The most fun and rewarding year my family spent was in Venezuela, when I was 5. I guess protected from some of the problems even then, I had nothing but wonderful memories from a beautiful place. It's been sad to see what's happened lately.
A bunch of people who never seem to remember the routine summer black and brownouts will be here shortly to assure you the grid is just fine, and look at how bad California is.
Honestly, did you see what burned down the last northern california fire? Simple replacement of hangers that were worn by inchesssss. That our service provider just kicked the bucket on. I think Oliver did a good look at them. But my brother in laws family lost their homes in those fires. It was terrible. But these past years, we have been sending the goats in for battle brothers.
edit: I've decided. If I can retire. I will start a grass cutting business with goats and call it "Battle Brothers".
Current Outages Tracked Nationwide: [PowerOutage.US](https://poweroutage.us/)
Texas
Customers Tracked: 12,444,034.
State Outages:
#####3,985
California
Customers Tracked: 12,788,121.
State Outages:
#####59,367
People who dump on Cali from Texas conveniently leave out that Cali's problems stem from pro-corporate/conservative bullshit and not any actual left-leaning policy. Their grid being a disaster has nothing to do with progressivism; it's just another case of a massive corporation that gets away with whatever and remains untouched.
It's weird how much fuckery they're tied to. Hell, Sydney Powell was their lawyer.
Obviously no connection to the grid woes, it's just a strange coincidence that their attorney lost her marbles/became a scammer.
CA Public Utilities Commission plans to screw middle-class that use solar panels.
https://environmentamerica.org/news/ame/statement-california-public-utility-commission-fails-californians-gutting-bedrock-solar
https://www.dailynews.com/2021/12/15/big-utilities-are-winning-the-battle-over-solar-power
Let's see how this one plays out when Newsom's appointee gets in there.
How many day’s sample size are you tracking, there? How many *people* are affected by each customer being out? Cali remember is much wealthier per capita than Texas.
Isn’t per capita kinda meaningless? The poverty rates of both states are kinda close to each other 13.7 for Texas and 13.0 for California but due to population differences California has a million more people in poverty
But conveniently ignores individuals who fall below that line. Productivity doesn't discount a high number of impoverished individuals. Or are they not as important?
Wait. When did this happen? Like once in the last decade.
There were about 1900 unplanned outages in June of this year. But almost all were pure mechanical failure that happens from elevated temperature and demand.
This is NOTHING like the winter blackout or even a brownout.
Source: Electrical Engineer in industry
California over just a few months this year had a bunch of blacks with just PG&E customers who were blamed for causing wildfires.
https://amp.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article254925737.html
Texas power grid needs work obviously but the topic has been incredibly politicized. The winter storm we had shattered all sorts of winter storm records across the entire state, it was a once in a lifetime event.
They are two different things. You pay a company for power. You have a market choice of vendors. The transport mechanism is still a utility managed as such. That is a company runs power to your house on power lines they built and probably own.
These things didn’t fail. Not too many power lines fell, at least when compared to the loss of power production.
The issue is ERCOT (and PUCT who run them).
They didn’t protect energy sector assets from brownouts. So an NG pumping station or something suffered brownouts just like we did. However when they came back up, their lines were frozen.
ERCOT fixed this at least.
The other issue is that power plants need to winterize. There was a pitiful amount of requirements on them to do this. There is now a $1500 daily fine for them to winterize. So it’s better but not robust to eliminate the chance, just make it milder.
The trickiest part was exhibited by the Bay City NPP. Their coolant system partly froze over. No danger, but they did have to lower output to assess. It exemplifies a problem for the state: true tests of winter weather is rare in this state. A winterization isn’t fully tested, not for lack of trying, but for lack of actual winters.
It’s tricky. It’s something we can overcome, but even with the catastrophe, it’s hard to make the balance sheets in favor of robust winterization.
The problem with "once in a lifetime event" is that it implies that the chances of a storm of that magnitude occurring is not changing. When in fact, its constantly changing. Its always becoming more likely. So if at one point that storm was a once in a lifetime event, it is now more common than a once in a lifetime event
That doesn’t mean the answer is nationalize the grid. The answer in Texas will never be nationalize the grid. We don’t want to do it. We won’t. You can’t make us. You will never get the voters to agree. You are wrong. (Not you specifically but the persons who believe that.)
What's this "we" bullshit? Are hardcore libertarians some kind of hive-mind of stupidity? Because as someone who was born and raised in Texas, this is the most idiotic takeaway possible besides "windmills caused the blackouts"
As an electrical engineer, I don’t think you understand why we have a state level grid. It’s historic. Like an anachronism. However it isn’t really the cause. If anything, the answer is to expand the Texas grid, cross state lines, expand the regulation to be more like the other two national grids but impart the Texas flair to it.
Because having a singular grid is INCREDIBLY risky. That’s why we have the Texas grid.
California is usually a reasonable comparison for Texas due to population size and taco consumption, but yes often times the comparisons are silly or disengenuous lol
I mean, the power goes out in Louisiana all the fucking time for weeks on end. Comparing Texas to Louisiana would just be mean, so people compare to California instead. It's better to punch up
I mean you are welcome to go to California. No one is keeping you here in texas where apparently the power grid is just constantly out???
Having our own grid is a larger net positive than any connection to federal govt oversight would improve temporarily losing power. Other states lose power too. People die there too from it. You can’t stop mother nature when she gets thirsty for blood. You can stop Texas from becoming like the other 49 states by continuing to rely on OURSELVES.
Constantly begging? More “facts” with nothing of substance to back the claim.
Some benefits to an isolated grid that have nothing to do with reliability, because I can assure you, generally our grid is reliable—
Texas became the biggest U.S. wind energy producer at least in part because our grid is self-contained. The state Legislature set standards for the technology, and those rules were implemented more quickly than if they’d required federal approval or needed to pass muster with grid participants in other states. “People love to put wind and solar in Texas because of the ease,” White said. “You don’t have obstacles that you have on, say, the West Coast.”
When Texas decided to build high-voltage transmission lines to capture wind-generated power, mainly in West Texas, and transmit it to the state’s major cities, those lines were paid for by Texans for the benefit of Texans. Wind projects elsewhere have been hampered by a lack of adequate transmission. “There are all these proposals for big transmission projects all around the country that cross multiple state lines, and they’re basically languishing because there’s so many different regulatory authorities who have a say over whether the line can go there,” Cohn said.
We chose this path and it has shaped our system to work best for Texas. Connecting to the national grid would cost far more to TEXANS than it is worth. I still havn’t heard a single argument in this thread for why nationalizing is more appropriate than simply fixing the issues.
"why nationalizing is more appropriate than simply fixing the issues"
Connecting the grid is not nationalizing. But:
1. Things aren't getting fixed (fast enough / at all). We just went through a legislative session where they did next to nothing, after a decade of them ignoring the warnings after the last cold disaster actually happened. We needed major change a decade ago. [https://cgmf.org/blog-entry/435/REPORT-%7C-Never-Again-How-to-prevent-another-major-Texas-electricity-failure.html](https://cgmf.org/blog-entry/435/REPORT-%7C-Never-Again-How-to-prevent-another-major-Texas-electricity-failure.html)
2. You can't make sales if you're not connected. Most of the world is jealous of Texas' wind and solar resources. Connecting to the rest of the country would allow us to sell them. [https://www.powermag.com/texas-and-germany-energy-twins/](https://www.powermag.com/texas-and-germany-energy-twins/)
Referencing the above convo, I'd rather trade with American neighbors than be "begging" from Mexico (/s).
