was that the chimney ran through the middle of it, not outside an exterior wall, so even some of the heat going up it would warm the house a bit.) After 4 days my dad felt the roads were clear enough for us to go to a motel where we could shower and experience some heat. Going back to the house after that (before power was restored) was in some ways worse than enduring the first 4 days. Granted, the reason for that outage was very different from what happened in Texas, but I just wanted to highlight that our power grid everywhere is still very susceptible to bad weather. (Well, ok, this story is 25 years old, but I suspect things haven't changed all that much.)
    • blabitty 6y ago
      I remember that storm! Week off of school and you could skate right on the sidewalk.
      • VonGuard 6y ago
        I remember trees encased in beautiful ice. Freezing rain, basically encased everything in that ice: powerlines, trees, roads, it was a monster.
    • sizzle 6y ago
      Is there no CO2 danger from sleeping with gas stove on? Don’t people die from carbon monoxide poisoning from sleeping with open flames?
  • JamesBarney 6y ago
    I'm surprised they have natural gas heat. Everyone I know has electric heat. I've been without power for 2 days and it sucks. My house was 34 degrees this morning. No water for 2 days. Most of my friends are in the same boat.
  • ewams 6y ago
    Re fireplace - check out a ventless system. They can change existing burner and logs with ventless which gives you lots of heat that a vented system won't. Can get a decent one for 600-1200 bucks.
  • hedora 6y ago
    Modern fireplaces can be >90% efficient. Some pull feed air from the outside, creating no draft inside.
  • Johnny555 6y ago
    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 have a gas fireplace, it's vented to the outside through a chimney. If you sit right in front of it, you can feel a little radiant heat, but the true warmth comes from the electric fan that circulates air through the firebox that's heated from the gas flames. I'd always figured that if there was an extended power failure, I'd set up a 5V fan from my computer to blow air through the the fireplace. Some gas fireplaces are "direct vent", which means that they vent the exhaust right into the room. I'd never trust one of those not to fill the room with Carbon Monoxide.
    • KMag 6y ago
      I'm honestly surprised direct vent gas fireplaces are legal.
  • theshrike79 6y ago
    > 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. American fireplaces in general are a joke. You are just spending way too much energy and not really storing it anywhere except the air around it. They are built to look good, not to actually heat anything properly. Check any Nordic country, we don't have gas fireplaces nor do we have the silly tiny iron things you have. What we do have is stone fireplaces. [1] How it works is this: You heat the multi-hundred kg stone mass using any material you want, for us it's usually wood in some form. After the stone is hot enough, you stop wasting wood and close the chimney when the fire has burned out to prevent heat from escaping. The stone mass will store heat and distribute it slowly and evenly over many hours, keeping everyone warm without electricity. If you want to distribute it, there are fans that operate on the radiant heat coming from the fireplace. A properly installed fireplace (central to the house) will keep a normal home toasty warm for a day or two with one proper heating cycle depending on how cold it's outside. [1] https://www.tulikivi.com/en https://www.tulikivi.com/en
    • paraselene_ 6y ago
      Or you know, instead of having a whole fireplace, just get a kerosene heater? Enough to heat a whole room in case of power&gas outages, last long enough through the night on one fill, and kerosene can be had at a gas station.
      • theshrike79 6y ago
        Pretty much anything actually built to heat stuff is better than the all-looks-no-function "fireplaces" the Americans seem to be in love with. The ones they like to mount their TVs over, despite the neck pain.
        • Cederfjard 6y ago
          You have a slightly condescending tone here that I'm not sure is necessary. Perhaps they're "all-looks-no-function" because they're mostly meant to be decorative rather than functional?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • jdc 6y ago
    My dad's heated with nothing but wood for at least a couple winters. The fireplace is never lit, but he'd run his airtight stoves would non-stop.
