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Well that’s bleak but entirely expected. I don’t remember the Texas government doing anything in response to the last time their grid almost fell over last year
by lovich 4y ago
Well that’s bleak but entirely expected. I don’t remember the Texas government doing anything in response to the last time their grid almost fell over last year other than crow about their independence
- enraged_camel 4y agoNot sure why you got downvoted. As a Texan, that's exactly what happened. Our state government will learn its lesson only when a series of major incidents start making companies reconsider their plans to expand or relocate to the state. Republicans may love their "independence" but money is also a language they understand very well.
- LambdaComplex 4y agoDid that not happen after the last incident?
- random-human 4y agoExactly, If or once the situation gets to a point that requires scheduled load shedding (eg South Africa) I would suspect a lot of things would change pretty quickly. I can not imagine any 'side' in TX putting up with having no power for 2-3 hours, 2-3 times day - forcing a greater divide between the have's (businesses/homes willing to pay for generators) & the have-nots.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago> I can not imagine any 'side' in TX putting up with having no power for 2-3 hours, 2-3 times day If it's the side that you've disenfranchised then you don't really need to worry about it.
- bradleybuda 4y ago
- rybosome 4y ago
- skellington 4y agoAre you talking about the Highland Park shooter? The guy who cross-dressed to escape and shot up a patriotic event? Not a single reference has credibly commented that he was a Trump supporter. This specific behavior is not even consistent with Trump supporters who tend to be patriotic. Are you just making stuff up and doing exactly what you claim to be against?
- kortilla 4y ago>anywhere else letting a million people die of COVID to prove a political point either but here we are Which million people does this refer to?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- programmarchy 4y agoThe State Senate actually came up with a good plan (on paper) for improving the grid. The implementation was then handed off to the Railroad Commissioner who then totally watered things down. There’s a good article about how it went down in Texas Monthly magazine. Lesson is that the Railroad Commissioner is a very powerful (elected) position in terms of energy, so worth paying close attention to that election.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoIsn't it also the Railroad Commissioner who deals with things like oil wells? I think that came up in an article about old oil wells that were flooding ranchland with salt water in East Texas thanks to the practice of pumping water into oil reserves to boost pressure for active wells. I'd love to understand how the Railroad Commissioner ended up responsible for energy.
- imadethis 4y agoIt started by taking over regulation of pipelines in the 1910s. That seems like a logical step to me, but over time their purview has expanded to O&G plants and energy production. They aren’t responsible for public utilities, but a lot of the winterization plans were around upgrading pipelines that froze in the storm. According to Wikipedia they haven’t dealt with rail since 2005, but it’s been a lot longer since the RRs were politically relevant to the office.
- programmarchy 4y agoThey are the head of oil and gas in the state so very likely. The history is complicated to say the least. They don’t even run the railroad anymore. It’s all energy related. The name of the office should be changed but the oil and gas companies probably want the office to keep flying under the public’s radar.
- collegeburner 4y agoit takes a long ass time to build more power plants. winterizing the grid better doesn't help with more demand from heat waves.
- ceejayoz 4y agoSure, but the message after the ice storm was “look, it isn’t cold here very often, who could have foreseen it?”, and some ham-handed attempts at blaming green energy (https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/abbott-republicans-green-energy/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/abbott-republicans-g...) for bonus political points. That’s a little harder to do with heat in Texas.
- mrguyorama 4y agoFor reference for other readers, the situation that happened in Texas to cause the power grid to fall over was widely forcasted as a "once in every ten years" event. It was not an unimaginable extreme. Most other states plan or require planning for such events, either out of caution, or from direct harm caused by similar events
- wumpus 4y agoIt doesn't take a long ass time to build new renewables. But it does take competent management to incentivize moving maintenance to the times of year that don't have heat waves.
- scifibestfi 4y agoHow long to build out on the scale needed?
- lovich 4y agoI am willing to accept they are trying to improve if I see it, but everything I saw out of the Texas government seemed to be a denial of any problems at all. The power grid is stressed in the summer under A/C load anywhere that is normally hot, which Texas is, so why weren’t they prepared for it? I’m just comparing this to my region where the government doesn’t have an excuse for the power grid failing everytime it’s hot or cold and has actually removed utilities who had catastrophic failures[1]. I’m not judging Texas for having unforeseen problems, I am judging them for failing to respond to their issues [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosi...
- scifibestfi 4y agoNow they really have to back that up with action. If things do break, it'll look doubly bad. If things don't break, but other parts of the country do, they'll look good. We may soon see which way it goes.
- salt-thrower 4y ago[flagged]
- junofan 4y agoVoting for your party of choice will increase grid capacity?
- salt-thrower 4y agoAcknowledging the failures of their ideologically motivated “independent” power grid that fails more easily under strain would be nice. Or retracting the assertion that power customers paying thousands of dollars to stay alive during a chill or a heat wave is “the system working as intended,” and instead saying “we need to improve this.” Anything like that might be a good start.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kortilla 4y agoThis isn’t particularly unique to Texas. It happens in any lopsided state. You can inverse it an perfectly describe the California political landscape. Constant rolling power outages, cast blame on corporations, and then tell people it’s actually a good thing that everything is falling apart - with lots of vague assertions about moving to a green future.
- scifibestfi 4y agoI think you're right. When a party doesn't have to worry about competition, they get complacent. Like any monopoly.