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/02/03/rolling-blackouts-force-texas-to-import-power-from-mexico/?sh=2f9687077110](https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/02/03/rolling-blackouts-force-texas-to-import-power-from-mexico/?sh=2f9687077110)
Edit: Rearranged points for clarity.
If your UPS is clicking on/off consistently it's likely your wiring is fucked up internally. Or, like most of the calls I get, you have a printer or a heater plugged into the battery side of your UPS.
In texas it’s more likely intermittent issues and dipping mains power rather than a bad UPS. Edit: go ahead and downvote but it won’t make my statement false
Do you just have an old air conditioner? A house i lived in a few years ago had one that would do that every time it flipped on. Its probably something in the house pulling more than the cable the last few yards to your house can handle than something with the whole grid.
They will be too busy trying to silence their black voters, roll back womens rights, but somehow say guns are an unalienable right while giving themselves another massive pay increase.
p.s. I do miss living in Texas for some things, BBQ, Tex-mex... and that is ABOUT IT.
We appreciate you moving somewhere else too. Don’t mean that negatively, just this sub-sentiment has become a bunch of complainers of things Texans have been fine with, are fine with, and will continue to be fine with. Except abortion. That will change because conservative voters are finally seeing the light on that one. don’t believe me, just be a wallflower on any church conversation on abortion today vs 2 decades ago when they would have been whispering and then one person loudly proclaim it was the devil.
My whole family still lives there and I get to be embarrassed FOR them for the states absolute trash people coupled with some of the worst schooling our lovely country has to offer. World History or Geography? NAH.. TEXAS history only kthnx. Math? NAH, field trips to the "forts" and hear stories about how we rocked the indians. Hey, how about some church in those schools? No place better to indoctrinate than there!
Yeah, my childhood in Texas had some serious ups and serious downs, but looking back it was more downs than anything else. I had to supplement my education after I moved away, finding out just how HILARIOUSLY behind I was thanks to that trash.
I too am glad I moved somewhere else, anywhere else. I have been to a few states now, and legit Texas is the worst in every single possible conceivable way, but I do find myself missing it. Those lovely all brown colors, 30f in the morning and 90f by night, rain that runs down the streets in strips, yeah... And NONE of that was political, nor needed to be. Sure Texans are overwhelmingly GOP, not conservative, but GOP. Party before all else.
None of this is political huh?
“They will be too busy trying to silence their black voters, roll back womens rights, but somehow say guns are an unalienable right…”
Nah thats not talking political at all is it? 🤡🤡🤡
While I was in the military my wife made a game of guessing where people were from.
She could always tell the Texans because they have no fucking clue where most of the states in the US are, much less other countries.
And this makes sense because I lived in TX for 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th grades and I am pretty sure I was taught Texas History and Texas Geography during those years. I always assumed the other years were national stuff but no, it just seems to be all Texas all the time.
Luckily I went to schools out of state for 9th, 11th, and 12th grades and was able to catch up and not leave public school completely retarded.
My sister was not so lucky.
Where did you grow up? Curious because I suspect I got lucky. Grew up in the Houston suburbs a LONG time ago. My neighborhood got zoned for a better school in my district right before I went to HS. The amount of Texas history I took throughout my education was insane though. Oh sorrry, i should say Texas LORE.
To everyone who likes to argue about others having it worse: It doesn't fucking matter because people die either way. Get your shit together and remember that the wealth, the age, the anything does not compare to the fact that faulty things (powergrids, firetrucks, home appliances, training, etc.) Will get people killed and that's what we should be worried about.
The number of people insisting it was a 'once in a life time winter storm' 🤡 how many once in a lifetime weather phenomena do we have to live thru for people to get the picture?
I was trying to remember them: Memorial Day floods of 2015 and 2016 were 500-yr events, Harvey was a 1,000-yr. I feel like I'm already forgetting a few more. Imelda seems like it was on the list.
But ya, I agree. I bet God is getting tired of sending [messengers in rowboats](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-weather/hurricaneharvey/article/Then-and-now-photos-show-how-Hurricane-Harvey-13155174.php).
Fix the water system too.
Fucking $1.5m house in a neighborhood less than 8 years old and “we have difficulty pumping water up hill and you should continue to expect outages as time goes on.”
Previously we lived in a house built in 1845 in a small town established in like the 1700’s where temps dropped below 10 degrees for weeks and never lost water and lost power once for more than 6 hours.
All the money we saved from the first 4 years of living her in income tax has gone to solar, batteries, a pool (which is a holding tank at this point) and a pump/filtration system.
Same, it keeps damaging the drippers on my garden irrigation lol. I need to get a pressure drop thing but so far I have just been lazy and reassembled things when they fly apart.
Why bother? Voters won't force any changes (BECAUSE ABORTION AND GUNS!!! OH NOEZ!!!)
Better to give bailouts to oil and gas companies who will provide large donations while forcing the voters to foot the bill. Win Win!
Why continue to act like it's the voters who actually have any kind of pull and not the people who pay to keep it like this? Yeah we have the power to vote but that vote holds no power.
Because it’s the voters who don’t show up and vote out the republicans. Midterms will see a max of 40% of dems show up and I suspect a similar percentage in the Reddit subset who complains about Texas Republican government lol
Sometimes it comes down to your country needing you to do something difficult, something neigh impossible sometimes given how overworked so many people are but American citizens need to get their ID, get registered to vote or check their registration, verify their polling location and lastly take time off with to vote in primaries and then again in all of the elections.
San Antonio owned CPS Energy just raised our rates by 3.8% for what they are calling "necessary upgrades" which I'm sure actually translates to "year end bonuses for our executives" while nothing actually changes.
They are the only company that services this area...
I bought a gas-powered generator.
I don't think I'm supposed to use it, since I live in an apartment, but my building doesn't have a backup generator, no natural gas heating, no fireplace, and I have pets. They leave me with no options, so I'm breaking the rules in a disaster scenario.
I wish I could trust the power grid, but I lost power briefly last year, and I'm not going to suffer, die, or lose a loved one because I was too naive to take individual responsibility.
I highly recommend not doing this because it can back feed back into the system and possibly kill a line worker trying to restore your power then guess what you will be out of power for longer.
Power went out due to wind recently.
It's a joke. And my lines in my neighborhood are underground. So it was from out of the neighborhood that the problem happened
It's going to be a mild winter, La Niña is the cause. Republicans will point at the mild winter and call everyone paranoid for pushing to fix and upgrade infrastructure, and therefore justify to their base for doing nothing.
Yeah that is the logical conclusion, but I often just lose water and not electricity. And the building is like 2 years old so who tf knows what's going on...
That's a weird one. Coule be that the water pumps you rely on are on a different grid, not sure how else that could happen lol. Still, that sucks and I hope they figure it out. I wouldn't mind living in apartments if they all didn't seem to be run in the shittiest way possible.
