The lesson to be learned here is that liquid natural gas, which supplies 50% of Texan's electricity, can freeze inside pipelines if not properly winterized.
Good thing they include wood and other sources for heat in their "renewable power" definition.
The solution is much simpler than you realize: join the rest of America by connecting the state grid to the western/eastern intercontinental grids and use other state's extra capacity as additional reserve. A state suffering catastrophic failure, like Texas, can receive extra capacity diverted from nearby states.
The lesson to be learned here is that liquid natural gas, which supplies 50% of Texan's electricity, can freeze inside pipelines if not properly winterized.
Actually the biggest lesson is that Texas has inept leadership at every level, so wherever people decide the buck stops, you'll find an idiot. Take your pick.
Ted Cruz, blistered for Cancun getaway during epic Texas power crisis, calls it ‘obviously a mistake’ in hindsight
Ted Cruz, blistered for Cancun getaway during epic Texas power crisis, calls it ‘obviously a mistake’ in hindsightwww.dallasnews.com
So we should invade Iran?23% of our power comes from wind, per the state's own figures. About 45% come from LNG - the rest is from coal, solar, or nuclear. Some of the nuke plants went offline because freezing temps caused certain sensors to freeze and triggered safety mechanisms. They said the plants were actually safe to operate, but the built in safety systems kicked in and shut the reactors down.
Wind turbines weren't winterized like other places do, because it usually doesn't get that cold here. Same with the LNG pipelines - in a place that typically stays well above freezing in the winter, they didn't plan for single digit temps. It can be seen as a failure to plan, yes. They didn't plan for the worst-case scenario of winter storms. They planned for the most likely scenarios, which caught Texas with its pants down. The energy demands were also substantially higher during this storm than typical of this time of year because everyone was home cranking their heaters up.
The county I live in has zero snow plows, and they use dump trucks to spread gravel / sand on the roads. Should they have plows / salt trucks / sanders etc, when in a typical snow-event, its an inch or less that lasts typically a day or less? I don't think I'd spring for a bunch of very expensive, special equipment that will rarely, if ever get used either. Freak weather events happen. How much money should be invested in preparing for such scenarios? I dunno - does Oregon prepare for hurricanes?
A lot of people here, and around the country are blaming the government at all levels for the black outs - I'm sure some of it is deserved, but this was a freak storm for this part of the country and they keep saying we haven't seen weather like this in 70 years. I don't know if preparing for another event like this by spending probably hundreds of millions of dollars (when all the costs are added up) is going to pencil out. Maybe it will.
People bubbleguming about the governor "not doing anything" like he's supposed to be out there building new generator plants or some bubblegum. Last I knew he also wasn't magical, so couldn't just snap his fingers and make the lights come on. If power demands are 75 gigawatts and generating capacity is 60, people are going to be without power.
If any lessons are learned by this, I hope its that you can't rely on a single power source, and redundancy and capacity beyond the normal is necessary. Nuclear is a good option, but again, we saw nuke plants go offline because some stuff got too cold. LNG went offline because well heads froze and the plants couldn't get fuel. Maybe that means we need more modern coal plants? Or maybe we need to drill into the earth's core, or maybe Elon Musk needs to create some antimatter reactors or zero point energy collectors or some crazy stuff.
Maybe we need more dams for hydro power.
Places on the federal controlled grids still see rolling blackouts or brown outs, its not like this is unique to Texas. How many times has California gone without power? How often does New York lose power when it gets bad?
Maybe as part of the Federal emergency relief package some of our gov is seeking should include mandatory driver's ed on driving in snow & ice (and dry weather - Texans are some scary damn drivers in nice weather, God help us when the pavement is slippery!)
Maybe every home needs its own power supply - solar + a generator?
Cities all over have been running out of water too. And when the water came back - it included boil-water notices with warnings not to even wash your hands in the unboiled tap water. Guess that means they need to build more water towers, and each water plant should have its own power plant to power the pumps when the power goes out? My dad was without power for over 48 hours, and they lost water about a day into things. When they got power back, they were hit with the rolling blackouts.
We experienced the blackouts, and had one short outage due to a tree falling and causing a transformer to blow.
In the end I think most people will forget, no big lessons learned, and most people aren't going to make big preps.
