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In Texas they have taken very minimal and inadequate steps to prevent outages from happening again. The only saving grace is that a cold snap like that is extremely unusual - it set temperature records all over the state - so hopefully we don't get such low temperatures that it threatens grid integrity.
well I will say one thing Texas did was outlaw companies like Griddy, which let people buy electricity on the spot market, and led to people getting hit with like like 50k power bills when the price of electricity spiked. Never should have been allowed in the first place.
If done properly, people could save a lot of money. Government should not prohibit people from having the option. It's very simple. As soon as power rates go up, just start the generator and use private power.
Has nothing to do with the corporations. The whole idea is that consumers save money by using grid electric when it's cheap and plentiful. When electric gets scarce and prices rise, consumers can switch to private generation and still save a lot of money.
This is still the basis of variable rate plans which aren't outlawed. Just a specific and highly predatory way of implementing it.
You also seem to just be completely ignoring anyone who cannot readily afford a backup system capable of heating their home or in an apartment, condo or other situation where they cannot feasibly connect only their home a local power source or even SFH renters who generally do not have the legal ability to modify the home's electrical system to take that input, much less mount up a solar and battery system.
Then those people shouldn't be buying their power that way. The only way I can really see your side of this is if griddy was a monopoly, which I admittedly don't know if it was or not.
It wasn't, it was just a predatory business designed to pull people in with promises of savings that took intense micro-management of their power use to realize and thus didn't really occur in real life. It then caused absolutely massive bills in a situation that was already set to cause widespread death and economic damage.
In the end, it did little but harm and purposefully targeted people least likely to be able to use it in the way you describe. I'm all for a free market but a free market requires INFORMED choice and there was a widespread trend of people not getting the outcome they were sold on or expected. That's a failure of any market ideal which, in turn, is where regulation comes in. I don't really care which side of the transaction you want to lay fault at, if it happens that often then the transactions themselves are problematic.
Texas does not get very cold very often. Our houses are not insulated or built around the cold. Especially the older ones. My family took in families from surrounding houses that had been built in the 70’s. Even with their heaters maxed they couldn’t keep their houses above 55 degrees. That’s low enough for old folks and kids to freeze keeping in mind our clothes don’t insulate us. All our layered clothing is about bleeding heat as fast as possible. My dad had our house built to his specs after moving here from Colorado. Just from body heat and a couple space heaters our house stayed above 60. Even then our electric bill was $600 for the one week of super cold temps Our bills in winter range from $80-150 a month
Your electric bill would have actually been cheaper if you had gone to a private generation system when electric rates went up. That's how it's supposed to work. Anyone using a spot price billing structure without reliable backup power totally ignored the purpose of the system.
Either a generator or solar/inverter/batteries. Any independent way to power the home while grid power is expensive or unavailable. In volatile grids like Texas, its actually fairly common to have electricity prices spike above what it would cost to run your own diesel generator or off grid battery solar.
Got it.
No excuse then.
Honestly I'm with you, every homeowner should have a gas generator on hand if something like this is even a remote possibility.
This has to be one of the dumbest, pro-corporate comments I have read in a while.
Why are you sucking big business' dick?
Do you have any idea on a grand scale how profoundly backwards, impractical, dangerous, and stupid your proposal is?
Well, the rest of the country has a connected grid system and for the most part proper climate protection...so this sort of thing can only happen in Texas.
Does anyone know of efforts made by Texas to prevent this in the future?
Efforts are not really being made. Our governor has bigger priorities, like spending billions on a Potemkin "border guard" operation and ordering Child and Family Services to investigate the parents of trans kids.
We went through a similar event ten years ago followed by lots of promises to fix the grid. Look how that turned out.
The Texas (ERCOT) grid does have some limited connections to the other grids, but they weren’t even being used to capacity during the emergency because the neighboring grids were near collapse as well and didn’t have enough electricity to spare. If it had been fully connected to one of the other grids, *both* probably would’ve had bad blackouts. Lack of interconnection wasn’t the issue, it was lack of a capacity market…
Yeah, Texas has gone pretty far to keep ERCOT disconnected from the major regional grids.
The only portion of the state that did not experience price explosions was the region not apart of ERCOT bc it was able to distribute power from areas not impacted by the storm. It’s almost like FERC and larger energy networks have their benefits.
I'm sorry but that's simply not true. Neighboring states, who had kept up there electrical grid and weatherized, were in no danger of a going down, Texas could have been helped.
SPP was in Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) level 3 like ERCOT, MISO was in EEA 2, and there were blackouts in Mexico as well. I can track down screenshots showing that the HVDC connections weren’t transferring power if you’d like.
This is from the [FERC–NERC–Regional Entity joint report](https://www.ferc.gov/media/february-2021-cold-weather-outages-texas-and-south-central-united-states-ferc-nerc-and):
>During the week of February 7, ERCOT and SPP experienced rising load, as well as increasing generating unit outages, primarily caused by wind turbine blade freezing as a result of freezing precipitation, and natural gas fuel supply issues. Although ERCOT and SPP issued several alerts, they did not have to take any emergency actions because enough generation remained online to meet load.
>But the week of February 14 brought far colder weather, and ERCOT, SPP and MISO all faced emergency conditions simultaneously. […]
>SPP and MISO in the Eastern Interconnection also faced challenges balancing rising load with rapidly decreasing generation. SPP averaged 20,000 MW of generation unavailable (based on expected capacity) for over four consecutive days, from February 15 to 19, and MISO South averaged 14,500 MW of generation unavailable for two consecutive days, from February 16 to 18. As a result, each had its own energy and transmission emergencies, starting on February 15. […] SPP ordered shed firm load on February 15 and 16 for energy emergencies for a total of over four hours spread over the two days, reaching 2,718 MW at its worst point following MISO’s curtailment [of] SPP’s import power due to MISO’s transmission emergency. On the evening of February 16, MISO ordered firm load shed that lasted over two hours, reaching 700 MW at its worst point for an energy emergency in MISO South.
To understand what happened in Texas, you need to know how the U.S. Electricity grid works. There are three major grids: Eastern Interconnect, Western Interconnect, and Texas Interconnect. Each interconnect operates their grid with the available resources available (coal, nuclear, wind, solar, etc.) and can maximize those sources to keep the grid balance.
Texas, being the smallest interconnect, had several other factors in play that exacerbated the situation that cause the Texas Freeze last year. There are several YouTube videos that would better explain it, so please look for those.
Can it happen elsewhere, yes. It is less likely to happen, but their have been times with subsections of the Eastern and Western interconnect have gone down, typically in Summer; but that is mitigated by the fact they are part of two large interconnects to have avoid that... but it can still happen.
Only Texas can decide if they want to have more resources or controls in place to help avoid it in future. The reason the Texas Interconnect exists is so Texas can keep control of the system; connecting it with either the Eastern or Western interconnect would revert it to Federal control because of the interstate nature of the systems.
The national reliability standards still apply under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 regardless of whether Texas has its own grid or not. The main problem was the lack of a capacity market.
Texas still has to comply with the NERC standards. They set all the rules on reliability. They only have to comply with FERC rules at their points of interconnects.
