re: Simple question for anyone complaining about the situation in Texas

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Millions of people in Texas lost power, probably all of them longer than they had originally anticipated. And I'm sure millions prepared accordingly and will come out of this fine. The issue is that you have thousands who didn't. A small percentage

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You are obviously not in Houston. Millions of people in Houston alone were without power for days.

I have a generator. I had a small amount of firewood. I don't have a space heater because you don't need them in Houston. 5 days out from the storm you could not buy a space heater. Wood cost $25 for 12 sticks. I looked around till I did find insulation for outside pipes and sprinkler. I would have used rags and duct tape if I had to do so. I always have spare drinking water. We filled our bathtubs in case we were without and needed to flush. I feel I was as prepared as a Houstonian could be expected to be.

However, I have a disaster in my house. Sometime on Tuesday night, when the temp was not as cold as Monday and I was staying at my son's house, a pipe in my attic burst. It went through 2 floors of my house. I was told to leave water dripping. I did that. Our water system maintained pressure and my water continued to drip, even as my pipe was bursting.

My situation with burst water pipes seemed to have happened with about 25% of the Houston homeowners. I know more people with pipe issues than without. People who prepared as best they could.

It's not thousands who didn't prepare. It's hundreds of thousands who prepared as best they could and still have issues.

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I don’t know why it’s so triggering to not immediately accept the talking point that Texas’ lack of federal oversight caused this crisis.

Show me some evidence that this was easily preventable with federal oversight and maybe I will consider it.

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It's a little weird that you didn't mention "federal oversight" at all in your OP, but OK. Since we're moving the goalposts..

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011

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The arctic cold front that descended on the Southwest during the first week of February 2011 was unusually severe in terms of temperature, wind, and duration of the event. In many cities in the Southwest, temperatures remained below freezing for four days, and winds gusted in places to 30 mph or more. The geographic area hit was also extensive, complicating efforts to obtain power and natural gas from neighboring regions.

The storm, however, was not without precedent. There were prior severe cold weather events in the Southwest in 1983, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2008, and 2010. The worst of these was in 1989, the prior event most comparable to 2011. That year marked the first time ERCOT resorted to system-wide rolling blackouts to prevent more widespread customer outages. In all of those prior years, the natural gas delivery system experienced production declines; however, curtailments to natural gas customers in the region were essentially limited to the years 1989 and 2003.

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The majority of the problems experienced by the many generators that tripped, suffered derates, or failed to start during the event were attributable, either directly or indirectly, to the cold weather itself. For the Southwest as a whole, 67 percent of the generator failures (by MWh) were due directly to weather-related causes, including frozen sensing lines, frozen equipment, frozen water lines, frozen valves, blade icing, low temperature cutoff limits, and the like. At least another 12 percent were indirectly attributable to the weather (occasioned by natural gas curtailments to gas-fired generators and difficulties in fuel switching).

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Problems on the natural gas side largely resulted from production declines in the five basins serving the Southwest. For the period February 1 through February 5, an estimated 14.8 Bcf of production was lost. These declines propagated downstream through the rest of the gas delivery chain, ultimately resulting in natural gas curtailments to more than 50,000 customers in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas.

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The ERCOT blackouts or customer curtailments affected primarily the Permian and Fort Worth Basins and caused or contributed to 29 percent (Permian) and 27 percent (Fort Worth) of the production outages, principally as a result of shutting down electric pumping units or compressors on gathering lines.

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Generators and natural gas producers suffered severe losses of capacity despite having received accurate forecasts of the storm. Entities in both categories report having winterization procedures in place. However, the poor performance of many of these generating units and wells suggests that these procedures were either inadequate or were not adequately followed.

The experiences of 1989 are instructive, particularly on the electric side. In that year, as in 2011, cold weather caused many generators to trip, derate, or fail to start. The PUCT investigated the occurrence and issued a number of recommendations aimed at improving winterization on the part of the generators. These recommendations were not mandatory, and over the course of time implementation lapsed. Many of the generators that experienced outages in 1989 failed again in 2011.

