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I was there last weekend & for the day of the hurricane. This was just a cat 1 hurricane at the time it passed through Houston, and there was SO much damage. I

I was there last weekend & for the day of the hurricane. This was just a cat 1 hurricane at the time it passed through Houston, and there was SO much damage. I can't imagine the city is remotely prepared for (god forbid, and idk how likely it is that far inland anyway) a cat 4 or 5. We were staying in a hotel that had a backup generator, but every single other building that was visible from our hotel had lost power during the storm. Everyone I talked to in the area lost power at home for at least a day, and many people said they expected to lose power for a full week. I'm interested if anyone familiar with the local state of the grid knows whose "fault" the enormous turnaround time in restoring power is: * Not enough employees at the electrical companies * Infrastructure regulation (e.g. requiring buried lines in critical areas) is insufficient in Houston specifically * Infrastructure regulation is insufficient in Texas specifically * (or nationally? are there national guidelines for the power grid in various weather-prone areas?) * The Texas grid being separate from the rest of the country's * Other??

blantonl 2y ago
This wasn't a "grid issue." It is a last-mile issue. It's specifically an issue with the sheer amount of above ground power lines and population density. There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. Plus, what causes the same amount of power outages (wind damage) isn't going to be different between 90mph winds and 150 mph winds. The effects are going to be the same on the power infrastructure. The hurricane, while even a Cat 1, still brought what would effectively be a localized extremely severe thunderstorm over vast swaths of, and a direct hit upon, major population areas over the 4rd largest city in the country. New Orleans was in the same boat with Ida in 2021. There were areas of the city that didn't get power back for over a month. Everyone was furious with Entergy there, but there's just a simple reality with this stuff.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  "no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this" Regulations on the initial construction? In other words, plan ahead. But no, I must have my 'Freeeeedooooommmmm'. You can't force me to prepare.
  - blantonl 2y ago
    Yeah, well what about existing infrastructure? Most new construction already buries the last mile of power. But if you do have above ground power lines feeding your house, how likely would it be that you'd be in favor of having your entire backyard dug up for a couple weeks while they implemented this huge public works project? How likely would you be willing to shoulder the cost burden? And of course, it's just as simple as digging a trench and burying the lines, right? I'm pretty sure there isn't any buried oil and gas infrastructure in the Houston area.... right?
    - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
      Sure, just stop complaining about not having power. Seems like everyone is ready to argue about how impossible everything is. Shrugs "guess it's impossible, we just have to go on like we've always have".
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      I would love it, personally. In addition to being vulnerable to wind and tree damage, above-ground power lines are very unsightly. Just compare any neighborhood with underground power to the ones where you can't look out of any window without seeing ugly poles and wires everywhere.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Why didn’t we think to regulate physics before!?
    - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
      Does physics dictate how you build power lines? Where is physics the constraint on more hardened construction? Physics isn't saying, build above ground and 'low cost'.
- gmueckl 2y ago
  What's wrong with below-ground power distribution for metropolitan areas?
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    It's time consuming and expensive to implement due to a mix of property rights and construction.
  - foota 2y ago
    "There is no easy fix" underground power lines for an entire city isn't easy.
  - blantonl 2y ago
    There's nothing wrong with it. But it would take lifetimes of money and time to retrofit a city like Houston to move all power infrastructure underground. And there is no way consumers would ever sign up for the cost to do so. It would be akin to building the Hoover Dam today. It would probably be one of the largest public works projects ever attempted.
    - mym1990 2y ago
      Lifetimes of money, really? What is that measurement? Someone above said 2.5 million per square miles. Catastrophic damage from larger storms is often in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, so it feel like it would be in the best interest of most parties to embark on this project, even if it happens slowly.
      - throwup238 2y ago
        Putting power lines underground wouldn't mitigate very much of that damage though, would it? I was under the impression that the vast majority of those multibillion dollar figures is water damage to buildings, cars, and other equipment.
        tstrimple 2y ago
- tigerBL00D 2y ago
  I don't think the difference between the power grid and the power utility is clear to most people. The grid is a statewide wholesale electricity distribution network which consists of generators, substations and high voltage long distance transmission lines. The utility is in charge of taking the power from the grid and delivering 110/220V to end customers, i.e. homes and businesses. This hurricane caused a lot of damage to the utility infrastructure. The grid performed fine. Some people bring up the storm Ian in 2021. Winter storms are fundamentally different disasters. Cold snaps drive up local electricity demand sharply and this is the kind of thing that can stress the grid.
  - quickthrowman 2y ago
    > The utility is in charge of taking the power from the grid and delivering 110/220V to end customers, i.e. homes and businesses. Sorry to be pedantic, but most US businesses have 208/120V or 480/277V three-phase electrical services. There are some old existing 240/120V three-phase high-leg delta (aka bastard leg) delta services. [0] Delta-wye transformers are the most common type today, that’s where you get the 208/120 and 480/277 services from. [1] Larger commercial/industrial customers can have their own medium/high voltage substations and premises wiring/distribution. Medium voltage is 2.4kV to 70kV with 4160V and 13800V being the most common for commercial/industrial applications. High voltage is roughly 100kV to 1mV. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-wye_transformer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-wye_transformer
    - gunapologist99 2y ago