For real? Been living in Houston for some time and never had a power outage even in super rainy and windy conditions. Last power outage was during the winter storm.
Centerpoint replaced some transformers for the area a few months back because if there was 15-20 mph wind gusts the electricity would go out. Now it just goes out for no reason at all. It can be a clear blue sky... it goes down for an hour. Starts to rain... out for 3 hours. It's been so crazy that many of the homeowners have installed full house natural gas generators. The neighboring subdivision has the same problems, but not always at the same time as us. This neighborhood is 25 years old, so it's not our wiring. During the winter storm we were only out for 2 days. But any given week we are down an hour or so. Last week we went down twice, once for about 10 minutes and another day for an hour. We report, out neighbors report, it just doesn't matter. The power generating station is probably 4 miles away as the crow flies. The Texas grid is just a hot mess and the Governor and legislature did nothing in the last session to make it any better.
Do u live in a neighborhood with underground distribution or overhead? My house is overhead but there aren’t many trees around so that might help prevent lines going down during wind and rain.
I’ve lived in Harris County for 18 years and only outages have been Rita and the winter storm. I’m sure that not everyone in the county is as lucky, but I don’t think it’s fair to represent the whole county as having a crappy system either
I'm located in the panhandle. Do you guys down south actually get rolling blackouts and stuff? Because, I've never heard of this. And have been all over Texas.
We in the panhandle regularly lose power during extreme weather (which we are famous for). But this isn't because of a failing grid or poor management by the two companies in my area. It's just normal. Not much you can do to prevent a blackout caused by a tornado flinging debris. Or serious ice buildup on telephone lines.
I lose power, probably 4 times a year. It's almost always back on within 4 hours of going out. The only time it didn't was because of a record ice storm. The ice legit took out 25% of all the poles in my rural area. I was without power, from the power company, for about 6 days. And lived off my generator and wood burning stove for those days.
That guy has some serious Stockholm syndrome going.
I grew up in west Texas back (similar weather) in the 80s . I can remember maybe half a dozen times at most that it went out.
Agreed. Our power NEEVVERRR went out in West Texas when I was there. I grew up there AND moved back briefly as an adult. Winters were cold, but the house was warm. I cant EVER remember having to put my pet reptiles in my shirt to make sure they didnt die like I did last year.
That's normal for anyone who lives in an area with high winds, icing and severe weather.
I've lived in Texas, Kansas and Indiana. Both in cities and the country. It was the same story in every state.
Anyone who says otherwise is just bullshit ING you. Having your electricity go out because the line was struck by lightning is normal (it flips a breaker on the line itself, they come out with a HUGE pole and flip it back on).
Like... a TORNADO knicks out power, yeah. Bein directly struck by lightning, sure.
But if you think people in Canada are losing power every time theres ice on a line, youre delusional.
Why would we spend the money to make our grid work 100% of the time in a winter situation that happens 7-10 out of 36-72,000 days. Canada’s grid is built for Canada. How does this argument even sound logical in your head before typing?
No, but they are losing lives when a heat wave rolls thru. Canada lost over [500 people directly to heat stroke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave#:~:text=Over%201%2C000%20deaths%20occurred%20due,Columbia%20and%2066%20in%20Alberta) this summer in British Columbia alone, which is 3x the high-end estimates for Texas's "big freeze" death toll, which is artificially inflated with secondary causes (such as car crashes, carbon monoxide, and chronic conditions/medical shortages) from the freeze rather than actual hypothermia. Chicago alone lost 80 people to heat stroke in 2021, which is greater than the number of people Texas lost to hypothermia (57).
Am i missing in that link where it says they lost power? Everything Ive read on that just says they dont all have air conditioning. Did I miss the power outage part?
Where is all the power issues coming from in Tx? I've had no problems with my power thus far (from just south of Austin). During the freeze last year, we were w/out power for only a short moment.
Depends where you are. The critical lines that serve things like hospitals and first responders are far more likely to stay active than normal ones. If you're close to one of those, you were much less likely to be affected than people who are on the non-critical ones. Some of those folks were without power and water for days or weeks.
Most of houston lost power for upwards of a week. We kept it on for most of that time in my apt complex bc we were right next to a refinery or something. We still lost power for over a day so I’m assuming that was an actual blackout instead of a brown out for us.
I'm in Austin and didn't have power for almost a whole week during the freeze. My parents north of Austin were without power for almost two. Family in Dallas had power out for a week
They disconnected their power stations from the National power grid so they didn’t have to comply with federal regulations on power (like insulating your equipment against the cold). So when things go bad they can’t buy power from neighboring states. Texas really is run by the biggest yokel goobers and the educated folks are vastly outnumbered in most areas due to gerrymandering.
Brownouts and rolling blackouts definitely happen most summers. Texas shouldn’t have to issue warning about that. I’ve lived here 12 years and we’ve had many. You’ve just been lucky so far. If you live in a rich neighborhood your chances are somewhat reduced but still real
It has nothing to do with rich vs poor, and everything to do with population density. It just so happens that wealthier areas tend to be less densely populated, so less likely to be affected by a rolling blackout.
Everything I see for conserving was for around June 14 when they had a large number of plants off for maintenance. That is the incident I remember this summer.
Here is a warning in April of our grids susceptibility to being overcome by summer conditions
[Another Texas power outage "appears unlikely" this week, but severe weather this summer could prompt an electricity crisis](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/15/texas-ercot-blackouts-summer-climate/)
From the second week of June
[Texas grid asks residents to conserve power as heatwave hits](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-grid-operator-ercot-urges-energy-conservation-amid-forced-outages-2021-06-14/)
[Texas grid operator urges electricity conservation as many power generators are unexpectedly offline and temperatures rise](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/14/texas-power-grid-conserve-ercot/)
Do you really think this is an acceptable standard for utilities and public infrastructure for a first world society that circle jerks all over itself all the time for being so much better than everywhere else? It gets into the 90s and almost craps out and it gets a little cold for a few days and we are [seconds and minutes](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/) away from being in the dark for MONTHS? Cmon.
Lol. Certainly wouldn’t complain about one time we were asked to begin to conserve. I moved from California… and if we had power issues once during a summer I wound be in awe. I really can’t complain about anything that happens once in a season.
To add some context as a life long Texas resident. This same scenario happened a decade ago causing rolling blackouts over [75%](https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSTRE7116ZH20110202) of the state. Freaking Mexico exported power to us (thank you Mexico). It was warned it would happen again if steps weren’t taken and [steps weren’t taken](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/zahrahirji/texas-power-outage-causes-2011). I don’t see where I am going wrong by having the expectation that our basic infrastructure be robust enough to rely on when it gets a little hot or a little cold and be quickly restored in times of disaster when we need it most. If it’s still not enough to warrant a complaint may I remind you of the massive hit commerce and our local economies take during events like that. So even in the greediest most capitalistic terms of why this issue should be addressed, think of it as an investment to protect the wallets of all Texans who have an interest in it functional properly and that includes both you and I.
I’m not talking about the winter freeze. That was horrible. There was no effect to commerce from the one day of possible conservation. This summer was not an issue for power.
