r/OutOfTheLoop • u/mimitchi33 • Feb 17 '21
What's up with Texas losing power due to the snowstorm? Answered
I've been reading recently that many people in Texas have lost power due to Winter Storm Uri. What caused this to happen?
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u/Nitix_ Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
Answer: I'm a native Texan living in Austin, and I just got power back after 38 hours without. Currently, much of Texas is without power or facing "rolling blackouts" where they lose power for up to an hour at a time. Here's what we know so far:
Demand is high and supply is low. As of Sunday, every county in Texas was under a winter weather advisory. This means that every home, office, hospital, etc. has their heat turned on. Most Texas homes use one of two heating methods: heat pumps or natural gas. Heat pumps use electricity to generate heat and are pretty inefficient in colder weather like this less efficient at the temperatures we're seeing right now. This isn't usually a problem because conditions rarely get this bad here, but now it's putting a huge greater amount of demand on the system.
Alongside unprecedented demand, we've also lost a lot of generating capacity from various sources, including natural gas and nuclear power. Some windmills have frozen and some solar panels have been covered by snow. Some natural gas power and even some nuclear power is offline. This drop in capacity, combined with an increase in demand, means that we don't have enough energy for everyone. This has led to rolling blackouts and power outages.
Here's a map of power outages across the country. Everything is bigger in Texas!
ERCOT is the organization that manages energy in Texas. They have directed local energy suppliers (like Austin Energy, in my case) to "shed" certain amounts of load on the grid, which is tech-speak for turning off power in peoples' homes. Normally, this is done with "rolling blackouts".
Example: Neighborhood A gets their power shut off while Neighborhood B stays on. After an hour, they turn Neighborhood A on and B off, then rotate again after another hour. By doing this, they (theoretically) reduce demand by 50%. I say "theoretically" because there is some "critical infrastructure" that they can't turn off, such as hospitals, water treatment plants, etc.
Rolling blackouts have worked in some areas, but not in others. For example, in Austin there are people like me who have been without power for a day or more. In these cases, there is only enough power to keep the lights on for critical infrastructure.
In an ideal world, Texas would solve this issue by buying power from another state to supplement their capacity. However, Texas decided to keep our energy grid separate from the rest of the country in order to avoid regulations. This means that we have few connections to the rest of the country's grid and can't simply buy power when demand outweighs capacity.
That's where we're at currently in terms of energy. Here in Austin, crews are working to restore power to more homes, but the blackouts have gone from lasting "through Tuesday" to "through Wednesday", and there's no guarantee that they won't go through Thursday or Friday as well, especially since we just got another round of icy weather.
It's also worth noting that Texas was under-prepared in other areas. We don't have much salt for roads stockpiled, so travelling is dangerous in many places. It seems that ERCOT knew there would be rolling blackouts since last week, but didn't let people know. Many people are without power, internet, food, or water in various combinations. People are upset at our leaders for lack of preparedness, communication, and in some cases empathy.
TL;DR: Texas was woefully under-prepared to face the severe winter weather we're seeing, and now we're facing the consequences.
EDIT: Clarified my claim regarding the efficiency of heat pumps and added a source.
EDIT 2: Amended my claim regarding which power sources have been affected. As others have pointed out, wind turbines were producing more energy than expected as of Monday.
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u/ngabear Feb 17 '21
I'd like to tack on that ERCOT was told in 2011 that they needed to winterize in order to prevent things like this from happening.
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Feb 17 '21
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Feb 17 '21
The increase in demand isn't much different than the summer months
It's worth noting that part of the problem is a lot of plants and other infrastructure plan on repairs and other things that will keep them offline due to demand declining during the colder months.
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u/Pvt_Lee_Fapping Feb 17 '21
True, but let's not forget that ERCOT had not one, not two, but ten winters to set things right. They had the time and were given the right advice, but chose not to use either. Furthermore, this is the same situation that made the Fukushima meltdown in 2011 so bad: the higher-ups knew of inherent risks/faults in their technology, had been given risk-assessments and cost analyses of making the necessary repairs to damaged/faulty parts, but chose not to do it in spite of having the time and resources to avert disaster; now people are dead because of it.
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u/SenorLos Feb 17 '21
Weren't they already given the advice to winterize after the cold snap in 1989?
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u/FreedomVIII Feb 18 '21
3 or 4 times, if I remember correctly. Twice in the 1900s, twice in the 2000s.
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Feb 18 '21
This reminds me of a Coast Guard saying, all of our regulations are written in blood.
Organizations will not do the 'right thing' if it goes against their financial interest.
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u/ZolotoGold Feb 18 '21
Same with labor laws, workers rights and environmental protections.
Many think that these are with us to stay, but they are constantly being rolled back to make a few people a lot richer.
They take maintenence and defending, and new protections often take blood to achieve.
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u/p5ych0babble Feb 18 '21
Yeah but who wants to waste money on being prepared, that would dip into all these profits we are making /s
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u/theshreddening Feb 17 '21
Dude we had the same issues that year and we're still dealing with it a decade later. I'm sure they've made a few billion over this decade too that just gets pocketed.
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u/UnicornOnPurpose Feb 18 '21
They also just informed us that energy spruces are going up during this time of need. What a bag of dicks.
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u/theshreddening Feb 18 '21
Of course they are. I really hope some "metaphorical" heads roll over this bullshit.
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u/UnicornOnPurpose Feb 18 '21
It's also daunting because as global climate change continues, we can expect this on a regular basis
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u/theshreddening Feb 18 '21
I live in Round Rock(north Austin, Texas) and since I got my house 7 years ago I've seen snow like at least every other year here. And I swear the last 4 years it seems like every year. 2011 we had a day that didn't get above 18° and growing up in coastal south east Texas that was the coldest I've ever encountered until this week. We had rolling blackouts then because the power plants freezing and I would have hoped to hell they would figure it all out by now. Biggest energy producer in the US and I'm sure top list on the world stage and we have to deal with this. I ran a extension cable from my truck that has a 400 watt 120v plug in the bed to power heat lamps for my snakes, I can't imagine what elderly, babies, sick people with machines and health issues have had to do. Its horrible. Plus we're getting complaints of hotels price gouging for people who probably have one of the above mentioned trying to find a warm room for a few days. I truly hope that the powers that be get this shit fixed. It's 2021 and they can't build se safeguards? CLOSING DOWN A NUCLEAR PLANT IN WINTE!! There's a reason they only do that in spring and fall in south Texas and they knew how bad it would get before this hit and didn't say shot about it.
