The federal government has no right to regulate Texas' state power grid. I agree. I'm pointing out that Texas built their own grid to avoid regulations that would have prevented this from occurring, and that kind of shorted sighted attitude is now going to cost them far more on top of the damage that has already been caused.

And that other events in the past decade or two have also occurred for similar reasons, like the fertilizer plant explosion

I love this mix of private business and "fuck you consumer"
Pass price on to consumer to upgrade the system so it doesn't fail you, as I am the only party that can provide this for you. IE I business owner have no burden to improve my product delivery.
They aren't the first/only/last company with this shitty service model. Still sucks IMO.

If adding so sort of thermal "wrap" or LV wire to something that already generates its own power is prohibitively expensive. That's just big business talking where bolts cost you 38 bucks and shit like that.

How would regulations have "prevented this from happening"? A quarter of Oregon's population lost power during the same storms. And right now, there are nearly as many Oregonians without power as there are Texans. Which part of "regulations don't prevent outages during storms" confuses you?

Just call it a win that we can agree that restructuring of FEMA guidelines to require winterization as a "risk mitigation" is probably a good thing, and stop making factual claims that are false. Because your claim of prevention is clearly false. People lost power in nearly every effected state. And arguably, Oregon suffered worse than Texas. Only 1/6th of Texas' population lost power, a quarter of Oregon's population lost power, and we're on the Western Interconnection.



Businesses do not exist to lose money. Businesses that lose money go out of business. Saving cost to the consumer is the basic business model that allows them to keep your consumer costs low, and not lose out to competing power companies. Of course they'll pass any renovation costs to you in the form of higher power.

In 2011, it was decided that the customers would be more angry about the temporarily higher bills than they would be happy about "futureproofing" the grid. All surveys and feedback solidified that stance. Today, the customers feel different. Great! Now ERCOT has the public support to get the grid retrofitted. In some ways, it's a huge win, especially for Wind, given Texas is the #1 source of Wind Power Generation in the US.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Feb 22 2021 04:19pm

Oregon had some power loss from downed trees, not a systemic failure of their power plants.

I think you should do some basic research because it took me 2 seconds to figure out why Oregon had power loss.

Oregon suffered power loss due to a wide variety of reasons. Claiming "downed trees" as a singular cause is ALSO factually false. And if you really want to go that route, why is not clearing areas around grid lines, shifting to underground line systems where feasible, and other such not every bit as important as adding self-deicing measures to wind turbines?

Why is it less important to plan for landslides, flooding, and surge overloads during storm conditions than insuring safety circuits on Nuclear plants can't freeze and cause reactor safety shutdowns? A quarter of Oregon's population lost power, and nearly as many actual people in Oregon are without power right this moment as are in Texas, a state that has 7.5 times the population. Why?

You want to claim regulation works to resolve these issues, but it doesn't. This happens in Oregon all the time. Nobody's shouting at Oregon "fix it or officials should resign" or "Fix it or you should be regulated!" We are regulated. We have more grid issues than Texas, and on a far more frequent basis. Roughly 90% of it is avoidable, as well.

The bottom line here is that providing stable power grids fit to survive all conditions in a 3.797 million mile^2 area of land (The United States) is impossible. You prepare for what you're capable of preparing for that you can afford to reasonably manage. Texas determined that since it so rarely freezes, and since they did so well in prior freezes, that mitigation for freezes wasn't really needed. This has proven them wrong. So, undoubtedly, they'll take corrective action. What's the issue?

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Feb 22 2021 04:40pm

Oregon should be doing a better job of keeping their trees clear.

Your claim was specifically that federal regulations wouldn't have kept Texas from losing power because Oregon still lost power under federal regulations. This is false, as the problems that caused power loss in Oregon are not the same ones that Texas had, and the cause of the power loss in Texas is directly addressed by existing federal regulations.

That we cannot keep the entire nation powered every second is irrelevant to the fact that Texas would not have had these issues if they had followed the same regulations as everybody else.

They had a crisis and made the consumer pay massive bills to due to their own problems.. Along with the fact they were warned about it and did nothing.
That's the problem

This post was edited by theCrossbones on Feb 22 2021 05:01pm

At this point, you're just making shit up. First: Show the regulation that requires wind turbines in say Arizona or Southern California to include cold weather packages that prevent freezing. Go ahead, find a single regulation.

Second, cold weather regulation DOES regulate a significant amount of action be taken regarding keeping lines clear, preventing flooding/slide damage of power sources, surge protection etc. Regulations are not a magical means of prevention.

You're making a lot of absolute claims that simply aren't factual. "Regulate Texas" is not the answer. "If Texas was regulated" is also not the answer. In the case of Texas, it literally required a disaster of this scope to convince the populace that a temporary increase in power rates to retrofit the grid is worthwhile.

Keep in mind, this is a state that does not charge State Income tax, and allows for a massive amount of freedom with how you deal with your property. "Should homes be winterproofed?" Most Texans would say no, such a requirement would increase building costs by tens of thousands, without providing a notable benefit 99.9% of the time. "Should power companies charge more to retrofit their grid to deal with freezing temperatures?" The average Texan literally said NO in 2011 when they were surveyed. What state legislators in Texas support is, oddly, what their constituents tell them to support. They're not divorced from their voters quite the way many other states tend to be.

Who is talking about wind turbines? We haven't been lol. Other power plants have to be winterized because federal regulation requires them to be, Texas wasn't. If they had been on the same federal regulations they wouldn't have lost power anywhere near the level they did here.

Voters can be wrong. This is clearly an instance where the short-sighted will of the voters was wrong.

In 2011, the "freeze" did not cause millions of homes and businesses to go without power. The freeze (and yes, it was a hard freeze) caused a minor rolling blackout that impacted a couple million people, and never left any home without power for longer than 45 minutes. It was this way because the baseline power provided by coal, natural gas, and nuclear was sufficient. In the last 10 years, multiple coal plants have been shut down. There has been virtually no increase in natural gas supply, and the percentage of wind reliance went from 8% to 25%. Lower baseline+complete failure of unreliable sources led to disaster. The issue with the nuclear plant that shut down was 100% unforeseeable. It had gotten to within a degree of as cold and not experienced issue. No regulation would have made that occurrence avoidable. Nuclear power is federally regulated. Period. No nuclear power plant in the nation is free from federal regulation. Losing 25% of the nuclear (green) power baseline was a hard shot.

Coal power supplies were not effected in any meaningful way, and have performed near peak the entire time. Natural gas supplies were only nominally effected regarding the base supply. The larger concerns with natural gas was that a lot of the Natural Gas was diverted to heat homes under an unforeseen demand. Think of a garden hose. Your water pressure is great under normal circumstance. Now put a splitter on it. The 1 hose becomes 2. You either lose half your pressure to the end sources, or you use smaller hoses. With the excess diversion to household Natural Gas heating, there was far less supply to the Natural Gas power plants, causing heavy impact on the grid.

The #1 "preventable" issue here was the Wind Turbines. Retrofitting them with cold weather packages should help alleviate the concern. The #2 issue was how the single safety sensor froze. That's likely going to lead to a massive federal case study that may well have an impact on national Nuclear power.

Voters aren't stupid, and neither are power companies. To say they're "wrong" when you don't understand the grid or how it was actively impacted is a rather odd attempt at a flex.