Posted on 02/18/2021 12:32:06 PM PST by grundle
Texas is nearing the end of what Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called "a once-in-every-120-year cold front," but that doesn't entirely explain why more than a million households still had no electricity early Thursday, after three full days of below-freezing temperatures. Plenty of places in the world keep their power on in prolonged arctic weather, and so did parts of Texas.
Those edges of Texas, including El Paso, "are primarily in areas outside of those supported by ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the electric grid for 90 percent of the state and operates separately from federal oversight and regulation," KHOU 11 Houston reported Wednesday night.
After the 2011 winter freeze, El Paso Electric, on the Western Interconnect grid, spent heavily to "winterize our equipment and facilities so they could stand minus-10 degree weather for a sustained period of time," Eddie Gutierrez, an El Paso Electric spokesman, told KHOU. So this year, "we had about three thousand people that were out during this period, a thousand of them had outages that were less than five minutes."
On the other side of Texas, near the Louisiana border, the city of Beaumont also appears to have weather the storm without massive outages. Entergy, which powers Beaumont on the Eastern Interconnect grid, told KHOU it also winterized its infrastructure after the 2011 storm. Weatherizing power generation and extraction equipment is voluntary in Texas, though the state legislature will probably revisit that strategy when it dissects ERCOT this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Three days of no power in my house. 12-18 deg at night. Not sure how many people will be found dead of hypothermia. Won’t be pretty.
Do you have any clay pots or candles ? Heaters can be made from them.
“...winterized its infrastructure after the 2011 storm. “
So Texas had its second 120 year event within 10 years of the first?
Is that some kind of non-racis’ Math?
Thank you for posting this; the state oughta go after ERCOT hammer and tongs...
State should mandate weatherization of all the ERCOT-managed power plants.
Then get some Texans to run it; the current managers don’t even live here.
The proverbial once a century storm that seems to happen every decade.
Here is a thought.... for the price of a few wind turbines you could probably winterize your fuel driven plants.
Guessing the utility executives would not be given bonuses for that though.
See post 6
It’s like clockwork. When I attended college we had “once in a century flooding” three times in 4 years. It was amazing!
What are the odds?
Why in the world would they expect the 2011 deep freeze to repeat? Everybody knows global warming is out of control and we have a climate catastrophe upon us. People in the Yukon are supposed to be basking in the sun in bathing suits right now and people in Texas should be frying eggs on the sidewalk.
Those El Paso Electric people just don't get it.
That would be the Southwest Power Pool. Not all Texas is ERCOT.
A friend of mine lives in Texas. His power and water are out, but his brother and sister-in-law’s house is fine. God help those who have neither heat nor family to turn to. And a pox on that local official who said the good people of Texas were moochers for wanting the water and electricity they pay for every month.
Of self-aggrandizing hyperbole unquestioned by the LSM? About once every 15 minutes.
>So Texas had its second 120 year event within 10 years of the first?
I’m 58, born and raised in Texas and there’s never been anything like this, not even close. I don’t know what the hell they are talking about 2011, must not have been much of a storm.
Closest thing I recall is around 1978 or so we had a major ice storm, trees fell on powerlines everywhere and we were without power for about a week.
Still, it was nothing like this, ice melted a day or so later, there were just so many lines down it took a massive effort to get things going again.
They got a little snow but it wasn’t as cold out there.
>State should mandate weatherization of all the ERCOT-managed power plants.
Then get some Texans to run it; the current managers don’t even live here.
Oh, believe me, this crap will be fixed.
The last cold front like this was 1989 and 1983 but without as much snow.
The media is on a jihad on this, with the message being “more socialism, more government regulation, less independence.”
And the ignorant sheep are slurping it up.
Now, my large city is increasingly issuing boil-water alerts for compromised tap water quality. I just got mine today.
We are told not to even wash hands with the tap water without first boiling it for 2 minutes. And the problem isn’t even related to the power outages, but because of broken water mains reducing positive pressure on the system.
Consider the source of the article, their solution is to add more “Unicorn Fart” power and Federalize everything, no thanks, we will winterize our pipelines and scrap the heavily subsidized wind turbines to pay for it this time ...
>The last cold front like this was 1989 and 1983 but without as much snow.
I think it was 83 when it got so cold the lakes iced over, the only time that has happened in my life. Yeah, don’t remember there being much snow, if any. Either way, we still had lignite plants to supply the power, as long as a tree didn’t fall and take down lines we were fine.
If you want to make the Electrical system bullet proof, then users are going to have to pay for it by doubled, even tripled billed rates. Then THAT will be the complaint.
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