Being smart
Why did Texas’s power supply fall over as the temperatures plunged way below freezing? It was nothing to do with the Green New Deal, as fools have been claiming. Texas has its very own electrical grid.
The U.S. has three power grids: one covers the eastern U.S., another the western states and the Texas grid covers nearly the entire state.
It’s the LONE STAR state, see, it has to do everything itsown self.
“Utilities in Texas were smart and made an agreement that no one was going to extend power outside of Texas,” Donna Nelson, who served as chair of the state Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT, from 2008 to 2017, said in an ERCOT promotional video about the history of the grid.
“By eschewing transmission across state lines, the Texas utilities retained freedom,” Richard D. Cudahy wrote in a 1995 article. “This policy of isolation avoided regulation by the newly created Federal Power Commission, whose jurisdiction was limited to utilities operating in interstate commerce.”
No regulation! Freedom! Yayyyyyyy!
I find it odd, though, even in the cold, because they surely are used to serving enough electricity to handle the immense air conditioning in the summer…and my years in Texas taught me that Texans keep it damn cold in the summer…my dorm room was 55 degrees when I moved in IN AUGUST…it was 110 outside, they cooled it to 55…and I had no control over the temperature. That was handled from a central location that decided for all of us how cold or hot we had to be. In the winter, a mild winter even, they would crank their heat up to 80.
There were a lot of things I hated about living in Texas; I was glad it was only five years, and I went home on weekends to the comparatively more sane Oklahoma, where people still didn’t open windows for any reason, but usually kept their heat at 75 and their air in the summer at 70.
Oh, and I remember when I was in Texas, one of my colleagues was shocked, just shocked that we had wind power where I lived in Oklahoma. How was that possible, with regulation and with government power? NOT POSSIBLE, they screamed. I said…yeah, it’s totally possible. You fit it in the regulations, and you pass laws permitting it, and it’s possible.
This has shown up on my social media groups too… but the problem is not a lack of electricity production capacity per se, but a lack of insulation/weatherproofing against the cold in the infrastructure, resulting in damaged equipment and delivery lines.
Iknklast #1
“heat at 75 and their air in the summer at 70”
Even that is rather stupid
Set the air conditioning to something warm enough for bare arms & legs to be comfortable, & set the heating cool enough so that long pants (long underwear in a region that gets real winter weather) & a long sleeve shirt are comfortable to wear inside.
ibbica,
Yes, what tends to happen is that a link goes down because of the weather or poor maintenance/investment so power is re-routed to other lines, which fail because they can’t handle the load due to the weather or poor maintenance/investment so…
Power (and lots of other) networks can have the property of being robust to damage in general but very sensitive to damage in specific, key areas.
It wuz them space Jews with lasers wut dun it.
Jim Baerg, my thinking exactly. We keep our heat down to 66 in the winter, and put on clothes. (This winter’s been tough – most of this past week, our downstairs didn’t rise above 59, making it difficult to be comfortable even with clothes).
ibbica, that makes sense. That’s one thing I noticed moving to Nebraska from Oklahoma – the houses are less drafty, and it’s easier to keep them warm. Partially because of basements, so the pipes don’t break during the winter.
Acolyte: It was TEH SOROS. Maybe working with the Space Jooz. (Get yur spellun right!)
Re “their heat at 75 and their air in the summer at 70”:
I’ve known people like that, who keep their house warmer in the winter than they do in the summer. It’s strange. You’d think, at the most, they’d aim for the same temperature in both situations, or opt for the warmer temperature in summer.
A Texan friend told me, decades ago when I was in college, that a Texan will say the heat is no problem, then go from his air-conditioned house to his air-conditioned car and drive to his air-conditioned office.
This same friend was fond of a song (admittedly very catchy) called “Freeze a Yankee”, saying (based on promises by then-governor Briscoe) Texas would stop sending oil and gas to the rest of the country and “let ’em all freeze and boil”. Seems, I dunno, ironic maybe, thinking about that song now.
Yeah, Sackbut, like they were “sending” it. They were SELLING it. Tons of money flowing from the rest of the country to Texas, and they repay us by sending Ted Cruz to the Senate…not to mention a succession of others, and Dubya to the White House.
Interesting. As an anecdote, in South Australia a few years ago, our whole state lost power at once, which was a first, unprecedented in our history of having a grid. We actually are connected to our neighbouring state though.
What was interesting (and relevant here), was that within approximately 30 minutes, before anyone could have know, local politicians were on the radio claiming it was obviously due to our uptake of wind energy. In the end, reports revealed that wasn’t why, but the accepted explanation stuck in the minds of Right Wing types, in politics and in the general public, and it continues to be brought up as “evidence” of “green power bad” regularly.
Also relevant, most of us except for the more remote towns (particularly Port Lincoln, which is over 6 hours drive from our state capital, and on the wrong side of the storm damage) had power back within a few days, many within one day. Port Lincoln was waiting 2 weeks, which really sucked for them.
Meanwhile, I note that all of Texas is apparently still powerless four days later, with apparently no homes or businesses restored.