      > Sorry to be pedantic Why apologize. You're in the right place for pedantry ;)
    - jsjohnst 2y ago
      > Sorry to be pedantic, but most US businesses have 208/120V or 480/277V three-phase electrical services. Sorry to be pedantic, but define “business”. As someone who’s worked on many job sites doing commercial electrical work, it’s not as common as you imply that there’s three phase service running to a business. Do a lot have it, yes, most, no. Literally everything else you said I’m aligned with.
- hedora 2y ago
  I disagree, and I speak from experience. We've been repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts hit both of the last two years. Our area looses a lot of roads to mudslides, and of course we have extended power outages. Having said that, the first year, PG&E only delivered one nine of availability last year, and this year, they're closer to two nines. The difference is that they actually trimmed the trees (residents have been asking for this for years), and they replaced most of the Regan-era telephone poles (the old ones had bent into all sorts of interesting arcs, and the data lines used be held up by being tied to nearby tree branches). So, for a Cat-1 to be as bad as it is in Texas, I assume the issue there is the same as here in California: Graft at the utility company, and corruption at the state house. We know for sure that Texas has these issues because they continue to refuse to winterize the grid. They could do so at minimal cost -- I think they just have to buy more expensive grease and install insulation sleeves when they run above ground pipes -- and the vast majority of states in the US do this. As a result, every time they get a 10-year snow storm the whole state loses power (and those storms are probably now 1-5 year storms thanks to climate change). This has been a well-publicized problem there since at least the 1990's, so they've had more than enough time to fix it. The last time they had a big winter storm, the power outage cascaded to a catastrophic failure at a refinery that feeds 20% of global PVC production. This is why you couldn't get materials to repair drainage or plumbing during the tail end of covid. As to your point about it being an urban area: The higher the population density, the easier the technical challenges become for this stuff. The amount of line to maintain per customer drops, and so does the density of hazardous trees, landslides, etc. The main challenges are around permitting, etc, but those processes are supposedly very lax in Texas (which is a good thing IMO). I do agree they should be burying lines whenever possible. Everyone should do that. Modern equipment means it's a lot easier than you'd think.
  - gunapologist99 2y ago
    Houston actually has relatively low population density compared to other metro areas with only 3,842 people per square mile, and across the MSA (Houston is extremely spread out), that number is much lower. (Compare to, for example, Union City, NJ, with 54,138 persons/sq mile.) There are some 7.5 million people spread out across more than 10,000 square miles across the greater Houston area. Also, the water table is very high, and hurricanes completely flood entire areas, so transformers etc are often completely underwater. It's just not feasible to bury sensitive equipment when the entire area is under six or ten feet of water.
- smelendez 2y ago
  Ida in New Orleans was a real mess and exposed a lot of issues in the city besides electricity. Because power was out for so long, everyone threw out a ton of food, but there was no trash pickup in some cases for weeks because of staffing shortages and contract disputes, so there was stinky trash and huge swarms of bright blue flies everywhere. At one point, the mayor suggested people could drive their own trash to the transfer station—after it had been sitting out in 95 degree heat for weeks. There also was no proper street cleaning, which meant streets and sidewalks were full of storm debris, including things like roofing nails. The lines at tire repair shops were wrapping around the block. Entergy's meter reading and billing also got completely thrown off. I moved shortly after Ida, and it took months to get any bill at all in the new place, and I only got my final bill for the old place this year, almost three years later, no longer living in Louisiana. (They also never actually sent me the bill or turned on my autopay, so I only knew it was time to pay when the power went out).
  - ddoolin 2y ago
    I am from central Louisiana (although I mostly have lived outside the state) and have been considering moving to NOLA and this is the kind of thing that gives me pause. Thanks for sharing.
    - selimthegrim 2y ago
      Things have changed since. I wouldn’t rule it out.
- matt_heimer 2y ago
  I think there is also a tree maintenance issue, the same problem that lead to fires in California. I'm 2 blocks from where one of the tornados touched down during the derecho and close the transmission lines that were heavily damaged. We were without power for 5 days after the derecho and only 1 day this time. If you look at where power was least impacted and restored the soonest for Beryl it is the same area that was most impacted by the derecho. I think the derecho took out a lot of the problematic trees and branches.
- bravetraveler 2y ago
  This last mile - lines/etc - are also partly what make trivial matters like 'extended cold periods' a problem. I hate it here in TX
- bastawhiz 2y ago
  > It's specifically an issue with the sheer amount of above ground power lines and population density. There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. Not to be pedantic, but this is easy to fix. Burying power lines, trimming trees, and all of the other labor are solved problems. By and large, it's not even a particularly hard technical problem. It's a bunch of easy solutions that are expensive and tedious and politically unpopular (nobody wants to spend money or tell their constituents that roads will be closed for utility work). I'd also note that Hurricane Sandy was category 2 when it hit NYC, which is inarguably far denser than Houston. New York had power back for 95% of customers in 11 days. New Jersey did the same in less than two weeks. Texas could be doing better.
  - randcraw 2y ago
    The water table in Houston is less than a foot below ground, making line burial impossible, and with almost 7 million residents, economically infeasible. Trees are not the problem since Houston has few trees. Like most underprovisioned (and under-designed) metro areas, Houston's only solution is to modularize its neighborhoods into independent services that can quickly switch to alternative sources of power, thereby rerouting around damage while it's being repaired. The absolutely worst model is the one they have now -- to remove all ability to route demand dynamically through as many external partners as possible, thereby minimizing their vulnerability to single points of catastropic failure. This needs to extend not only to out-of-state power sources but also to in-state and in-city multipoint forms of routing and even power generation. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. THAT's what's needed most. And the cooperative spirit to do what's necessary -- something Texas lacks in SPADES.
