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When infrastructure is built in areas where hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes are expected and said infrastructure fails, we do assign blame. And we should! Th

When infrastructure is built in areas where hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes are expected and said infrastructure fails, we do assign blame. And we should! The attempts to rationalize this as a “once in a century” event are full of it. This nearly happened in 2011, and similar freezes happened in 1989. This is a “once in a decade” event, and those responsible for building critical infrastructure should have a plan for it.

chasd00 6y ago
1989 was 30 years ago. I was in Dallas and remember the 2011 event well, it wasn't anywhere near the same. The major problems in 2011 were trees falling on power lines it wasn't core generation facilities failing.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Your summary of 2011 is in complete contradiction of the FERC report on the incident. And frankly, I trust them more than I trust you. The report in particular said that 67% of the lost capacity was directly attributable to cold weather, specifically frozen sensing lines, frozen water pipes, windmill blade icing, etc. A remaining 12% of the shortfall was secondarily caused by the weather, specifically plants running low on fuel. This leaves a remaining 21% for “other”, which presumably includes downed lines. I wouldn’t call that the “major” problem, not compared to the 67% caused by the plants freezing. https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the-southwest-could-have-been-avoided/ https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the... As far as 1989 being 30 years ago: it’s still within living memory. It’s not like we’re talking about the 1899 freeze or whatever, lots of people in Texas remember it! So far Texas has had power issues due to the cold in 1989, 2011, and 2021. I think by the point you’re having this every 10-20 years, it’s time to start planning for it, no?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chasd00 6y ago
    Not really, from your link "A total of 210 individual generating units within the footprint of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which covers most of Texas, experienced either an outage, a derate, or a failure to start. The loss of generation was severe enough on Feb. 2 to trigger a controlled load shed of 4 GW. Spot prices in ERCOT hit the $3,000 per MWh cap on Feb. 2, the worst day of the event. The following day, local transmission constraints coupled with the loss of local generation triggered load shedding for another 180,000 customers in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas." that is not close to the severity of what happened over the course of this week. "According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages 75% of the state's deregulated electricity market, the single-day record for demand, set in 2018, was smashed on Valentine's Day. And as the weather has gotten worse, the capacity to generate electricity has diminished: By Tuesday, per ERCOT's CEO, 45,000 megawatts of generating capacity was offline — up from 34,000 megawatts offline the day before, representing more than half of what the state typically uses in a day. https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-power-generation-has-been-from-fossil-fuels-2021-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-pow...
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      > that is not close to the severity of what happened over the course of this week. Right, but I wasn't claiming that 2011 was as bad as 2021, which would be an obviously silly claim. I'm claiming that in 2011 the grid failed in a similar way to what's happening today, due to the cold, and that it was a failure of leadership to not learn from that and prepare (El Paso excepted). This is why I talked about why power failed in 2011, rather than talking about how long the outage in 2011 was or how cold it got. Meanwhile I am saying that this claim you made is in contradiction with the official report: > The major problems in 2011 were trees falling on power lines it wasn't core generation facilities failing. The FERC claims that 79% of the lost energy production in 2011 was caused by either power plants failing directly due to the cold (67%), or indirectly as fuel production and transport failed due to the cold (12%). Between your unsupported assertion about falling trees, and the report produced by experts who spent six months studying the failure, I'm going to trust the latter. Unless if you'd like to provide some evidence beyond happening to live in Texas in 2011.
Matticus_Rex 6y ago
I read an explanation earlier this week (which I can't find at the moment) that preparing for the 2011 event would not have mitigated most of the issues we're running into in 2021 -- this is much, much worse than 2011.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The level of mitigation required to prevent 2011 wouldn’t be enough to stop 2021’s outage, absolutely. But it would’ve helped. Rolling blackouts are not good, but they’re far superior to losing power for days in freezing weather. Also, consider the fate of El Paso, who followed the 2011 report’s recommendations. They’re still experiencing some issues; some plants have failed and they’ve had to cut off gas exports to Mexico. But their lights are on. All in, you’d much rather be in El Paso right now than Dallas or Austin.
  - 0xBDB 6y ago
    El Paso, like Beaumont and Lubbock, are not on ERCOT's grid.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      That’s also a factor, no doubt.