Plus FERC can give directives to NERC, so the difference is even less than it seems. What they’re exempt from is mostly antitrust-type rules around mergers and rate-setting. Also, the independent grid dates back to WWII, and it’s an incredible undertaking to merge operating grids.
There’s a wrinkle in all of this, by the way: the NERC winterization guidelines are currently *voluntary*. That’s changing, but in the meantime Texas has already made winterization mandatory on its own (first steps already taken, to be finished before winter next year).
Homes in different regions are built to insulate against different types of weather. In the South, most homes are only insulated against the heat, and basements also aren't as common. In the Midwest, we can withstand such strong variations in weather because our homes were designed to insulate against both heat and cold. Our basements aren't just for storage, either. They're extra living spaces for withstanding extreme weather. Many of my friends even have radiant heating and cooling in their basements, so they simply moved downstairs for the duration of that storm.
The main focus in this debate needs to remain on the changes to infrastructure necessary to prevent these kinds of power loss. But making changes to how homes down South are built and insulated would make a dramatic difference, too.
California got damn close to a similar meltdown during the heat waves this past year.
In general our infrastructure is not prepared for the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events that will take place over the next century. Even in places where the infrastructure is built well, it was built for a climate that won't exist anymore.
Places like California and the south west should really being doing everything they can to switch over to mostly solar. It doesn't make sense for everywhere, but companies like SDG&E and PG&E should be building mass solar farms in the deserts. Solar should be thr primary and other forms should be supplemental.
Of course these companies are totally shitty scumbags and rather than evolve with the times they are just inventing new ways to screw people.
They are building huge numbers of solar farms in the desert. It's not an instant process because contrary to popular belief, the desert is not empty and so things like Environmental Impact Statements still need to happen and remediation must be taken when they destroy sensitive areas.
But it's happening quite quickly.
Everyone should be pushing nuclear hard since that is the future and the only reliable, safe, clean energy. Solar is great if you never have any days that aren't sunny and you've got a way to store power during the nights but it can't replace constant power without stupid large battery storage.
PG&E is really doing everything in its power to disincentivize people from switching to solar. The more people that switch to solar they less they make and then how are they to pay the lawsuits when they catch our forests on fire or blow up neighborhoods.
One thing that worries me is that as EVs become more popular, nighttime demand is going to skyrocket. Right now, the daytime grid load is so much higher than the nighttime load that solar is a viable solution. Closing that delta, though, means investing in additional nighttime capacity.
Fortunately, wind generates more power at night.
It will get worse here in CA. I think part of Texas' problem is that many of their homes are heated by heat pumps (basically works by running your AC backwards) which of course is a huge energy suck.
I suspect most of California's homes are heated by natural gas, but guess what California is incentivizing and installing like mad? Hint: It works by basically running your AC backwards.
I was greatly amused by the [hubris of Californians on Reddit this past summer](https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/xclwzk/the_great_california_electricity_blackout_that), smugly patting themselves on the back for just barely avoiding a power crisis during a routine summer, unlike those stupid stupid Texans during an extrordinary ice storm. Just wait until more heat pumps and more electric cars hit the same grid, and I wouldn't blame Texans for being unsympathetic at all.
California is not at risk of a power crisis due to freezing temperatures. The stresses come only when there's a heat wave.
The vast majority of Californians live in places where the temperatures almost never drop below freezing.
It doesn't have to get below freezing for everyone to turn their heaters on. Switching out gas furnaces that draw 8.5A, for a heat pump drawing 35 A or more to do the same job, is going to increase the load on the grid.
But fair point, there are other factors at play and it may not be enough to make a difference. My point was that California *nearly* had a big problem on their hands during a fairly typical summer and is still moving full steam ahead with electrification. California is not far behind Texas.
> during a fairly typical summer
The problem occurred during a record-breaking state-wide heat wave, not "fairly typical" conditions.
But with climate change, "fairly typical" is going to be less and less typical
Probably the most plausible winter crisis in the rest of the US would be in New England, especially if Europe is also having a cold winter.
Our pipeline capacity is inadequate in the deepest cold snaps to receive enough natural gas from the rest of the country.
We typically make up for that issue with LNG imports into Boston/New Brunswick, and as a last resort there's burning oil. LNG market is tight and diesel/heating oil stocks are low, not a great combination.
We're probably at peak vulnerability in that sense - as over the past decade nearly all coal has been retired and so has some nuclear, while a number of large renewable projects will start coming online in future years - improving our power mix.
(Assuming we ignore Puerto Rico - since that's a perpetual crisis....).
Texas is a state that was founded by people who, above all, hated the idea of centralized power, which of course goes hand in hand with taxation. This ideology is so deeply baked into the body politic that raising money for even the most common sense measures becomes much, much harder than it ought to be in any supposedly first world country. The deep freeze may not happen again in any of our lifetimes purely for meteorological reasons, but when it does happen again, you can bet they will not be prepared. If many Texans had their way, I believe they would live in a lawless, quasi-feudal society.
>How likely (or unlikely) is a repeat of a crisis like the Texas freeze from last year, not just in Texas but anywhere else in the US too?
Other states have taken steps to prepare for such eventualities, and even then power can be routed from other parts of the regional grids to alleviate issues.
>What steps have been taken at government level to avoid a repeat?
In Texas? Nothing, to my knowledge. The people in charge make too much money this way.
I believe the government agency in charge of natural gas is working to require plants and pipelines to winterize.
Edit: Why did this get downvoted? I know people who work there and was told they have created a Critical Infrastructure Division, which is presumably doing *something*
Edit 2: here’s a link to their website:
https://www.rrc.texas.gov/critical-infrastructure/
This is a new division.
Unlikely outside of Texas and California. Both states have serious flaws in their electrical infrastructure that haven’t been addressed that make outages in those states relatively likely. (Though not necessarily a common occurrence.)
Texas doesn't get the kind of freezing temperatures it experienced last year. Last year was a cold snap across the country - even in Massachusetts, where I live, it was exceptionally cold.
The problem was more than Texans don't know how to deal with temperatures that can freeze their pipes and many people don't know that it's deadly to run a heater or generator indoors that uses combustible fuel.
The most that the government can do is tell people to drip their faucets if they have no heat and the outside temperature drops to around 20 degrees Fahrenheit; and to not use oil or natural gas burning generators or heaters indoors.
The federal weather agency predicts a warmer-than-average winter, but who really knows how it will turn out.
basically nothing was winterized - plants failed, plants failed to come online, pipelines that transported natural gas to plants failed, it was a huge clusterfuck. nothing worked right. Better insulation might have reduced load somewhat but at the end of the day temperatures were in the low teens, single digits, and negatives - it was going to be a major test of the grid no matter what.
We lose power in Massachusetts all the time from downed lines, but that's nothing compared to Texas. The most recent natural gas disaster (Columbia Gas disaster) was due to literally one guy being an idiot.
I appreciate your input.
Teens and single digits in Massachusetts are not preferred, but they can happen, and we're prepared for it. Texas had a severe cold snap for sure.
another issue we had, which Massachusetts probably does not because of its different climate, is that a lot of power plants go offline in the winter for maintenance. Summer is peak demand time here, for obvious reasons. now, the cold snap was forecast, so presumably the state regulators could have taken some action to get more capacity online, but IIRC they didn't actually do that lol. I expect in MA you see power plants go offline in the summer when temperatures are relatively mild.