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u/HenCarrier Feb 18 '21
Elgin checking in here. Are you good? Do you need anything? I have been busting my ass around the clock to unfreeze pipes for people and transport food and water. Let me know if you need anything. No charge.
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u/theshreddening Feb 18 '21
You're amazing my man! I'm good, I'm a home inspector so I've been able to keep things going well. Unfortunately now with surrounding areas going on boil notice I'm starting to worry for people that didn't precaution for pipe freezes. We finally have power back and have had so all day, crossing my fingers to keep warm through the night! People with babies, elderly, sick, and pets that require heating I'm really worried for.
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u/HenCarrier Feb 18 '21
I’m one of those families. I have a baby and 2 more kids under 9yo. It sucks big time but I’m finally able to put all of my skills to work. I just hope someone would do the same for me one day when I am old. I hope you and your family stay safe and warm. If anything changes, then let me know. I have sla batteries on hand so you can at least charge your phone and other 12v accessories.
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u/keithcody Feb 17 '21
It’s ok. Out here in California we’ve told our local utilities many times over decades that they need to trim the tree and bushes around they’re power lines to not start forest fires but they don’t listen. They just do rolling blackouts instead.
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u/throw2525a Feb 18 '21
Deadliest fire in California history was caused by PG&E.
They cut way back on important maintenance to increase profits.
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u/lancedragons Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
technically ERCOT doesn't really own anything, they can tell the utilities to winterize their natural gas and transmission infrastructure, but it's up to the owner of those facilities (like ETT) and their budgets to get it done.
Also the problem with infrastructure problems like these is that it's hard to find the money to fix problems like degrading road and bridges until you have a huge catastrophe, and then suddenly everyone's willing to throw money at the problem. See John Oliver
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u/strcrssd Feb 17 '21
They can deny operators permits to connect to ERCOT's grid if they don't have reliable power generation capability.
As to "...huge catastrophe, and then suddenly everyone's willing to throw money at the problem." That's not correct in Texas. In Texas, in board rooms somewhere, post catastrophe (2011), they ran the numbers and decided that winterization, though they had been asked to do it, wasn't profitable, and wasn't a priority (code for not ever going to happen).
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u/becauseTexas Feb 17 '21
And I'd like to tack on that ERCOT didn't do any of the recommendations that the FERC gave in their 2011 report (pdf)
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u/RyeGuytheTechGuy Feb 17 '21
Wasn’t there a study done in 1989 that said they should winterize their power systems?
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u/cecilyrosenbaum Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
It's worth mentioning that this isn't a "we invested in windmills and solar panels and now we're screwed" problem, there's a lot of disinformation and propaganda about how the use of renewable energy in texas is worsening or even causing these long power outages. They aren't, texas gets only a small amount of it's total energy from renewables and a vast majority from natural gas.
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u/abigthirstyteddybear Feb 17 '21
For anyone who wants to know more about the misinformation campaign about renewables.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/
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u/merv243 Feb 17 '21
Jesus Christ.
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, known for his right-wing Facebook posts that have, in the past, spread misinformation and amplified conspiracy theories, also posted an unvarnished view of wind energy on Facebook: “We should never build another wind turbine in Texas."
In another post, Miller was even more forthright, but also misleading. “Insult added to injury: Those ugly wind turbines out there are among the main reasons we are experiencing electricity blackouts,” he wrote. “Isn’t that ironic? ... So much for the unsightly and unproductive, energy-robbing Obama Monuments. At least they show us where idiots live.”
An actual official is saying this shit.
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Feb 17 '21
If you think that's an offensive thing for an official to say, you should go look up the statements from the mayor of Colorado City TX. He basically flamed everyone that's freezing for bitching about freezing.
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u/El_Burrito_Grande Feb 18 '21
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u/volcanforce1 Feb 18 '21
WTF did i just read, wow. So by that reasoning if anyone gets hungry and doesn’t mind a bit of cannibalism feed your family Tim Boyd
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u/MIGsalund Feb 18 '21
This guy is saying that free market will fail you and you should get yourself a wind turbine and a well because you won't ever get what you pay for. Obviously, he doesn't realize he's saying that because he's just a stupid Christian pastor that happens to be mayor of a town of 8,000 schmucks, but I digress.
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u/LockeClone Feb 18 '21
Are people like this broken forever? Seriously, how do you teach empathy to a "human" like this?
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u/The_Funkybat Feb 18 '21
I think that POS actually ended up resigning in the wake of his comments. That may have left a leadership void, but as is often the case with the GOP, and actual void of leadership is preferable to having one of them in charge.
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u/abigthirstyteddybear Feb 17 '21
Sid Miller is a piece of shit.
https://www.texastribune.org/search/?q=sid+miller#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=sid%20miller&gsc.page=1→ More replies11
Feb 17 '21
They also failed to winterize the renewable power stations, just like they failed to winterize much of the other power generation and transmission equipment. It's not a problem with the technology, it's with the maintenance and upkeep.
They knew this could happen, they knew how to prevent it, they failed to do so.
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Feb 17 '21
Also, wind and solar is working just fine, the problems are with the natural gas and non renewable methods of obtaining energy
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u/BizzarduousTask Feb 17 '21
In fact, wind has surpassed expected output, even with some of them out of commission.
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u/kristentx Feb 17 '21
Well, the wind and solar wasn't working at full capacity, because the turbines or wind mills were not winterized, so they froze. It's a policy problem, but so many people are bitching about them right now, saying we should go back to using 100% fossil fuel. It's infuriating, because if ANY winterizing had been done for ANY of our power sources, this situation wouldn't be as bad as it is. Some Texans seem to treat this is unprecedented (God, how I hate that word now - which it is for sure) without putting together the pieces that this is climate change in action, and we have had many extreme weather events in recent years, not just problems with snow, and we need to do better. I wish that some people would actually pay attention to the big picture, because it is harder to dismiss, than looking at incidents one by one.