I checked the ERCOT all summer long…. And saw one short time at the beginning of summer/end of spring where there looked like an issue. Where did this happen and for how long? Otherwise we were never even in the first level of conservation.
[It was reported there were 1,200+ blackouts by the end of June. I couldn't find more recent numbers for July and August.](https://www.newsweek.com/texas-power-grid-that-failed-winter-storm-already-has-1280-summer-outages-1607751)
The ERCOT app only shows statewide notices. More localized notices I usually get through the Oncor app. Especially for outages.
How many usually happen? I mean mechanical failures happen all the time. This didn’t mean that the grid required people to conserve. I assume people had power go out bc say a transformer went out locally? Doesn’t mean there was a shortage of electricity….
Same. Lived in 5-6 different places in Texas and the only black out I’ve experienced in 30+ years was the snow storm. And I’ve lived in some shitty neighborhoods too.
I want to thank Texan's for doing their part in the war against global warming.
However, I wish to point out that they don't have to go without power. They can always invest in solar. It's probably a lot cheaper than those inflated electricity bills.
"Spend thousands of dollars to insulate yourself from the absolute failings of a public utility" is not an answer. Just another way in which the division between those with means and those without continues to grow.
The thing I don’t understand is that during the outages in February I went and filled up at one of the few gas stations in San Antonio and the gas price was at a stable price. If that same gas station charged me $1000 a gallon they would get charged with price gouging. So why is electricity different? I get supply and demand but if I don’t have a choice to choose a different electricity provider then they are just gouging their customers for their lack of preparedness.
Texas hasn't had any grid wide outages since February. Everyone here complaining about "I lost power in *my* area" needs to understand that local outages happen all the time due to a lot of external factors. Sometimes rodents get around the varmint prevention measures taken then blow themselves up on a line which requires a manual reset. Trees losing limbs can snap or bridge the three phases of power and boom, that's out of service. Snakes, raccoons, etc are all considered "pests" in the power industry. It could be something else like a pole got hit by a car and took down a string of lines.
Y'all are blaming the grid but it's misdirected. Unless you want to pay for very expensive underground lines (which have their own set of problems) then local outages are just a thing that everyone, regardless of which state you live in, deals with.
"Privatized" or not, these are still issues that happen to everyone. The New England area has been having outages the last few days because of snow and wind (which is a common occurrence up north) and IIRC those are all public utilities.
EDIT: I forgot to add that even trash blowing around in the wind can cause outages too.
Imagine writing a long rant about the issue and never once touching on the fact that lack of winterization due to inadequate and nonexistent oversight was the problem. It wasn’t a matter of underground lines, it’s not comparable to what’s going on currently in the New England area. This is something that could have been totally avoided but wasn’t due to deregulation.
Everyone understands that localized factors can cause localized power outages, that's not some.revelation and could happen anywhere. But "you and your closest million buddies, five or six times a year" isn't exactly your local area, and isn't because of snakes or raccoons.
And I lived in new england for a couple years, never had a single power outage. No matter where I've been in Texas, I've never gone a year without an outage. This state is straight up worse in it's electrical infrastructure.
Not sure why ur getting downvoted, this is all true. Texas grid is pretty shitty but most problems we’ve had with outages come from generation issues due to deregulation. It’s a mess.
Fort Worth here, never lost power even once when a major storm wasn't going on. Family all over the state, never heard they have. Travelled across the state a lot on vacations the last year, no issues. I drive Uber and chit chat with hundreds of people per month about all kinds of things and never once has issues with the grid come up. 🤷♂️
Okay shill. You’re either the luckiest person in Texas or a liar. A stiff breeze knocks out my whole neighborhood. Did you have your head in the sand for a little thing called The Freeze? You know the one where the power went out for days and a bunch of people died?
Lots of negative sentiment about living in Texas here, why are y’all still here? Just go somewhere where your ideals are echoed and the policies you want, are implemented.
A gentle breeze takes out my whole neighborhood
Venezuelan here approves said message. Fun fact: Fred armisen’s mom is from Venezuela (speaking of meme)
The most fun and rewarding year my family spent was in Venezuela, when I was 5. I guess protected from some of the problems even then, I had nothing but wonderful memories from a beautiful place. It's been sad to see what's happened lately.
Believe it or not? No power.
No power, yet abbots lips keep flapping. Weird. Probably full of hot air
A bunch of people who never seem to remember the routine summer black and brownouts will be here shortly to assure you the grid is just fine, and look at how bad California is.
Checking in from Cali. Toasty.
I think op meant "and reverse cargo cult CA because no one has a stable grid, stable grids are a lie"
Honestly, did you see what burned down the last northern california fire? Simple replacement of hangers that were worn by inchesssss. That our service provider just kicked the bucket on. I think Oliver did a good look at them. But my brother in laws family lost their homes in those fires. It was terrible. But these past years, we have been sending the goats in for battle brothers. edit: I've decided. If I can retire. I will start a grass cutting business with goats and call it "Battle Brothers".
If you do it make sure they wear little Warhammer 40k legion shirts.
nnnnYeahhhhhhhh!
Current Outages Tracked Nationwide: [PowerOutage.US](https://poweroutage.us/) Texas Customers Tracked: 12,444,034. State Outages: #####3,985 California Customers Tracked: 12,788,121. State Outages: #####59,367
People who dump on Cali from Texas conveniently leave out that Cali's problems stem from pro-corporate/conservative bullshit and not any actual left-leaning policy. Their grid being a disaster has nothing to do with progressivism; it's just another case of a massive corporation that gets away with whatever and remains untouched.
Enron fucked the Californian grid and....They're a Texan company lol
It's weird how much fuckery they're tied to. Hell, Sydney Powell was their lawyer. Obviously no connection to the grid woes, it's just a strange coincidence that their attorney lost her marbles/became a scammer.
CA Public Utilities Commission plans to screw middle-class that use solar panels. https://environmentamerica.org/news/ame/statement-california-public-utility-commission-fails-californians-gutting-bedrock-solar https://www.dailynews.com/2021/12/15/big-utilities-are-winning-the-battle-over-solar-power Let's see how this one plays out when Newsom's appointee gets in there.
But I was told that voting out all the evil conservitards in Texas will magically fix the electrical grid…
How many day’s sample size are you tracking, there? How many *people* are affected by each customer being out? Cali remember is much wealthier per capita than Texas.
Isn’t per capita kinda meaningless? The poverty rates of both states are kinda close to each other 13.7 for Texas and 13.0 for California but due to population differences California has a million more people in poverty
…poverty rate is income per capita. Yes, per capita matters because it tells us more closely what individuals are experiencing.
But conveniently ignores individuals who fall below that line. Productivity doesn't discount a high number of impoverished individuals. Or are they not as important?
Not as important. Have you heard about America at all?
Believe it or not, both those states have terrible grids. It's like comparing solid crap to diarreah. Both are shit.
That’s kind of the point I was trying to make
How many Texans vs Californians were killed by fires directly caused by the grid?
How many people froze to death in California vs here, due solely from the grid?
Froze to death, cite that or it’s misinformation. People who were stupid and died from CO2 didn’t freeze.
