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It's a real head-scratcher why Texas, with abundant oil, gas and wind energy resources, can't build and maintain a hardened and reliable grid to deliver that pl
by while_true_ 2y ago
It's a real head-scratcher why Texas, with abundant oil, gas and wind energy resources, can't build and maintain a hardened and reliable grid to deliver that plentiful energy to themselves.
- theultdev 2y agouhm, a hurricane hit.
- slater 2y agoIf only they'd had literal decades to build up hardened infrastructure. Alas, ..
- UberFly 2y agoTheir population doubled in size over the last quarter century. Maybe that has something to do with it.
- ironmagma 2y agoSo what you're saying is they scaled too fast?
- wiml 2y agoSo half their infrastructure is less than 25 years old and it still wasn't built up to snuff?
- gregw2 2y agoIt doesn’t seem that’s the issue. 60% of lines are buried but it’s mostly the newer developments paid for by the land developers: https://houstonlanding.org/to-bury-or-not-to-bury-how-can-centerpoint-best-prepare-power-lines-for-major-storms/ https://houstonlanding.org/to-bury-or-not-to-bury-how-can-ce... That said, I’d expect to be able to see this effect on the outage maps and I don’t.
- gregw2 2y agoTrue, but it doesn’t seem that’s the issue. 60% of lines are buried but it’s mostly the newer developments paid for by the land developers: https://houstonlanding.org/to-bury-or-not-to-bury-how-can-centerpoint-best-prepare-power-lines-for-major-storms/ https://houstonlanding.org/to-bury-or-not-to-bury-how-can-ce... That said, I’d expect to be able to see this effect on the outage maps and I don’t, at least from an eyeball perspective.
- jen20 2y agoAnecdotally, plenty of areas with buried lines have outages still.
- bigthymer 2y agoYes, but only a Cat 1.
- pennybanks 2y agobut the wind was crazy. rain only lasted but a few hours. but that wind was pretty intense. a lot more so then anything iv experienced
- sojournerc 2y agoCat 1 is up to 90 mph wind. That's not nothing.
- reaperman 2y agoWe’d expect some power outage but when Category 1 hurricanes hit Florida, power is back on in 1-3 days. This knocked out 85% of Houston’s power and will take weeks for many customers to get A/C back on. Excess deaths are rising fast, and I know of many pets which have died already. Category 1 hurricanes aren’t supposed to cause this much damage. Most likely, Centerpoint skimped on tree maintenance, which led to excessively large damage.
- nunez 2y agoIN the city. With sustained high winds for hours. And Houston has LOTS of big trees next to power lines.
- sho 2y ago"Well a wave hit it!"
- nvader 2y agoIs that unusual?
- weard_beard 2y agooh yeah. At sea? Chance in a million!
- lurking_swe 2y agosure. and a hurricane will probably hit every few years at this rate of global warming. You realize texas is right by the gulf of mexico, and the trend is stronger and stronger hurricanes every year? Next you’ll tell me we couldn’t foresee this… regularly trimming all trees around power lines, slowly moving toward underground power lines, etc is the way to go.
- theultdev 2y agoHurricanes are not increasing in frequency. And is this your same advice for California? Everyone needs to bury their lines but it costs money. Cali every year has to have controlled blackouts because it's so bad at managing lines, no hurricanes needed.
- lurking_swe 2y ago“not increasing in frequency” - is this a hoax then? https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/news/more-frequent-hurricanes-raise-risk-us-east-and-gulf-coasts https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/news/more-frequen... And yes California is another state with a poor grid. 100%. On the bright side i see some action being taken to improve things: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-puc-power-line-undergrounding-program/709846/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-puc-power-line-u...
- theultdev 2y agoyes it is a hoax, NOAA tracks this and they haven't found any significant increase: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ > There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for changing observing capabilities over time), there is not strong evidence for an increase since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes, or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.
