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From an engineering standpoint, I agree that you want a true RCA and this event's RCA will be a bit different than 2011's. And this RCA (and its political conse

by gregw2 6y ago

From an engineering standpoint, I agree that you want a true RCA and this event's RCA will be a bit different than 2011's. And this RCA (and its political consequences) will take time, doesn't need to be done right this minute, etc etc. However, this problem is not at its root an engineering one; it is political. While the public attention is on this, we should point attention as close as possible to the most likely cause given the information we have at the time. It's bayesian truth and bayesian politics. You'll note I didn't draw conclusions about which recommendations were ignored but having read through them all, there is no way they were all actually followed and we ended up where we are. I think some basics are fairly obvious. While some winterization perhaps was done, there is some degree of winterization that was never done; power plants in other states far north of us and colder than us are not having the same types of problems. Various professors in various cities in Texas who follow this stuff confirm this in various news outlets I haven't cited here. I also wouldn't be surprised if there was were issues with gas transport from wells through pipelines to plants that were noted in 2011 but much more severe this time due to even colder temps and unexpected by all. But still... At the end of the day, Texas has optimized for cheap power and has not funded the work of reliable power. This is a political decision at the end of the day due to companies not paying for their externalities of poor service. I'm open to saying we shouldn't blame follower-type politicians who were scared of "raising electrical rates" and we should blame ourselves, but let's all acknowledge that some costs that weren't borne should have been borne and some oversight that should have occurred didn't occur. Is that so hard to concede at this early juncture?

silexia 6y ago
Is this power outage truly such a bad thing? It seems like a decision that the elected representatives of Texas have chosen to make. They basically said we would rather have much lower utility costs on a regular basis and have a risk that we lose our power every 9 or 10 years in a big storm. Everything is cost vs benefit trade off, and this just seems to be a different decision than most make.
- seph-reed 6y ago
  My friends have been unable to drive, without water or electricity for a few days now. Their house is slowly losing all residual heat, making its way down to ~18 degrees. They're young and prepared, so they'll be fine. I expect there to be a lot of deaths. And then a wave of burst pipes and property damage. Many people may be going without running water for weeks or months to come.
- gregw2 6y ago
  The deaths and impacts on the poor make it, to me an unacceptable tradeoff. I don't see why others states can do it and Texas couldn't or shouldn't. This is hindsight, but out past strategy, if it was intentional, was not optimal. Even just numerically, I would bet money that the lost productivity and sales will be much more than the "ounce of prevention" costs, even ignoring the humanitatian aspects.
- lazide 6y ago
  This outage is undoubtably causing 10's of billions of dollars of property damage as we speak (the internet is being flooded with pictures of burst pipes, not to mention rather stark conditions for everyday people that will almost certain result in many deaths in outlier populations). If the utility company had a disclaimer on their bills, or a billing option to pay more or less depending on if you wanted to run this type of risk - maybe it would be a tradeoff people could make? Instead this seems to be a complete failure of the regulated utility and it's governing political apparatus resulting in an entirely preventable 'major hurricane' level crisis.
- 542354234235 6y ago
  Are voters actually informed of this tradeoff? Is this lowering cost or just shifting cost, given the huge amount of property damage being caused due to lack of power? The “stitch in time” would apply here. Not to mention how to calculate the cost of human suffering caused by trying to survive in freezing temps with no power for multiple days.

by gregw2 6y ago

silexia 6y ago

Is this power outage truly such a bad thing? It seems like a decision that the elected representatives of Texas have chosen to make. They basically said we would rather have much lower utility costs on a regular basis and have a risk that we lose our power every 9 or 10 years in a big storm. Everything is cost vs benefit trade off, and this just seems to be a different decision than most make.

seph-reed 6y ago
My friends have been unable to drive, without water or electricity for a few days now. Their house is slowly losing all residual heat, making its way down to ~18 degrees. They're young and prepared, so they'll be fine. I expect there to be a lot of deaths. And then a wave of burst pipes and property damage. Many people may be going without running water for weeks or months to come.
gregw2 6y ago
The deaths and impacts on the poor make it, to me an unacceptable tradeoff. I don't see why others states can do it and Texas couldn't or shouldn't. This is hindsight, but out past strategy, if it was intentional, was not optimal. Even just numerically, I would bet money that the lost productivity and sales will be much more than the "ounce of prevention" costs, even ignoring the humanitatian aspects.
lazide 6y ago
This outage is undoubtably causing 10's of billions of dollars of property damage as we speak (the internet is being flooded with pictures of burst pipes, not to mention rather stark conditions for everyday people that will almost certain result in many deaths in outlier populations). If the utility company had a disclaimer on their bills, or a billing option to pay more or less depending on if you wanted to run this type of risk - maybe it would be a tradeoff people could make? Instead this seems to be a complete failure of the regulated utility and it's governing political apparatus resulting in an entirely preventable 'major hurricane' level crisis.
542354234235 6y ago
Are voters actually informed of this tradeoff? Is this lowering cost or just shifting cost, given the huge amount of property damage being caused due to lack of power? The “stitch in time” would apply here. Not to mention how to calculate the cost of human suffering caused by trying to survive in freezing temps with no power for multiple days.