Saw a meteorologist who predicts weather patterns for large companies. He said they were told in January this was coming.
My grandparents lodt power yesterday but have a generator. My dad has been in a hotel. My girlfriends parents never lost power. I havent had power for more than a few minutes in the last three days. We've been grilling. Its been fun except for when its too cold. And the food going bad. Its starting to heat up down here little by little. Dont know when the power will be restored, hopefully soon. This has kind of made me want to move out of texas a little more than I did before. Havent showered in days either and that sucks
ERCOT's a joke and is the reason you're having these problems. If regulators in Texas also woke up and connected to the rest of the nation's grid they could have avoided this; when demand gets too high in Nevada they can import from Arizona or New York can buy from Virginia for example, but Texas is isolated. Before someone chimes in with "but the windmills!" they work just fine in Canada and the North Sea during the winter, and would in Texas too if they'd have bothered to winterize them but it was more important to go cheap and this was the inevitable outcome.
You saved me some typing, thank you. Hope you don't mind me borrowing this, it's nicely put and succinct.
Between this and Harvey (9 days straight no power), I'm getting a little used to having no power. Number one thing I can recommend is to charge up your bluetooth speakers in advance. You wouldn't believe what a luxury some tunes are, and it makes things feel a lot more normal. Charge up tablets, too. They can play music. The Kindle. Anything that can provide entertainment. I'm gonna buy one of those phone battery source deals, too. Unless you're daring, just use one of those sources of entertainment at a time, and they can last days. Immediately turn your screen brightness down as much as possible on all devices. Turn off WiFi so your device isn't searching and wasting power. Small pencil size flashlights are great, cause you can hold them in your mouth while you use both hands. Great to have some square stackable jugs of water just in case, too. Store some Vienna Sausages or something in your pantry besides just carbs.
Damn... I didn't figure and hoped it wasn't multiple deaths per state due to this. Very unfortunate and terrible news. Stay strong and have hope.
Have at it man, spread it around. I've seen a lot of disinformation thrown out there already by those on the take from certain industries and it really works my nerves.
Dude, put your groceries outside. They'll freeze just fine. Biting my tongue about WHY your state's infrastructure was unprepared.
I think i know why. Its heating up here, its in the 40s. Not cold enough to save the groceries anymore. At least not the frozen stuff
Texas is far superior to all other states and therefore will not consider information drawn from outside of the state
yesterday was the coldest day in the history of texas. this is a freak storm and almost never happens.
Power was on for an hour and just went out again. I’m sorry, but your information is just not correct and your percentages are off. ERCOT just held a news conference on Dallas news 8 confirming that windmills froze up and got ice on the blades. They turned them off to prevent total damage to the windmills. Natural gas power plants have also had failures due to the freezing conditions. They do not have answers for those failures, but plan to investigate after this is over. Windmills account for 23% of the power production. If another 10% of natural gas goes down, you are looking at loosing 1/3 of your power supply, in conditions that are going to be blackouts if you are running at 100%. ERCOT said in the news conference that they made the decision Sunday night to ration electricity because they new that they would totally crash over usage, when 33% had malfunctioned. Again, this is direct from the CEO of ERCOT. Nuclear accounts for 11% of TX electricity and they had no failures with nuclear.
There are several factors from what I've read, that being a major one, the LNG price spike being another, (at least based on the fact that they issued and order allowing them to pass on the cost). I've also seen the lack of sufficient winterization of the plants themselves which somehow slowed operation or reduced capacity and the fact that plants are generally offline for maintenance during the winter since the heaviest demand in Tx is traditionally the summer months. I suspect it's all these and more. What they have in common is a lack of foresight. It's not like weather events haven't been getting worse, and they didn't use much of what could have been learned from the last time this happened to prepare for this. Fact is extreme weather is becoming the norm for the time being and it would behoove them to adjust. Unfortunately it's just more of a reactive than proactive system. It's ruled by crisis managers, not visionaries. But having somewhere to point the finger(s) isn't going to make you warm, provide you with water, or keep your food fresh, so, again, the real takeaway is to assume that you're on your own and be prepared. If they step up, great. If they don't, you got it covered.
What types of electricity are generated in Texas? Natural-gas-fired power plants generated 40% of Texas’s electricity in 2020, according to Ercot, the largest single source. Wind turbines were second at 23%, followed by coal at 18% and nuclear at 11%. In recent years, coal has been declining on the Texas grid, and renewable sources such as wind and solar have been increasing.
Does not change the fact that wind works all ovef the world in similar adverse conditions. Also, getting information from the entity already proven to be unprepared seems odd.
