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> 2) Texas's power grid has gained a reputation lately for being unreliable. Having the appearance of something is not the same as actually being that thing. T

by ars 4y ago

> 2) Texas's power grid has gained a reputation lately for being unreliable. Having the appearance of something is not the same as actually being that thing. They had one outage during a cold snap, and then warned about high usage, but there has not actually been another outage. California is also warning about an outage. https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_SRA_2022.pdf https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20... the graph on page 6 (labeled as page 5) should be more instructive.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Aloha 4y ago
As a Texan, I can concur. That said, the failure and piss-poor government response to it makes me almost viscerally angry. Texas has promoted itself as an energy leader, from traditional oil and gas production, to large (and growing) production of renewables, we shouldn't be having these failures. The issue for me isn't the failure of the power grid, extraordinary events happen - its that: One - it's happened before (twice before). Two - we should have had a governmental response to adequately winterize the grid. Three - the deregulated power system in Texas creates perverse incentives to building more capacity in - and power usage in Texas is growing faster than either base load or peaking capacity is. These are all governmental and regulatory failures, and ones that were both foreseeable and preventable.
galangalalgol 4y ago
They are in fact doing rolling "brownouts" as of a few days ago. I put it in quotes because the friend who told us about it had been without for a couple hours at that point.
- trashcan 4y ago
  This is not being done by ERCOT that manages power distribution in Texas. Your friend had a local power failure, probably caused by a downed power line. Rolling blackouts would be documented here if they were happening: https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages More info: https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/do-you-know-the-difference-between-a-local-outage-and-an-ercot-mandated-rolling-blackout/ https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/do-you-know-the-difference-b...
systemvoltage 4y ago
California has regular brownouts in late summer, right here in Bay Area. Third worldian, the CA gov + PGE has no plans to fix. And they just increased the price of electricity by 20%. I want to leave this place, for a better standard of living.

by ars 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Aloha 4y ago

As a Texan, I can concur. That said, the failure and piss-poor government response to it makes me almost viscerally angry. Texas has promoted itself as an energy leader, from traditional oil and gas production, to large (and growing) production of renewables, we shouldn't be having these failures. The issue for me isn't the failure of the power grid, extraordinary events happen - its that: One - it's happened before (twice before). Two - we should have had a governmental response to adequately winterize the grid. Three - the deregulated power system in Texas creates perverse incentives to building more capacity in - and power usage in Texas is growing faster than either base load or peaking capacity is. These are all governmental and regulatory failures, and ones that were both foreseeable and preventable.

galangalalgol 4y ago

They are in fact doing rolling "brownouts" as of a few days ago. I put it in quotes because the friend who told us about it had been without for a couple hours at that point.

trashcan 4y ago
This is not being done by ERCOT that manages power distribution in Texas. Your friend had a local power failure, probably caused by a downed power line. Rolling blackouts would be documented here if they were happening: https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages More info: https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/do-you-know-the-difference-between-a-local-outage-and-an-ercot-mandated-rolling-blackout/ https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/do-you-know-the-difference-b...

systemvoltage 4y ago

California has regular brownouts in late summer, right here in Bay Area. Third worldian, the CA gov + PGE has no plans to fix. And they just increased the price of electricity by 20%. I want to leave this place, for a better standard of living.