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The not interconnected with neighbors was an intentional decision driven by previous degradations of QoS way back in the 50's/60's era when they were intercinne

The not interconnected with neighbors was an intentional decision driven by previous degradations of QoS way back in the 50's/60's era when they were intercinnected with the coastal grids. It's downright shocking the difference in frequency between power losses I experienced on the regular in Texas vs. what my out of state family experience. I started keeping track of it a couple years ago. My family can have dozens of sporadic outages in a span of time with 100% uptime for me in TX. Smaller, less interconnected networks can be a godsend. Hell, it's a lesson that's immortalized in our interstate highway system. ...Then again, I suppose that there's the case to be made that more frequent outages keep your response teams sharp. There is a drop off among Operations people whereby knowledge tends to end up getting forgotten when too much time passes between completion of repeated periodic tasks.

dfinninger 3y ago
Which is interesting because, anecdotally, I’ve had the exact opposite experience. I’ve lived in Dallas and Austin for a collective 27 years. And the number of outages I’ve had bewilders friends and family that are out of state. Since I’ve moved out of Texas a few years ago I haven’t had a single power outage. In my family while growing up we kept flashlights and candles handy, and us kids were (very lightly) drilled on where to find them when the power went out. And again, this was in the middle of the metro, not out in any rural parts.
- salawat 3y ago
  I was in an area serviced by the Bluebonnet power cooperative, which executed one of the smoothest time based multiplexes I've ever seen. Interestingly, I've found most problems seem to be metro-centric in Texas. Austin, for instance, in patticular has a horribly architected power network, where much of downtown's skyscrapers and what not share a circuit that is never load shed, leaving only the residentials to be. This escalated to tragic consequences during the Winter storms of a few years ago when everyone was told to stay home (and freeze due to lack of power), while all of the buildings downtown where they'd have ostensibly worked kept their lights and heat on. Families would have unironically been better off braving the streets to park themselves in a heated office downtown rather than trying to make due in their own homes. The landlords, lawyers, insurers, and sadly the fire departments, however, would have had a meltdown trying to figure out who should be culpable for anything that ended up happening as a result of the terrible decisionmaking when building the trunk. Cutting everyone loose on their own recognizance was a brilliant stroke of legal culpability shedding there. Gg Austin Power on that one. Friends over in Dallas were also reporting a similar situation there during the hullaballo. If it's taught me anything, it's that urban planning of power networks seriously needs some rearchitecting in those locales.

dfinninger 3y ago

Which is interesting because, anecdotally, I’ve had the exact opposite experience. I’ve lived in Dallas and Austin for a collective 27 years. And the number of outages I’ve had bewilders friends and family that are out of state. Since I’ve moved out of Texas a few years ago I haven’t had a single power outage. In my family while growing up we kept flashlights and candles handy, and us kids were (very lightly) drilled on where to find them when the power went out. And again, this was in the middle of the metro, not out in any rural parts.

salawat 3y ago
I was in an area serviced by the Bluebonnet power cooperative, which executed one of the smoothest time based multiplexes I've ever seen. Interestingly, I've found most problems seem to be metro-centric in Texas. Austin, for instance, in patticular has a horribly architected power network, where much of downtown's skyscrapers and what not share a circuit that is never load shed, leaving only the residentials to be. This escalated to tragic consequences during the Winter storms of a few years ago when everyone was told to stay home (and freeze due to lack of power), while all of the buildings downtown where they'd have ostensibly worked kept their lights and heat on. Families would have unironically been better off braving the streets to park themselves in a heated office downtown rather than trying to make due in their own homes. The landlords, lawyers, insurers, and sadly the fire departments, however, would have had a meltdown trying to figure out who should be culpable for anything that ended up happening as a result of the terrible decisionmaking when building the trunk. Cutting everyone loose on their own recognizance was a brilliant stroke of legal culpability shedding there. Gg Austin Power on that one. Friends over in Dallas were also reporting a similar situation there during the hullaballo. If it's taught me anything, it's that urban planning of power networks seriously needs some rearchitecting in those locales.