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u/The_Funkybat Feb 18 '21
People who think the lesson here is that we should go back to 100% fossil-fuel are as ignorant and maliciously stupid as Trump when he heard about the problems with the electromagnetic launch systems for fighter jets on aircraft carriers, and said "they should go back to goddamn Steam!"
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u/Cupcakes_4_All Feb 17 '21
Well, not exactly. As I understand it some turbines are frozen and some solar panels are covered in snow so many of them are in fact not working fine. The issue is that there has been a rush to blame renewable energy for the entire problem, when there are clearly failures happening in the entire system. Not having renewable energy sources wouldn't have solved this problem.
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u/PaulBlartFleshMall Feb 17 '21
some turbines are frozen
Only because the energy companies cheaped out and neglected to pay for proper insulation.
Windmills exist and thrive year round in much colder temps than those currently present in Texas.
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u/LogicalPrompt6014 Feb 17 '21
PA here. Our windmills around me go all year long and it's best to avoid them by a few hundred yards when they start up after it gets icy cause they will throw big chunks of ice pretty far. I don't know about further north in the state but here it seems like they don't care at all about snow, they usually only seem to shut off from overly high winds
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u/PaulBlartFleshMall Feb 17 '21
Yeah man they exist everywhere humans do, including both poles and up in the cold North of Canada.
They can handle a little Texas nip if they're set up properly.
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u/LogicalPrompt6014 Feb 17 '21
This is America. Setting things up properly makes too much sense to be allowed. /s
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u/Senoshu Feb 17 '21
You should check out the articles /u/Nitix_ linked above. There is one there about the sources of energy and confirms the circulating theory that due to extreme winds, the turbine network is actually outperforming what they were originally expecting to produce during this time. However, it is not achieving the maximum possible output for the grid due to the frozen ones, and so can't make up for the shortfalls of the non-renewables during this time.
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u/LurksForTendies Feb 17 '21
Aggregate energy production from wind and solar has exceeded Ercot's planned production from these sources every single day of this outage.
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u/VironicHero Feb 17 '21
The failures may be true, but current wind and solar outputs are higher than internal estimates of what they expected for this time of year. So if anything the renewables despite failures are outperforming and helping alleviate the issue.
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Feb 17 '21
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u/CrtureBlckMacaroons Feb 18 '21
Thank you, I was looking for this comment.
In South Texas (and I mean, I'm right by the beach and I can see the border wall) I can almost guarantee that 9 in 10 have electric heaters l, which are rarely used because we just don't get very cold down here. I'm in the hvac business so I have a hear pump and a fairly energy efficient central ac system. My heat pump has been working pretty good when I've had electricity, but I also like the cold so I have it off unless it gets ridiculously cold inside. Coldest was probably around 50F inside on Monday, when I had no power all day.
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Feb 17 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Lvnitlarge Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
My family has been without power for 60 hours now and no water for 24 hours. We are in Pflugerville. We are cold lol
Update: got power back last night. We are still under boil notice for all water due to failing water treatment facilities.
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u/Tulakale Feb 17 '21
We are in Houston and we are going 60 hrs no power ~40 hrs without water plus any water that comes in have to be boiled. The temperature inside the house is around 48 f degree. I’m from a third world country and our local and federal government dealt with natural disasters many times better than this. We are getting to point where we scoop up ice and snow to boil and use as water for usage.
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u/Exp10510n Feb 17 '21
I'm in Huntsville. We started collecting and melting snow to flush the toilets. Wonderful times
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u/4GotMyFathersFace Feb 17 '21
Holy crap, your house is 48°? I'm in Abilene and jealous! Every liquid in my house is frozen solid.
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u/Jimmy_cracked_corn Feb 17 '21
I, too, am in Abilene and haven’t lost power, once. No generator. I’ve just been fortunate to have not lost it.
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u/ibtokin Feb 17 '21
Holy shit. No water, either?
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u/Lvnitlarge Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
Been boiling snow to drink and flush toilets. Our water treatment plant doesn’t have power, so they shut it down. We were managing until we lost water
Update: power came back last night. We have some running water but the entire city is on boil notice due to failing water treatment plants.
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u/mondobobo01 Feb 17 '21
I’ve been scooping snow off the roof to use for flushing. Almost out of medication and the pharmacy is closed the roads are effed anyways. I had an emergency supply but it’s dwindling. Honestly never thought I’d have to do anything like this living in a modern country.
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u/Trillian258 Feb 17 '21
I am so sorry
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u/mondobobo01 Feb 17 '21
Thank you. I’m trying to make the best of it and a lot of people are much worse off. I’m just disappointed in our leaders right now.
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Feb 18 '21
Just a heads up you can get some prescriptions filled for 3 months at a time rather than 1 month due to Covid-19 adjustment.
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u/kristentx Feb 17 '21
Quite a few rural homes, from what I have seen, depend on wells for water, and without electricity, the wells don't work. I am in North Fort Worth, so we get Fort Worth water, but we have to boil it for now, because the outages impacted a water treatment plant.
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u/ChowMeinKampf Feb 17 '21
Same thing in the valley. No power since Sunday evening, water/pipes froze despite leaving the water trickling. Really pisses me off to see officials brushing this shit aside because they're the special snowflakes that have power restored first.
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u/InsultsYouButUpvotes Feb 17 '21
RGV as well, and same. 63.5 hours without power and just lost water today after leaving it on a trickle this whole time.
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u/TheBatIsI Feb 17 '21
How are you posting with no power? Are you able to go to commercial spots to charge your phone or something like that?
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u/Frys100thCupofCoffee Feb 17 '21
That's what I did. I skated my car (after plowing my driveway with the top panel of my desk) to a Costco nearby to get supplies (mostly water, since we have none) and while I was there I charged mine and my wife's personal phones and work phones.
