Abbott is an idiot. Free market approach to failing electrical grid.

[iRONic]

Abbot & Cruz leave yet...?

AccuWeather is not only warning residents that roads will turn into sheets of ice, but that widespread power outages are possible as the ice accumulation weighs down tree limbs and power lines.

1 hour ago
Ice begins glazing over Dallas

By Brian Lada, AccuWeather staff writer

The temperature across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex has dropped to the freezing point, and in some cases, below 32 F. These freezing conditions combined with the rain falling across the region is causing ice to form on all outdoor surfaces, including roads and sidewalks. The Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport reported the switch from rain to freezing rain at 7:20 p.m. CST Wednesday. AccuWeather National News Reporter Bill Wadell is just north of Dallas in Denton, Texas, and said that ice is already starting to coat trees.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1489052864395808770

 

[ch33zw1z]

See, those damn coastal elites

 

[nakedfrog]

Who could have foreseen this?!?

Thousands of Texans are without power as arctic cold front hits state

ERCOT says there is enough to meet the demand, but still, thousands of Texans are without power. Gov. Abbot warned that issues like downed power lines could cause outages.

abc13.com

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- As an arctic cold front sweeps across the state, many Texans are concerned about whether the power will stay on.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) says there is enough power to meet the demand, but still, thousands of customers across Texas are without power.

As of 11:20 a.m. Thursday, over 70,000 customers were without power in Texas. You can check the number of outages in real-time at poweroutage.us.

Most of the outages were reported in north Texas.

 

[m8d]

Thank God Abbott working on getting that wall done and signing a CRT bill.

 

[SmCaudata]

Thank God Abbott working on getting that wall done and signing a CRT bill.

And creating a vigilante army to save unviable fetuses.

Im still waiting for his "pro life" policies to save some actual lives.

 

[Dave_5k]

Who could have foreseen this?!?

Thousands of Texans are without power as arctic cold front hits state

ERCOT says there is enough to meet the demand, but still, thousands of Texans are without power. Gov. Abbot warned that issues like downed power lines could cause outages.

abc13.com

No generation or large scale transmission issues (...yet!), 70k is quite minor, and mostly from more local transmission lines failures from icing. Last year was around 4-5 million without power for extended period of time, from a massive generation shortfall.

However, government actions can take precisely no credit, as there were a grand total of zero potentially effective actions taken centrally to improve power reliability since last years storm. Some generators have (individually and voluntarily) chosen to take additional efforts to improve winter reliability, and the hard freeze expected tonight/tomorrow reaching all the way down to southern part of state will be the real test.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Who could have foreseen this?!?

Thousands of Texans are without power as arctic cold front hits state

ERCOT says there is enough to meet the demand, but still, thousands of Texans are without power. Gov. Abbot warned that issues like downed power lines could cause outages.

abc13.com

I really want to feel bad for Texans, but I'm running out of thoughts and prayers.

 

[nakedfrog]

No generation or large scale transmission issues (...yet!), 70k is quite minor, and mostly from more local transmission lines failures from icing. Last year was around 4-5 million without power for extended period of time, from a massive generation shortfall.

However, government actions can take precisely no credit, as there were a grand total of zero potentially effective actions taken centrally to improve power reliability since last years storm. Some generators have (individually and voluntarily) chosen to take additional efforts to improve winter reliability, and the hard freeze expected tonight/tomorrow reaching all the way down to southern part of state will be the real test.

70k is larger than the entire population of the city where I live (and it's 1/4 of our entire metro area), so while it may be "quite minor", that's still a lot of people.
Maybe two years in a row will be enough to take a little more action? My money is on "no". Rich people have backup power, and fuck the poor.

 

[sandorski]

Ice on Power lines is really difficult to deal with. Even here in the Great White North people lose Power when Ice is involved. Most of the country is too cold for this to happen most of the time, but it happens.

 

[Paratus]

For those interested here’s a link to ERCOTS real-time power and demand data.

Grid and Market Conditions

www.ercot.com

 

[Dave_5k]

70k is larger than the entire population of the city where I live (and it's 1/4 of our entire metro area), so while it may be "quite minor", that's still a lot of people.
Maybe two years in a row will be enough to take a little more action? My money is on "no". Rich people have backup power, and fuck the poor.

Fair enough, 70k is even larger than you think - as that's actually 70k customers (where 1 house is a customer) which is probably closer to 150k people without power.

But this ice storm's outages, so far, has nothing to do with Texas grid mismanagement - same storm has 130k odd customers in Memphis alone without power, and tens of thousands more across other states along the ice line. Significant icing on power lines = outages and a real mess, no matter what state you're in.