    - bastawhiz 2y ago
      > Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. THAT's what's needed most. And this is also not a hard problem, just expensive, tedious, and politically unpopular.
- duped 2y ago
  Florida took a direct hit from a cat 5 in 2017 and power was back in most places in a couple of days, and iirc they didn't lose a single (new) pole statewide. After Wilma they hardened the infrastructure and this isn't as big a problem there, despite having even worse geographic issues than Texas and New Orleans.
- presentation 2y ago
  Why doesn’t Tokyo, which almost entirely relies on above ground power cables and gets hit with strong typhoons every year, not experience these problems? What makes the Houston situation so hopeless?
- whoknowsidont 2y ago
  >There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. This is quite literally the easiest thing to fix.
silverquiet 2y ago
I see people talking about deficiencies in the Texas grid, and that may be true but hardly seems relevant to Houston; it's the Houston grid that seems to be acutely problematic. In fact, it occurred to me that with much of Houston still offline, the TX grid is probably less stressed than usual and a look at the dashboards on ercot.com would seem to confirm this - capacity is well over demand.
- bdcravens 2y ago
  The state grid is problematic at other times, but in the case of storms, it's irrelevant when a fallen tree takes out a physical power line. It's more of a "last mile" issue.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    The solution to last-mile problems is fewer miles. Fact is metro Houston takes up 15x more land than is really called for. A factor of 15 makes a significant difference in the cost of wires, pipes, and roads.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  it's totally irrelevant. there was a wind storm in a region where burying power lines is impractical without wireless power transmission I'm not sure what people want. Where do you put lines that can't be buried or blown over?
  - fragmede 2y ago
    SimCity and Elon Musk to the rescue! See, we put satellites in space with giant solar panels on then and then just beam the energy down from space, directly to a receiver dish mounted on your rooftop, next to the starlink dish.
bdcravens 2y ago
I live in an area northwest of Houston. We had similar outages (though not as long) in May (serious storm, but not a hurricane) In many cases, it's the result of winds knocking trees into powerlines. I feel like preventative maintenance could mitigate this. A big factor is likely our deregulation: the electricity provider isn't the company billing end customers.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  I live in Seattle’s Ballard area, but work with people on the east side. Big storms blow down branches all the time on the other side of the lake, causing power outages. We have less trees here in Seattle, comparatively, or maybe Seattle power and light is better at tree maintenance, but ya lots of trees = lots of power outages from what I can infer. Some richer communities on the east side bury their lines so power outages are more rare.
  - jtolmar 2y ago
    Downtown Ballard had a lot of power outages over the last two years. Apparently they were using a different transformer than everywhere else, all of which are getting old, and some procurement mistake lead to the spare parts being back-ordered by a year. (This is second hand through a neighbor who actually went and bothered them about all the outages, so there are probably mistakes.)
    - zacharycohn 2y ago
      Using different equipment from the rest of Seattle is very Ballard.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      Ya, I live on 60th, so 4 blocks north of market, and it’s weird that they get power outages to about 56th or 57th while we never do.
- vel0city 2y ago
  The delivery price is regulated like it was pre-deregulatuon and is a separate line item in pretty much everyone's bill.
AlbertCory 2y ago
It's obvious that everyone wants to blame it on their favorite villain, whatever that is. A more rational approach would be to look at comparable cities and see how they cope with big storms, whatever the storms' cat numbers. My guess is, no matter what comparables you pick, Houston comes out on the bottom. Maybe it IS deregulation! You can be in favor of it in general, and still admit, "OK, maybe in this instance it didn't work." That doesn't mean you're giving free rein to the people in favor of the government regulating everything.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Let's rephrase that. "Centerpoint Energy comes out on the bottom". I believe that's a statement Houstonians can get behind enthusiastically. (Although PG&E is also doing well in this race to the bottom".
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- blantonl 2y ago
  The issue was exactly the same with Ida and New Orleans in 2021. Areas of the New Orleans metro area were without power for 3 weeks or more
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    so that's one comparable. Surely there are other First World cities that have storms?
    - 2y ago
tzs 2y ago
> I can't imagine the city is remotely prepared for (god forbid, and idk how likely it is that far inland anyway) a cat 4 or 5. In the past they've never had a cat 5. The last cat 5 was Carla in 1961. The last cat 3 was Alicia in 1983. The last cat 2 was Alicia in 2008 (although that was actually east of Houston and just hit Houston with its weaker winds). Climate change should make such storms more likely to form, but it should also change ocean and air current patterns which could affect the chances they make it to Houston. The list I got those from noted that in 1961 air conditioning was still novel, which makes me curious. How did people deal with the heat in Houston before air conditioning? The average July temperature in Houston nowadays is 4.2℉ (2.3℃) higher than it was in 1970, and climate change tends to cause more extremes, so I'd guess that the highs are also higher and extreme days more common, so maybe AC has become more of a necessity nowadays?
- wongarsu 2y ago
  > How did people deal with the heat in Houston before air conditioning I imagine at first it was really drafty homes, and later on big ceiling fans everywhere
- genocidicbunny 2y ago
  I'd expect the population of Houston in those days was also a little more self selective, in that of you couldn't deal with that heat, you probably didn't want to live there anyways. There's a reason a lot of southwestern cities like Phoenix started booming in population when AC became more readily available.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Probably right, but also you don't miss what you've never had. Not having air conditioning was just normal.