  • lmilcin 6y ago
    I have seen some fireplaces in US (I am from Poland) and outside of northern states they are all decorative pieces not designed to heat the home. A good fireplace is completely closed (yes! no fire visible!) and is built to recover and store as much heat as possible. * the fireplace must be enclosed completely so that it is possible to regulate amount of air going inside and especially to close it completely and SAFELY when you go to sleep. You need to close it so that it does not suck air out of your house. The fireplace stores heat but it does not make any sense if, once it burns out, the air takes all that stored heat out. * the hot gasses go through a complicated tunnel (not directly into chimney) to heat up a large amount of bricks made from material that has high energy capacity. That's why here in Europe we don't tell silly stories about Santa coming through the chimney, because that would be totally ridiculous. He could just as well be coming through water pipes, it is just as accessible. * the fireplace is built on a steel bed so that you can easily take out the ash WHILE it is burning. Also, it supplies the fire from beneath which makes for much better heating. * traditionally, if you made effort to keep fire on throughout the day, you want to make as much use of it as possible. That's why you will see these frequently performing multiple functions: separate space for oven, large top to be able to heat multitude of things, maybe even place to sleep (that especially in really cold climate in Russia, in Poland much less popular). Here are pictures of traditional fireplaces you could expect to heat well: https://images.app.goo.gl/Ka9uiuNTU3LxMHqa6 https://images.app.goo.gl/Ka9uiuNTU3LxMHqa6 https://images.app.goo.gl/rWrvoqGxzcJHC5P77 https://images.app.goo.gl/rWrvoqGxzcJHC5P77 The first one is something you would expect heating the kitchen and the main/dining room and provide most of the heating for the house throughout the day. The second one is something to put in individual rooms that are too far from the kitchen. It is easy to light it up and it heats extremely quickly but also stores absolutely no heat.
    • evgen 6y ago
      There is a difference between a fireplace and a wood-fueled heater. You have described the latter. No one would ever call what you have shown in those images a 'fireplace' in English. There are wood-fueled heaters but they have mostly been replaced by ones that use composite wood pellets, these are popular for off-grid heating in the US.
  • throwaway189262 6y ago
    I've been out of power since Sunday night. Water out since yesterday. I'm on the seventh floor too. Most of my friends are in even worse situation. I'm a paranoid near doomsday prepped and my batteries are still low. Walking out of my apartment is indistinguishable from an apocalypse. The emergency system batteries died days ago. Police don't come. The roads are pure ice. Nothing is open. All essential supplies are sold out. Fire systems are all disabled because pipes have burst. Elevators have been gone for a long time. Without a flashlight you might as well be in a cave. Pray for us. People are going to die
  • LgWoodenBadger 6y ago
    I can't speak to a fireplace by itself, but anyone who uses wood as a primary source for heat will have a wood stove or furnace. Wood stoves and furnaces are pretty advanced these days, some of them have catalytic "converters" (I guess that's the term). A fireplace looks nice, but doesn't do much else other than that.
  • fuzzfactor 6y ago
    Power down at home in west Houston before daylight Monday. Lost water before daylight Tuesday. Power came back on just before daylight Wednesday, off just over 48 hrs, not as bad as some hurricanes. Water service unlikely for a few more days, worse than any hurricane this century.
  • bjacobt 6y ago
    > 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 believe fireplaces in Texas are for decoration. I live in a relatively new house in North Dallas, read open floor plan, and turning on the fireplace make absolutely no difference. We managed to turn it on by replacing the igniter batteries and turned it back off after an hour because you don't get any heat unless you sit within 1 feet of it.
• TheJoeMan 6y ago
  Yes I agree state's legislatures did not prepare. But maybe that shows why a body of politicians is not prepped for engineering nuances. Maybe they should have adequately applied leverage to the power companies to "push" them to better practices rather than trying to fine and inspect and regulate which is an inherently "pulling" option which the companies will always try to weasel out of. This argument to incentivize rather than punish applies to many issues with legislative bodies across all complex industries like Big Tech and other Engineering fields. You pass a law that drinking water cannot have over 10ppm of XXX carcinogen? There is most likely going to be 9.99ppm because that's the bare minimum. We really need to move from stick to carrot.
  • newacct583 6y ago
    > Yes I agree state's legislatures did not prepare. But maybe that shows why a body of politicians is not prepped for engineering nuances. The problem is that Texas is an outlier. Other governments, broadly, get this right. Those FERC recommendations mentioned upthread? They're the work of the government (hell, NERC is even a multinational globalist thing). That argues less that "governments are bad" than it does for "THIS government was bad".