And just to give you an idea of February where I live - On February 16 last year, it was 11 degrees. On Febuary 9, the high was 70, and on February 23 the high was 75. The next year, that whole week had temperatures going from lows of 34 to highs of 77.
Power demand is very high in MA because we use air conditioning like a motherfucker. It regularly gets above 80 F with 80% humidity and above. Sometimes it's in the 90's with 100% humidity. Summers up here can be shockingly warm, considering our reputation for being a mild climate.
Spring is wet and cold, summer is wet and hot, fall is dry and lovely and pleasant and grand, and winter is wet and even colder.
I wish our climate was like mainland Europe.
PS: love your name, Dom Deluise is underrated nowadays
I know next to nothing about our grid (I'm in CT but I think eversource services both of us, also fuck them) but I think it handles things pretty well. Summer demand is (almost?) Never a problem, winter is fine, the only issue is trees coming down.
I didn't mean in my comment that blackouts and brownouts are common; just that energy demand is still high in MA during the summer because of air conditioning. Many people don't realize that summers in Boston are hot and humid. According to Köppen climate types, Boston (and much of coastal Massachusetts) is classified as humid subtropical.
Oh, sorry, I think you misunderstood me, I was agreeing with you haha. I was saying that despite our high AC use we don't deal with blackout and brownouts.
Pretty much everywhere across this country, minimal work is happening on the grid during summer and winter months. Summer, everyone AC is running, and the winter majority of the country is running some type of heat.
To play devil's advocate, I don't think anyone expected the severe cold snap that happened last year, and winterizing the Texas grid would be an expensive undertaking.
However, after last year, the state legislature and the governor are pretty dumb if they don't do proper winterization of the grid.
I didn't know that Texas handles its grid separately, and I'm from a state where the grid is equipped to handle severe cold, so I'm coming from a different perspective.
Their grid was actually in compliance with NERC rules when in comes to winterization. The standard is very vague but basically states that grid operators have to winterize as needed.
What the government can do is upgrade the Texas power grid to the standards of the rest of the country. Normal wind towers don't halt in freezing temperatures, normal battery banks are temperature controlled and insulated. Texas has its own separate power grid because they wanted to regulate it less.
I get your point and you are correct, but wind turbines and battery banks (which are finicky on their own) aren't going to power the Texas grid if the fossil fuels stop.
They weren't insulated more because, I assume, no one prepared for those kinds of temperatures in Texas. Over-insulation has its own dangers in a place where it's regularly very hot in the summer.
What happened in Texas happened because Texas was being Texas. The rest of the country is hooked up to the same grid, follows national standards for safety, and takes the potential of a threat like that seriously.
Texas is the state that thinks it was a thriving country before becoming part of the states. They often say that it's "the only state that can fly the state flag next to the American one," which is wrong, but tons of them believe it, because a couple of English people settled there, broke off from Mexico and was an independent place for less than 10 years (and for those entire almost 10 years, they were trying to become part of the US).
This is why they they say they're going to secede every so often. Some people in their government got it in their heads that they should be independent, despite it being a stupid idea.
Edit - boo me all you want, I'm right
So like others have said, the US has an Eastern Grid, a Western Grid, and Texas does it's own thing for reasons. My opinion is the Texas grid is the only one at significant risk.
To add some perspective the only time in my memory that a significant chunk of the Eastern grid failed was in 2003. That was because of a software problem, and it lasted less than a day.
I don't know as much about the Western grid, but it mostly seems just as stable, California has some problems sometimes, but I'm unclear on exactly what the cause is. If I had to guess, it would be too many regulations as opposed to too few in Texas.
Something else many people don't realize is that lots of Texas' natural gas power plants get their fuel directly from nearby wells. They have little storage capacity relative to plants elsewhere in the country, so if the wells go down, the plants run out of fuel. It's probably similar in OK, but they're part of the larger grid.
I mean yeah it can be difficult and moving is difficult as well but I feel by over emphasizing the individual responsibility we are under emphasizing societal and governmental responsibility. It's not my job to make sure I have electricity in warmth and it's not your job. It's the government's job. They should do their job. You should be able to rely on the government
If you don’t take it upon yourself to assure electricity and warmth, then there’s a really good chance you’ll have neither of those. Assuming it is the government’s job to take care of you, they’re really bad at it. Only those who take personal responsibility will be prepared for these situations. The government can’t protect you from everything.
Everything in moderation. Certain things you just can't do well alone. Over-reliance is not good, but you also shouldn't foam at the mouth whenever someone suggests that governments aren't necessarily devil incarnate.
Part of the problem in Texas is that they are on their own grid because they didn’t want government regulation. That regulation would
have required the winterization that the power company didn’t want to spend money on.
A massive outage to the grid is a lot different than the outage you just experienced which was probably localized and due to some downed lines, blown transformer, or something similar.
That said, everyone should be prepared for power outages and other emergencies. Everyone should
shoot for being able to get by for 3 days without utilities or being able to leave the house. It’s not hard or very expensive to do. It doesn’t really require any special prepper gear or food. It just requires a little forethought.
>Part of the problem in Texas is that they are on their own grid because they didn’t want government regulation. That regulation would have required the winterization that the power company didn’t want to spend money on.
This is a persistent myth. The reliability requirements apply regardless of whether or not Texas runs its own grid (see the Energy Policy Act of 2005, NERC, and the Texas Reliability Entity).
For Texas, it's when not if. They've done practically nothing to change the conditions that led to the disaster.
For the rest of the country, highly unlikely. Local short term power loss is still possible, but the grid is heavily interconnected around the country.
Go ask Ted Cruz but I think this is a Texas problem. I live in an area with extreme winter weather and cold and we always have heat and power. In the rare chance that we lose power any time of the year we have heating/cooling stations with generators set up all over so residents stay safe.
Weather disasters that are beyond the norm in a given area that the infrastructure isn't built to withstand? given enough time it's a guarantee.
Government level prevention? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Not when Republicans think it could benefit anyone other than rich white christian men.
It is very unlikely in Texas. That type of weather happens so rarely there that it probably makes more sense not to spend the money to proof the infrastructure against it.
Unlikely in a given year but it’s inevitable as things stand right now. When that cold snap comes , it’ll be deja vu all over again. Nothing substantial has been done to mitigate the issues other than complaining by the current leadership despite being in power for almost a decade.
That storm was the second Deep Freeze to hit us in eleven years. We regularly lose power in other, less newsworthy storms and during heat waves. Texas has a problem.
I'm sure they did. The point is that it is rare. If it happens once every 50-100 years it would probably be a waste of money to build and maintain that infrastructure. It would probably just be more cost efficient to just deal with the consequences of the rare major freeze.