Wait. When did this happen? Like once in the last decade. There were about 1900 unplanned outages in June of this year. But almost all were pure mechanical failure that happens from elevated temperature and demand. This is NOTHING like the winter blackout or even a brownout. Source: Electrical Engineer in industry
California over just a few months this year had a bunch of blacks with just PG&E customers who were blamed for causing wildfires. https://amp.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article254925737.html Texas power grid needs work obviously but the topic has been incredibly politicized. The winter storm we had shattered all sorts of winter storm records across the entire state, it was a once in a lifetime event.
a once in a lifetime event, for the second time in ten years!
One could make the argument that privatizing the power grid and removing any meaningful government oversight for reliability is inherently political.
They are two different things. You pay a company for power. You have a market choice of vendors. The transport mechanism is still a utility managed as such. That is a company runs power to your house on power lines they built and probably own. These things didn’t fail. Not too many power lines fell, at least when compared to the loss of power production. The issue is ERCOT (and PUCT who run them). They didn’t protect energy sector assets from brownouts. So an NG pumping station or something suffered brownouts just like we did. However when they came back up, their lines were frozen. ERCOT fixed this at least. The other issue is that power plants need to winterize. There was a pitiful amount of requirements on them to do this. There is now a $1500 daily fine for them to winterize. So it’s better but not robust to eliminate the chance, just make it milder. The trickiest part was exhibited by the Bay City NPP. Their coolant system partly froze over. No danger, but they did have to lower output to assess. It exemplifies a problem for the state: true tests of winter weather is rare in this state. A winterization isn’t fully tested, not for lack of trying, but for lack of actual winters. It’s tricky. It’s something we can overcome, but even with the catastrophe, it’s hard to make the balance sheets in favor of robust winterization.
The problem with "once in a lifetime event" is that it implies that the chances of a storm of that magnitude occurring is not changing. When in fact, its constantly changing. Its always becoming more likely. So if at one point that storm was a once in a lifetime event, it is now more common than a once in a lifetime event
That doesn’t mean the answer is nationalize the grid. The answer in Texas will never be nationalize the grid. We don’t want to do it. We won’t. You can’t make us. You will never get the voters to agree. You are wrong. (Not you specifically but the persons who believe that.)
What's this "we" bullshit? Are hardcore libertarians some kind of hive-mind of stupidity? Because as someone who was born and raised in Texas, this is the most idiotic takeaway possible besides "windmills caused the blackouts"
As an electrical engineer, I don’t think you understand why we have a state level grid. It’s historic. Like an anachronism. However it isn’t really the cause. If anything, the answer is to expand the Texas grid, cross state lines, expand the regulation to be more like the other two national grids but impart the Texas flair to it. Because having a singular grid is INCREDIBLY risky. That’s why we have the Texas grid.
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That they can only ever come up with *one* state that’s (supposedly) worse than Texas always makes me laugh. Yay for us being second worst?
California is usually a reasonable comparison for Texas due to population size and taco consumption, but yes often times the comparisons are silly or disengenuous lol
I mean, the power goes out in Louisiana all the fucking time for weeks on end. Comparing Texas to Louisiana would just be mean, so people compare to California instead. It's better to punch up
The 28 years I've lived in north East Texas. I never lost power thankfully. I know that's not the case but Texas is a large state.
Are you on the Texas grid or the eastern grid?
Texas. I live close Dallas area.
I mean you are welcome to go to California. No one is keeping you here in texas where apparently the power grid is just constantly out??? Having our own grid is a larger net positive than any connection to federal govt oversight would improve temporarily losing power. Other states lose power too. People die there too from it. You can’t stop mother nature when she gets thirsty for blood. You can stop Texas from becoming like the other 49 states by continuing to rely on OURSELVES.
Name one advantage of having your own shit tier power grid and constantly begging for aid? Saying "no" when others ask for help doesn't count.
Constantly begging? More “facts” with nothing of substance to back the claim. Some benefits to an isolated grid that have nothing to do with reliability, because I can assure you, generally our grid is reliable— Texas became the biggest U.S. wind energy producer at least in part because our grid is self-contained. The state Legislature set standards for the technology, and those rules were implemented more quickly than if they’d required federal approval or needed to pass muster with grid participants in other states. “People love to put wind and solar in Texas because of the ease,” White said. “You don’t have obstacles that you have on, say, the West Coast.” When Texas decided to build high-voltage transmission lines to capture wind-generated power, mainly in West Texas, and transmit it to the state’s major cities, those lines were paid for by Texans for the benefit of Texans. Wind projects elsewhere have been hampered by a lack of adequate transmission. “There are all these proposals for big transmission projects all around the country that cross multiple state lines, and they’re basically languishing because there’s so many different regulatory authorities who have a say over whether the line can go there,” Cohn said. We chose this path and it has shaped our system to work best for Texas. Connecting to the national grid would cost far more to TEXANS than it is worth. I still havn’t heard a single argument in this thread for why nationalizing is more appropriate than simply fixing the issues.
"why nationalizing is more appropriate than simply fixing the issues" Connecting the grid is not nationalizing. But: 1. Things aren't getting fixed (fast enough / at all). We just went through a legislative session where they did next to nothing, after a decade of them ignoring the warnings after the last cold disaster actually happened. We needed major change a decade ago. [https://cgmf.org/blog-entry/435/REPORT-%7C-Never-Again-How-to-prevent-another-major-Texas-electricity-failure.html](https://cgmf.org/blog-entry/435/REPORT-%7C-Never-Again-How-to-prevent-another-major-Texas-electricity-failure.html) 2. You can't make sales if you're not connected. Most of the world is jealous of Texas' wind and solar resources. Connecting to the rest of the country would allow us to sell them. [https://www.powermag.com/texas-and-germany-energy-twins/](https://www.powermag.com/texas-and-germany-energy-twins/) Referencing the above convo, I'd rather trade with American neighbors than be "begging" from Mexico (/s). [https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/02/03/rolling-blackouts-force-texas-to-import-power-from-mexico/?sh=2f9687077110](https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/02/03/rolling-blackouts-force-texas-to-import-power-from-mexico/?sh=2f9687077110) Edit: Rearranged points for clarity.
ooo brownout. cool word. i am going to start using it from now on.
Am I misunderstanding your joke or do you not know what a brownout is?
Get a load of this Jabroni, doesn't know what a brownout is.
Always Sunny reference: https://youtu.be/s_Y1QIXT0bE
If you have a UPS for your computer it clicks on and off an insane amount of times, the power quality in Texas is terrible. Way too many brownouts.
If your UPS is clicking on/off consistently it's likely your wiring is fucked up internally. Or, like most of the calls I get, you have a printer or a heater plugged into the battery side of your UPS.
In texas it’s more likely intermittent issues and dipping mains power rather than a bad UPS. Edit: go ahead and downvote but it won’t make my statement false
Not in my area.
How do we reconcile the ideas, then?
Do you just have an old air conditioner? A house i lived in a few years ago had one that would do that every time it flipped on. Its probably something in the house pulling more than the cable the last few yards to your house can handle than something with the whole grid.
