The article is pure unadulterated bull shit
I’ve been through several, several hurricanes. I’m surprised when I don’t lose power. I’ve lost power for almost 3 weeks. It never even occurred to me to blame the power company. I believe the only way to solve this would be to spend a kabillion dollars and bury all the cables.
“Houston paper criticizes pols, regulators and company executives for putting the biggest city in the southwest through a multi-day blackout after a mild hurricane.”
Agree, and I’m not even sure it was a hurricane in Houston as it landed 50 miles south. I think the reasons people didn’t prepare was that it was earlier forecast much further south, near the Mexico border, it was a holiday weekend, and it wasn’t even a hurricane until just before it landed (it was a big hurricane a week earlier, but then weakened to a tropical storm).
But, overall, if this is how Houston holds up in a Cat 1 hurricane, one could only imagine what a REAL hurricane will do.
The one good thing is that at least the low-hanging fruit (meaning the weak trees and poles) were taken down and not much other damage, so a repeat of this hurricane, this year, should be a lot less damage...but they do need to get to work on the grid, because next time it may not be a Cat 1.
#1 reason people are leaving, cannot afford a generator to insure they have Reliable Electricity.
#2 reason people are leaving, cannot get a generator quick enough to insure they have Electricity.
2k lost power in my town (around 20%) in Indiana and winds were just 45 mph. They had went down the old tracks near my house on Monday cutting back trees or it might have been worse.
The biggest problem that I see is because these failures give additional talking points to the left. There is a renewed effort by the left to absorb the Texas grid into the national grid thereby making Texas power subservient to the whims of FedGov. The commies in WDC would love nothing more than to be able to control our electricity at such a macro level. Imagine the Feds being able to shut down the power to all or some Red states just before an election.
Nice power grid youse got there ... be a shame if it stayed off for a few months because youse voted the wrong way.
Beryl barely reached category 1 status as a hurricane and it didn’t even make a direct hit on Houston.
I haven’t seen such a clusterf###k like this.
Everyone could see it days in advance.
Did they lose the capacity to produce or did winds take down their transmission lines? If the latter, they’re not to blame. If the former, then, possibly. Depending on the reason they lost capacity.
Betcha they wish they had back all those coal and lignite plants they shut down in the Obama years, and the people back to work the power lines.
monopoly = bad idea
HOWEVER--Centerpoint seems to avoid trimming back trees and maintaining lines so that when things like Beryl do happen, it requires MUCH more work to get things back to "normal."
So yeah--I blame Centerpoint.
Why should the power company maintain the grid infrastructure when the feds (taxpayers) will pay for the rebuild? That’s the way the world works now.
Fortunately, I have a standby generator that's been running continuously since Monday.
-PJ
ggg