Posted on 02/06/2011 10:18:30 AM PST by dragnet2
Forget all the concern about al Qaeda terrorists using explosions to take out our power grid or foreign hackers disabling it from afar - in Texas a cold front can apparently do the job.
As the lights flickered and went dark across Texas on Wednesday in response to a state-mandated rolling blackout plan, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst was clearly irritated.
He wasn't the only one.
"This should not happen," Dewhurst told reporters on Wednesday.
Dewhurst said that cold weather knocked 50 of the 550 power plants in Texas offline. That, coupled with increased demand, turned out the lights.
"Lack of adequate winterization and preparation appear to be a major cause of the outages," Dewhurst said.
The plant managers and the parent companies might want to make a note in their day planners for next year - "WINTER CAN BE COLD!"
The fact that we weren't properly prepared for it - and because of that computers and equipment all over the state came to a screeching halt - is simply inexcusable.
(Excerpt) Read more at seguingazette.com ...
Hmmm...I was told just yesterday, it was no ones fault and it just happened...
Look for the source of any giant screw-up and you will find government at the root of it every time. We need a free market in energy. Obama and the enviro-nuts want to deprive us of energy and halt progress. They won’t be happy until we are all living in cold caves and using latrines.
I am with Dewhurst. This is technology for the better? Yeah right. What about the people that have medical issues at home. So much for telling them. What about the surgeons that may have been performing surgery?
What fools. They didn’t plan anything. They relied on computers.
We need grownups running the show. People who plan and think and are responsible.
I understand that, but there were people here who were claiming, “No one was at fault”....attempting to sugar coat and softball the fact even hospitals were losing power.
I’m sure of that. Failure is always an orphan. ;-)
Characterizing the weather this week as a “cold front” is ridiculous and ruins any credibility this writer might otherwise have had.
We’re living in a soft and silly time when mere inconvenience is intolerable.
Bad stuff happens. Good folks suffer the consequences. That’s been true since the beginning of time. Accept it and move on.
This is ridiculous. No matter what the weather has been in the past they should have planned for Global Warming and properly winterized their equipment.
Yeah, we had no electricity, but we have the most windmills!
WE have heat tapes at our house in west Texas, and the water was on running slowly. When the power went off, and of course since it was 5 degrees the pipes froze and broke.
Calling a plumber gets you on a waiting list for Tuesday or Wednesday. So, a week without water, and no parts to be had to do the work by oneself.
Right...
But when California had rolling blackouts some years ago due to periods of high temps and corrupt companies from Texas, like ENRON who were manipulating supply so they could raise prices, it was because the state was full of Communist and was a 3rd world...
When the shoe is on the other foot, it seems the bucket mouths head for the tall grass...
lol...
How about lack of adequate border preparation causing it. If we didn't have so many illegals wasting electricity, we wouldn't have had this problem. Yo, David, whacha gonna do 'bout that, huh?
I heard that Texas has not allowed electric stations to be built for about 15 years. They don’t have the capacity for an extra load like this.
The blackouts were due to winds dying down and the generation not meeting the forecast of wind generation during the Arctic blast.
Medical or emergency services and people on those lines did not have their electricity turned off.
We had a blackout for about 20 minutes but when they turned it back on, the surge blew the transformer. My biggest complaint was the electric company sent all calls to their answering machine so any emergency call was ignored. We didn't have electricity for over 6 hours until we finally got someone and gave them some bs story to get them out before nightfall.
We have friends staying here all week because of just that.
We in New Mexico still don't have NG for heat
thanks to the rolling blackouts in Texas.The blackouts shut down the NG compressors.
This happened when it was 20 degrees below zero
in northern New Mexico.
Are you sure that’s true?
I’ve read that wind is not calculated to add ANYTHING to the base gen output.
If they have wind, they use it instead of whatever, but the base capacity has to be in place.
lol....
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