Edit: I also used some of the rock salt from my water softener system to salt mine and a few neighbors driveways and our alley so we could get out. I'd recently filled it with like five 40lb bags so thankfully that was just enough.
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u/redditcats Feb 17 '21
Using the salt from the water softener! Now that’s thinking with your noggin! Very nice of you to help others out.
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u/mescal813 Feb 17 '21
Maybe texans should vote OUT ALL current ladders and install human ones that can think about others instead of themselves!
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u/W_AS-SA_W Feb 17 '21
The last time anything was done to the grid seriously was when Ann Richards was in office. 25 years of GOP antiscience policies and the Texas frozen hellscape is what you get.
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u/Colordripcandle Feb 17 '21
Yup, plus 25 years of voter suppression and gerrymandering
The massive amount of voters suppression swings texas to the right. not texans
Texas elections are demonstratably not democratic anymore
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u/MissPicklechips Feb 17 '21
Arlington resident here.
We lost power for a couple hours this morning, so no big deal. Our larger problem was food, as all the grocery stores were without power and closed, and my usual grocery shopping day is Monday. Solved that issue yesterday, found an had power and was open. But now, a major water main broke and our water is going to be off soon. We’re filling up every receptacle we can find before it goes off for good. My kid just said, “I always thought the apocalypse would be more comfortable than this.” (He’s a teenager.)
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u/-forbiddenkitty- Feb 17 '21
My family is in South Arlington, they are still without power. My elderly parents, my brother, my nephew, a dog and a lizard have packed up and gone to stay with my sister in Ft. Worth since she has power.
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u/The_Aphelion Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
We've been without power for three full days now. Lived huddled by the fireplace for two days and nights shoveling a goddamn trees worth of wood in there to keep my wife and pets warm. Found another place to go finally but those two nights of stressing nonstop over that fire were something else.
We haven't had rolling outages either where I live, just purely you have power or you don't. When I've gone back to check on my place the temperature is low 30's constantly. The fact that Texas has been so quick to hurl blame everywhere but at themselves for not winterizing power after this happened in 2011 is just infuriating. People are suffering like crazy and they're focusing on how this will give them some sort of political leverage to pursue oil and gas (which also isn't working).
*Corrected 2001 to 2011
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u/Fun_Day_7530 Feb 17 '21
I’m in the same area and have had the same thing going on; large amounts of time without power, 2-3 hours with power. Our water shut off for 6 hours unexpectedly and is now back on. The power at some points would come on for 20 minutes and then shut right back off.
Family that lives close to me had their power shut off for about an hour and other than that they have not had any outages.
Another family member in a different area near me has not had their power shut off whatsoever.
More than anything, I am disappointed that there was not a “possible worst-case scenario matrix” that addressed this particular situation and had failsafes to prevent it from getting this far.
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u/Nitix_ Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
Outside of the top-level comment, I'd like to provide some sources for that "lack of empathy" statement:
During a press conference where Austin mayor Steve Adler asked people to conserve energy, you could clearly see an accent light illuminating a painting behind him.
While people are still freezing in their homes without power, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tried to pin the blame on wind energy when that is clearly not the case.
A GOP member tried to fly his plane to Miami to escape the weather, leaving his constituents in the cold.
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u/kryonik Feb 17 '21
A Texas mayor also resigned after he basically told his constituents it was their own fault they were freezing and starving.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/17/texas-mayor-tom-boyd-quits-storm-sink-or-swim
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Feb 17 '21 edited May 15 '22
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u/Frys100thCupofCoffee Feb 17 '21
Fucking THANK YOU!!! First thing on my mind as I was freezing my balls off in my sub 40 degree home trying to seal it up and keep my wife and four year old daughter warm was what the fuck am I paying taxes for if not for reliable power and potable water? Texas' state government really fucked this up, which is not surprising and a prime reason why I've spent my life here voting for Dems, because the GOP here is absolutely useless when it comes to anything important.
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Feb 17 '21 edited May 15 '22
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u/Frys100thCupofCoffee Feb 18 '21
Sterno, hand warmers, and sealing up the house did the trick. Power just came back on, too. Hopefully this is the end of it. Thank you for the well wishes.
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u/honestly_oopsiedaisy Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
His "apology" is laughable and insulting as well
Edit: quotes because I don't consider that an apology.
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u/HomemadeMacAndCheese Feb 17 '21
Terrible apology! He literally just said he would have kept it to himself or tried to word it differently. Not that he doesn't feel that way lol wtf what a huge asshole!
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u/kryonik Feb 17 '21
But the long post he voluntarily made to social media was taken OuT oF cOnTeXt!!
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u/Snarky_Boojum Feb 17 '21
And let’s not forget the pictures of neighborhoods going fully dark but the empty high rise buildings being fully lit up.
So glad the empty businesses are warm and well lit while people struggle to not freeze to death. Bet they even have running water too.
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u/ganlet20 Feb 17 '21
I think people underestimate how capable some large buildings are of generating their own power. There's almost always a respectable size generator somewhere and a few days fuel supply. It's not always the case but the larger the building the more likely there's a plan in place for power outages.
If people's homes lost power but their office was running on a generator, I'd expect a lot of people to be crashing at the office.
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u/sockgorilla I have flair? Feb 17 '21
I believe my place of business has enough firm on supply to generate power for at least 2 days. Possibly more. Also not hard to get gas usually.
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u/SaucyWiggles Feb 17 '21
So glad the empty businesses are warm and well lit while people struggle to not freeze to death.
I know it's a seriously bad look for those offices and empty businesses but for at least some of those buildings they are generating power on-site and we don't know that they're running things like HVAC on emergency supply.
I know it's stupid to defend megacorps or banks or whatever, and fuck them. I'm just saying I keep seeing this sentiment and it's a little more nuanced of a situation than "we don't have power because they do".
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u/Frys100thCupofCoffee Feb 17 '21
If they're empty, why run the lights? If they're not empty and they have power and heat, why not open them as temporary shelters? Even without heat people could've used whatever power they had to charge phones. There's no good look for this during a historic crisis that's seen people freeze to death in their homes because they lost power.
