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I lived both events. Some rolling blackouts for some people is massively different than no power for many people for several days. 2021 was way colder for way

I lived both events. Some rolling blackouts for some people is massively different than no power for many people for several days. 2021 was way colder for way longer. Sure on paper the same words are being used to describe it, some power outages over a few days due to the cold. But 2021 was way worse both weather-wise and grid-wise. In scale they're pretty much incomparable. In 2011 it got above freezing during the days and melted a lot of the snow and ice. It stayed well below freezing for many days in 2021, more days below freezing in many decades. In 2011 a few friends had their power turn off for a few minutes every few hours for a couple of days. Most people I know never lost power. Stores stayed open. Transit was still operating. They even still managed to play the Superbowl at AT&T stadium. In 2021 everything was shut down for nearly a week. No mail, no shipping services for several days. Stores were without power. Gas stations unable to pump gas because of no power. All the airports shut down. All transit shut down. There was a 100-car pileup on the highway. I don't disagree about if the operators implemented the weatherization recommended in the NERC's report it would have at worst alleviated and at best completely prevented the issues that would have happened, but 2021 was still way worse than 2011. Other than they were both storms in February they're massively different in scales in almost every way.

Retric 3y ago
I don’t disagree with your take, but the absolute magnitude of electricity demand wasn’t that different. Lower temperatures increased heating demand by around 20%, but it’s not like heating was the only thing people use electricity for. Stoplights, water pumps, exterior lighting, etc need power either way. What made it worse was the triple whammy of more generation going online, slightly higher demand, and prioritization of specific areas which didn’t lose power.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > the absolute magnitude of electricity demand wasn’t that different. The magnitude of electricity demand increased by more than the entire state of most states' entire generation capacities. I do agree, the main root cause for the power going out so bad was power was cut to natural gas processing which caused shortfalls of natural gas which couldn't be alleviated until things thawed. But in 2011, that would have just been overnight since it got above freezing every day. It took several days to get above freezing in 2021. Things are pretty different when it's below freezing multiple days in a row, and that just doesn't normally happen in most of Texas. It's pretty different having your highs be in the 20s versus the upper 30s and low 40s. I've never seen ice accumulate on a pool in Texas. In 2021 it formed over an inch on my pool, and I never lost power. If that's not an obvious indicator the cold was way more I don't know what to tell you.
  - Retric 3y ago
    New York State is part of a larger grid and imports a great deal of electricity. Critically only 1 in 7 households heat with electricity in NY (vs 2/3 in Texas) and they have much better insulation so demand isn’t particularly impacted by winter storms. Texas has intentionally set itself up for failure from winter storms in a multitude of ways but primarily not paying companies for reserve capacity. Your area may have gotten above freezing every day in 2011 but that wasn’t true statewide. El Paso airport recorded February 2 High 15, Low 6f, February 3 High 18f, Low 1f, February 4 High 37f, Low 3f, and that was kicked off by a low of 14 on February 1st. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USW00023044/detail https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GH... And they didn’t see such extreme weather in 2021.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      > Your area may have gotten above freezing every day in 2011 Yeah, my area and most of the rest of the state. And pretty much every major population center. That's a massive difference. You're pointing to one of the smaller/midsize cities that isn't even a part of ERCOT. It really shows how much you don't understand about the situation if you're arguing the state of Texas' grid and using weather data from El Paso to back your argument. El Paso is one of the coldest cities in Texas in the winter. Its not indicative of most of the state. And its not connected anyways. You should have picked Amarillo if you wanted to single out a cold city for an imbalanced data point, at least it would have been connected to ERCOT. 2021 was way colder for the entire state. That makes a massive difference.
      - Retric 3y ago
        > 2021 was way colder for the entire state. Except not the entire state, I was pointing to one of several areas that got above freezing every day in 2021 while also being dramatically colder in 2011. So your experience wasn’t shared across the entire state just the highest population areas. As to ERCOT seriously fucking everything up, well yea that’s completely accurate. Yet, Foard County along several other counties are within ERCOT and didn’t lose power from the 2021 storm. Those are low population areas, but understanding why power outages where continuous relates both to lack of power but also an inability to route available power.

Retric 3y ago

I don’t disagree with your take, but the absolute magnitude of electricity demand wasn’t that different. Lower temperatures increased heating demand by around 20%, but it’s not like heating was the only thing people use electricity for. Stoplights, water pumps, exterior lighting, etc need power either way. What made it worse was the triple whammy of more generation going online, slightly higher demand, and prioritization of specific areas which didn’t lose power.

vel0city 3y ago
> the absolute magnitude of electricity demand wasn’t that different. The magnitude of electricity demand increased by more than the entire state of most states' entire generation capacities. I do agree, the main root cause for the power going out so bad was power was cut to natural gas processing which caused shortfalls of natural gas which couldn't be alleviated until things thawed. But in 2011, that would have just been overnight since it got above freezing every day. It took several days to get above freezing in 2021. Things are pretty different when it's below freezing multiple days in a row, and that just doesn't normally happen in most of Texas. It's pretty different having your highs be in the 20s versus the upper 30s and low 40s. I've never seen ice accumulate on a pool in Texas. In 2021 it formed over an inch on my pool, and I never lost power. If that's not an obvious indicator the cold was way more I don't know what to tell you.
- Retric 3y ago
  New York State is part of a larger grid and imports a great deal of electricity. Critically only 1 in 7 households heat with electricity in NY (vs 2/3 in Texas) and they have much better insulation so demand isn’t particularly impacted by winter storms. Texas has intentionally set itself up for failure from winter storms in a multitude of ways but primarily not paying companies for reserve capacity. Your area may have gotten above freezing every day in 2011 but that wasn’t true statewide. El Paso airport recorded February 2 High 15, Low 6f, February 3 High 18f, Low 1f, February 4 High 37f, Low 3f, and that was kicked off by a low of 14 on February 1st. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USW00023044/detail https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GH... And they didn’t see such extreme weather in 2021.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    > Your area may have gotten above freezing every day in 2011 Yeah, my area and most of the rest of the state. And pretty much every major population center. That's a massive difference. You're pointing to one of the smaller/midsize cities that isn't even a part of ERCOT. It really shows how much you don't understand about the situation if you're arguing the state of Texas' grid and using weather data from El Paso to back your argument. El Paso is one of the coldest cities in Texas in the winter. Its not indicative of most of the state. And its not connected anyways. You should have picked Amarillo if you wanted to single out a cold city for an imbalanced data point, at least it would have been connected to ERCOT. 2021 was way colder for the entire state. That makes a massive difference.
    - Retric 3y ago
      > 2021 was way colder for the entire state. Except not the entire state, I was pointing to one of several areas that got above freezing every day in 2021 while also being dramatically colder in 2011. So your experience wasn’t shared across the entire state just the highest population areas. As to ERCOT seriously fucking everything up, well yea that’s completely accurate. Yet, Foard County along several other counties are within ERCOT and didn’t lose power from the 2021 storm. Those are low population areas, but understanding why power outages where continuous relates both to lack of power but also an inability to route available power.