    - genocidicbunny 2y ago
      It might have been normal but people are people and would still seek out more comfortable climates. And if you stretch the definition of air conditioning a bit, we've had that for about as long as we've been living in semi enclosed spaces. Running a fire at night to keep the cave warm is air conditioning. Building your home to have water flowing under the floors so that you can cool or heat the floors passively (I believe the Romans were doing this) is air conditioning. Hanging a wet towel to allow the water to evaporate and cool the room a little is air conditioning.
christophilus 2y ago
I’ve lived through a lot of big hurricanes. Cat 1 storms can be worse than more intense storms, as they are often slower-moving, so they can dump a LOT more water per square inch. Not sure if that was the case here, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’d fare significantly worse under higher category storms.
gunapologist99 2y ago
Hurricane Ike was a category 4 that traveled nearly directly over Houston in 2008. (It wasn't a category four when it passed over, since, like all major storms, they weaken as they move inland.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike Burying lines, especially in historic areas, is incredibly expensive and not necessarily a panacea either, although it helps. Is it worth it? Realistically, for the millions upon millions of people that live in the greater Houston MSA (and of course except for those who rely on power for healthcare equipment, who really need to invest in a small generator or get to a shelter), it's far more cost effective to simply deal with power outages every decade or two. During Ike, large parts of Houston, especially to the northeast, were literally underwater, so power wouldn't have helped anyway. The number of utility crews lined up along highways from other states, even from thousands of miles away, in the immediate aftermath of Ike is both inspiring and enlightening, especially when you recognize that they were going into a disaster zone, likely without a nice hotel to go back to or even running water after working a 12 hour shift. So, no, it's just part of living near the coast in a hurricane-prone area. If you don't like it, move somewhere else.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  I think part of the argument is that it’s like that the number of these events will double or trouble, or even become yearly with climate change.
  - gunapologist99 2y ago
    Yes, that's the argument. Of course, some of it remains to be seen, because as of now we're not actually seeing more or more intense storms compared to historical averages (at least that we know about). Houston has, on average, one large storm event every decade or so, and that hasn't really changed much over the last 100 years. https://www.weather.gov/hgx/major_events https://www.weather.gov/hgx/major_events
    - two_handfuls 2y ago
      We’re probably about to see more and more intense storms over the Atlantic. Hurricane Beryl is the earliest category five Atlantic hurricane in records going back around 100 years ([source](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9r3g572lrno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9r3g572lrno)). So it’s just a matter of time. Also, looking at your source, I see 2 tropical cyclones between 1900-1950, 3 between 1950-2000, and then 8 in the 24 years since. To me that looks like an increase in tropical cyclones over time.
poikroequ 2y ago
It's likely a combination of multiple factors. Texas, being a red state, most certainly has a stronger climate denial sentiment, which is going to affect policies and regulations. Texas may be unprepared because major hurricanes were uncommon in the past. Global warming means hotter temperatures which makes long power outages more unbearable. And probably other reasons I can't think of. I expect things will improve, but it may take some years. As these events become more common and people have to suffer every year, voters are going to get fed up, and Republicans would be foolish to keep up their climate denial stance.
- dylan604 2y ago
  >Texas may be unprepared because major hurricanes were uncommon in the past. Maybe, but no. Texas has its history of major hurricanes. While maybe not as popular of a target as Florida and New Orleans, but Houston definitely has as much of a bullseye on it as a trailer park in a tornado. Harvey was predicted well in advance that it was going to be a devastating storm. For days ahead I saw the up to 40" of rain and thought that couldn't possibly be correct. Then it happened. Houston took little action and then acted shocked. Of course, Houston has it's own unique set of problems with their lack of zoning rules plus so many other things without having to make some climate denier argument that's not necessarily wrong but just horribly out of place
  - poikroequ 2y ago
    I just know what I hear. Power outage during freezing temperatures in winter time, and their response? No handouts, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. As if people in a major metropolitan city can just go into the nearby woods and gather firewood. Politics is definitely a factor.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > Politics is definitely a factor. It's also election year. The state agencies didn't submit the emergency declaration work before the storm hit like they usually did in years past - this is not their first rodeo, so it can't be explained by ignorance. Also, Houston is Harris county, so not exactly the governor's or legislature's favorite voting county.
akira2501 2y ago
> This was just a cat 1 hurricane _just_. The definition of "just a cat 1" is winds from 75 to 95 miles per hour. There is some debate over whether it picked up to cat 2 levels just before it made landfall and reweakened to cat 1. > Other?? Political corruption preventing elected officials from actually enforcing any laws or authority over Centerpoint.
pennybanks 2y ago
its funny people comment and act like they know how strong a hurricane and how much damage it should do like theyre all the same. or that they know how much infrastructure is supposed to break or not break. if you were there during beryl you know the winds were strong enough to take trees out yes? trust me houston is not a stranger to hurricanes we all went through a cat 4 harvey years back. which well funnily enough didnt have any huge power problems. more so a house and car totally flooded problem. or 10in of water in the house for weeks problem. mold problem. tropical storm ike before that took out power for weeks causing $30b in damages in the states wish people would put their energy into helping or something instead of just thinking about their own agenda. or talking crap i dont know i wouldnt wish this on anyone its hell