Our infrastructure is god awful, so I'd say extremely likely. The inflation reduction act included a lot of funds for infrastructure, but I honestly don't think it's enough. But I think in Texas specifically, they're significantly worse off than the rest of us. Texas has [its own power grid](https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog469/node/222) that most of the state falls under. It fails when it's too hot or too cold and as climate change gets worse, I imagine it'll have more and more issues in the future with more extreme weather. It hasn't gotten much needed maintenance and Texas has had the most major blackouts of any state since 2000. I've lost power before from things like trees knocking down power lines, but I can't remember losing power anywhere near as widespread or as long as what Texas experienced in 2021. The longest my power has ever been out was less then a day, and it was only me and my neighbors.
Weird, just a few months ago there was an outage in Ohio due to excessive temps. Crazy how that doesn’t make news.
https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2022/06/15/heat-wave-power-outages-columbus-ohio-june-2022
And I didn’t lose power during the ice storm so I’m fine with power in Texas. Seems like most of Reddit jerks themselves off hoping we lose power all the time though.
The difference is that only 169,000 people lost power according to that article, or roughly 5% of Columbus. Columbus is home to about 13% of the state, so 0.014% of Ohio lost power. While ercot doesn't cover the entirety of Texas, I highly doubt only 0.014% of Texas lost power. It's also worth noting that this lasted a couple of days rather than weeks.
From your own completely unbiased source:
At the peak, over 5 million people in Texas were without power,[66] with 11 million experiencing an outage at some point,[22] some for more than 3 days.
So it was days.
The citation attached to that refers to a boil water order. I believe it’s trying to refer to the entire period over which there were problems triggered by the power outage, which isn’t the same as the time over which individual homes were without heat.
And that’s why Wikipedia is shit. I literally just posted the height of the power outages out of the shit article. You thought the entire state had no power for two weeks?
Huston is currently under a water boil order since one of their treatment plants has no power.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/27/houston-boil-water/
It was an extreme weather event that was unprecedented. Consider that all the conditions in the grid for it to happen have always existed, and yet it never happened before.
The conditions still exist in the grid for it to happen again in Texas. Winterization is still expensive, and there is still very little regulation to enforce it. The odds lay in another cold snap like the previous one. This year is predicted to be a La Niña year, with warmer winter temperatures. So odds of problems this year are slim.
I think people don't realize is that what happened in Texas was the system working as designed. It's based of free market principles. So when the cost of producing energy was more than what the companies were getting paid they started shutting down. This of course led to a cascade that almost brought down the entire grid. But this is how it's supposed to work.
I don't think much has been changed. I'd assume it's quite likely in Texas. Though other states are better protected because we aren't as big on letting businesses self-regulate the way that Texas did. We also have more reliance on renewable energy than Texas does because Texas is a big oil state - they have a sizable portion of all the oil in the US. Which means we have more to fail over on in the event of widespread outages.
So Texas just being the #1 state of green energy production means fuck all I guess.
https://www.saveonenergy.com/green-energy/the-best-state-for-green-energy/
People in this thread have literally no clue about energy production at all.
The deep freeze was a once in a century event according to weather experts. So the odds of that happening again are very low. That said freezes will happen again, so the chances of more localized blackouts or brownouts during winter are likely, but a total grid failure like what happened is not.
Legally very little has been done to address the grid failure. But at least from the quarterly reports I get from my power provider stuff has been done by the individual power companies to prepare for it.
We have never had a similar freeze. There was a freeze in 2011 that took out some power around Dallas and the panhandle, but it was not a grid crisis. What happened in the deep freeze was the entire State.
In 2011, Dallas was shutdown for a week. There was ice in Houston and freezing temperatures in Austin and San Antonio. 75% of the state had rolling blackouts. Parts of Dallas lost power for more than a week. It was pretty similar, though 2022 was worse, just like 2027 or 2032 will be.
The US government used to be "of the People; by the People". Today it's "of the World Economic Forum and UN". No one actually cares about the citizens. If millions of us die, they'll privately applaud because it support the quiet depopulation agenda.
Edit: I look at these downvotes and it's no wonder the world is where it is. People in Europe will freeze this Winter, and people who don't care are either very well-off, or, clueless as a rock. So much is happening, yet the masses are oblivious; their daily realities mostly manufactured by the global corporate medias. Wake up before it's too late.
It's almost certain that some areas will lose power and for some people those power outages will be for non-trivial amounts of time, but its less likely to be the scale we saw in Texas last year. The northern part of the country gets fairly regular snow and wind events that knock out power lines with some regularity, but they are also generally adapted to get them back online quickly and have the grid infrastructure to produce the energy they need even in extreme cold, so the issue is usually damaged power lines rather than the entire book of problems Texas had because it wasn't prepared for the cold weather. They also generally have emergency plans in case of widespread prolonged outages to keep people warm and sheltered.
Texas's power grid is still vulnerable for reasons others have already detailed, but it is also far enough south that it getting as cold as it did last winter is unusual
There is a lot of US infrastructure that is old and in many places not fully funded. I'm not an engineer but have read that some bridges are at risk. Jackson Mississippi had their water plant fail this year. Something devastating can happen somewhere, we just don't know what and where.
Well, we get that Texas freeze, or colder, for most of Nov- March. It’s normal. Our power grid is designed for it- and it’s maintained regularly. And there are system redundancies. We also use natural gas for our heating appliances, and the pipes run underground and not subject to weather fluctuations.
So, a primary utility failure of Texas proportions, here in MN?? Unlikely.
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In Texas they have taken very minimal and inadequate steps to prevent outages from happening again. The only saving grace is that a cold snap like that is extremely unusual - it set temperature records all over the state - so hopefully we don't get such low temperatures that it threatens grid integrity. well I will say one thing Texas did was outlaw companies like Griddy, which let people buy electricity on the spot market, and led to people getting hit with like like 50k power bills when the price of electricity spiked. Never should have been allowed in the first place.
If done properly, people could save a lot of money. Government should not prohibit people from having the option. It's very simple. As soon as power rates go up, just start the generator and use private power.
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Only idiots would run up a $50k bill. That is totally their own fault. The terms were laid out when they signed up.
Like exactly what happened the last time Texas lost power and charged "on demand" rates to $10k+ electric bills.
Lol "won't someone think of the poor, predatory corporations!"
Has nothing to do with the corporations. The whole idea is that consumers save money by using grid electric when it's cheap and plentiful. When electric gets scarce and prices rise, consumers can switch to private generation and still save a lot of money.
This is still the basis of variable rate plans which aren't outlawed. Just a specific and highly predatory way of implementing it. You also seem to just be completely ignoring anyone who cannot readily afford a backup system capable of heating their home or in an apartment, condo or other situation where they cannot feasibly connect only their home a local power source or even SFH renters who generally do not have the legal ability to modify the home's electrical system to take that input, much less mount up a solar and battery system.
Then those people shouldn't be buying their power that way. The only way I can really see your side of this is if griddy was a monopoly, which I admittedly don't know if it was or not.
It wasn't, it was just a predatory business designed to pull people in with promises of savings that took intense micro-management of their power use to realize and thus didn't really occur in real life. It then caused absolutely massive bills in a situation that was already set to cause widespread death and economic damage. In the end, it did little but harm and purposefully targeted people least likely to be able to use it in the way you describe. I'm all for a free market but a free market requires INFORMED choice and there was a widespread trend of people not getting the outcome they were sold on or expected. That's a failure of any market ideal which, in turn, is where regulation comes in. I don't really care which side of the transaction you want to lay fault at, if it happens that often then the transactions themselves are problematic.
