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Texan here: while the situation was far from satisfactory, Texas is not a poor state, and has the resources to fix things. Mostly, it will require: 1) inspect
by rossdavidh 6y ago
Texan here: while the situation was far from satisfactory, Texas is not a poor state, and has the resources to fix things. Mostly, it will require:
1) inspection of power plants to confirm that they have "winterized", i.e. prepared adequately for winter cold, rather than just advising them to
2) installation of much more power storage capacity, akin to what Elon Musk's company sold to Australia (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a31350880/elon-musk-battery-farm/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a31350880/elon-musk...), in order to adapt to having a much higher % of power capacity from wind and solar than in the past
3) when the National Weather Service says, more than a week out, "you're going to have record cold coming up", get all of the power plants which were shut down for the winter back into service. For example, Austin had a biomass-burning one which sat idle through the whole thing, because during the winter it is normally not needed so it was idled. It takes time to start it up again, but we ought to be able to do so when the NWS gives us more than a week notice
- baybal2 6y agoWhat do you think about relocating population to apartments with central heating?
- forgotmysn 6y agoseems antithetical to Texas' ranching culture
- baybal2 6y agoWhat is important? Not freezing, or culture?
- forgotmysn 6y agolol im pretty sure Texans would say culture
- rossdavidh 6y agoWell maybe not after this week. : ) But seriously, there is nothing in Texas culture that prevents living in apartments; plenty of Texans already living in condos and apartments.
- rossdavidh 6y agoWell the apartments, for whatever reason, seem to have done worse in terms of power and water. That seems odd to me, but that's what I'm seeing in Austin anyway. Regardless, Texas is definitely urbanizing, and a much higher % live in apartments now than several decades ago (because house prices keep going up).
- dangwu 6y agoWhy are energy sources less needed in the winter? I assume that energy usage higher in the winter months.
- polka_haunts_us 6y agoI would assume it's because winter in Texas isn't necessarily cold, at all. For example, Houston has average hi/low of 66/47 F in February, as opposed to 94/75 in July. In the first case, you're running the heater sometimes, as opposed to the later case where you probably have AC on as much as humanly possible.
- rossdavidh 6y agoThe fundamental reason for all of Texas' problems is that energy usage is NOT usually higher in the winter here. It is, by far, normally higher when it's 105+ degrees F outside. But, extreme weather events are likely to be more common in the future than in the past, so we need to get ready for weather events that would have been unexpected previously.
- maxerickson 6y agoWhat about natural gas? I haven't seen anything real clear about it, but lots of this and that about not enough being available for power plants to start up.
- rossdavidh 6y agoThere was apparently a drop in natgas pressure. To some degree this was unavoidable because usage went up, but it did take us a while to stop exports out of Texas. Knowing that it's coming, we could probably also pick which plants to idle rather than just seeing which ones go offline on their own.