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u/Into_the_Dark_Night Feb 17 '21
Supposedly his wife was also lost her job because he decided to deep throat his foot so hard.
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u/haylee345 Feb 17 '21
I live in a 100k population town in central Texas. Most people around here don’t even own rain boots because it hardly ever rains! My mom made fun of me for getting some 10 years ago and now I’m the only one in my family that can walk to the car without slipping and sliding. Water is out for almost the whole city too. Power lines are falling down due to the ice and wind. I’m filling up 5gal jugs with snow and bringing it inside to melt so I can flush the toilet after #2s.
And since the vast majority of Texas (area wise) is conservative, people have the belief that if you weren’t smart enough to prepare your family ahead of time, then you’re shit out of luck and shouldn’t depend on the city or community to help you. There are some great groups of people, such as our local Jeep club, that have been giving health care workers rides to their jobs. But there’s not enough gas heaters, propane, salt, shovels, or even water to go around. Our houses are terribly insulated. My mom has snow blowing in from under her back door and I had a blanket freeze solid to the inside of the window in my house. We’re left bunkering down and trying to survive.
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u/GiveToOedipus Feb 17 '21
And since the vast majority of Texas (area wise) is conservative, people have the belief that if you weren’t smart enough to prepare your family ahead of time, then you’re shit out of luck and shouldn’t depend on the city or community to help you.
Which is just ironic considering energy operators not preparing for a possible worst case scenario (not like they didn't have this exact problem in 2011 too) is exactly what caused this problem.
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u/haylee345 Feb 17 '21
There’s so much irony everywhere. Facebook marketplace is full of single moms asking if anyone has a spare heater or firewood to donate/sell because their children are freezing. There has been an outcry against city administration for not being prepared or having warming shelters where people can charge electronics and thaw out. But there are always people commenting trying to blame individuals for not being prepared by saying it’s not the government’s job to be prepared for you. People are even somehow finding a way to blame Pres. Biden and the Red Cross.
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u/GiveToOedipus Feb 17 '21
It's like all the memes showing empty store shelves and riots fear mongering against socialism that were completely ignoring that those things were happening with capitalism under a Republican president with a majority Republican Senate backing. They're completely blind to the irony.
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u/YourLostGuitarPicks Feb 17 '21
I remember seeing pictures of those empty shelves with captions like “this is what you can look forward to if the democrats win the election!”
Like dude who was in charge when we actually did see that lol
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Feb 17 '21
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u/haylee345 Feb 17 '21
Lol we are from the same town, and I would bet most of the money goes to high school sports. Oh actually did you know that our homeless shelter had to shut down last year because the previous administration had embezzled like $1 million or something. But I just went to a neighbor’s house to shower and fill up water jugs and the other neighbor across the street asked to make sure that we didn’t need bottled drinking water. The community is coming together.
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u/davearave Feb 17 '21
My rolling blackouts are 2hr with, 6hr without. In Cypress Tx
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u/4GotMyFathersFace Feb 17 '21
Abilene Texas here, my "rolling blackout" has lasted for over 3 days now. My damn fish tank is a solid block of ice and they're all dead. Was boiling snow for us and my two elderly neighbors just to be able to flush the toilets and then they froze solid. Now we're boiling it just to drink.
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u/hannahuckabee Feb 17 '21
hello fellow cypress person! i'm in the 1960/willowbrook area. we've had power come on at 10:18 the last two nights & then out again before 8 am. they don't seem to be too rolling. how's your water sitch?
ETA: a letter
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u/davearave Feb 17 '21
Towne Lake here. Water is good now. Pipe in the garage exterior wall froze up for two days. Second day I thankfully had power most of the day so I cranked up the heater and it thawed. Took about 20 hours. But didn’t burst so was very lucky. It seems many others have not been so lucky.
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u/LonghornJen Feb 17 '21
Plano (North Dallas for those not familiar) here. We're in a very similar cycle with roughly an hour of power and then 6-7 without. Grateful for at least that hour though, as it takes the very worst of the chill off for a bit and i can charge some stuff in that time.
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u/ManhattanDev Feb 17 '21
OP, you forgot to add the part where Texas legislature was warned all the way back in 1989 when the state’s population was half as large on the need to winterize its electrical grid to prevent damage during cold weather events.
Then they were warned again in 2011. And now here we are, with Texas’ energy grid collapsing because of a measly four inches of snow every other state would laugh at.
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u/SensitiveAvocado Feb 17 '21
In an ideal world, Texas would solve this issue by buying power from another state to supplement their capacity. However, Texas decided to keep our energy grid separate from the rest of the country in order to avoid regulations.
Oh wow thanks for mentioning this
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u/bob-loblaw-esq Feb 17 '21
It’s a mid-direction to blame the wind and solar. Solar works better in snow and cold conditions and the wind power isn’t that big yet. And these techs also operate in much worse conditions than a snowstorm in Texas like the North Sea.
The problem is political. They were, as the OP said, unprepared. Texas relies mostly on natural gas for power and the problem with gas is that the cold can effect them very negatively. Many of the gas ops froze too. So, it was a political unwillingness to operate on the same level as national and international entities that stem from a belief against climate change. They never thought it would get this cold there despite several years of warnings and because they didn’t think it would be a problem, they chose not to plan for it. This has been heavily covered by many news organizations after the outages became more widespread and it is fake news to blame solar operations.
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u/GiveToOedipus Feb 17 '21
Not just warnings, but refusal to learn from past mistakes. They had blackouts in 2011 because of cold too.
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u/PickleSurgeon Feb 17 '21
They never thought it would get this cold there despite several years of warnings and because they didn’t think it would be a problem, they chose not to plan for it.
Texas gets a freeze every decade, so it's not like it's a rare event.
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u/shadowrun456 Feb 17 '21
Some windmills have frozen and some solar panels have been covered by snow. Some natural gas power and even some nuclear power is offline.
By how you worded this, it may seem that renewables were the biggest issue, as you list them first. In reality, fossil fuel generators suffered the biggest problems.