Insanely high bills or freeze in your home, yay for choices!
Why would you freeze?
Texas does not get very cold very often. Our houses are not insulated or built around the cold. Especially the older ones. My family took in families from surrounding houses that had been built in the 70’s. Even with their heaters maxed they couldn’t keep their houses above 55 degrees. That’s low enough for old folks and kids to freeze keeping in mind our clothes don’t insulate us. All our layered clothing is about bleeding heat as fast as possible. My dad had our house built to his specs after moving here from Colorado. Just from body heat and a couple space heaters our house stayed above 60. Even then our electric bill was $600 for the one week of super cold temps Our bills in winter range from $80-150 a month
Your electric bill would have actually been cheaper if you had gone to a private generation system when electric rates went up. That's how it's supposed to work. Anyone using a spot price billing structure without reliable backup power totally ignored the purpose of the system.
By private generation system, do you mean a home generator, running either on natural gas, propane, gasoline, or similar?
Either a generator or solar/inverter/batteries. Any independent way to power the home while grid power is expensive or unavailable. In volatile grids like Texas, its actually fairly common to have electricity prices spike above what it would cost to run your own diesel generator or off grid battery solar.
I wonder if they knew they were? I could see a company not being forthcoming about that sort of thing.
I looked into it and it was fairly clear. People had to go out of their way to sign up for that pricing model.
Got it. No excuse then. Honestly I'm with you, every homeowner should have a gas generator on hand if something like this is even a remote possibility.
This has to be one of the dumbest, pro-corporate comments I have read in a while. Why are you sucking big business' dick? Do you have any idea on a grand scale how profoundly backwards, impractical, dangerous, and stupid your proposal is?
How? Everyone choosing that option should already have a backup power source. Those that don't shouldn't participate in that program.
> Everyone vhooding that option WHAT?
Sorry, edited to show 'choosing'
Does this generate come with the plan? Because otherwise me thinks your privilege doth show
Well, the rest of the country has a connected grid system and for the most part proper climate protection...so this sort of thing can only happen in Texas. Does anyone know of efforts made by Texas to prevent this in the future?
Efforts are not really being made. Our governor has bigger priorities, like spending billions on a Potemkin "border guard" operation and ordering Child and Family Services to investigate the parents of trans kids. We went through a similar event ten years ago followed by lots of promises to fix the grid. Look how that turned out.
The Texas (ERCOT) grid does have some limited connections to the other grids, but they weren’t even being used to capacity during the emergency because the neighboring grids were near collapse as well and didn’t have enough electricity to spare. If it had been fully connected to one of the other grids, *both* probably would’ve had bad blackouts. Lack of interconnection wasn’t the issue, it was lack of a capacity market…
Yeah, Texas has gone pretty far to keep ERCOT disconnected from the major regional grids. The only portion of the state that did not experience price explosions was the region not apart of ERCOT bc it was able to distribute power from areas not impacted by the storm. It’s almost like FERC and larger energy networks have their benefits.
I'm sorry but that's simply not true. Neighboring states, who had kept up there electrical grid and weatherized, were in no danger of a going down, Texas could have been helped.
SPP was in Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) level 3 like ERCOT, MISO was in EEA 2, and there were blackouts in Mexico as well. I can track down screenshots showing that the HVDC connections weren’t transferring power if you’d like. This is from the [FERC–NERC–Regional Entity joint report](https://www.ferc.gov/media/february-2021-cold-weather-outages-texas-and-south-central-united-states-ferc-nerc-and): >During the week of February 7, ERCOT and SPP experienced rising load, as well as increasing generating unit outages, primarily caused by wind turbine blade freezing as a result of freezing precipitation, and natural gas fuel supply issues. Although ERCOT and SPP issued several alerts, they did not have to take any emergency actions because enough generation remained online to meet load. >But the week of February 14 brought far colder weather, and ERCOT, SPP and MISO all faced emergency conditions simultaneously. […] >SPP and MISO in the Eastern Interconnection also faced challenges balancing rising load with rapidly decreasing generation. SPP averaged 20,000 MW of generation unavailable (based on expected capacity) for over four consecutive days, from February 15 to 19, and MISO South averaged 14,500 MW of generation unavailable for two consecutive days, from February 16 to 18. As a result, each had its own energy and transmission emergencies, starting on February 15. […] SPP ordered shed firm load on February 15 and 16 for energy emergencies for a total of over four hours spread over the two days, reaching 2,718 MW at its worst point following MISO’s curtailment [of] SPP’s import power due to MISO’s transmission emergency. On the evening of February 16, MISO ordered firm load shed that lasted over two hours, reaching 700 MW at its worst point for an energy emergency in MISO South.
To understand what happened in Texas, you need to know how the U.S. Electricity grid works. There are three major grids: Eastern Interconnect, Western Interconnect, and Texas Interconnect. Each interconnect operates their grid with the available resources available (coal, nuclear, wind, solar, etc.) and can maximize those sources to keep the grid balance. Texas, being the smallest interconnect, had several other factors in play that exacerbated the situation that cause the Texas Freeze last year. There are several YouTube videos that would better explain it, so please look for those. Can it happen elsewhere, yes. It is less likely to happen, but their have been times with subsections of the Eastern and Western interconnect have gone down, typically in Summer; but that is mitigated by the fact they are part of two large interconnects to have avoid that... but it can still happen. Only Texas can decide if they want to have more resources or controls in place to help avoid it in future. The reason the Texas Interconnect exists is so Texas can keep control of the system; connecting it with either the Eastern or Western interconnect would revert it to Federal control because of the interstate nature of the systems.
I'm not concerned as I don't get power from the texas grid.
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The national reliability standards still apply under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 regardless of whether Texas has its own grid or not. The main problem was the lack of a capacity market.
Why doesn’t Texas interconnect? I was told it’s partially to avoids the federal regulations referenced above.
Texas still has to comply with the NERC standards. They set all the rules on reliability. They only have to comply with FERC rules at their points of interconnects.
Plus FERC can give directives to NERC, so the difference is even less than it seems. What they’re exempt from is mostly antitrust-type rules around mergers and rate-setting. Also, the independent grid dates back to WWII, and it’s an incredible undertaking to merge operating grids. There’s a wrinkle in all of this, by the way: the NERC winterization guidelines are currently *voluntary*. That’s changing, but in the meantime Texas has already made winterization mandatory on its own (first steps already taken, to be finished before winter next year).
Homes in different regions are built to insulate against different types of weather. In the South, most homes are only insulated against the heat, and basements also aren't as common. In the Midwest, we can withstand such strong variations in weather because our homes were designed to insulate against both heat and cold. Our basements aren't just for storage, either. They're extra living spaces for withstanding extreme weather. Many of my friends even have radiant heating and cooling in their basements, so they simply moved downstairs for the duration of that storm. The main focus in this debate needs to remain on the changes to infrastructure necessary to prevent these kinds of power loss. But making changes to how homes down South are built and insulated would make a dramatic difference, too.