Even though SE Texas gets blasted with hurricanes every year - all the locals / natives I've talked to here say few people actually prepare for any weather events. You see huge runs on supplies before & after the storms. We had to go to the store on Saturday afternoon, before things got bad because I was making clam chowder for dinner and needed heavy cream for it. Had to drive 15 miles, because our local grocery store was out of dairy products and eggs. I've been told that leading up to any storm you'll see a run on toilet paper, bottled water, bread, milk, eggs, and beer. Our own trip to the grocery store seemed to confirm that - the cheap versions of all those were hard to come by by Saturday afternoon. Bread could be had, if you liked the $3-5 / loaf stuff. Soy / Almond milk was available. I don't drink, but I could see the beer section had big voids. The wine section was still pretty well stocked.
Home Depot in our town ran out of PVC pipe yesterday. You can't get a generator if you wanted one because they're sold out all over.
What I did see on a very local level though - is our neighbors came together to help one another out. Lot of folks had busted pipes - others who had extra supplies offered the supplies and a hand to fix it. Those who still had running well water were offering water up to those who were on the local supply and ran out, and when those folks had water they were offering it up to those whose wells froze or who had broken pipes. Neighbors were checking in with one another to make sure everyone was OK. Had a few who were braving the crazy drivers and slippery roads to run into town for supplies that offered to get extra for those who were in need.
Its forecast to still be below freezing at night for the next couple nights, but it is going to be 60 degrees by Sunday or Monday (they keep changing the day) and into the 70's the weekend after next. We'll be OK.
The solution is much simpler than you realize: join the rest of America by connecting the state grid to the western/eastern intercontinental grids and use other state's extra capacity as additional reserve. A state suffering catastrophic failure, like Texas, can receive extra capacity diverted from nearby states.
No new plants needed. They just need to join their neighboring states hand-in-hand.
Electricity primer: Not being connected to rest of Texas helped El Paso in cold wave
El Paso Electric upgraded winterization of power plants after the 2011 freeze-induced power outages.www.elpasotimes.com
They fixed the election so..Yeah cause they need Oregon Government to fix things ...
Proof is in the fact that 4 million households in Texas were without power for days. Did any neighboring states suffer that level of failure? Nope. Case closed.
23% of our power comes from wind, per the state's own figures. About 45% come from LNG - the rest is from coal, solar, or nuclear. Some of the nuke plants went offline because freezing temps caused certain sensors to freeze and triggered safety mechanisms. They said the plants were actually safe to operate, but the built in safety systems kicked in and shut the reactors down.
Wind turbines weren't winterized like other places do, because it usually doesn't get that cold here. Same with the LNG pipelines - in a place that typically stays well above freezing in the winter, they didn't plan for single digit temps. It can be seen as a failure to plan, yes. They didn't plan for the worst-case scenario of winter storms. They planned for the most likely scenarios, which caught Texas with its pants down. The energy demands were also substantially higher during this storm than typical of this time of year because everyone was home cranking their heaters up.
The county I live in has zero snow plows, and they use dump trucks to spread gravel / sand on the roads. Should they have plows / salt trucks / sanders etc, when in a typical snow-event, its an inch or less that lasts typically a day or less? I don't think I'd spring for a bunch of very expensive, special equipment that will rarely, if ever get used either. Freak weather events happen. How much money should be invested in preparing for such scenarios? I dunno - does Oregon prepare for hurricanes?
A lot of people here, and around the country are blaming the government at all levels for the black outs - I'm sure some of it is deserved, but this was a freak storm for this part of the country and they keep saying we haven't seen weather like this in 70 years. I don't know if preparing for another event like this by spending probably hundreds of millions of dollars (when all the costs are added up) is going to pencil out. Maybe it will.
People bubbleguming about the governor "not doing anything" like he's supposed to be out there building new generator plants or some bubblegum. Last I knew he also wasn't magical, so couldn't just snap his fingers and make the lights come on. If power demands are 75 gigawatts and generating capacity is 60, people are going to be without power.
