New report suggests Texas' grid was 5 minutes from catastrophic failure

[DBoon]

With autumn arriving in much of the US, it won't be long before parts of the country start experiencing cold weather again. Texas residents can be forgiven for the thought triggering a bit of PTSD, given that last winter saw the near-collapse of the state's power grid, leaving many residents without any power for several days of below-freezing weather.

A long list of factors contributed to the mess, and in the immediate aftermath, it was difficult to understand their relative importance. But now, grid regulatory and governance groups have put together a preliminary report on the event, along with some recommendations for avoiding future calamities. A central conclusion is that the grid failure was tightly coupled to the failure of the natural gas supply—in part because natural gas processing facilities were among the places that saw their power cut.
...
Texas' grid is poorly integrated into the rest of North America, so it didn't have much help. As a result, demand exceeded capacity for three consecutive days, with the largest deficit being 20 GW. For over four minutes, the ERCOT grid's frequency dropped from the standard 60 Hz to 59.4 Hz. Had ERCOT stayed at that frequency for five more minutes, additional generating sources would have tripped offline, sending all of ERCOT into a cascading blackout.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/preliminary-report-looks-into-what-went-wrong-during-texas-grid-collapse/

[marble falls]

1. We will be revisiting this crap again in 3-4 months. This will be the hill Abbott finally ...

... gets his political reckoning on. It is criminal that he will kill more Texans this time proving what a hateful, incompetent PoS he really is.

[CurtEastPoint]

10. and hopefully it'll be the hill that SOB rolls right down and off into oblivion.

[Luz]

2. This winter I have solar power for electric, and a propane

stove and heater. 108 hours below freezing last year with nothing, and I never want to experience that again.

[TxGuitar]

7. We had no power for 4+ days

And thanks to a broken pipe, were without water for a lot of that time but we were so lucky we have gas so we could keep the fireplace going the whole time. And it was still fucking cold.

[XanaDUer2]

3. I keep thinking of the little boy

who was put to bed and froze to death in his family's home.

His death is the direct result of conservative Texas policies, and it enrages me.

[paleotn]

4. A system leaned out to the mean because it's cheaper.

When reality rarely sits at the mean for very long. For profit will always gravitate to the cheap mean. That's why they fail miserably in managing the commons.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. I have bought a generator but it will not be here until Jan

I am hoping that Greg will not allow a power failure until after the GOP primary in March or May

[walkingman]

6. For those people that are not aware - Texas has a segregated power grid

that doesn't tie to the national East/West grid because in the 1930s, Texas energy companies opted for a power grid that didn’t cross state lines to prevent federal regulators from interfering in it's operations.

In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which tasked a regulatory agency called the Federal Power Commission with overseeing electricity sales that crossed state lines. Congress enacted the law in response to market domination and shady business practices by huge utility holding companies during the 1920s and ‘30s.

As a Texan it is pretty obvious why this remain in place even today - REGULATION. Clean Air, Clean water, Clean energy have no consideration in the State of Texas. Energy runs Texas with over 40% of revenue from fossil fuel companies.

TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) is the environmental agency for the state. It is a total farce - they are bought and paid for by the energy businesses.

[pandr32]

9. Thank you for this info

[gay texan]

8. That was some scary shit last year

I picked up a diesel generator (7kw) from a scrapyard right after this happened. Managed to fix it up and it works great.

That was some truly scary shit out here in west texas. It was "up North" type cold, with 4' foot snow drifts. Somehow, my power managed to stay on. I kept getting calls from the power company that they were going to be doing rolling blackouts. If it had gone out, the damage to my house would have been catastrophic.

I'm prepared this year because Abbott didnt do a fucking thing to fix the grid.

Abbott's priority was to make sure we can carry guns , kids cant learn about how we screwed over people of color for the last 250 years, and women cant get abortions .

[keithbvadu2]

11. People died while Cruz vacationed in Cancun.

People died while Cruz vacationed in Cancun.

“California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity,” Cruz wrote back then.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017641262

[DBoon]

12. California had planned local outages to manage demand

Texas had a catastrophic state-wide outage that was minutes away from complete disaster

Note the difference

[UTUSN]

13. Low on ABBUTT's list of Anti-Choice, voter suppression, border militarism, refusing Medicaid funds,

suing Feds, ad infititum.

[Aristus]

14. I seem to remember there WAS a catastrophic failure...

[Blue Owl]

15. Leave it to the GOP to re-define the term 'catastrophic'

[hunter]

16. It might have been worse -- taking weeks or months to reboot the power system...

... not days. They were minutes away from that kind of catastrophe.