blantonl 2y ago

This wasn't a "grid issue." It is a last-mile issue. It's specifically an issue with the sheer amount of above ground power lines and population density. There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. Plus, what causes the same amount of power outages (wind damage) isn't going to be different between 90mph winds and 150 mph winds. The effects are going to be the same on the power infrastructure. The hurricane, while even a Cat 1, still brought what would effectively be a localized extremely severe thunderstorm over vast swaths of, and a direct hit upon, major population areas over the 4rd largest city in the country. New Orleans was in the same boat with Ida in 2021. There were areas of the city that didn't get power back for over a month. Everyone was furious with Entergy there, but there's just a simple reality with this stuff.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago
"no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this" Regulations on the initial construction? In other words, plan ahead. But no, I must have my 'Freeeeedooooommmmm'. You can't force me to prepare.
- blantonl 2y ago
  Yeah, well what about existing infrastructure? Most new construction already buries the last mile of power. But if you do have above ground power lines feeding your house, how likely would it be that you'd be in favor of having your entire backyard dug up for a couple weeks while they implemented this huge public works project? How likely would you be willing to shoulder the cost burden? And of course, it's just as simple as digging a trench and burying the lines, right? I'm pretty sure there isn't any buried oil and gas infrastructure in the Houston area.... right?
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Sure, just stop complaining about not having power. Seems like everyone is ready to argue about how impossible everything is. Shrugs "guess it's impossible, we just have to go on like we've always have".
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I would love it, personally. In addition to being vulnerable to wind and tree damage, above-ground power lines are very unsightly. Just compare any neighborhood with underground power to the ones where you can't look out of any window without seeing ugly poles and wires everywhere.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- FredPret 2y ago
  Why didn’t we think to regulate physics before!?
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Does physics dictate how you build power lines? Where is physics the constraint on more hardened construction? Physics isn't saying, build above ground and 'low cost'.
gmueckl 2y ago
What's wrong with below-ground power distribution for metropolitan areas?
- alephnerd 2y ago
  It's time consuming and expensive to implement due to a mix of property rights and construction.
- foota 2y ago
  "There is no easy fix" underground power lines for an entire city isn't easy.
- blantonl 2y ago
  There's nothing wrong with it. But it would take lifetimes of money and time to retrofit a city like Houston to move all power infrastructure underground. And there is no way consumers would ever sign up for the cost to do so. It would be akin to building the Hoover Dam today. It would probably be one of the largest public works projects ever attempted.
  - mym1990 2y ago
    Lifetimes of money, really? What is that measurement? Someone above said 2.5 million per square miles. Catastrophic damage from larger storms is often in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, so it feel like it would be in the best interest of most parties to embark on this project, even if it happens slowly.
    - throwup238 2y ago
      Putting power lines underground wouldn't mitigate very much of that damage though, would it? I was under the impression that the vast majority of those multibillion dollar figures is water damage to buildings, cars, and other equipment.
      - tstrimple 2y ago
tigerBL00D 2y ago
I don't think the difference between the power grid and the power utility is clear to most people. The grid is a statewide wholesale electricity distribution network which consists of generators, substations and high voltage long distance transmission lines. The utility is in charge of taking the power from the grid and delivering 110/220V to end customers, i.e. homes and businesses. This hurricane caused a lot of damage to the utility infrastructure. The grid performed fine. Some people bring up the storm Ian in 2021. Winter storms are fundamentally different disasters. Cold snaps drive up local electricity demand sharply and this is the kind of thing that can stress the grid.
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  > The utility is in charge of taking the power from the grid and delivering 110/220V to end customers, i.e. homes and businesses. Sorry to be pedantic, but most US businesses have 208/120V or 480/277V three-phase electrical services. There are some old existing 240/120V three-phase high-leg delta (aka bastard leg) delta services. [0] Delta-wye transformers are the most common type today, that’s where you get the 208/120 and 480/277 services from. [1] Larger commercial/industrial customers can have their own medium/high voltage substations and premises wiring/distribution. Medium voltage is 2.4kV to 70kV with 4160V and 13800V being the most common for commercial/industrial applications. High voltage is roughly 100kV to 1mV. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-wye_transformer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-wye_transformer
  - gunapologist99 2y ago
    > Sorry to be pedantic Why apologize. You're in the right place for pedantry ;)
  - jsjohnst 2y ago
    > Sorry to be pedantic, but most US businesses have 208/120V or 480/277V three-phase electrical services. Sorry to be pedantic, but define “business”. As someone who’s worked on many job sites doing commercial electrical work, it’s not as common as you imply that there’s three phase service running to a business. Do a lot have it, yes, most, no. Literally everything else you said I’m aligned with.
hedora 2y ago
