“Texas officials have warned they may need to use rolling blackouts to ease the strain on the state's power grid this winter, despite the same strategy resulting in over 200 deaths during a previous storm. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said it may need to employ controlled outages if temperatures plunge below freezing for days on end as they did in February 2021.”
Translation: When Republicans “fixed the grid” they actually were lying — again.
Has the grid been fixed?
“No, the Texas electric grid isn’t fixed, if by fixed you mean guaranteed to work perfectly in all weather conditions. But there have been some improvements on the Texas grid after the storm of 2021 that should increase its reliability in extreme weather conditions.”
In fact it is SO NOT FIXED we’ve had rolling blackouts during SUMMER AND WINTER since the Great Snowpocalyse of 2021. What we HAVE had is a PR snow job by Republicans.
https://justenergy.com/blog/were-there-any-improvements-on-the-texas-grid-after-the-storm
Nor is all of Texas on the Texas grid.
El Paso, for example, is not. They DID NOT suffer power outages like the rest of Texas.
There is a reason the Texas grid sucks: $$$
“Politicians voted to spend billions to support the construction of gas-fueled power plants, even though many gas-fired plants failed dramatically in the freezing weather, as did other power sources like wind and solar.”
Close. But not the whole story.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/05/texas-bills-energy-natural-gas-fossil-fuel-renewables/
Now, I’ve only been an engineer for over 45 years and my job has always been to minimize risk (product should about by reducing risk to a minimum — if this is news to any engineers, this is a great skill to have in your back pocket).
Doing what Republicans did is just stupid and shows few in our Legislature or ERCOT has a brain. Worse, many Republicans in this state want to make renewables MORE expensive — because capitalism (/sarcasm font).
I am constantly frustrated with the idiots who make up our political office — they want to control my body, my vote and my life.
They want to make it deadly to live in Texas for anyone who isn’t rich.
Worse, they are fake capitalists. They are no more fond of capitalism than they are of free speech or the free exercise of religion.
They are everything our Framers were against.
Not everyone can afford an electric generator and yet this is HOW FUCKING BROKEN TEXAS HAS BECOME!
I wish I were joking. But we talk about our banana republic state as if it were modern and we can’t keep the fucking lights in mildly inclement weather.
The argument that “oh, companies are doing the best they can” is complete and utter bullshit. I know because I used to build systems that survived inclement weather from Canadian winters to Texas summers.
It is complete and utter bullshit and ERCOT, the Governor and Republican legislators all know this because they are corrupt.
The economic interests to DO FUCKING NOTHING is lower, to State Republicans than the loss of life.
Hell, more people were upset about Ted Cruz’s dog being left in a heatless house than dead Texans (good news, the dog was not left in a heatless house, all posts on Twitter were wrong).
And that is PRECISELY the problem with our state. Musk is deemed more important (both the left and the right — for different reasons) than the number of people without health insurance —about 4.9 million people
@feloneouscat They look like regular capitalists to me.
I am very sorry, and very worried for all of you who live in Texas. We're paying attention.
They talk free market but actually are monopolists.
My folks have a gas powered generator. When they lost power a week ago, they were unable to arrange it to support my mother’s bipap. People do not realize how bad it is.
@CajunBlueAZ1 @feloneouscat That’s messed up. Have they figured it out since then?
Health devices sometimes need a better sine wave than cheaper generators can deliver.
Many generators are more for things like light bulbs, refrigerators and other devices.
Many electronics expect high quality sine waves (the A in AC) and just don’t work if the are ragged.
@feloneouscat @CajunBlueAZ1 So maybe add an UPS?
Out of my element here. :) I will have people talk to people and see what needs to be done.
That actually is a good idea — we live rurally and have a UPS on all of our expensive electronic devices.
What you need to know is how many amps your device consumes and get a UPS that is greater than that.
No. It was 0200. Dad hurt himself getting it out of their shed and pulling it to the house. It’s not a far walk (40’) but in pitch black with only mom’s cell phone for light and after a couple of c-spine surgeries, he was bound to injure himself. His cognitive decline is very rapid. I appreciate the question. I will follow with them tomorrow and see who we can get to go check it out. Hopefully they move out of TX sooner rather than later.
@CajunBlueAZ1 @feloneouscat Oh. There’s a ton of shit going on there beyond the crap grid, but obviously that doesn’t help.
An ERCOT that didn’t play to defend Republicans and business would be nice, but I dream the impossible dream at the moment.
@feloneouscat @CajunBlueAZ1 Oh lord, Texas is fucked. Ex-Austinite here.
Yes. Every year it snows bullshit — even in summer. ERCOT is there to defend the non-renewable energy industry.
It is Abbott, Paxton, and their syndicate. ERCOT would be functioning properly if Beto had won.
Totally agree.
True. The panhandle isn’t even on the grid. They lose power sporadically. I have no idea what in the hell is going on with that.
My brother has convinced them to move to Nebraska. We are hopeful.
@feloneouscat Fellow Engineer here, and risk is something that is absolutely tracked, calculated, and reduced as much as possible. If a risk is identified in the risk matrix beyond a certain value, the project is instantly required to create a mitigation plan to reduce the risk or to track it relentlessly until the issue has either passed or the project needs to be retired. Nothing is allowed to be released if the risks aren't eliminated by the end of the program.
Exactly and yet our legislators instead ignored the risk — more gas generators would actually cripple electricity generation faster as more generators attempted to sink a relatively fixed source.
It is an moronic approach to a very real problem. And it should be expected to be moronic as our state legislators are just as much engineers as they are doctors. 🙄
@feloneouscat When you're paid not to care about a problem, you don't care about the problem. Only the worst of humanity would destroy the world in which we live for profit.
Our legislators are paid $45,340 for a two year term.
You can tell in the quality of their work 🙄
They are also more about fixing problems for the rich and business than real problems.
https://oertx.highered.texas.gov/courseware/lesson/1075/student-old/
@feloneouscat That may be their salary, but what are they getting under the table?
Exactly, and that is why they are corrupt.
@feloneouscat If we had a functional government and Constitution, corrupt members of the government would be removed swiftly. But alas...
@Gord02 @feloneouscat Not wrong, but the magnitude of the consequence is an important factor.
@feloneouscat That's because they _want_ the problem. Without the problem, how are they going to get away charging someone $15,000 a month for electric they can't deliver?
The whole story is that home customers who used natural gas were fighting with gas electric generators — as a result the pressure (and as a result volume) dropped dramatically causing electric generators to go offline.
Some renewables went offline, but both ERCOT and Governor Abbott blamed it ALL on renewables — which of course makes no sense.
The Republican solution? Put ALL of our eggs in one basket by building MORE gas powered plants — the ones that caused the problem in the first place.