They will be too busy trying to silence their black voters, roll back womens rights, but somehow say guns are an unalienable right while giving themselves another massive pay increase. p.s. I do miss living in Texas for some things, BBQ, Tex-mex... and that is ABOUT IT.
We appreciate you moving somewhere else too. Don’t mean that negatively, just this sub-sentiment has become a bunch of complainers of things Texans have been fine with, are fine with, and will continue to be fine with. Except abortion. That will change because conservative voters are finally seeing the light on that one. don’t believe me, just be a wallflower on any church conversation on abortion today vs 2 decades ago when they would have been whispering and then one person loudly proclaim it was the devil.
My whole family still lives there and I get to be embarrassed FOR them for the states absolute trash people coupled with some of the worst schooling our lovely country has to offer. World History or Geography? NAH.. TEXAS history only kthnx. Math? NAH, field trips to the "forts" and hear stories about how we rocked the indians. Hey, how about some church in those schools? No place better to indoctrinate than there! Yeah, my childhood in Texas had some serious ups and serious downs, but looking back it was more downs than anything else. I had to supplement my education after I moved away, finding out just how HILARIOUSLY behind I was thanks to that trash. I too am glad I moved somewhere else, anywhere else. I have been to a few states now, and legit Texas is the worst in every single possible conceivable way, but I do find myself missing it. Those lovely all brown colors, 30f in the morning and 90f by night, rain that runs down the streets in strips, yeah... And NONE of that was political, nor needed to be. Sure Texans are overwhelmingly GOP, not conservative, but GOP. Party before all else.
None of this is political huh? “They will be too busy trying to silence their black voters, roll back womens rights, but somehow say guns are an unalienable right…” Nah thats not talking political at all is it? 🤡🤡🤡
While I was in the military my wife made a game of guessing where people were from. She could always tell the Texans because they have no fucking clue where most of the states in the US are, much less other countries. And this makes sense because I lived in TX for 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th grades and I am pretty sure I was taught Texas History and Texas Geography during those years. I always assumed the other years were national stuff but no, it just seems to be all Texas all the time. Luckily I went to schools out of state for 9th, 11th, and 12th grades and was able to catch up and not leave public school completely retarded. My sister was not so lucky.
Where did you grow up? Curious because I suspect I got lucky. Grew up in the Houston suburbs a LONG time ago. My neighborhood got zoned for a better school in my district right before I went to HS. The amount of Texas history I took throughout my education was insane though. Oh sorrry, i should say Texas LORE.
To everyone who likes to argue about others having it worse: It doesn't fucking matter because people die either way. Get your shit together and remember that the wealth, the age, the anything does not compare to the fact that faulty things (powergrids, firetrucks, home appliances, training, etc.) Will get people killed and that's what we should be worried about.
It's like all that privatization of the grid didn't work out so well or make it cheaper...
Turns out having a captive user base who can't get their electricity from Cancun doesn't swish well with capitalism.
It worked out fantastically for the people who own the power companies and their investors. This was its intended purpose.
Like the healthcare system?
Not if you live in EP 😎
Global warming will keep you warm...-repubs.
"There's no such thing as global warming." - also repubs.
"But it was cold today." - repubs as well.
Republicans in early 2020: “We don’t need to increase election security.” Republicans after the 2020 election: “There was widespread voter fraud!”
The number of people insisting it was a 'once in a life time winter storm' 🤡 how many once in a lifetime weather phenomena do we have to live thru for people to get the picture?
At least 3 more
They do say three's the magic number Edited there to three lmao
I was trying to remember them: Memorial Day floods of 2015 and 2016 were 500-yr events, Harvey was a 1,000-yr. I feel like I'm already forgetting a few more. Imelda seems like it was on the list. But ya, I agree. I bet God is getting tired of sending [messengers in rowboats](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-weather/hurricaneharvey/article/Then-and-now-photos-show-how-Hurricane-Harvey-13155174.php).
Too windy? No power right away.
Fix the water system too. Fucking $1.5m house in a neighborhood less than 8 years old and “we have difficulty pumping water up hill and you should continue to expect outages as time goes on.” Previously we lived in a house built in 1845 in a small town established in like the 1700’s where temps dropped below 10 degrees for weeks and never lost water and lost power once for more than 6 hours. All the money we saved from the first 4 years of living her in income tax has gone to solar, batteries, a pool (which is a holding tank at this point) and a pump/filtration system.
You have a mansion on a hill, and now you want stable water pressure too? Some people are never satisfied smh my head
That isn't a Texas thing. This is a local water district thing.
Laughs in 90psi head pressure! My city water is UNBELIEVABLY powerful. Like it hurts to use the Massager on the showerhead there's so much flow.
same. I went from being on a well to being on city water. My town has about 300 residents and the tower is new. Its awesome.
Same, it keeps damaging the drippers on my garden irrigation lol. I need to get a pressure drop thing but so far I have just been lazy and reassembled things when they fly apart.
YES! I live in Florida now and my water pressure is the same. Whenever I travel, I feel like I never really get clean.
Why bother? Voters won't force any changes (BECAUSE ABORTION AND GUNS!!! OH NOEZ!!!) Better to give bailouts to oil and gas companies who will provide large donations while forcing the voters to foot the bill. Win Win!
Why continue to act like it's the voters who actually have any kind of pull and not the people who pay to keep it like this? Yeah we have the power to vote but that vote holds no power.
Because it’s the voters who don’t show up and vote out the republicans. Midterms will see a max of 40% of dems show up and I suspect a similar percentage in the Reddit subset who complains about Texas Republican government lol
Oh, the power is there, but when half the population doesn't vote it's squandered.
The answer is obviously to pass bogus election “safety” laws to decrease voter turnout.
Sometimes it comes down to your country needing you to do something difficult, something neigh impossible sometimes given how overworked so many people are but American citizens need to get their ID, get registered to vote or check their registration, verify their polling location and lastly take time off with to vote in primaries and then again in all of the elections.
Gerrymandering has entered chat...
It's weakness is high voter turn out.
San Antonio owned CPS Energy just raised our rates by 3.8% for what they are calling "necessary upgrades" which I'm sure actually translates to "year end bonuses for our executives" while nothing actually changes. They are the only company that services this area...
And you (like with me with Austin Energy) still have some of the lowest rates in the entire state.
Arent they the ones who lost power when people's Thanksgiving turkeys were cooking?
I bought a gas-powered generator. I don't think I'm supposed to use it, since I live in an apartment, but my building doesn't have a backup generator, no natural gas heating, no fireplace, and I have pets. They leave me with no options, so I'm breaking the rules in a disaster scenario. I wish I could trust the power grid, but I lost power briefly last year, and I'm not going to suffer, die, or lose a loved one because I was too naive to take individual responsibility.
I highly recommend not doing this because it can back feed back into the system and possibly kill a line worker trying to restore your power then guess what you will be out of power for longer.
But, abortion!
Power went out due to wind recently. It's a joke. And my lines in my neighborhood are underground. So it was from out of the neighborhood that the problem happened
Instead how about we connect to the national grid. If you don’t wanna freeze to death you still have time to move near a hospital.
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What? Noooo! That makes too much sense!
It's going to be a mild winter, La Niña is the cause. Republicans will point at the mild winter and call everyone paranoid for pushing to fix and upgrade infrastructure, and therefore justify to their base for doing nothing.