If any lessons are learned by this, I hope its that you can't rely on a single power source, and redundancy and capacity beyond the normal is necessary. Nuclear is a good option, but again, we saw nuke plants go offline because some stuff got too cold. LNG went offline because well heads froze and the plants couldn't get fuel. Maybe that means we need more modern coal plants? Or maybe we need to drill into the earth's core, or maybe Elon Musk needs to create some antimatter reactors or zero point energy collectors or some crazy stuff.
Maybe we need more dams for hydro power.
Places on the federal controlled grids still see rolling blackouts or brown outs, its not like this is unique to Texas. How many times has California gone without power? How often does New York lose power when it gets bad?
Maybe as part of the Federal emergency relief package some of our gov is seeking should include mandatory driver's ed on driving in snow & ice (and dry weather - Texans are some scary damn drivers in nice weather, God help us when the pavement is slippery!)
Maybe every home needs its own power supply - solar + a generator?
Cities all over have been running out of water too. And when the water came back - it included boil-water notices with warnings not to even wash your hands in the unboiled tap water. Guess that means they need to build more water towers, and each water plant should have its own power plant to power the pumps when the power goes out? My dad was without power for over 48 hours, and they lost water about a day into things. When they got power back, they were hit with the rolling blackouts.
We experienced the blackouts, and had one short outage due to a tree falling and causing a transformer to blow.
In the end I think most people will forget, no big lessons learned, and most people aren't going to make big preps.
Even though SE Texas gets blasted with hurricanes every year - all the locals / natives I've talked to here say few people actually prepare for any weather events. You see huge runs on supplies before & after the storms. We had to go to the store on Saturday afternoon, before things got bad because I was making clam chowder for dinner and needed heavy cream for it. Had to drive 15 miles, because our local grocery store was out of dairy products and eggs. I've been told that leading up to any storm you'll see a run on toilet paper, bottled water, bread, milk, eggs, and beer. Our own trip to the grocery store seemed to confirm that - the cheap versions of all those were hard to come by by Saturday afternoon. Bread could be had, if you liked the $3-5 / loaf stuff. Soy / Almond milk was available. I don't drink, but I could see the beer section had big voids. The wine section was still pretty well stocked.
Home Depot in our town ran out of PVC pipe yesterday. You can't get a generator if you wanted one because they're sold out all over.
What I did see on a very local level though - is our neighbors came together to help one another out. Lot of folks had busted pipes - others who had extra supplies offered the supplies and a hand to fix it. Those who still had running well water were offering water up to those who were on the local supply and ran out, and when those folks had water they were offering it up to those whose wells froze or who had broken pipes. Neighbors were checking in with one another to make sure everyone was OK. Had a few who were braving the crazy drivers and slippery roads to run into town for supplies that offered to get extra for those who were in need.
Its forecast to still be below freezing at night for the next couple nights, but it is going to be 60 degrees by Sunday or Monday (they keep changing the day) and into the 70's the weekend after next. We'll be OK.
Your ignorance proves you know nothing about the region and refuse to be educated. Imagine this ... every place in the US isn't like the PNW and FWIW every single year more Californians go without power than have done so in Texas .
Kinda like a commune! so simple!The solution is much simpler than you realize: join the rest of America by connecting the state grid to the western/eastern intercontinental grids and use other state's extra capacity as additional reserve. A state suffering catastrophic failure, like Texas, can receive extra capacity diverted from nearby states.
No new plants needed. They just need to join their neighboring states hand-in-hand.
Electricity primer: Not being connected to rest of Texas helped El Paso in cold wave
El Paso Electric upgraded winterization of power plants after the 2011 freeze-induced power outages.www.elpasotimes.com
Simpler than begging Biden to declare your state a Federal disaster area so FEMA can come to your rescue, like Greg Abbott did.
Good thing they include wood and other sources for heat in their "renewable power" definition.
23% of our power comes from wind, per the state's own figures. About 45% come from LNG - the rest is from coal, solar, or nuclear. Some of the nuke plants went offline because freezing temps caused certain sensors to freeze and triggered safety mechanisms. They said the plants were actually safe to operate, but the built in safety systems kicked in and shut the reactors down.
Wind turbines weren't winterized like other places do, because it usually doesn't get that cold here. Same with the LNG pipelines - in a place that typically stays well above freezing in the winter, they didn't plan for single digit temps. It can be seen as a failure to plan, yes. They didn't plan for the worst-case scenario of winter storms. They planned for the most likely scenarios, which caught Texas with its pants down. The energy demands were also substantially higher during this storm than typical of this time of year because everyone was home cranking their heaters up.