I disagree, and I speak from experience. We've been repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts hit both of the last two years. Our area looses a lot of roads to mudslides, and of course we have extended power outages. Having said that, the first year, PG&E only delivered one nine of availability last year, and this year, they're closer to two nines. The difference is that they actually trimmed the trees (residents have been asking for this for years), and they replaced most of the Regan-era telephone poles (the old ones had bent into all sorts of interesting arcs, and the data lines used be held up by being tied to nearby tree branches). So, for a Cat-1 to be as bad as it is in Texas, I assume the issue there is the same as here in California: Graft at the utility company, and corruption at the state house. We know for sure that Texas has these issues because they continue to refuse to winterize the grid. They could do so at minimal cost -- I think they just have to buy more expensive grease and install insulation sleeves when they run above ground pipes -- and the vast majority of states in the US do this. As a result, every time they get a 10-year snow storm the whole state loses power (and those storms are probably now 1-5 year storms thanks to climate change). This has been a well-publicized problem there since at least the 1990's, so they've had more than enough time to fix it. The last time they had a big winter storm, the power outage cascaded to a catastrophic failure at a refinery that feeds 20% of global PVC production. This is why you couldn't get materials to repair drainage or plumbing during the tail end of covid. As to your point about it being an urban area: The higher the population density, the easier the technical challenges become for this stuff. The amount of line to maintain per customer drops, and so does the density of hazardous trees, landslides, etc. The main challenges are around permitting, etc, but those processes are supposedly very lax in Texas (which is a good thing IMO). I do agree they should be burying lines whenever possible. Everyone should do that. Modern equipment means it's a lot easier than you'd think.
- gunapologist99 2y ago
  Houston actually has relatively low population density compared to other metro areas with only 3,842 people per square mile, and across the MSA (Houston is extremely spread out), that number is much lower. (Compare to, for example, Union City, NJ, with 54,138 persons/sq mile.) There are some 7.5 million people spread out across more than 10,000 square miles across the greater Houston area. Also, the water table is very high, and hurricanes completely flood entire areas, so transformers etc are often completely underwater. It's just not feasible to bury sensitive equipment when the entire area is under six or ten feet of water.
smelendez 2y ago
Ida in New Orleans was a real mess and exposed a lot of issues in the city besides electricity. Because power was out for so long, everyone threw out a ton of food, but there was no trash pickup in some cases for weeks because of staffing shortages and contract disputes, so there was stinky trash and huge swarms of bright blue flies everywhere. At one point, the mayor suggested people could drive their own trash to the transfer station—after it had been sitting out in 95 degree heat for weeks. There also was no proper street cleaning, which meant streets and sidewalks were full of storm debris, including things like roofing nails. The lines at tire repair shops were wrapping around the block. Entergy's meter reading and billing also got completely thrown off. I moved shortly after Ida, and it took months to get any bill at all in the new place, and I only got my final bill for the old place this year, almost three years later, no longer living in Louisiana. (They also never actually sent me the bill or turned on my autopay, so I only knew it was time to pay when the power went out).
- ddoolin 2y ago
  I am from central Louisiana (although I mostly have lived outside the state) and have been considering moving to NOLA and this is the kind of thing that gives me pause. Thanks for sharing.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    Things have changed since. I wouldn’t rule it out.
matt_heimer 2y ago
I think there is also a tree maintenance issue, the same problem that lead to fires in California. I'm 2 blocks from where one of the tornados touched down during the derecho and close the transmission lines that were heavily damaged. We were without power for 5 days after the derecho and only 1 day this time. If you look at where power was least impacted and restored the soonest for Beryl it is the same area that was most impacted by the derecho. I think the derecho took out a lot of the problematic trees and branches.
bravetraveler 2y ago
This last mile - lines/etc - are also partly what make trivial matters like 'extended cold periods' a problem. I hate it here in TX
bastawhiz 2y ago
> It's specifically an issue with the sheer amount of above ground power lines and population density. There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. Not to be pedantic, but this is easy to fix. Burying power lines, trimming trees, and all of the other labor are solved problems. By and large, it's not even a particularly hard technical problem. It's a bunch of easy solutions that are expensive and tedious and politically unpopular (nobody wants to spend money or tell their constituents that roads will be closed for utility work). I'd also note that Hurricane Sandy was category 2 when it hit NYC, which is inarguably far denser than Houston. New York had power back for 95% of customers in 11 days. New Jersey did the same in less than two weeks. Texas could be doing better.
- randcraw 2y ago
  The water table in Houston is less than a foot below ground, making line burial impossible, and with almost 7 million residents, economically infeasible. Trees are not the problem since Houston has few trees. Like most underprovisioned (and under-designed) metro areas, Houston's only solution is to modularize its neighborhoods into independent services that can quickly switch to alternative sources of power, thereby rerouting around damage while it's being repaired. The absolutely worst model is the one they have now -- to remove all ability to route demand dynamically through as many external partners as possible, thereby minimizing their vulnerability to single points of catastropic failure. This needs to extend not only to out-of-state power sources but also to in-state and in-city multipoint forms of routing and even power generation. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. THAT's what's needed most. And the cooperative spirit to do what's necessary -- something Texas lacks in SPADES.
  - bastawhiz 2y ago
    > Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. THAT's what's needed most. And this is also not a hard problem, just expensive, tedious, and politically unpopular.
duped 2y ago
Florida took a direct hit from a cat 5 in 2017 and power was back in most places in a couple of days, and iirc they didn't lose a single (new) pole statewide. After Wilma they hardened the infrastructure and this isn't as big a problem there, despite having even worse geographic issues than Texas and New Orleans.
presentation 2y ago
Why doesn’t Tokyo, which almost entirely relies on above ground power cables and gets hit with strong typhoons every year, not experience these problems? What makes the Houston situation so hopeless?
whoknowsidont 2y ago
>There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. This is quite literally the easiest thing to fix.