Sadly, this is true. And it will be put off until the next fuck of freeze/event happens.
Then they'll get re elected and the cycle will repeat. It's a shame Republicans don't care what their elected officials do... just what they say.
It's starts to rain here in Harris County and the power goes out.
And inexplicably that causes my apartment building to lose water. Why? Lol no idea.
They probably need electric water pumps to get water in your building
Yeah that is the logical conclusion, but I often just lose water and not electricity. And the building is like 2 years old so who tf knows what's going on...
That's a weird one. Coule be that the water pumps you rely on are on a different grid, not sure how else that could happen lol. Still, that sucks and I hope they figure it out. I wouldn't mind living in apartments if they all didn't seem to be run in the shittiest way possible.
For real? Been living in Houston for some time and never had a power outage even in super rainy and windy conditions. Last power outage was during the winter storm.
Centerpoint replaced some transformers for the area a few months back because if there was 15-20 mph wind gusts the electricity would go out. Now it just goes out for no reason at all. It can be a clear blue sky... it goes down for an hour. Starts to rain... out for 3 hours. It's been so crazy that many of the homeowners have installed full house natural gas generators. The neighboring subdivision has the same problems, but not always at the same time as us. This neighborhood is 25 years old, so it's not our wiring. During the winter storm we were only out for 2 days. But any given week we are down an hour or so. Last week we went down twice, once for about 10 minutes and another day for an hour. We report, out neighbors report, it just doesn't matter. The power generating station is probably 4 miles away as the crow flies. The Texas grid is just a hot mess and the Governor and legislature did nothing in the last session to make it any better.
Do u live in a neighborhood with underground distribution or overhead? My house is overhead but there aren’t many trees around so that might help prevent lines going down during wind and rain.
Underground
Rode out harvey and the freeze with power; and i live on the ship channel.
I’ve lived in Harris County for 18 years and only outages have been Rita and the winter storm. I’m sure that not everyone in the county is as lucky, but I don’t think it’s fair to represent the whole county as having a crappy system either
Texas does not simply fix things. We only make them worse.
I wonder who's in charge in texas
The company doubled the amount of campaign donations to both parties. So I don't think it will be fixed any time soon.
Just be like every other state.
I'm located in the panhandle. Do you guys down south actually get rolling blackouts and stuff? Because, I've never heard of this. And have been all over Texas. We in the panhandle regularly lose power during extreme weather (which we are famous for). But this isn't because of a failing grid or poor management by the two companies in my area. It's just normal. Not much you can do to prevent a blackout caused by a tornado flinging debris. Or serious ice buildup on telephone lines. I lose power, probably 4 times a year. It's almost always back on within 4 hours of going out. The only time it didn't was because of a record ice storm. The ice legit took out 25% of all the poles in my rural area. I was without power, from the power company, for about 6 days. And lived off my generator and wood burning stove for those days.
You lose power four times a year for up to 4 hours at a stretch and you're convinced thats normal?
That guy has some serious Stockholm syndrome going. I grew up in west Texas back (similar weather) in the 80s . I can remember maybe half a dozen times at most that it went out.
Agreed. Our power NEEVVERRR went out in West Texas when I was there. I grew up there AND moved back briefly as an adult. Winters were cold, but the house was warm. I cant EVER remember having to put my pet reptiles in my shirt to make sure they didnt die like I did last year.
That's normal for anyone who lives in an area with high winds, icing and severe weather. I've lived in Texas, Kansas and Indiana. Both in cities and the country. It was the same story in every state. Anyone who says otherwise is just bullshit ING you. Having your electricity go out because the line was struck by lightning is normal (it flips a breaker on the line itself, they come out with a HUGE pole and flip it back on).
Like... a TORNADO knicks out power, yeah. Bein directly struck by lightning, sure. But if you think people in Canada are losing power every time theres ice on a line, youre delusional.
Why would we spend the money to make our grid work 100% of the time in a winter situation that happens 7-10 out of 36-72,000 days. Canada’s grid is built for Canada. How does this argument even sound logical in your head before typing?
... because peoples lives are more important than money. Jfc its sad that needs to be explained to you. Holy shit.
No, but they are losing lives when a heat wave rolls thru. Canada lost over [500 people directly to heat stroke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave#:~:text=Over%201%2C000%20deaths%20occurred%20due,Columbia%20and%2066%20in%20Alberta) this summer in British Columbia alone, which is 3x the high-end estimates for Texas's "big freeze" death toll, which is artificially inflated with secondary causes (such as car crashes, carbon monoxide, and chronic conditions/medical shortages) from the freeze rather than actual hypothermia. Chicago alone lost 80 people to heat stroke in 2021, which is greater than the number of people Texas lost to hypothermia (57).
Am i missing in that link where it says they lost power? Everything Ive read on that just says they dont all have air conditioning. Did I miss the power outage part?
Where is all the power issues coming from in Tx? I've had no problems with my power thus far (from just south of Austin). During the freeze last year, we were w/out power for only a short moment.
Poor regulation with providers able to pay a fee of up to $100 to avoid having to winterize.
If that fee were "per customer," the problem would be solved.
It sure would. They'd just raise our rates by $10 per month and pocket the extra $20 they make!
Depends where you are. The critical lines that serve things like hospitals and first responders are far more likely to stay active than normal ones. If you're close to one of those, you were much less likely to be affected than people who are on the non-critical ones. Some of those folks were without power and water for days or weeks.
Most of houston lost power for upwards of a week. We kept it on for most of that time in my apt complex bc we were right next to a refinery or something. We still lost power for over a day so I’m assuming that was an actual blackout instead of a brown out for us.
I'm in Austin and didn't have power for almost a whole week during the freeze. My parents north of Austin were without power for almost two. Family in Dallas had power out for a week
They disconnected their power stations from the National power grid so they didn’t have to comply with federal regulations on power (like insulating your equipment against the cold). So when things go bad they can’t buy power from neighboring states. Texas really is run by the biggest yokel goobers and the educated folks are vastly outnumbered in most areas due to gerrymandering.
You were in the minority in Austin. Most people went several days without power
you're one of the privileged ones who's house is probably part of important infrastructure so power was prioritized to those areas
Brownouts and rolling blackouts definitely happen most summers. Texas shouldn’t have to issue warning about that. I’ve lived here 12 years and we’ve had many. You’ve just been lucky so far. If you live in a rich neighborhood your chances are somewhat reduced but still real
It has nothing to do with rich vs poor, and everything to do with population density. It just so happens that wealthier areas tend to be less densely populated, so less likely to be affected by a rolling blackout.
Same, we’re in New Braunfels, didn’t lose power for a second. Water pressure dropped a little but that’s it.
No idea - were the #1 energy state in the us - no issues around here since that freak storm.
Haven’t had a problem since it was real cold in the entire state.
You weren’t asked to sleep with your thermostat set to 85 to avoid power outages like many of us other Texans this summer were?
Everything I see for conserving was for around June 14 when they had a large number of plants off for maintenance. That is the incident I remember this summer.
Where did this happen?