The county I live in has zero snow plows, and they use dump trucks to spread gravel / sand on the roads. Should they have plows / salt trucks / sanders etc, when in a typical snow-event, its an inch or less that lasts typically a day or less? I don't think I'd spring for a bunch of very expensive, special equipment that will rarely, if ever get used either. Freak weather events happen. How much money should be invested in preparing for such scenarios? I dunno - does Oregon prepare for hurricanes?
A lot of people here, and around the country are blaming the government at all levels for the black outs - I'm sure some of it is deserved, but this was a freak storm for this part of the country and they keep saying we haven't seen weather like this in 70 years. I don't know if preparing for another event like this by spending probably hundreds of millions of dollars (when all the costs are added up) is going to pencil out. Maybe it will.
People bubbleguming about the governor "not doing anything" like he's supposed to be out there building new generator plants or some bubblegum. Last I knew he also wasn't magical, so couldn't just snap his fingers and make the lights come on. If power demands are 75 gigawatts and generating capacity is 60, people are going to be without power.
If any lessons are learned by this, I hope its that you can't rely on a single power source, and redundancy and capacity beyond the normal is necessary. Nuclear is a good option, but again, we saw nuke plants go offline because some stuff got too cold. LNG went offline because well heads froze and the plants couldn't get fuel. Maybe that means we need more modern coal plants? Or maybe we need to drill into the earth's core, or maybe Elon Musk needs to create some antimatter reactors or zero point energy collectors or some crazy stuff.
Maybe we need more dams for hydro power.
Places on the federal controlled grids still see rolling blackouts or brown outs, its not like this is unique to Texas. How many times has California gone without power? How often does New York lose power when it gets bad?
Maybe as part of the Federal emergency relief package some of our gov is seeking should include mandatory driver's ed on driving in snow & ice (and dry weather - Texans are some scary damn drivers in nice weather, God help us when the pavement is slippery!)
Maybe every home needs its own power supply - solar + a generator?
Cities all over have been running out of water too. And when the water came back - it included boil-water notices with warnings not to even wash your hands in the unboiled tap water. Guess that means they need to build more water towers, and each water plant should have its own power plant to power the pumps when the power goes out? My dad was without power for over 48 hours, and they lost water about a day into things. When they got power back, they were hit with the rolling blackouts.
We experienced the blackouts, and had one short outage due to a tree falling and causing a transformer to blow.
In the end I think most people will forget, no big lessons learned, and most people aren't going to make big preps.
Even though SE Texas gets blasted with hurricanes every year - all the locals / natives I've talked to here say few people actually prepare for any weather events. You see huge runs on supplies before & after the storms. We had to go to the store on Saturday afternoon, before things got bad because I was making clam chowder for dinner and needed heavy cream for it. Had to drive 15 miles, because our local grocery store was out of dairy products and eggs. I've been told that leading up to any storm you'll see a run on toilet paper, bottled water, bread, milk, eggs, and beer. Our own trip to the grocery store seemed to confirm that - the cheap versions of all those were hard to come by by Saturday afternoon. Bread could be had, if you liked the $3-5 / loaf stuff. Soy / Almond milk was available. I don't drink, but I could see the beer section had big voids. The wine section was still pretty well stocked.
Home Depot in our town ran out of PVC pipe yesterday. You can't get a generator if you wanted one because they're sold out all over.
What I did see on a very local level though - is our neighbors came together to help one another out. Lot of folks had busted pipes - others who had extra supplies offered the supplies and a hand to fix it. Those who still had running well water were offering water up to those who were on the local supply and ran out, and when those folks had water they were offering it up to those whose wells froze or who had broken pipes. Neighbors were checking in with one another to make sure everyone was OK. Had a few who were braving the crazy drivers and slippery roads to run into town for supplies that offered to get extra for those who were in need.
Its forecast to still be below freezing at night for the next couple nights, but it is going to be 60 degrees by Sunday or Monday (they keep changing the day) and into the 70's the weekend after next. We'll be OK.