silverquiet 2y ago

I see people talking about deficiencies in the Texas grid, and that may be true but hardly seems relevant to Houston; it's the Houston grid that seems to be acutely problematic. In fact, it occurred to me that with much of Houston still offline, the TX grid is probably less stressed than usual and a look at the dashboards on ercot.com would seem to confirm this - capacity is well over demand.

bdcravens 2y ago
The state grid is problematic at other times, but in the case of storms, it's irrelevant when a fallen tree takes out a physical power line. It's more of a "last mile" issue.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  The solution to last-mile problems is fewer miles. Fact is metro Houston takes up 15x more land than is really called for. A factor of 15 makes a significant difference in the cost of wires, pipes, and roads.
dingnuts 2y ago
it's totally irrelevant. there was a wind storm in a region where burying power lines is impractical without wireless power transmission I'm not sure what people want. Where do you put lines that can't be buried or blown over?
- fragmede 2y ago
  SimCity and Elon Musk to the rescue! See, we put satellites in space with giant solar panels on then and then just beam the energy down from space, directly to a receiver dish mounted on your rooftop, next to the starlink dish.

bdcravens 2y ago

I live in an area northwest of Houston. We had similar outages (though not as long) in May (serious storm, but not a hurricane) In many cases, it's the result of winds knocking trees into powerlines. I feel like preventative maintenance could mitigate this. A big factor is likely our deregulation: the electricity provider isn't the company billing end customers.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
I live in Seattle’s Ballard area, but work with people on the east side. Big storms blow down branches all the time on the other side of the lake, causing power outages. We have less trees here in Seattle, comparatively, or maybe Seattle power and light is better at tree maintenance, but ya lots of trees = lots of power outages from what I can infer. Some richer communities on the east side bury their lines so power outages are more rare.
- jtolmar 2y ago
  Downtown Ballard had a lot of power outages over the last two years. Apparently they were using a different transformer than everywhere else, all of which are getting old, and some procurement mistake lead to the spare parts being back-ordered by a year. (This is second hand through a neighbor who actually went and bothered them about all the outages, so there are probably mistakes.)
  - zacharycohn 2y ago
    Using different equipment from the rest of Seattle is very Ballard.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Ya, I live on 60th, so 4 blocks north of market, and it’s weird that they get power outages to about 56th or 57th while we never do.
vel0city 2y ago
The delivery price is regulated like it was pre-deregulatuon and is a separate line item in pretty much everyone's bill.

AlbertCory 2y ago

It's obvious that everyone wants to blame it on their favorite villain, whatever that is. A more rational approach would be to look at comparable cities and see how they cope with big storms, whatever the storms' cat numbers. My guess is, no matter what comparables you pick, Houston comes out on the bottom. Maybe it IS deregulation! You can be in favor of it in general, and still admit, "OK, maybe in this instance it didn't work." That doesn't mean you're giving free rein to the people in favor of the government regulating everything.

dingnuts 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Let's rephrase that. "Centerpoint Energy comes out on the bottom". I believe that's a statement Houstonians can get behind enthusiastically. (Although PG&E is also doing well in this race to the bottom".
  - deleted 2y ago
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blantonl 2y ago
The issue was exactly the same with Ida and New Orleans in 2021. Areas of the New Orleans metro area were without power for 3 weeks or more
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  so that's one comparable. Surely there are other First World cities that have storms?
  - 2y ago

tzs 2y ago

> I can't imagine the city is remotely prepared for (god forbid, and idk how likely it is that far inland anyway) a cat 4 or 5. In the past they've never had a cat 5. The last cat 5 was Carla in 1961. The last cat 3 was Alicia in 1983. The last cat 2 was Alicia in 2008 (although that was actually east of Houston and just hit Houston with its weaker winds). Climate change should make such storms more likely to form, but it should also change ocean and air current patterns which could affect the chances they make it to Houston. The list I got those from noted that in 1961 air conditioning was still novel, which makes me curious. How did people deal with the heat in Houston before air conditioning? The average July temperature in Houston nowadays is 4.2℉ (2.3℃) higher than it was in 1970, and climate change tends to cause more extremes, so I'd guess that the highs are also higher and extreme days more common, so maybe AC has become more of a necessity nowadays?