  • mikepurvis 6y ago
    Can you clarify what the distinction is that you see here? Ultimately, whether it's fines/regulations ("stick") or bonuses/incentives ("carrot"), you're still going to have a bunch of budget-focused politicians pulling the levers. Their incentive structure rewards short term budget savings at the expense of long term preparedness. The real fix is to have a non-partisan body staffed by actual engineers setting this kind of policy, isn't it?
  • ianai 6y ago
    The definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different outcome. When another option works and the current implementation fails, then it's time to change to the workable option.
  • confidantlake 6y ago
    Under 10 ppm you get a carrot. Then drinking water will still be 9.99. How is it any different?
• mjevans 6y ago
  Parts 15 and 16 of that PDF are, in polished up polite speak, particularly scathing in terms of what's being recommended. The summary is: Regularly inspect and maintain your equipment, here are the obvious things that must be done. (Unstated: We feel a need to say this, because obviously it didn't happen in at least one place...) Probably got cut by the bean counters and a cut-throat market that didn't require safety and availability as considerations.
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    Given the current crisis, it seems like they weren’t scathing enough.
    • myself248 6y ago
      If the penalty for ignoring scathing words is hurt feelings, then there's no reason to be scathing or not. (Well, except it might look good in an investigation someday.) What's needed is real incentives, carrots and/or sticks, with real enforcement and follow-through. Speak softly, and all.
• cavisne 6y ago
  It's hilarious to look back on this HN post and the top comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14630650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14630650 Exactly the same thing happened in South Australia in 2016 1) Renewables % of generation mix grows (wind + solar) 2) Base generation sources get pushed out by economics and regulation (coal) 3) Peak generation sources get squeezed by the economics of wind + solar over summer (lots of wind, lots of sun) and begin to be relegated to backup roles 4) Something bad happens (in SA it was software misconfiguration across multiple wind generation sources) 5) The backup generation gets used for the first time, suprise suprise it doesnt work 6) chaos
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    Yeah, but none of that appears to actually be what happened. Renewables are down from their peak capacity in Texas, but they're actually performing above what the grid thought they'd do. So it's not like ERCOT got caught with their pants down when it comes to renewable generation. Instead the issue appears to be that thermal (gas, coal, and nuclear) plants all over Texas are failing in the face of cold weather, and because Texas has its own grid it can't shift enough power from nearby states in order to cover the demand. And it's not like these plants were off and everyone is surprised that they didn't turn on; Texas gets most of its power from natural gas most of the time. More to the point cold weather specific recommendations from back in 2011 weren't followed with sadly predictable consequences.
  • bbreier 6y ago
    I think you might have missed this important line: > Most of the power knocked offline came from thermal sources, Woodfin said, particularly natural gas.
    • cavisne 6y ago
      backup generation (gas) is not working. As mentioned. When your only on-demand source of generation is only profitable in peak periods its a recipe for disaster.
      • 6y ago
• jswizzy 6y ago
  wrong
• oivey 6y ago
  The legislature could have done something, but the private utility companies could have also decided to provide a quality, reliable product. In the old days they may have considered it their civic duty. This is just another example of why private utility monopolies don’t work.
  • Spooky23 6y ago
    They did that in the old days because the public utility commission wielded a big stick. Companies only understand punishment when delivering a commodity service. Power companies care about the dividend. In my experience running capital projects, you get performance by paying modest performance bonuses and assessing tough penalties for non-performance.
• Animats 6y ago
  Would customers be willing to pay 20% more for electric power to prevent a once a decade event?
  • tedunangst 6y ago
    The customers unfortunate enough to have signed up for spot pricing are paying 200x more than before. One week of that is enough to erase two decades of 20% savings.
  • zero_deg_kevin 6y ago
    Are customers being asked to pay 20% more? 20 whole percent more?
    • cjbprime 6y ago
      It would be interesting to see a plot of price vs. uptime in the face of unlikely events for electric grids, and which spot on the curve has been chosen here. There are definitely points on such curves, of course, where you've exhausted the sweet spot and just have the option of paying e.g. 3x as much for a very modest marginal decrease in risk. But that doesn't sound like the case here.
      • zero_deg_kevin 6y ago
        I haven’t found a detailed comparison, but I learned today that El Paso, TX requires utility operators to winterize. Comparing El Paso to similar cities in Texas should provide a more definitive answer.
