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The head line of the article does not seem to match its contents. The article spends 90% of the time describing problems in the Texas grid. The only mention o

by jussij 6y ago

The head line of the article does not seem to match its contents. The article spends 90% of the time describing problems in the Texas grid. The only mention of the nation problem is this throw away line at the end: > The issue of extreme cold weather and electrical outages is a national issue that needs to be addressed. However, after repeated failings it hasn’t really been addressed. Now that statement would make sense if 'extreme cold weather' had caused problems in other parts of the USA. But to date I only know of two such events and both occurred in Texas. To make matters worse the national energy regulator warned Texas this would most likely happen again: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/texas-was-warned-a-decade-ago-its-grid-was-unprepared-for-cold https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/texas-was... That suggest to me the national regulator has these extreme weather events covered.

gwoplock 6y ago
> Now that statement would make sense if 'extreme cold weather' had caused problems in other parts of the USA. In 2014 the polar vortex brought power down across the Eastern Interconnection (citation 13) and again in 2018 (citation 10). > That suggest to me the national regulator has these extreme weather events covered. There currently are not standards for winter weatherization. In 2013 standards were proposed for this however they were rejected (citation 15). Finally in 2020 standards started the approval process however they wont be fully approved until November.
- jussij 6y ago
  So for that event which states experienced state wide blackouts that lasted for days on end? Here is a write up of that event: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/us-polar-vortex-extreme-cold-weather-heads-to-east-coast-live https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/us-polar-vorte... Not a single mention of blackout. And the reason for that is the grid is well designed and has backup options that makes it resiliently to extreme weather events.
  - rcurry 6y ago
    The grid didn’t seem so great back in 2003 when NYC took a dive for two days. It was amazing seeing the whole city just dead in the water. Shit happens, but fortunately our infrastructure is fairly resilient and we can recover pretty quickly from this kind of thing.
    - drjasonharrison 6y ago
      For most places that was a 7 hour black out created by a software bug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
      - rcurry 6y ago
        Full power was restored to NYC on the 16th. Yes, that seems about right - I stayed at my office for two days until a coworker commandeered a car that was in our parking garage (owned by a guy who was out of town on business) and gave me a ride home to Freeport. The city was pretty much paralyzed for two days. Some places might have done better but NYC was dead in the water for about two days.
txlpo78 6y ago
> Now that statement would make sense if 'extreme cold weather' had caused problems in other parts of the USA. Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri all had blackouts this week. The SPP had to stop sharing electricity with the Texas grid because they had no spare capacity due to dealing with their own power emergencies. The headlines this week have all focused on Texas, but this was happening over the entire region.
- jussij 6y ago
  So are you claiming Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri have experience state wide blackouts similar to those found in Texas in recent days? Or are you saying these states have experienced short term blackouts? I don't think there is an electricity grid in the world that is immune to short term blackouts.
  - txlpo78 6y ago
    You asked if extreme cold weather had caused problems in states other than Texas. It did, and I commented so. But if you want to play “move the goalposts”, I’m not going to bother trying to discuss something with you that you obviously have already made your mind up on. Keep stubbornly believing what you want to believe, I don’t care.
    - jussij 6y ago
      So you are in fact claiming Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri are experiencing the same 'extreme weather' blackouts as those currently going on in Texas. For example Texas has seen millions people with out power for days, millions people with no running water for days, people dying because of the cold. And the exact same think is going on in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri but no one is reporting on this in the news or on social media? I think not.
      - gwoplock 6y ago
        Yes. https://spp.org/markets-operations/current-grid-conditions/ https://spp.org/markets-operations/current-grid-conditions/ > Feb. 16 at 6:15 a.m. SPP declared an EEA Level 3. System-wide generating capacity had dropped below current load of approximately 42 gigawatts (GW) due to extremely low temperatures, inadequate supplies of natural gas and wind generation. SPP directed member utilities to implement controlled, temporary interruptions of service.
solidsnack9000 6y ago
This is not a fair reading of the article. It actually discusses national winterization versus those of Texas, and points out both that other southern states have experienced power disruptions due to the cold, and that the national winterization standards are neither stricter than those of Texas nor strict enough to address the events of recent days.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  That is a reasonable point, but it is only half the story when it leaves out regulatory capture (which certainly is not confined to Texas), the deliberate adoption or rejection of policies on the basis of whether they conform to a counterfactual ideology (climate-change denial), and the brazen attempt to shift blame for the problem onto policies that actually attempt to mitigate problems that really are happening.
  - solidsnack9000 6y ago
    Texas's separate grid dates back decades, and was driven by a conscious desire to optimize for the needs of manufacturing. It doesn't have anything to do with climate-change denial or the current governor. By allowing your evaluation of the situation to be influenced by that sort of thing, you are engaging in a kind of recency bias -- imagining that the future can cause the past.
    - mannykannot 6y ago
      All of today's grids started with smaller, less-connected entities. That is not an adequate justification for the current situation. The idea that Texas alone is somehow constrained, by forces beyond its control, from changing with the times, is absurd. Is Texas doomed by its history to live with the cold-vulnerable infrastructure that led up to these problems, on account of the way things were decades ago? Of course not - things will be fixed.
      - solidsnack9000 6y ago
WalterBright 6y ago
Here in the Seattle area, we regularly have a big blow which knocks trees onto the power lines and vast portions of the power grid go down. While it happens to some extent every year, about once a decade it's a several day outage, even in the city. The last time it was 10 days. The power cables were down for miles everywhere. And yet, everything gets rebuilt in place, the same way, the same risks. No engineering improvements. No buried cables (which do just fine in storms). Most everyone in my neighborhood has some sort of generator, and we're well inside the dense part of the city.
- oasisbob 6y ago
  Buried cables tend to have a higher lifetime cost, which is one reason why Seattle has stuck with aerial cables in so many neighborhoods. West Seattle neighborhoods have more buried cables than most, and they're facing some very expensive reliability issues due to IIRC dielectric breakdown. If Seattle wanted to squeeze better reliability out of their aerial transmission systems, they could move to a four-year tree clearance pruning cycle, like Portland. Last I heard, we're still on a five year cycle and every time changing it comes up, it's seen as cost prohibitive. We get the reliability we're willing to pay for.
  - fy20 6y ago
    Is there any reason why Europe can do buried cables just fine (and has been for a good few decades), but the US can't? As I understand even new neighbourhoods in the US often have overhead cables.
    - sildur 6y ago
      I live in Europe, and in general we don't distrust the state, and we don't want to pay less taxes (we would like more efficiency managing them, though).
      - rocgf 6y ago
        Interesting, somehow I never thought of that. Lowering taxes is just not a major talking point in European politics except maybe for certain types of taxes, or distributing them differently, but there are no big divides on this.
stevenwoo 6y ago
The postmortem on this is going to be interesting. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-... They got close to damaging equipment system wide that would take months to repair. there was real time coverage of the system melting down on reddit of all places https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/lk7cgn/ercot_and_the_rolling_blackouts/gnii3el/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/lk7cgn/ercot_and_th...