wongarsu 2y ago
> How did people deal with the heat in Houston before air conditioning I imagine at first it was really drafty homes, and later on big ceiling fans everywhere
genocidicbunny 2y ago
I'd expect the population of Houston in those days was also a little more self selective, in that of you couldn't deal with that heat, you probably didn't want to live there anyways. There's a reason a lot of southwestern cities like Phoenix started booming in population when AC became more readily available.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Probably right, but also you don't miss what you've never had. Not having air conditioning was just normal.
  - genocidicbunny 2y ago
    It might have been normal but people are people and would still seek out more comfortable climates. And if you stretch the definition of air conditioning a bit, we've had that for about as long as we've been living in semi enclosed spaces. Running a fire at night to keep the cave warm is air conditioning. Building your home to have water flowing under the floors so that you can cool or heat the floors passively (I believe the Romans were doing this) is air conditioning. Hanging a wet towel to allow the water to evaporate and cool the room a little is air conditioning.

christophilus 2y ago

I’ve lived through a lot of big hurricanes. Cat 1 storms can be worse than more intense storms, as they are often slower-moving, so they can dump a LOT more water per square inch. Not sure if that was the case here, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’d fare significantly worse under higher category storms.

gunapologist99 2y ago

Hurricane Ike was a category 4 that traveled nearly directly over Houston in 2008. (It wasn't a category four when it passed over, since, like all major storms, they weaken as they move inland.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike Burying lines, especially in historic areas, is incredibly expensive and not necessarily a panacea either, although it helps. Is it worth it? Realistically, for the millions upon millions of people that live in the greater Houston MSA (and of course except for those who rely on power for healthcare equipment, who really need to invest in a small generator or get to a shelter), it's far more cost effective to simply deal with power outages every decade or two. During Ike, large parts of Houston, especially to the northeast, were literally underwater, so power wouldn't have helped anyway. The number of utility crews lined up along highways from other states, even from thousands of miles away, in the immediate aftermath of Ike is both inspiring and enlightening, especially when you recognize that they were going into a disaster zone, likely without a nice hotel to go back to or even running water after working a 12 hour shift. So, no, it's just part of living near the coast in a hurricane-prone area. If you don't like it, move somewhere else.

EasyMark 2y ago
I think part of the argument is that it’s like that the number of these events will double or trouble, or even become yearly with climate change.
- gunapologist99 2y ago
  Yes, that's the argument. Of course, some of it remains to be seen, because as of now we're not actually seeing more or more intense storms compared to historical averages (at least that we know about). Houston has, on average, one large storm event every decade or so, and that hasn't really changed much over the last 100 years. https://www.weather.gov/hgx/major_events https://www.weather.gov/hgx/major_events
  - two_handfuls 2y ago
    We’re probably about to see more and more intense storms over the Atlantic. Hurricane Beryl is the earliest category five Atlantic hurricane in records going back around 100 years ([source](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9r3g572lrno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9r3g572lrno)). So it’s just a matter of time. Also, looking at your source, I see 2 tropical cyclones between 1900-1950, 3 between 1950-2000, and then 8 in the 24 years since. To me that looks like an increase in tropical cyclones over time.

poikroequ 2y ago

It's likely a combination of multiple factors. Texas, being a red state, most certainly has a stronger climate denial sentiment, which is going to affect policies and regulations. Texas may be unprepared because major hurricanes were uncommon in the past. Global warming means hotter temperatures which makes long power outages more unbearable. And probably other reasons I can't think of. I expect things will improve, but it may take some years. As these events become more common and people have to suffer every year, voters are going to get fed up, and Republicans would be foolish to keep up their climate denial stance.

dylan604 2y ago
>Texas may be unprepared because major hurricanes were uncommon in the past. Maybe, but no. Texas has its history of major hurricanes. While maybe not as popular of a target as Florida and New Orleans, but Houston definitely has as much of a bullseye on it as a trailer park in a tornado. Harvey was predicted well in advance that it was going to be a devastating storm. For days ahead I saw the up to 40" of rain and thought that couldn't possibly be correct. Then it happened. Houston took little action and then acted shocked. Of course, Houston has it's own unique set of problems with their lack of zoning rules plus so many other things without having to make some climate denier argument that's not necessarily wrong but just horribly out of place
- poikroequ 2y ago
  I just know what I hear. Power outage during freezing temperatures in winter time, and their response? No handouts, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. As if people in a major metropolitan city can just go into the nearby woods and gather firewood. Politics is definitely a factor.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > Politics is definitely a factor. It's also election year. The state agencies didn't submit the emergency declaration work before the storm hit like they usually did in years past - this is not their first rodeo, so it can't be explained by ignorance. Also, Houston is Harris county, so not exactly the governor's or legislature's favorite voting county.

akira2501 2y ago

> This was just a cat 1 hurricane _just_. The definition of "just a cat 1" is winds from 75 to 95 miles per hour. There is some debate over whether it picked up to cat 2 levels just before it made landfall and reweakened to cat 1. > Other?? Political corruption preventing elected officials from actually enforcing any laws or authority over Centerpoint.

pennybanks 2y ago

its funny people comment and act like they know how strong a hurricane and how much damage it should do like theyre all the same. or that they know how much infrastructure is supposed to break or not break. if you were there during beryl you know the winds were strong enough to take trees out yes? trust me houston is not a stranger to hurricanes we all went through a cat 4 harvey years back. which well funnily enough didnt have any huge power problems. more so a house and car totally flooded problem. or 10in of water in the house for weeks problem. mold problem. tropical storm ike before that took out power for weeks causing $30b in damages in the states wish people would put their energy into helping or something instead of just thinking about their own agenda. or talking crap i dont know i wouldnt wish this on anyone its hell