Snapshot of current outages (which allows drill down to detail), which follows the ice-storm front line rather precisely:

PowerOutage.us - Regions

PowerOutage.us tracks, records, and aggregates power outages across the United States.

poweroutage.us

 

[MrPickins]

This is just a normal storm we get in TX every couple of years. There's no reason to expect widespread electrical outages. Everybody is just so laser focused on it because of last year's storm (which was the worst I've personally seen in the decades I've lived in Central Texas).

Tots and pears are appreciated, but unnecessary.

As for Abbot being an idiot, why yes, he is.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I really want to feel bad for Texans, but I'm running out of thoughts and prayers.

It is okay, as a Texan living in North Texas, if the power goes out I'll have my guns to keep me warm. If all else fails I can always burn some books, and the flaming cross on my neighbors lawn gives off quite a bit of heat.

 

[ch33zw1z]

This is just a normal storm we get in TX every couple of years. There's no reason to expect widespread electrical outages. Everybody is just so laser focused on it because of last year's storm (which was the worst I've personally seen in the decades I've lived in Central Texas).

Tots and pears are appreciated, but unnecessary.

As for Abbot being an idiot, why yes, he is.

It is okay, as a Texan living in North Texas, if the power goes out I'll have my guns to keep me warm. If all else fails I can always burn some books, and the flaming cross on my neighbors lawn gives off quite a bit of heat.

Both excellent points

 

[Paratus]

Texas City lost power. The sky is glowing red with flaring refineries and chem plants.

Not sure why yet.

 

[sandorski]

Texas City lost power. The sky is glowing red with flaring refineries and chem plants.

Not sure why yet.

Probably just because streetlights are not drowning them out. If they were flaring when they usually don't, that would certainly be weird. Maybe the Koch bro thought he'd pump the atmosphere with CO2 to end the Freeze...likely always lit though.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Texas City lost power. The sky is glowing red with flaring refineries and chem plants.

Not sure why yet.

I know this was last Friday, but I spend a bit of my youth in Texas City, and a bit of my young adulthood working as IT for those chem plants.
The reason they didn't lose power is two-fold:

1. They have backup. It didn't get cold enough for long enough to effect the natural gas lines, so even if they lost power they would automatically transfer over to their gas powered backup generators. While it is expensive to run those for any amount of time, it is cheaper then doing an uncontrolled shutdown.

2. The city likely lost power due to electrical lines going down under the ice. The chemical plants and refineries are not hooked up to the small lines that deliver power to individual businesses. Each plant has heavy duty high power lines running to it. Those lines are much more resilient to weather effects.

 

[KMFJD]

Ex-ERCOT chief says Abbott directed freeze blackouts to stop before decision to run up billions in bills

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that when he ordered...

www.houstonchronicle.com

Abbott ordered up a lot of debt there, i thought conservatives were against debt

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott when the grid manager ordered wholesale power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies.

Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting come back online, former Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker told him that Abbott wanted them to do whatever necessary to prevent further rotating blackouts that left millions of Texans without power.

“She told me the governor had conveyed to her if we emerged from rotating outages it was imperative they not resume,” Magness testified. “We needed to do what we needed to do to make it happen.”

 

[hal2kilo]

Ex-ERCOT chief says Abbott directed freeze blackouts to stop before decision to run up billions in bills

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that when he ordered...

www.houstonchronicle.com

Abbott ordered up a lot of debt there, i thought conservatives were against debt

Holy paywall.

 

[brycejones]

Holy paywall.

The chronical was early in the paywall game.

 

[dawp]

Holy paywall.

Ex-Texas power grid chief says he was following Greg Abbott’s orders

"The governor had conveyed ... if we emerged from rotating outages it was imperative they not resume."

www.axios.com

 

[UNCjigga]

Today I learned that Texas' super awesome deregulated free market power grid--the same grid that can't keep people from freezing to death after an ice storm--has provided 40% of all the energy used to mine Bitcoin in the US.

Here’s why crypto companies are flocking to Texas

Mance Harmon graduated from college in 1993 when the World Wide Web was just getting ripples, so he remembers the frustrations of trying to explain it to his...

www.dallasnews.com

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Cheap power! That fucking bastard Abbott! What in the hell is he thinking ?

 

[fleshconsumed]

Cheap power! That fucking bastard Abbott! What in the hell is he thinking ?

Difference is, when power is cut because of Texas shithole grid bitcoin miners simply go offline, people on the other hand die due to extreme heat/cold.

 

[HomerJS]

Cheap power! That fucking bastard Abbott! What in the hell is he thinking ?

Tell it do the families of the dead people due to their neglected electrical grid.

Never mind, you wouldn't give 2 shits about them as long as you can stick it to the libs.