4 ms·
> If you have lived in a country with load-shedding and have experienced this before, as far as your average household goes, 3 hours without power is barely an
by lkbm 4y ago
> If you have lived in a country with load-shedding and have experienced this before, as far as your average household goes, 3 hours without power is barely an inconvenience.
I live in the US (TX) where load shedding is rare, but I did lose power from roughly 11:30a yesterday until ~11:30 today due to a snafu with the power company. Discovered this just prior to my 12pm Zoom meeting.
Three hours while I sleep matters not. Three hours when I need my wifi for work is quite annoying.
A more robust energy supply should be the goal, but better failure modes would also be of value.
- themitigating 4y agoTexas is disconnected from the national power grid even though it would help. "According to an analysis by the American Council on Renewable Energy, each additional gigawatt of transmission capacity connecting the Texas power grid with neighboring states could have saved nearly $1 billion and prevented blackouts in around 200,000 Texas homes during Winter Storm Uri last year." "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that the state’s denizens would prefer a prolonged blackout over federal regulators requiring changes to the system. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/14/texas-national-power-grids/ https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/14/texas-national-power... It seems like Texas having a robust power supply is second to ideological virtue signaling by republicans
- alexchamberlain 4y agoAFAIK there isn't a national power grid in America- there are at least 5 or so State+ size grids, with loads of smaller ones and a whole bunch of interconnects. I'm fairly sure Texas (ERCOT) has interconnects to other grids.
- Izkata 4y ago5 grids (of which Texas is one), and they're not even just US ones - we share with Canada: https://i.cbc.ca/1.5921020.1613772812!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_1180/how-power-is-shared-in-north-america.jpg https://i.cbc.ca/1.5921020.1613772812!/fileImage/httpImage/i... They're then further subdivided into operators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...
- pharrington 4y agoIn February of last year, a winter storm led to Texas having multi-day power outages, exasperated by the fact that ERCOT does not connect to any other grids.
- alexchamberlain 4y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#Ties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#Ties, the Texas grid has DC ties to the Eastern grid, and similar ties into Mexico.
- pharrington 4y agoStrictly speaking - 3 DC ties (from some cursory searching, they seem to only be used for power export) and 1 AC tie, that has only ever been used once. Texas is technically, but not meaningfully, connected to neighboring power grids.
- themitigating 4y agoI saw the term used to describe the various interconnected states but I think it's used because federal regulations can apply if one states connects with at least another, hence national
- bonestamp2 4y agoA more robust grid is the solution. But, in the meantime, you can do what I did and put all of my network gear on a battery so it continues to function for about an hour after a power failure. That gives me enough time to wrap up most meetings and start up the generator or head to a cafe, etc if I need more than that. Bonus, I use Power over Ethernet access points and security cameras in my house, so even my cameras and the wifi access point at the other side of my house still functions perfectly during a power failure. I plan to add an additional battery which should help the system work for up to 4 hours without grid power.