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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

• 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'.
      • FredPret 2y ago
        > Does physics dictate how you build power lines? Bro. Come up with a plan and a budget for your buried cables and sell it to the people of Texas who will have to pay for it.
        • FrustratedMonky 2y ago
          They are paying for it. It's either on the front end with regulations on more expensive construction, or on the back end with power outages, damage and repairs.
          • FredPret 2y ago
            Put that in your presentation to the Texans!
    • rfrey 2y ago
      Closer to regulating that providers of essential infrastructure acknowledge that physics exists.
• 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.