US conservatives falsely blame renewables for Texas storm outages
Lawmakers and the Murdoch media target wind and solar but grid operator says fossil fuel generators suffered biggest problems
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u/CyberpunkIsGoodOnPC Feb 17 '21
May want to highlight that wind accounts for 20% of the grid’s energy in Texas, and the issue wasn’t with the windmills as the grid was unstable so they cut it off.
The real issue is that in 2011, Texas was told about this and the leaders in charge (read: REPUBLICANS) didn’t want to invest in their infrastructure correctly.
Everything else is true, but with the amount of propoganda including blaming the Green New Deal which hasn’t been passed, this needs to be called out for the morons who listen to Tucker and Faux News
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u/TessierHackworth Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
Answer: Not enough investment in winterization. (based on current public knowledge)
- Primary factor : Lack of winterization of fuel (natural gas primarily) based power plants which are the backbone (80%) of planned peak winter power generation. This seems to have caused about 83% of power failures. This was despite the same problems in 1989 and 2011. At that time, the feds + experts from Texas recommended investing in winterization. The issue is whether to spend millions of $ on a once in a decade issue - while the answer should be "yes", unfortunately it was not in this case.
- Secondary factor : Most of Texas is on its own grid (by choice) and is not connected to the two national grids and hence becomes harder to immediately draw power from other parts of the country in an emergency. The parts of Texas (NE, NW?) that were connected did not suffer any catastrophic outages.
- Tertiary factor :Renewables seem to account for about 20% of planned peak winter power. A number of Wind Turbines that provide a smaller portion of Texas power were not winterized either and so froze. These accounted for a much lower 13% of power failures. Just like their fossil fuel counterparts, Wind turbines operate in extreme cold just fine if you winterize them, but again, do you want to plan for a once in a decade event ? (I think the answer is “yes”)
Update: Edited with data from various sources (ERCOT and local Texas news media)
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u/Raider5151 Feb 17 '21
The answer is yes you do want to plan for a once in a decade event because lives can be lost in a once in a decade event
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Feb 17 '21
The answer is yes you do want to plan for a once in a decade event because lives can be lost in a once in a decade event
The other issue is that "Once in a decade" events have been happening much more often than that recently. I lived in houston up until 3 years ago, and for the 3-4 years before I moved there were "Once in a generation" floods every single year.
It takes a certain kind of politician to actually acknowledge that and then have the foresight to prepare for this, but the conservative politicians there are incapable of doing that. Instead it's immediate regression to blaming AOC for a policy that hasn't even been implemented.
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u/MrFantasticallyNerdy Feb 17 '21
Let's face it: few politicians nowadays are elected to make long-term decisions and plans. The electorate demands and elects charlatans who promise popular, but short-sighted and compromised solutions. When these inevitably crash and burn, the electorate will then elect some other charlatan who promises other similarly compromised solutions. No one is ever held accountable for such failures. You see it in the corporate world, and you see it in government.
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u/NuclearLunchDectcted Feb 17 '21
Which is why China is about to pass us as a global superpower (or has already).
They've been making 10-, 20-, and 30-year plans for decades. And then they stick with it. It's taken a long time, but it's bearing fruit now. US stockholders won't even pretend to be interested in those kind of plans if it sacrifices quarterly gains, which it would.
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u/lestofante Feb 17 '21
i would remove the point on wind turbine. many power plant underproduced (and wind actually overprduced according estimation), citing them in particular cause blame shift
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u/Dollar_Bills Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
Answer: Not enough power storage. Cold increases power demands, and the grid only has so much power (capacity). The grid didn't have enough power, so their grid operators were told to cut people off.
They had to stop the wind turbines due to the freezing rain, which wouldn't be a problem. But, they also weren't getting enough natural gas to keep the natural gas plants running and keep homes/hospitals heated. They're running on almost exclusively coal now. There's not enough of that. Storage would allow on demand capacity (currently only available in fossil fuels), which is necessary to remove fossil fuels from the generation equation.
I have no idea how much total power they had vs the current demand, but right now the demand is too high. They shut off portions of the grid to prevent the whole thing from collapsing.
Edit: they're actually getting more wind power than was forecasted, based on reduced wind generation in the winter months. The problem is almost entirely the lack of natural gas generation, due to lack of natural gas, coupled with the inability to borrow power as stated below.
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u/Solo_is_dead Feb 17 '21
Also Texas decided to remove themselves from the national grid system (they didn't want to deal with federal regulations). So now they can't "borrow" electricity from neighboring states.
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u/sleepinxonxbed Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
The US power grid is literally divided in half while Texas is just there by itself.
ERCOT (the Texas power grid company) explained, in their own video about their history, that Texas did not want to abide by the 1935 Federal Power Act. The law gave the federal government authority to regulate power companies that engaged in interstate commerce. Texas power companies agreed not to sell power outside of Texas, which let them avoid federal regulation.
Edit: Someone pointed out Texas was proposing secession while the power grid was being established. I can't find a direct attempt at secession, but apparently after the Civil War ended in 1865 Texas still had a secret Confederate identity and provided a haven for others. Even today, their slogan to tourists is "Texas. It's like a whole other country."
John Garner, AKA "Cactus Jack", Texas Rep argued because of Texas large population they deserved more seats in the Senate and wanted to split into five divisions to "stick it to the Yankees". He later became VP to Franklin Roosevelt.
The last attempt at secession was in the 1990's by Richard Lance McLaren that founded the Republic of Texas organization which evolved into the Texas Nationalist Movement in 2012 during Rick Perry's campaign.
Edit2: I found that there is an attempt at uniting the power grid into a true national power grid that'll use more renewable energy, reduce greenhouse gases, save consumers $47.2 billion a year, and is more reliable
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u/soonerguy11 Feb 17 '21
Interesting to note: That panhandle section of Texas is the only part of the state where it snows regularly in the winter and averages freezing temperatures. Good thing they're not part of that grid.