by jussij 6y ago

gwoplock 6y ago

> Now that statement would make sense if 'extreme cold weather' had caused problems in other parts of the USA. In 2014 the polar vortex brought power down across the Eastern Interconnection (citation 13) and again in 2018 (citation 10). > That suggest to me the national regulator has these extreme weather events covered. There currently are not standards for winter weatherization. In 2013 standards were proposed for this however they were rejected (citation 15). Finally in 2020 standards started the approval process however they wont be fully approved until November.

jussij 6y ago
So for that event which states experienced state wide blackouts that lasted for days on end? Here is a write up of that event: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/us-polar-vortex-extreme-cold-weather-heads-to-east-coast-live https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/us-polar-vorte... Not a single mention of blackout. And the reason for that is the grid is well designed and has backup options that makes it resiliently to extreme weather events.
- rcurry 6y ago
  The grid didn’t seem so great back in 2003 when NYC took a dive for two days. It was amazing seeing the whole city just dead in the water. Shit happens, but fortunately our infrastructure is fairly resilient and we can recover pretty quickly from this kind of thing.
  - drjasonharrison 6y ago
    For most places that was a 7 hour black out created by a software bug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
    - rcurry 6y ago
      Full power was restored to NYC on the 16th. Yes, that seems about right - I stayed at my office for two days until a coworker commandeered a car that was in our parking garage (owned by a guy who was out of town on business) and gave me a ride home to Freeport. The city was pretty much paralyzed for two days. Some places might have done better but NYC was dead in the water for about two days.

txlpo78 6y ago

> Now that statement would make sense if 'extreme cold weather' had caused problems in other parts of the USA. Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri all had blackouts this week. The SPP had to stop sharing electricity with the Texas grid because they had no spare capacity due to dealing with their own power emergencies. The headlines this week have all focused on Texas, but this was happening over the entire region.