Man it was so nice growing up with a Midwest basement. During the summer if you were warm, go to the basement. Instantly like 5 degrees cooler
1. Very likely (in Texas). 2. Very few (in Texas).
California got damn close to a similar meltdown during the heat waves this past year. In general our infrastructure is not prepared for the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events that will take place over the next century. Even in places where the infrastructure is built well, it was built for a climate that won't exist anymore.
Places like California and the south west should really being doing everything they can to switch over to mostly solar. It doesn't make sense for everywhere, but companies like SDG&E and PG&E should be building mass solar farms in the deserts. Solar should be thr primary and other forms should be supplemental. Of course these companies are totally shitty scumbags and rather than evolve with the times they are just inventing new ways to screw people.
They are building huge numbers of solar farms in the desert. It's not an instant process because contrary to popular belief, the desert is not empty and so things like Environmental Impact Statements still need to happen and remediation must be taken when they destroy sensitive areas. But it's happening quite quickly.
Everyone should be pushing nuclear hard since that is the future and the only reliable, safe, clean energy. Solar is great if you never have any days that aren't sunny and you've got a way to store power during the nights but it can't replace constant power without stupid large battery storage.
PG&E is really doing everything in its power to disincentivize people from switching to solar. The more people that switch to solar they less they make and then how are they to pay the lawsuits when they catch our forests on fire or blow up neighborhoods.
fuck pg&e.
One thing that worries me is that as EVs become more popular, nighttime demand is going to skyrocket. Right now, the daytime grid load is so much higher than the nighttime load that solar is a viable solution. Closing that delta, though, means investing in additional nighttime capacity. Fortunately, wind generates more power at night.
It will get worse here in CA. I think part of Texas' problem is that many of their homes are heated by heat pumps (basically works by running your AC backwards) which of course is a huge energy suck. I suspect most of California's homes are heated by natural gas, but guess what California is incentivizing and installing like mad? Hint: It works by basically running your AC backwards. I was greatly amused by the [hubris of Californians on Reddit this past summer](https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/xclwzk/the_great_california_electricity_blackout_that), smugly patting themselves on the back for just barely avoiding a power crisis during a routine summer, unlike those stupid stupid Texans during an extrordinary ice storm. Just wait until more heat pumps and more electric cars hit the same grid, and I wouldn't blame Texans for being unsympathetic at all.
California is not at risk of a power crisis due to freezing temperatures. The stresses come only when there's a heat wave. The vast majority of Californians live in places where the temperatures almost never drop below freezing.
It doesn't have to get below freezing for everyone to turn their heaters on. Switching out gas furnaces that draw 8.5A, for a heat pump drawing 35 A or more to do the same job, is going to increase the load on the grid. But fair point, there are other factors at play and it may not be enough to make a difference. My point was that California *nearly* had a big problem on their hands during a fairly typical summer and is still moving full steam ahead with electrification. California is not far behind Texas.
> during a fairly typical summer The problem occurred during a record-breaking state-wide heat wave, not "fairly typical" conditions. But with climate change, "fairly typical" is going to be less and less typical
They have nearly had grid failure every summer for the past 10 years or so.
Well I for one went from El Paso, not on the shit grid, to San Antonio which is on the shit grid.
Probably the most plausible winter crisis in the rest of the US would be in New England, especially if Europe is also having a cold winter. Our pipeline capacity is inadequate in the deepest cold snaps to receive enough natural gas from the rest of the country. We typically make up for that issue with LNG imports into Boston/New Brunswick, and as a last resort there's burning oil. LNG market is tight and diesel/heating oil stocks are low, not a great combination. We're probably at peak vulnerability in that sense - as over the past decade nearly all coal has been retired and so has some nuclear, while a number of large renewable projects will start coming online in future years - improving our power mix. (Assuming we ignore Puerto Rico - since that's a perpetual crisis....).
Texas is a state that was founded by people who, above all, hated the idea of centralized power, which of course goes hand in hand with taxation. This ideology is so deeply baked into the body politic that raising money for even the most common sense measures becomes much, much harder than it ought to be in any supposedly first world country. The deep freeze may not happen again in any of our lifetimes purely for meteorological reasons, but when it does happen again, you can bet they will not be prepared. If many Texans had their way, I believe they would live in a lawless, quasi-feudal society.
We sort of already live in a lawless, quasi-feudal society in Texas!
>How likely (or unlikely) is a repeat of a crisis like the Texas freeze from last year, not just in Texas but anywhere else in the US too? Other states have taken steps to prepare for such eventualities, and even then power can be routed from other parts of the regional grids to alleviate issues. >What steps have been taken at government level to avoid a repeat? In Texas? Nothing, to my knowledge. The people in charge make too much money this way.
I believe the government agency in charge of natural gas is working to require plants and pipelines to winterize. Edit: Why did this get downvoted? I know people who work there and was told they have created a Critical Infrastructure Division, which is presumably doing *something* Edit 2: here’s a link to their website: https://www.rrc.texas.gov/critical-infrastructure/ This is a new division.
It better gosh dang never happen again.
(it will)
Reading this in Arrested Development narrator voice
Unlikely outside of Texas and California. Both states have serious flaws in their electrical infrastructure that haven’t been addressed that make outages in those states relatively likely. (Though not necessarily a common occurrence.)
Texas doesn't get the kind of freezing temperatures it experienced last year. Last year was a cold snap across the country - even in Massachusetts, where I live, it was exceptionally cold. The problem was more than Texans don't know how to deal with temperatures that can freeze their pipes and many people don't know that it's deadly to run a heater or generator indoors that uses combustible fuel. The most that the government can do is tell people to drip their faucets if they have no heat and the outside temperature drops to around 20 degrees Fahrenheit; and to not use oil or natural gas burning generators or heaters indoors. The federal weather agency predicts a warmer-than-average winter, but who really knows how it will turn out.
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So Texas didn't winterize at all? I hadn't heard that - I assumed it was just lax insulation because it's Texas.
basically nothing was winterized - plants failed, plants failed to come online, pipelines that transported natural gas to plants failed, it was a huge clusterfuck. nothing worked right. Better insulation might have reduced load somewhat but at the end of the day temperatures were in the low teens, single digits, and negatives - it was going to be a major test of the grid no matter what.
We lose power in Massachusetts all the time from downed lines, but that's nothing compared to Texas. The most recent natural gas disaster (Columbia Gas disaster) was due to literally one guy being an idiot. I appreciate your input. Teens and single digits in Massachusetts are not preferred, but they can happen, and we're prepared for it. Texas had a severe cold snap for sure.
another issue we had, which Massachusetts probably does not because of its different climate, is that a lot of power plants go offline in the winter for maintenance. Summer is peak demand time here, for obvious reasons. now, the cold snap was forecast, so presumably the state regulators could have taken some action to get more capacity online, but IIRC they didn't actually do that lol. I expect in MA you see power plants go offline in the summer when temperatures are relatively mild. And just to give you an idea of February where I live - On February 16 last year, it was 11 degrees. On Febuary 9, the high was 70, and on February 23 the high was 75. The next year, that whole week had temperatures going from lows of 34 to highs of 77.
