re: Reasons why Texas power grid failed:

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TX having it's own grid goes back to the 30s irrc. Ercot was created in 60s/70s maybe? So this isn't new or something quick to change. People are just now hearing about. Most Texans have known this since birth as it's connected to the "if we have to secede we have our own grid, so that's a major plus". So yes it's connected to the age old Texan want to have that out. So yes it's been atop convos at the moment with the TEXIT.

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The liberals will go all out pushing Texas to no longer be Texas and sadly with so much new growth it may work for them.

Texas having its own grid works well but the problem is that lazy, money eyed politicians were arrogant and dumb. The grid is supposed to be setup so that regions could be self sufficient and send excess to other regions when needed. They got away from that with ERCOT centralized control.

Its just like the federal government. The more power you give one central power the more reliance everyone has to be to that power. When that one centralized power makes a mistake the mistake is catastrophic.

It's really obnoxious how our culture/society simply disregards extraordinary events to place blame.

I pay for power in Georgia on the basis of Georgia-like weather with some margin for swings and rare events. If we have 5 days of historic-low temperatures and once-a-decade winter precipitation I have no expectation of anything working correctly and that's not the fault of industry or government.

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The economic decision was not to put the 1 in a 1000 measures to prepare for this. Smart business decision.

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While there are failures and plenty of blame to around on this, people trying to make it a left and right issue is where we’ve gotten in the last 10 years of politics.

Green energy is to blame, deregulation is to name, cutting costs is to blame, ERCOT is to blame, republicans letting this stuff go unchecked is to blame, and most of all, a 100 year storm is to blame (I was alive in 83, 89, and 2011... none of those compare to this year.)

I know that a storm like this is possible but I haven’t bought a generator, built in a gas fireplace, and a host of other options that could have kept my family warmer during this.

Afterwards, I’m not sure that I will to be honest. What’s the cost of planning for something that may not happen again in my life time? I may make some changes but like ERCOT, how much do you sink into a fixing a problem that may never materialize for another 40 years.

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It's really obnoxious how our culture/society simply disregards extraordinary events to place blame.

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It's steeped into our culture. If something bad happens, somebody is always at fault. I don't know if the slip & fall industry is a cause or effect (I suspect a little of both), but it's a prime example. Anybody could make a power grid that won't fail regardless of extreme weather events, but you won't like what you pay per kWh.

That great big ginormous coal fired power plant that used to sit 60 miles down the road from me would be handy right now. Of course, it got closed a few years ago because “muh wind power”.

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If you or anyone in your family were left to freeze in the dark for the last 2-3 days, SIGN AND SHARE THIS.

Somebody must be held responsible for this sudden emergency we were all unexpectedly forced to endure.

Now, they are trying to permanently raise our electric bills to cover for the cost of “lost power” — WE should not have to hold the bag for monopolies like ERCOT who hide behind private company clauses to avoid federal regulation. OUR taxpayer money should NOT be used to bailout billion dollar corporations who choose to line their pockets while we freeze & while people die.

https://www.change.org/p/greg-abbott-ercot-oncor-must-be-held-accountable

I really wish people would let go of the wind thing. Yes it’s fickle and only exists because of subsidies. It was also only supposed to account for 7% of supply. NatGas/Coal makes up the vast, vast majority of generation in the winter.

The NatGas pump stations and hubs weren’t winterized like it was suggested after the 2011 winter storm. Why? Because it costs money and regulations are the devil.

OSHA is a pain in the arse but every single section is written in blood. Regulations suck but having the “energy capital of the world” go completely dark sucks even more.

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Also, Texas infrastructure isn’t designed for once-in-a-century freezes.

#1 - Frozen Wind Turbines:

West Texas had wind turbines that had to be de-iced. The little energy that power regulators planned on being supplied from wind was now gone.

We have almost 31GW of wind installed on the grid, but on Monday we couldn’t even depend on 6 GW working.

To make matters worse, existing storage of wind energy in batteries was also gone, because batteries were losing 60% of their energy in the cold.

Bottom line: renewables don’t work well in extreme weather. Never will.

This is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source. When weather conditions get bad as they did this week, intermittent renewable energy like wind isn’t there when you need it. LINK /

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BuT tHeY cAn JuSt Be WiNtErIzEd! WiNd PoWeR wOrKs In AnTaRtIcA!!!

Yes, but you don’t in Texas.

You need to look at the average Texas winter weather and compare this storm to that. This is the storm she tells you not to worry about. It’s a robotic 12” cock with a flamethrower attached to a Silverback.

Redleg, wind IS the problem along with solar - in that they are subsidized to the point that wind generators can pay to have their power taken away and they still are profitable! How can nuclear and coal compete with that?

Wind and solar are unreliable, you just can’t turn up the production when you want to. If the wind doesn’t blow, or if it blows too hard you get no power from these windmills. Same if they freeze apparently.

Just like California has energy outages in the summer, because they are too dependent on “renewables”, when they don’t make what you need (and it WILL happen), you have to have backups that are reliable or....

The subsidies for renewables are exactly backwards. Renewables should bear an extra burden to pay for the 100% reliable backups they require, probably nuclear or coal when you consider the ability to inventory necessary fuel that gas can’t match.