jussij 6y ago
So are you claiming Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri have experience state wide blackouts similar to those found in Texas in recent days? Or are you saying these states have experienced short term blackouts? I don't think there is an electricity grid in the world that is immune to short term blackouts.
- txlpo78 6y ago
  You asked if extreme cold weather had caused problems in states other than Texas. It did, and I commented so. But if you want to play “move the goalposts”, I’m not going to bother trying to discuss something with you that you obviously have already made your mind up on. Keep stubbornly believing what you want to believe, I don’t care.
  - jussij 6y ago
    So you are in fact claiming Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri are experiencing the same 'extreme weather' blackouts as those currently going on in Texas. For example Texas has seen millions people with out power for days, millions people with no running water for days, people dying because of the cold. And the exact same think is going on in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri but no one is reporting on this in the news or on social media? I think not.
    - gwoplock 6y ago
      Yes. https://spp.org/markets-operations/current-grid-conditions/ https://spp.org/markets-operations/current-grid-conditions/ > Feb. 16 at 6:15 a.m. SPP declared an EEA Level 3. System-wide generating capacity had dropped below current load of approximately 42 gigawatts (GW) due to extremely low temperatures, inadequate supplies of natural gas and wind generation. SPP directed member utilities to implement controlled, temporary interruptions of service.

solidsnack9000 6y ago

This is not a fair reading of the article. It actually discusses national winterization versus those of Texas, and points out both that other southern states have experienced power disruptions due to the cold, and that the national winterization standards are neither stricter than those of Texas nor strict enough to address the events of recent days.

mannykannot 6y ago
That is a reasonable point, but it is only half the story when it leaves out regulatory capture (which certainly is not confined to Texas), the deliberate adoption or rejection of policies on the basis of whether they conform to a counterfactual ideology (climate-change denial), and the brazen attempt to shift blame for the problem onto policies that actually attempt to mitigate problems that really are happening.
- solidsnack9000 6y ago
  Texas's separate grid dates back decades, and was driven by a conscious desire to optimize for the needs of manufacturing. It doesn't have anything to do with climate-change denial or the current governor. By allowing your evaluation of the situation to be influenced by that sort of thing, you are engaging in a kind of recency bias -- imagining that the future can cause the past.
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    All of today's grids started with smaller, less-connected entities. That is not an adequate justification for the current situation. The idea that Texas alone is somehow constrained, by forces beyond its control, from changing with the times, is absurd. Is Texas doomed by its history to live with the cold-vulnerable infrastructure that led up to these problems, on account of the way things were decades ago? Of course not - things will be fixed.
    - solidsnack9000 6y ago

WalterBright 6y ago

Here in the Seattle area, we regularly have a big blow which knocks trees onto the power lines and vast portions of the power grid go down. While it happens to some extent every year, about once a decade it's a several day outage, even in the city. The last time it was 10 days. The power cables were down for miles everywhere. And yet, everything gets rebuilt in place, the same way, the same risks. No engineering improvements. No buried cables (which do just fine in storms). Most everyone in my neighborhood has some sort of generator, and we're well inside the dense part of the city.

oasisbob 6y ago
Buried cables tend to have a higher lifetime cost, which is one reason why Seattle has stuck with aerial cables in so many neighborhoods. West Seattle neighborhoods have more buried cables than most, and they're facing some very expensive reliability issues due to IIRC dielectric breakdown. If Seattle wanted to squeeze better reliability out of their aerial transmission systems, they could move to a four-year tree clearance pruning cycle, like Portland. Last I heard, we're still on a five year cycle and every time changing it comes up, it's seen as cost prohibitive. We get the reliability we're willing to pay for.
- fy20 6y ago
  Is there any reason why Europe can do buried cables just fine (and has been for a good few decades), but the US can't? As I understand even new neighbourhoods in the US often have overhead cables.
  - sildur 6y ago
    I live in Europe, and in general we don't distrust the state, and we don't want to pay less taxes (we would like more efficiency managing them, though).
    - rocgf 6y ago
      Interesting, somehow I never thought of that. Lowering taxes is just not a major talking point in European politics except maybe for certain types of taxes, or distributing them differently, but there are no big divides on this.

stevenwoo 6y ago

The postmortem on this is going to be interesting. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-... They got close to damaging equipment system wide that would take months to repair. there was real time coverage of the system melting down on reddit of all places https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/lk7cgn/ercot_and_the_rolling_blackouts/gnii3el/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/lk7cgn/ercot_and_th...