- akira2501 2y agoThey have. Centerpoint is just a terrible steward of it. California faced the same problem in the past. Rolling blackouts led to the end of a governorship and to the biggest corporate scandal in history. Notoriously weak government combined with deregulation and with a market that involves natural monopolies lead to corruption if unchecked.
- CalRobert 2y agoIronic that the scandal was related to Enron, hailing from Texas.
- reaperman 2y agoHouston, even. Though in an “Uno Reverse”, the current CEO of Centerpoint was the CFO of PG&E in California and the CFO of Centerpoint also hails from PG&E. California was very unhappy with their performance and now Houston is unhappy with them as well.
- Dig1t 2y agoCalifornia still has PLENTY of power outages all across the state for a variety of reasons. Wildfires are a particular cause, but it happens all the time for other reasons.
- jahewson 2y agoRolling blackouts are not power outages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout
- trilbyglens 2y agoIt's not all that much of a head scratcher. Texas prioritizes speed and cheapness in building. Nothing is built to last more than 20 years. The entire vibe of the state is that everything is provisional. It's an extraction camp the size of 3 Germanys.
- ironmagma 2y agoI stayed at a hotel outside of Austin and it was on par with my first apartment out of college, smelling something like a blend of plywood and cockroach droppings. That was the most expensive hotel in the area, too.
- guywithahat 2y agoA hurricane seems like a totally legitimate reason to lose power
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoWhy? Underground cables for the last mile wouldn't be subject to hurricane damage. I don't know how often long-haul high voltage lines get taken out by hurricanes but I suspect it is not that often. Why build a last-mile power grid that can be so easily disrupted?
- pennybanks 2y agoi read from some people in that field that it was basically unreasonable to try to fund for something like that. and that it wouldnt completely stop power outage. unreasonable for houston i think it was. houston is i think the largest or second largest city in america besides a city in alaska.
- gmokki 2y agoNordic countries mandate that private electric companies move their cables (last mile and between power stations) underground, even in rural areas to reduce likelihood of outages. The process has been ongoing for many years now. One way to incentivize it is to mandate high reimbursements to customers on outage.
- 2y ago
- benreesman 2y agoThe private sector is an unmitigated disaster on reliable base load power. Full stop across dozens of examples. Enron and the California grid is a conspicuous example, but it’s mostly lesser degrees of that anywhere. Badly refereed markets in essentials aren’t a matter of if a market failure will emerge, it’s when.
- orwin 2y agoI'm not usually an euroskeptic, but EU's directives on the electricity market would have been an excellent argument for Brexit. It's like the ptomelaic solar system: to make it match how the world really work, you had to add layers upon layers of additional rules, and in the end it's still wrong. The fact that my country used to use Copernic's system is make me feel even worse.
- more_corn 2y agoIs it though? They deregulated the industry deliberately removing rules around weatherization and reliability so energy companies could increase profits at the cost of reliability. They disconnected their grid from the rest of the country specifically so they could make those changes. It’s not surprising to me at all. Everyone who is paying attention could see this coming for years.
- dreamcompiler 2y agoThey didn't disconnect it. The Texas grid has always been mostly separate from the rest of the country.
- dreamcompiler 2y agoIt's pretty simple really. Before deregulation and the total privatization of Texas' power grid, the utilities were required by law to spend part of their income on reliability so that all the elements of the grid had reserve capacity for emergencies. Backup generators, extra insulation for fuel pipes, fatter cables, more workers to trim trees and repair damage, etc. When I was a kid in Texas in the 70s, the grid was extremely reliable. Since deregulation the reliability incentive is gone. Any utility CEO that spends money on reliability will be pummeled into oblivion by Wall Street. It's all about maximizing profit now, and that means every part of the Texas grid operates right on the hairy edge of failure. The plan was that competition would provide some incentive for reliability, but that was always fantasy. No home in Texas has two sets of power lines coming into it from two competing companies. We all know what enshittification looks like by now. Texas is where enshittification meets the power grid.
- inamberclad 2y agoBecause the wealth of the state is being raided and hoarded by for profit companies instead of benefitting the people living there