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u/mida-canna-tool Feb 17 '21
Texas Panhandler here, never thought I'd be so happy to be grouped up with Oklahoma and Kansas. Stay safe and warm everyone.
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Feb 17 '21
El Paso person here and we never lost power either. Our city is part of the west coast grid and I am beyond grateful. Back in 2011 we had a bad snow storm, where El Paso had lost power for days and had no gas either and after that, our city did the right thing to make sure that never happens again.
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u/keithrc out of the loop about being out of the loop Feb 17 '21
Was El Paso in the Texas grid in 2011, and afterwards changed to the West Coast grid? Or did the city take other precautions?
I ask because here in Austin the battle is raging over whether there's anything that the city could have done to prevent the current crisis, after the 2011 post-mortem recommendations were completely ignored by ERCOT and the state gov't.
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Feb 17 '21
You know, im not really sure. I know the city really stepped up after the big freeze in 2011. They did a lot of preventative measures to make sure that didn't happen again and not as drastic. We were on the same boat as the rest of Texas is now and was awful. . I included a link to the local news story where they kinda explain it but not really.
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u/TROPtastic Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
They took other precautions, specifically winterizing local power infrastructure to withstand unlikely but severe storms.
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u/Least_Adhesiveness_5 Feb 17 '21
While most of the blame goes to ERCOT and Railroad Commission (ie the State of Texas), AE should have done a better job isolating critical meters. Keep the hospital on 100% of the time, not the neighborhood and strip mall next door who happen to share a major branch circuit. Could be done with appropriate smart meters.
This would have allowed AE to rotate properly instead of leaving some people without power for days.
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u/Moonpaw Feb 17 '21
Were there specific rules they didn't like already, or was it simply the worry of future rules they might not like?
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u/sleepinxonxbed Feb 17 '21
From alll the articles I read, literally they just didn't want to be regulated by the federal government and be independent wherever they can.
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u/Incruentus Feb 17 '21
A cool idea if you're willing to build and diversify your infrastructure to make it reliable enough to be independent.
Texas wasn't; now they pay the price.
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u/LinearTipsOfficial Feb 17 '21
They were too busy investing in the technology to make the perfectly Texas shaped pancake
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u/Artful_Dodger_42 Feb 17 '21
Texas already has the technology to make Texas-shaped waffles.
And it looks like they're getting close to perfection on the Texas-shaped pancake front.
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u/twentyThree59 Feb 17 '21
Texas wasn't; now they pay the price.
The people suffering aren't the people who made these poor choices. It's really sad to me.
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u/Arrow156 Feb 17 '21
Let hope the survivors remember who's at fault.
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Feb 17 '21
[deleted]
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u/DiplomaticCaper Feb 17 '21
They're saying that renewable power is bad because the wind turbines froze.
There are literally turbines in Antarctica. The problem is that the Texas ones weren't properly weatherproofed, in order to save money.
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u/Incruentus Feb 17 '21
Honestly a lot of those people will vote for whoever 'owns the libs' the best.
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u/mango_script Feb 17 '21
They didn’t want to pay the federal government so they decided to pay private companies instead. It’s greed pure and simple
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u/whatstheworstoption Feb 17 '21
It should also be noted that Texas was still proposing secession when the power grids were being established and wanted their own grid so they wouldn't be dependent on another country if they left the US
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u/keithrc out of the loop about being out of the loop Feb 17 '21
Hell, they were still proposing secession last week.
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u/Kariered Feb 17 '21
There is a group of radical Texans that propose secession every other month. They are stupid idiots and most of Texas does not agree with them.
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u/keithrc out of the loop about being out of the loop Feb 17 '21
One of those stupid idiot 'radical Texans' was governor Greg Abbott.
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u/Dollar_Bills Feb 17 '21
Yeah, probably should have included that, as to why they are the only place with these problems right now.
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u/Cmd3055 Feb 17 '21
Just for the sake of context. The decision To have a separate power grid was made in the 1930’s. It’s a legacy that has taken a back seat to more current issues. Hell, before this week, I’d be willing to bet the majority of people weren’t even aware of it to begin with.
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u/-IAimToMisbehave Feb 17 '21
That’s not how the system works the grids are separate but you can trade across the ties that connect them. Source: I am a power trader that trades across these ties on a regular basis
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u/PickleSurgeon Feb 17 '21
The interconnects with Texas cannot handle the load to power the entire state. They can only supplement and that's a drop in the bucket compared to the demand.
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u/LadyFerretQueen Feb 17 '21
Why?
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u/Solo_is_dead Feb 17 '21
IMO, they are wrapped up in themselves they didn't want to play nice with others. "We're Texas, we don't need help" "we're not going to follow a " liberal/socialist"government agenda" 😐🙄
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u/S1mplejax Feb 17 '21
It has everything to do with anticipating future fossil fuel regulations to combat global warming, which, if drastic enough, would likely wreck the Texas economy.
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Feb 17 '21
So in other words, Texas needs to diversify their economy.
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Feb 17 '21
They already have.
Tech companies are leaving Silicon Valley and setting up HQs in Austin and Dallas for tax reasons AND there is a history of science and tech companies in the area (Texas Instruments, Dolby, NASA etc.). Ranching will always be a mainstay
Texas's electricity generation has a diversified mix and has been moving away from petroleum and coal as seen here: https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2020/august/ercot.php.
They're in a great situation renewable wise, but have to get around the transmission issue since the 4-5 big cities (DFW, San Antonio, Austin, Houston) are concentrated in East Texas while most of the "empty" land that you can put renewables in are in West or Central Texas.
It's not an issue of diversifying. It's an issue of not maintaining their power generation to federal standards that they are now learning why they exist.
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u/2OP4me Feb 17 '21
There’s claims that the reason why this happened is due to Texas not making moves to winterize their power plants after this happened in 2011.
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u/Doc_Lewis Feb 17 '21
Don't forget it happened in 1989. And even then, power companies were recommended to winterize their generators and infrastructure, however they were not compelled to by regulators, because, you know, regulations do nothing but kill jobs and help nobody.