    • Animats 6y ago
      20% is about what energy deregulation supposedly saved customers. Utilities regulated under rate-of-return regulation tended to overbuild and maintain large safety margins, because they could pass those costs along to the customer.
      • takeda 6y ago
• roenxi 6y ago
  It is annoying when this sort of event happens and everyone starts deciding what they believe to be truth within 48 hours of the outage. It makes more sense to be talking about the 2011 outages in terms of what went wrong than the 2021 ones - because we have actual information on 2011 instead of "things went wrong!" now. I want to thank you personally for injecting a PDF into the discussion, but also positively assert that it is not obvious what just happened this week. We don't yet know how many of the recommendations were ignored, what happened in the last decade regulator-wise or whether this round of failures are for the same or different reasons. Speculation is much less useful than waiting a few months for the actual investigations. Emergencies are urgent, engineering (and political) decisions and assessments are never emergencies.
  • tacon 6y ago
    Since the Texas Legislature is in its once every two year session right now, and four million Texans are pissed off, it will be fun to see if new laws result this cycle.
    • Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      Once every two years FFS this makes the Handforth Parish Council look Good.
      • trentnix 6y ago
        It’s not a bug. It’s the best feature.
        • Mauricebranagh 6y ago
          Apart from the holding the executive to account part of democracy.
          • trentnix 6y ago
            The executive can't do much damage if it doesn't have any money to work with.
• fuzzfactor 6y ago
  0. Houston Lighting & Power Local monopoly. 1. Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Holding_Company_Act_of_1935 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Holding_Company... Limited the profits of a utility holding company, spurring the formation of additional shell companies to each get the maximum allowed. Overturned in 2005, when today's highly increased risk was cemented. 2. Houston Industries, Inc. https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/67/HOUSTON-INDUSTRIES-INCORPORATED.html https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/67/HOUSTON-IND... 3. The Public Utility Commission of Texas https://www.puc.texas.gov https://www.puc.texas.gov Still exists in more toothless form after 2005. 4. Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Reliability_Council_of_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Reliability_Council_o... Est. 1970 just in case of unreliability (for utility shareholders), not much of a factor until recently. Given more leeway to disappoint consumers after 2002. 5. Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA) https://www.lawinsider.com/documents/5KMbhJATuC2 https://www.lawinsider.com/documents/5KMbhJATuC2 Est. 1975. Modified 1995, 1997, 1999, restructured 2007, latest edition effective as of September 1, 2017. Straight downhill as far as reliability goes. https://www.electricchoice.com/blog/guide-texas-electricity-deregulation https://www.electricchoice.com/blog/guide-texas-electricity-... Up until 1995, under the HL&P monopoly the first 675 kWh remained extremely low cost for residential consumers as had been agreed with PUC to allow jacking up further residential kWh, and business accounts, into rates beyond the reach of low-income households. Check your old bills. Of course 675 kWh is not enough for air conditioning but otherwise a small household could remain within that tier if they could conserve effectively, and had gas heat for the normally mild winters. As soon as deregulation started, HL&P then began the agressive promotion of new plans to all their established customers, similar to the limited number of newly allowed competitors where giving a break for the first bunch of kWh was no longer required. For a while there it was still required for HL&P consumers who had not opted out of their 1980's plan, but they made whatever straight-rate deals were necessary to get this info off of people's bills ASAP. 6. Deregulation of the Texas electricity market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_electricity_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_elec... Headed us in the current direction starting in 2002. New company Centerpoint took over the energy delivery infrastructure. Transmission assets from HL&P and others, delivery pipelines from gas suppliers, all of it. As the name implies, pay no attention to a central point of failure. Nothing to see here. By 1983 in the other most air-conditioned state, FPL the Florida state monopoly in a number of power plants was consuming the same grade of fuel oil as the Houston monopoly. A fuel oil vessel could be loaded from a Houston refinery, and with freight to FL the consumers there were paying half the price as in Houston using the same fuel without the added cost of sea freight. 7. As we have seen, Gov. Abbot has never been good enough for Texas, Lt. Gov. Patrick experienced his high point as a failed sports announcer, and Atty. Gen Paxton has only enough integrity for an uninhabited island. Don't get me started on the equally compromised Ex. Rep. DeLay who in 2002 became US House Majority "Leader". Left in disgrace over lack of ethics himself.