chasd00 6y ago

1989 was 30 years ago. I was in Dallas and remember the 2011 event well, it wasn't anywhere near the same. The major problems in 2011 were trees falling on power lines it wasn't core generation facilities failing.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Your summary of 2011 is in complete contradiction of the FERC report on the incident. And frankly, I trust them more than I trust you. The report in particular said that 67% of the lost capacity was directly attributable to cold weather, specifically frozen sensing lines, frozen water pipes, windmill blade icing, etc. A remaining 12% of the shortfall was secondarily caused by the weather, specifically plants running low on fuel. This leaves a remaining 21% for “other”, which presumably includes downed lines. I wouldn’t call that the “major” problem, not compared to the 67% caused by the plants freezing. https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the-southwest-could-have-been-avoided/ https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the... As far as 1989 being 30 years ago: it’s still within living memory. It’s not like we’re talking about the 1899 freeze or whatever, lots of people in Texas remember it! So far Texas has had power issues due to the cold in 1989, 2011, and 2021. I think by the point you’re having this every 10-20 years, it’s time to start planning for it, no?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chasd00 6y ago
  Not really, from your link "A total of 210 individual generating units within the footprint of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which covers most of Texas, experienced either an outage, a derate, or a failure to start. The loss of generation was severe enough on Feb. 2 to trigger a controlled load shed of 4 GW. Spot prices in ERCOT hit the $3,000 per MWh cap on Feb. 2, the worst day of the event. The following day, local transmission constraints coupled with the loss of local generation triggered load shedding for another 180,000 customers in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas." that is not close to the severity of what happened over the course of this week. "According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages 75% of the state's deregulated electricity market, the single-day record for demand, set in 2018, was smashed on Valentine's Day. And as the weather has gotten worse, the capacity to generate electricity has diminished: By Tuesday, per ERCOT's CEO, 45,000 megawatts of generating capacity was offline — up from 34,000 megawatts offline the day before, representing more than half of what the state typically uses in a day. https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-power-generation-has-been-from-fossil-fuels-2021-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-pow...
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    > that is not close to the severity of what happened over the course of this week. Right, but I wasn't claiming that 2011 was as bad as 2021, which would be an obviously silly claim. I'm claiming that in 2011 the grid failed in a similar way to what's happening today, due to the cold, and that it was a failure of leadership to not learn from that and prepare (El Paso excepted). This is why I talked about why power failed in 2011, rather than talking about how long the outage in 2011 was or how cold it got. Meanwhile I am saying that this claim you made is in contradiction with the official report: > The major problems in 2011 were trees falling on power lines it wasn't core generation facilities failing. The FERC claims that 79% of the lost energy production in 2011 was caused by either power plants failing directly due to the cold (67%), or indirectly as fuel production and transport failed due to the cold (12%). Between your unsupported assertion about falling trees, and the report produced by experts who spent six months studying the failure, I'm going to trust the latter. Unless if you'd like to provide some evidence beyond happening to live in Texas in 2011.

Matticus_Rex 6y ago

I read an explanation earlier this week (which I can't find at the moment) that preparing for the 2011 event would not have mitigated most of the issues we're running into in 2021 -- this is much, much worse than 2011.

ashtonkem 6y ago
The level of mitigation required to prevent 2011 wouldn’t be enough to stop 2021’s outage, absolutely. But it would’ve helped. Rolling blackouts are not good, but they’re far superior to losing power for days in freezing weather. Also, consider the fate of El Paso, who followed the 2011 report’s recommendations. They’re still experiencing some issues; some plants have failed and they’ve had to cut off gas exports to Mexico. But their lights are on. All in, you’d much rather be in El Paso right now than Dallas or Austin.
- 0xBDB 6y ago
  El Paso, like Beaumont and Lubbock, are not on ERCOT's grid.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    That’s also a factor, no doubt.