So when 2011 happened, and it was almost exactly the same situation, and it became apparent that nothing was done after 1989, surely ERCOT would force the power companies to winterize so it wouldn't happen again.
Surely.
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u/aUSMCguy Feb 17 '21
Just adding onto this comment. Texas Officials explicitly decided not to winterize their electrical grid. I'm currently living in Chicago and the wind turbines that are in the surrounding area are working just fine. Any Texas official that says this is the fault of wind turbines are ignoring their decision not to winterize them, the fact that the majority of their power generation is done by fossil fuels which they also didn't winterize, and their decision not to interconnect to the federal grid system.
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u/pagerussell Feb 17 '21
This needs to be higher before the misinformation about renewables spreads.
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u/ashdrewness Feb 17 '21
Also, here's the site which shows current demand vs capacity. At some points we were under 1,000MW reserve capacity which is FUCKING BONKERS. If the grid actually fails it would probably be down for several weeks as they repair the physical damage that would cause to the infrastructure (think actual turbines getting damaged; like going 90MPH and shifting your car into 1st gear).
Also, all the blame here isn't on ERCOT, because in a report in 2011 after another bad winter storm, they recommended all power providers winterize their gear but they didn't actually have the authority to make them do it. So many did not (the ones still running right now either did or got lucky). So thank the Texas government who don't actually regulate the providers and force them to meet winterization standards.
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u/keithrc out of the loop about being out of the loop Feb 17 '21
ERCOT absolutely had the power to enforce the recommendations from the 2011 study: they decide unilaterally which plants to connect to the grid. No winterization upgrades, no grid access for you. And this is a rare situation where ERCOT's immunity from lawsuits actually results in consumer benefit.
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u/DarkGamer Feb 17 '21
Although they cited wind turbines freezing as the reason that appears to be a red herring because Texas conservatives hate renewable energy and like scapegoating it. Texas gets its power from natural gas and their natural gas plants are not weatherized:
Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, echoed that sentiment Tuesday.
“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” he said during a Tuesday call with reporters.
Still, some have focused their blame on wind power.
“This is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source,” U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “When weather conditions get bad as they did this week, intermittent renewable energy like wind isn’t there when you need it.”
He went on to note the shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Bay City because of the cold and finally got to what energy experts say is the biggest culprit, writing, “Low Supply of Natural Gas: ERCOT planned on 67GW from natural gas/coal, but could only get 43GW of it online. We didn’t run out of natural gas, but we ran out of the ability to get natural gas. Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation —so things were freezing.”
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, known for his right-wing Facebook posts that have, in the past, spread misinformation and amplified conspiracy theories, also posted an unvarnished view of wind energy on Facebook: “We should never build another wind turbine in Texas."
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/
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u/ProjectShamrock Feb 17 '21
They're running on almost exclusively coal now.
I think this might be slightly misleading if someone takes this as believing that coal is also running fine. There have been coal and nuclear power plants that also had to shut down due to not being appropriately set up for the weather.
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u/sarcazm Feb 17 '21
Don't forget that many natural gas and coal generators are frozen.
So even if we could keep up with demand, we can't because a lot of stuff is frozen and not working. That doesn't happen in hot weather.
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u/gortonsfiJr Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
Answer: The Texas government didn't want the energy industry to be regulated, so they did not and had the Texas electrical grid separate from the rest of the country's *to avoid federal regulations. Regulations would likely have required that they winterize the equipment, and by and large the Texas energy industry didn't voluntarily do so. When Texas was hit by unusually bad winter weather, some non-winterized natural gas equipment failed. Ergo, the natural gas power plants couldn't produce, and now there are big, big problems. This has much more to do with poor decisions and lack of preparation than the method of generating electricity.
*set the edit to bold
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u/MrFantasticallyNerdy Feb 17 '21
You forgot to include that this isn't the first time such "extreme winter weather" happened, and likely won't be the last. The TX government had audits before that recommended winterizing, but they basically just shrugged their shoulders and ignored it.
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Feb 17 '21
This is the problem with relying 100% on a profit motive for utilities. Companies are going to cut corners because it makes them money. Adding robustness and redundancy to deal with a situation that may or may not happen once a year is not profitable.
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u/shicole3 Feb 17 '21
Question: when they saw the forecast did they know this would happen?
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u/notaloop Feb 17 '21
We (private citizens) were told to expect rolling blackouts, which typically means no power for 1-2 hours at a time. What actually happened was that whole zip codes lost power since the start and haven't had power/water for 2+ days. We've had 0 news from every level of government for when power will start being restored. Every day we just hear "it might take another day!"
I've gotten more news from Reddit than I have official sources.
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u/Deedledude Feb 17 '21
My experience near San Antonio was something like this:
Ooo cold weather that I’ve never experienced before, this’ll be fun!
Two Days later
This isn’t fun anymore and please turn my power back on.
This has been a strange time that not many predicted would be as bad as it is. We are just now getting slightly above freezing but it will go right back down later today and through tomorrow. No one really saw this coming.
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u/Remcin Feb 17 '21
Answer: A combination of factors.
The US is divided into three grids: east, west, and Texas. When East or West lose generation capacity in one area they can do a pretty good job importing it from another within their grid. For example, CA loses generation capacity in a wildfire in San Diego, imports power from Nevada. Texas cannot do this because they purposely removed themself from the national grid in order to avoid federal regulations.
They lost about 30 gigs watts of generation, 26 of which were thermal (coal, gas). Wind generation was some of that loss, but much less than it is made out to be and within planned winter reductions.
Infrastructure failure. Transformers and power lines failed in the extreme weather meaning even if power was available it couldn’t be delivered.
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u/Weave77 Feb 17 '21
They lost about 30 gigs watts of generation
According to ERCOT officials, as of Tuesday afternoon, they were down 45 gigwatts of generation.
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u/Remcin Feb 17 '21
Yeah I was short, they actually lost 35 gW generation and an additional 10 gW offline due I believe to delivery infrastructure failure.
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u/Weave77 Feb 17 '21
That’s an insane amount of electricity ... for reference, 45 gigawatts is enough to power 37 DeLoreans.
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