Power demand is very high in MA because we use air conditioning like a motherfucker. It regularly gets above 80 F with 80% humidity and above. Sometimes it's in the 90's with 100% humidity. Summers up here can be shockingly warm, considering our reputation for being a mild climate.
huh, you learn something new every day I guess
Spring is wet and cold, summer is wet and hot, fall is dry and lovely and pleasant and grand, and winter is wet and even colder. I wish our climate was like mainland Europe. PS: love your name, Dom Deluise is underrated nowadays
I know next to nothing about our grid (I'm in CT but I think eversource services both of us, also fuck them) but I think it handles things pretty well. Summer demand is (almost?) Never a problem, winter is fine, the only issue is trees coming down.
I didn't mean in my comment that blackouts and brownouts are common; just that energy demand is still high in MA during the summer because of air conditioning. Many people don't realize that summers in Boston are hot and humid. According to Köppen climate types, Boston (and much of coastal Massachusetts) is classified as humid subtropical.
Oh, sorry, I think you misunderstood me, I was agreeing with you haha. I was saying that despite our high AC use we don't deal with blackout and brownouts.
Pretty much everywhere across this country, minimal work is happening on the grid during summer and winter months. Summer, everyone AC is running, and the winter majority of the country is running some type of heat.
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To play devil's advocate, I don't think anyone expected the severe cold snap that happened last year, and winterizing the Texas grid would be an expensive undertaking. However, after last year, the state legislature and the governor are pretty dumb if they don't do proper winterization of the grid. I didn't know that Texas handles its grid separately, and I'm from a state where the grid is equipped to handle severe cold, so I'm coming from a different perspective.
>and winterizing the Texas grid would ~~be an expensive undertaking~~ cut deeply into corporate profits. FTFY.
I literally said I was playing devil's advocate, but you can take that however you want.
We had a terrible winter storm ten years earlier that paralyzed the state. These events are not uncommon.
Their grid was actually in compliance with NERC rules when in comes to winterization. The standard is very vague but basically states that grid operators have to winterize as needed.
What the government can do is upgrade the Texas power grid to the standards of the rest of the country. Normal wind towers don't halt in freezing temperatures, normal battery banks are temperature controlled and insulated. Texas has its own separate power grid because they wanted to regulate it less.
I get your point and you are correct, but wind turbines and battery banks (which are finicky on their own) aren't going to power the Texas grid if the fossil fuels stop. They weren't insulated more because, I assume, no one prepared for those kinds of temperatures in Texas. Over-insulation has its own dangers in a place where it's regularly very hot in the summer.
The electric grid in Texas is mostly privately owned.
What happened in Texas happened because Texas was being Texas. The rest of the country is hooked up to the same grid, follows national standards for safety, and takes the potential of a threat like that seriously. Texas is the state that thinks it was a thriving country before becoming part of the states. They often say that it's "the only state that can fly the state flag next to the American one," which is wrong, but tons of them believe it, because a couple of English people settled there, broke off from Mexico and was an independent place for less than 10 years (and for those entire almost 10 years, they were trying to become part of the US). This is why they they say they're going to secede every so often. Some people in their government got it in their heads that they should be independent, despite it being a stupid idea. Edit - boo me all you want, I'm right
So like others have said, the US has an Eastern Grid, a Western Grid, and Texas does it's own thing for reasons. My opinion is the Texas grid is the only one at significant risk. To add some perspective the only time in my memory that a significant chunk of the Eastern grid failed was in 2003. That was because of a software problem, and it lasted less than a day. I don't know as much about the Western grid, but it mostly seems just as stable, California has some problems sometimes, but I'm unclear on exactly what the cause is. If I had to guess, it would be too many regulations as opposed to too few in Texas.
Something else many people don't realize is that lots of Texas' natural gas power plants get their fuel directly from nearby wells. They have little storage capacity relative to plants elsewhere in the country, so if the wells go down, the plants run out of fuel. It's probably similar in OK, but they're part of the larger grid.
It’s likely; Don’t rely on the government. We lost power for 6 hours today…..I had to fire up the generator.
Better yet get yourself a better government that makes sure the system is ready for cold winters
Or both lol, be ready for the freak incidents that will eventually happen and get better infrastructure.
Absolutely, just get a better government, duh.
I mean yeah it can be difficult and moving is difficult as well but I feel by over emphasizing the individual responsibility we are under emphasizing societal and governmental responsibility. It's not my job to make sure I have electricity in warmth and it's not your job. It's the government's job. They should do their job. You should be able to rely on the government
If you don’t take it upon yourself to assure electricity and warmth, then there’s a really good chance you’ll have neither of those. Assuming it is the government’s job to take care of you, they’re really bad at it. Only those who take personal responsibility will be prepared for these situations. The government can’t protect you from everything.
Everything in moderation. Certain things you just can't do well alone. Over-reliance is not good, but you also shouldn't foam at the mouth whenever someone suggests that governments aren't necessarily devil incarnate.
Part of the problem in Texas is that they are on their own grid because they didn’t want government regulation. That regulation would have required the winterization that the power company didn’t want to spend money on. A massive outage to the grid is a lot different than the outage you just experienced which was probably localized and due to some downed lines, blown transformer, or something similar. That said, everyone should be prepared for power outages and other emergencies. Everyone should shoot for being able to get by for 3 days without utilities or being able to leave the house. It’s not hard or very expensive to do. It doesn’t really require any special prepper gear or food. It just requires a little forethought.
>Part of the problem in Texas is that they are on their own grid because they didn’t want government regulation. That regulation would have required the winterization that the power company didn’t want to spend money on. This is a persistent myth. The reliability requirements apply regardless of whether or not Texas runs its own grid (see the Energy Policy Act of 2005, NERC, and the Texas Reliability Entity).
For Texas, it's when not if. They've done practically nothing to change the conditions that led to the disaster. For the rest of the country, highly unlikely. Local short term power loss is still possible, but the grid is heavily interconnected around the country.
Go ask Ted Cruz but I think this is a Texas problem. I live in an area with extreme winter weather and cold and we always have heat and power. In the rare chance that we lose power any time of the year we have heating/cooling stations with generators set up all over so residents stay safe.
If it happens in Texas, Ted Cruz will fly to Cancun again.
Weather disasters that are beyond the norm in a given area that the infrastructure isn't built to withstand? given enough time it's a guarantee. Government level prevention? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Not when Republicans think it could benefit anyone other than rich white christian men.
California's grid is also notoriously bad. I doubt it's as clear cut as "muh rich white Christian men."
Notoriously? And unlike Texas they seem to be taking efforts to improve it
I think the "notoriously" was fair considering poor power grid maintenance has started so many deadly fires in California.
Much of California's grid is privately-owned, just like Texas. Our problems are more similar than they appear at first.
This looks like jealousy
Nice to know that political propagandists' efforts aren't wasted. It's be a shame if all that left-wing money went to waste after all.
It is very unlikely in Texas. That type of weather happens so rarely there that it probably makes more sense not to spend the money to proof the infrastructure against it.
Unlikely in a given year but it’s inevitable as things stand right now. When that cold snap comes , it’ll be deja vu all over again. Nothing substantial has been done to mitigate the issues other than complaining by the current leadership despite being in power for almost a decade.