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While extreme cold weather events are obviously not as common in the Southwest as elsewhere, they do occur every few years. And when they do, the cost in terms of dollars and human hardship is considerable. The question of what to do about it is not an easy one to answer, as all preventative measures entail some cost. However, in many cases, the needed fixes would not be unduly expensive. Indeed, many utilities have already undertaken improvements in light of their experiences during the February event. This report makes a number of recommendations that the task force believes are both reasonable economically and which would substantially reduce the risk of blackouts and natural gas curtailments during the next extreme cold weather event that hits the Southwest.

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The report also addresses the interdependency of the electric and natural gas industries. Utilities are becoming increasingly reliant on gas-fired generation, in large part because shale production has dramatically reduced the cost of gas. Likewise, compressors used in the gas industry are more likely than in the past to be powered with electricity, rather than gas. As a result, deficiencies in the supply of either electricity or natural gas affect not only consumers of that commodity, but of the other commodity as well.

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From The section "Recommendations - Electric":

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11. States in the Southwest should examine whether Generator/Operators ought to be required to submit winterization plans, and should consider enacting legislation where necessary and appropriate.

12. Consideration should be given to designing all new generating plants and designing modifications to existing plants (unless committed solely for summer peaking purposes) to be able to perform at the lowest recorded ambient temperature for the nearest city for which historical weather data is available, factoring in accelerated heat loss due to wind speed.

13. The temperature design parameters of existing generating units should be assessed.

14. Generator Owner/Operators should ensure that adequate maintenance and inspection of its freeze protection elements be conducted on a timely and repetitive basis.

15. Each Generator Owner/Operator should inspect and maintain its generating units’ heat tracing equipment.

16. Each Generator Owner/Operator should inspect and maintain its units’ thermal insulation.

17. Each Generator Owner/Operator should plan on the erection of adequate wind breaks and enclosures, where needed.

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From the section "Recommendations - Natural Gas":

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1. Lawmakers in Texas and New Mexico, working with their state regulators and all sectors of the natural gas industry, should determine whether production shortages during extreme cold weather events can be effectively and economically mitigated through the adoption of minimum, uniform standards for the winterization of natural gas production and processing facilities.

2. The gas and electric sectors should work with state regulatory authorities to determine whether critical natural gas facilities can be exempted from rolling blackouts.

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From the Appendix:

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On May 13, 2011, the TRE issued a report on whether ERCOT Protocols and Operating Guides were followed during the period leading up to the Energy Emergency Alert event. The TRE concluded that event “was caused by either insufficient or ineffective preparation of generating facilities for prolonged freezing weather.” The report went on to find that “ERCOT Market Participants committed potential violations of the ERCOT Protocols and Operating Guides in connection with the event.” The TRE will conduct additional investigations as necessary and forward information to the PUCT for further action, as appropriate.

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And the kicker:

KXAN: Winter preparedness not mandatory at Texas power plants and generators, despite 2011 report

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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation found Texas power generators were “reactive as opposed to being proactive in their approach to winterization and preparedness.”

“The lack of any state, regional or Reliability Standards that directly require generators to perform winterization left winter-readiness dependent on plant or corporate choices,” the report read.

FERC and NERC made industry recommendations to prevent these types of outages from happening again, and as the standard-setting bodies for the industry, these guidelines became best practices for power generators.

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It’s up to the individual generators to spare the cost and take steps to winterize their equipment. While they must submit winterization plans to the Public Utility Commission of Texas, there are no specific measures that must be taken across the industry.

ERCOT said they do voluntary “spot-checks” for around a sixth of the state’s generators to make sure they are following best practices. This past year, those checks happened virtually instead of on-site because of the pandemic. Ultimately, the council is not in charge of keeping power generators up to speed.

In a press call on Wednesday, ERCOT’s Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin said, “they have financial incentives to stay online, but there’s no regulation at this point.”

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Because the grid doesn't cross state lines, FERC doesn't have regulatory authority either.