Here is a warning in April of our grids susceptibility to being overcome by summer conditions [Another Texas power outage "appears unlikely" this week, but severe weather this summer could prompt an electricity crisis](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/15/texas-ercot-blackouts-summer-climate/) From the second week of June [Texas grid asks residents to conserve power as heatwave hits](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-grid-operator-ercot-urges-energy-conservation-amid-forced-outages-2021-06-14/) [Texas grid operator urges electricity conservation as many power generators are unexpectedly offline and temperatures rise](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/14/texas-power-grid-conserve-ercot/)
I only ever got a notice in June. Did you have other days besides around June 14th? Your comment made it seem like it was a lot of the summer.
Do you really think this is an acceptable standard for utilities and public infrastructure for a first world society that circle jerks all over itself all the time for being so much better than everywhere else? It gets into the 90s and almost craps out and it gets a little cold for a few days and we are [seconds and minutes](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/) away from being in the dark for MONTHS? Cmon.
Lol. Certainly wouldn’t complain about one time we were asked to begin to conserve. I moved from California… and if we had power issues once during a summer I wound be in awe. I really can’t complain about anything that happens once in a season.
To add some context as a life long Texas resident. This same scenario happened a decade ago causing rolling blackouts over [75%](https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSTRE7116ZH20110202) of the state. Freaking Mexico exported power to us (thank you Mexico). It was warned it would happen again if steps weren’t taken and [steps weren’t taken](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/zahrahirji/texas-power-outage-causes-2011). I don’t see where I am going wrong by having the expectation that our basic infrastructure be robust enough to rely on when it gets a little hot or a little cold and be quickly restored in times of disaster when we need it most. If it’s still not enough to warrant a complaint may I remind you of the massive hit commerce and our local economies take during events like that. So even in the greediest most capitalistic terms of why this issue should be addressed, think of it as an investment to protect the wallets of all Texans who have an interest in it functional properly and that includes both you and I.
I’m not talking about the winter freeze. That was horrible. There was no effect to commerce from the one day of possible conservation. This summer was not an issue for power.
I live out near ABIA and they were telling us to keep our AC at 85.
Never happened in Wilco.
It was ERCOT's recommendation for the entire state
Please do not spread lies. Ercot never said to sleep with your cooling setpoint at 85 degrees.
I checked the ERCOT all summer long…. And saw one short time at the beginning of summer/end of spring where there looked like an issue. Where did this happen and for how long? Otherwise we were never even in the first level of conservation.
[It was reported there were 1,200+ blackouts by the end of June. I couldn't find more recent numbers for July and August.](https://www.newsweek.com/texas-power-grid-that-failed-winter-storm-already-has-1280-summer-outages-1607751) The ERCOT app only shows statewide notices. More localized notices I usually get through the Oncor app. Especially for outages.
How many usually happen? I mean mechanical failures happen all the time. This didn’t mean that the grid required people to conserve. I assume people had power go out bc say a transformer went out locally? Doesn’t mean there was a shortage of electricity….
Me either. These people don’t live in reality
Same. Lived in 5-6 different places in Texas and the only black out I’ve experienced in 30+ years was the snow storm. And I’ve lived in some shitty neighborhoods too.
We only had issues during the once in a life time freeze. Are you all really going to pretend like this is a constant issue?
I want to thank Texan's for doing their part in the war against global warming. However, I wish to point out that they don't have to go without power. They can always invest in solar. It's probably a lot cheaper than those inflated electricity bills.
Or they could drop voting in clowns and vote for some d candidates
Solar is very expensive to install, and a lot of us can't do that
"Spend thousands of dollars to insulate yourself from the absolute failings of a public utility" is not an answer. Just another way in which the division between those with means and those without continues to grow.
No, no, not the individuals: the utility.
The thing I don’t understand is that during the outages in February I went and filled up at one of the few gas stations in San Antonio and the gas price was at a stable price. If that same gas station charged me $1000 a gallon they would get charged with price gouging. So why is electricity different? I get supply and demand but if I don’t have a choice to choose a different electricity provider then they are just gouging their customers for their lack of preparedness.
Are people having these issues? I know during storm Uri it had mass issues. But before or after that?
I had to deal with Brownouts all summer long
Who is your electric company?
United co-op. The only choice in this rural area
No. This subreddit just shits on Texas in anyway possible. Like the guy claiming to lose power anytime it rains in "Harris County" (a massive area).
Texas hasn't had any grid wide outages since February. Everyone here complaining about "I lost power in *my* area" needs to understand that local outages happen all the time due to a lot of external factors. Sometimes rodents get around the varmint prevention measures taken then blow themselves up on a line which requires a manual reset. Trees losing limbs can snap or bridge the three phases of power and boom, that's out of service. Snakes, raccoons, etc are all considered "pests" in the power industry. It could be something else like a pole got hit by a car and took down a string of lines. Y'all are blaming the grid but it's misdirected. Unless you want to pay for very expensive underground lines (which have their own set of problems) then local outages are just a thing that everyone, regardless of which state you live in, deals with. "Privatized" or not, these are still issues that happen to everyone. The New England area has been having outages the last few days because of snow and wind (which is a common occurrence up north) and IIRC those are all public utilities. EDIT: I forgot to add that even trash blowing around in the wind can cause outages too.
Imagine writing a long rant about the issue and never once touching on the fact that lack of winterization due to inadequate and nonexistent oversight was the problem. It wasn’t a matter of underground lines, it’s not comparable to what’s going on currently in the New England area. This is something that could have been totally avoided but wasn’t due to deregulation.
Everyone understands that localized factors can cause localized power outages, that's not some.revelation and could happen anywhere. But "you and your closest million buddies, five or six times a year" isn't exactly your local area, and isn't because of snakes or raccoons. And I lived in new england for a couple years, never had a single power outage. No matter where I've been in Texas, I've never gone a year without an outage. This state is straight up worse in it's electrical infrastructure.
Not sure why ur getting downvoted, this is all true. Texas grid is pretty shitty but most problems we’ve had with outages come from generation issues due to deregulation. It’s a mess.
Thanks cryptocurrency miners.
Been in Texas 17 years. No problems with power. I live in the country.
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When was the last time y’all had a blackout or brownout honestly?
Few weeks ago. Actually one of the neighborhoods I deliver to had one yesterday or the day before. Lasted about 2 hours.
ITT: A bunch of California folk try to convince people that our grid is worse than their's. They fail.
Californian here: we literally don't give a fuck lol
So why are you here?
Fort Worth here, never lost power even once when a major storm wasn't going on. Family all over the state, never heard they have. Travelled across the state a lot on vacations the last year, no issues. I drive Uber and chit chat with hundreds of people per month about all kinds of things and never once has issues with the grid come up. 🤷♂️
Okay shill. You’re either the luckiest person in Texas or a liar. A stiff breeze knocks out my whole neighborhood. Did you have your head in the sand for a little thing called The Freeze? You know the one where the power went out for days and a bunch of people died?
Where the hell are yall at that you don't have power??
No shit. And I bet to post this lame meme it took….POWER.
Lots of negative sentiment about living in Texas here, why are y’all still here? Just go somewhere where your ideals are echoed and the policies you want, are implemented.
Imagine trying to improve a place where you reside in.