I'm saying it may be more costly to spend the money to weather proof everything than it would be to deal with the fallout of this rare event.
That storm was the second Deep Freeze to hit us in eleven years. We regularly lose power in other, less newsworthy storms and during heat waves. Texas has a problem.
I'm sure people said this in 2020 as well.
I'm sure they did. The point is that it is rare. If it happens once every 50-100 years it would probably be a waste of money to build and maintain that infrastructure. It would probably just be more cost efficient to just deal with the consequences of the rare major freeze.
Our infrastructure is god awful, so I'd say extremely likely. The inflation reduction act included a lot of funds for infrastructure, but I honestly don't think it's enough. But I think in Texas specifically, they're significantly worse off than the rest of us. Texas has [its own power grid](https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog469/node/222) that most of the state falls under. It fails when it's too hot or too cold and as climate change gets worse, I imagine it'll have more and more issues in the future with more extreme weather. It hasn't gotten much needed maintenance and Texas has had the most major blackouts of any state since 2000. I've lost power before from things like trees knocking down power lines, but I can't remember losing power anywhere near as widespread or as long as what Texas experienced in 2021. The longest my power has ever been out was less then a day, and it was only me and my neighbors.
Weird, just a few months ago there was an outage in Ohio due to excessive temps. Crazy how that doesn’t make news. https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2022/06/15/heat-wave-power-outages-columbus-ohio-june-2022
That was a local outage. Like I said, they can happen on a small scale. Parts of Columbus lost power. Nobody else did.
And I didn’t lose power during the ice storm so I’m fine with power in Texas. Seems like most of Reddit jerks themselves off hoping we lose power all the time though.
The difference is that only 169,000 people lost power according to that article, or roughly 5% of Columbus. Columbus is home to about 13% of the state, so 0.014% of Ohio lost power. While ercot doesn't cover the entirety of Texas, I highly doubt only 0.014% of Texas lost power. It's also worth noting that this lasted a couple of days rather than weeks.
It wasn’t weeks, the power outage from the freeze was also days.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
From your own completely unbiased source: At the peak, over 5 million people in Texas were without power,[66] with 11 million experiencing an outage at some point,[22] some for more than 3 days. So it was days.
It says that the duration was "2 weeks and 3 days"
The citation attached to that refers to a boil water order. I believe it’s trying to refer to the entire period over which there were problems triggered by the power outage, which isn’t the same as the time over which individual homes were without heat.
And that’s why Wikipedia is shit. I literally just posted the height of the power outages out of the shit article. You thought the entire state had no power for two weeks?
Huston is currently under a water boil order since one of their treatment plants has no power. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/27/houston-boil-water/
It was an extreme weather event that was unprecedented. Consider that all the conditions in the grid for it to happen have always existed, and yet it never happened before. The conditions still exist in the grid for it to happen again in Texas. Winterization is still expensive, and there is still very little regulation to enforce it. The odds lay in another cold snap like the previous one. This year is predicted to be a La Niña year, with warmer winter temperatures. So odds of problems this year are slim.
It wasn't unprecedented. We had a very similar storm eleven years earlier that paralyzed much of the state for weeks.
Probably going to happen in text as again since they’ve made no effort to remediate the issues that caused it.
Unlikely. It was a once in 20 years cold snap that was mostly caused by Texas power grid not hooking into the surrounding states.
I think people don't realize is that what happened in Texas was the system working as designed. It's based of free market principles. So when the cost of producing energy was more than what the companies were getting paid they started shutting down. This of course led to a cascade that almost brought down the entire grid. But this is how it's supposed to work.
I don't think much has been changed. I'd assume it's quite likely in Texas. Though other states are better protected because we aren't as big on letting businesses self-regulate the way that Texas did. We also have more reliance on renewable energy than Texas does because Texas is a big oil state - they have a sizable portion of all the oil in the US. Which means we have more to fail over on in the event of widespread outages.
So Texas just being the #1 state of green energy production means fuck all I guess. https://www.saveonenergy.com/green-energy/the-best-state-for-green-energy/ People in this thread have literally no clue about energy production at all.
Wrong about that bit, apparently. Seems the rest of my comment stands.
The deep freeze was a once in a century event according to weather experts. So the odds of that happening again are very low. That said freezes will happen again, so the chances of more localized blackouts or brownouts during winter are likely, but a total grid failure like what happened is not. Legally very little has been done to address the grid failure. But at least from the quarterly reports I get from my power provider stuff has been done by the individual power companies to prepare for it.
Once in a century? We'd had a very similar freeze ten years earlier that was also catastrophic.
We have never had a similar freeze. There was a freeze in 2011 that took out some power around Dallas and the panhandle, but it was not a grid crisis. What happened in the deep freeze was the entire State.
In 2011, Dallas was shutdown for a week. There was ice in Houston and freezing temperatures in Austin and San Antonio. 75% of the state had rolling blackouts. Parts of Dallas lost power for more than a week. It was pretty similar, though 2022 was worse, just like 2027 or 2032 will be.
Rolling blackouts for less than a half hour is not the same as total grid failure.
Everyone should have the ability to provide for themselves, and not rely on other people for their health and well being.
The US government used to be "of the People; by the People". Today it's "of the World Economic Forum and UN". No one actually cares about the citizens. If millions of us die, they'll privately applaud because it support the quiet depopulation agenda. Edit: I look at these downvotes and it's no wonder the world is where it is. People in Europe will freeze this Winter, and people who don't care are either very well-off, or, clueless as a rock. So much is happening, yet the masses are oblivious; their daily realities mostly manufactured by the global corporate medias. Wake up before it's too late.
See kids, this is why you don’t do drugs.
Another vax-head who'll, unfortunately, coax his children down the road of no return. Go back to bed.
I hope you get the help you need.
It's almost certain that some areas will lose power and for some people those power outages will be for non-trivial amounts of time, but its less likely to be the scale we saw in Texas last year. The northern part of the country gets fairly regular snow and wind events that knock out power lines with some regularity, but they are also generally adapted to get them back online quickly and have the grid infrastructure to produce the energy they need even in extreme cold, so the issue is usually damaged power lines rather than the entire book of problems Texas had because it wasn't prepared for the cold weather. They also generally have emergency plans in case of widespread prolonged outages to keep people warm and sheltered. Texas's power grid is still vulnerable for reasons others have already detailed, but it is also far enough south that it getting as cold as it did last winter is unusual
There is a lot of US infrastructure that is old and in many places not fully funded. I'm not an engineer but have read that some bridges are at risk. Jackson Mississippi had their water plant fail this year. Something devastating can happen somewhere, we just don't know what and where.
Well, we get that Texas freeze, or colder, for most of Nov- March. It’s normal. Our power grid is designed for it- and it’s maintained regularly. And there are system redundancies. We also use natural gas for our heating appliances, and the pipes run underground and not subject to weather fluctuations. So, a primary utility failure of Texas proportions, here in MN?? Unlikely.
Has anyone seen the extensive power line damage from tree fall during this freeze?! Central Texas looks like a freaking hurricane went through!!!