A friend lives in Houston. During the event I looked at the radar and o.O FZRA.... freezing rain and just below him, just south of his house, pinned on my radar by gps by being there a whole buncha times in the past 15 years, snow.
I lived the exact scenario in Grand Forks ND in 1997, when I was a wx guy there.
Rain, ice, rain, ice, rain.. only I didn't know about the ice. "Airman, where did you chip that piece of clear ice from?" "From the flagpole." *gulp*
THen it snowed. Oh man it snowed, and for once, it wasn't that nodak powdery dry stuff, it was the heavy wet stuff. Inches per hour. The weight on the already ice-encrusted wires and poles....
Every power pole from Bemidji, MN to Devils Lake ND snapped like burnt matches. We lost power for two weeks. April 1997. THat event was the nail in our coffin. The melt from that one jammed up the Red River and well... wasn't pretty.
I was married, then... so me and the wife bugged out to Devil's Lake and stayed at the first motel with power and vacancy.
It really was a sight.. all that snow on the ground, and every pole, snapped.
It was the ice. Guaranteed. What I saw on the radar the other night gave me the creeps.
(wtf lameness filter post looks like ascii art? Then how do you explain the ascii art that gets posted here all the time?!)
Close. It was the decision to not winterize the equipment.
While this freeze is bad, a freeze like this is not "once in a lifetime", but easily seen as about every few years. 2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
After 2011 there was a commission that identified a bunch of winterizing steps that should be required. The companies agreed to take them as recommendations... And then they ignored them. They claimed that they were the experts, they knew what they were doing, and they would take adequate steps. They didn't need it as a mandate, because freedom. And the market would choose.
Then after a decade, NONE of the recommendations were implemented.
The regulators tried a gentle "regulation bad, freedom good" approach, now people are dead, maimed, and financially harmed so corporations could save a few bucks.
2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
Huh. Had a texan (forget what town, ebay vendor i bought from) told me today this is a '100 year event')
If it truly as frequent as you say that Texas gets clobbered by blizzards... then yeah, they need to armor it against that.
But... I swapped DRT for RDR. In English, that means when I was given a forecasting job in school, I was given Del Rio. When I saw the high temps, and the fact that officer parking had awnings, I'm like "too hot for me." So I swapped some poor soul for RDR... Grand Forks AFB. OMG
Texas climates are a bit more diverse than you may expect. This is one thing I like to point out to folks - you can drive 12 hours west on I-10 from Beaumont for 12 hours straight and still be a bit shy of El Paso. Or leave Armarillo and head southerly for 11 1/2 hours and still be a bit shy of Brownsville. There are lots of countries in the world with less geographic area. So it's really hard to generalize for the state. But, case in point: El Paso is not on the Texas grid nor under control of ERCOT. They are a part of the National grid, and they did winterize. It seems that they suffered very very minor outages. I, on the other hand, had 7 hours of no electricity last night, and at least 8 hours of no electricity in the 24 hours prior to that. All because the grid did not have enough capacity/supply.
There is no "National grid." El Paso is part of the Western Interconnect. The dividing line between Eastern and Western runs roughly down the middle of the Great Plains. There are a handful of AC-DC-AC interties between east and west with a total transfer capacity less than 2GW -- that is, about the capacity of a single large generating station. No one's ever made a viable economic case for increasing that capacity.
Both the Eastern and the Western were established by the Power Act, were they not? Thus I'd say that distinction you make, while accurate, isn't very important for the point being made, which is that El Paso plays ball according to the regulations of the Federal gov't. Almost the entirety of the state of Texas, otherwise, has staunchly refused that because "Federal gubmint bad, mkay?" Also, they're always rattling their sabers about secession, but more than happy to take assistance from the Fed gov't.
The difference is that it covers all of Texas; the 2011 events were more localized IIRC. Ice kills a number of things, and the lack of diversity (by being part of a larger grid) makes a number of small failures have much larger impact.
I thought Texas had several interconnects with neigboring states, but it is possible they are just DC links. Interconnections add complexity (DC reduces that complexity some), but for a major event like this they can be a huge benefit.
e belongs in the citizens for not having enough generators and fuel properly stockpiled on their property. A more liberal bias might suggest that insufficient work was done for the common good.
May I suggest all those right leaning folks use their own roads from now on ?
Why is it always leftists that try to legitimize genocide against others, all the while holding themselves in some obviously false semblance of superiority that gives them the license to decide who should live and die?
How convoluted does your internal morality need to be for you to declare your own virtue while calling for the deaths of anyone that dares to think differently than you?
You are correct, they are DC links. There are theoretically five (East, Laredo, North, Railroad, Eagle Pass). Two of them are showing flow, both negative, and the sum of that flow is a little over 1% of system capacity. Under normal conditions Wind and PV provide up to 25% of supply. At present Wind and PV are providing about 11% of supply.
Correct. TX occasionally has ice storms that do significant local damage. This is nothing like that.
"If I take a Texas mindset, the blame belongs in the citizens for not having enough generators and fuel properly stockpiled on their property."
Indeed, although that is only one TX mindset. You could expand on that to include "those citizens need to hurry up and freeze to death, problem solved."
100 year events happen more often than every 100 years. In part this is due to human changes (both climate change and more local changes - although local changes do not apply in this case) that the model does not account for. Partially, it is because people use the term loosely to mean rare. Partly because given how many places there are in the US , the usual locality of events, and how many different events there could be, it is very likely that some 100 year event happens at any given time. See also,
Huh. Had a texan (forget what town, ebay vendor i bought from) told me today this is a '100 year event')
They are setting low temperature records that lasted ~100 years. But: 1. Those records are often for that particular day, 2. If you set a new record at 12F, the power generation problem isn't all that different from when it was 15F last time, even though 15F was above the record.
Point is, you prepare for the mean, and suck it up in the extremes
No, you build your power generation to handle 100-year events. At least, you do if you're in either of the federally-regulated power grids. Yes, there can still be distribution problems, but the generators could produce power.
Funny how there are so many "storms of the century". I remember as a little kid at my grandmother's in D.C. and they had the "worst blizzard since the Knickerbocker" whenever that was. People skiing down Connecticut Ave. Seems like extreme weather is guaranteed once in a while but people tend to forget there will be a next time.
Point is, you prepare for the mean, and suck it up in the extremes.
No, you don't prepare for the mean, that would be just stupid. You prepare for what could reasonably be expected, and, ideally, calculate the tradeoffs in odds and costs between preparing for something worse and dealing with it if it happens.
For example, in Chicago the frost line is 42" below grade. That is, foundations and sewers have to be buried under 42" of cover so you won't get freezing damage. But, by code, water pipes have to be buried 60" below grade, because the frost line occasionally drops below 42" during unusually extended, unusually cold weather. That won't really hurt sewers, which typically run less than half full, and won't be enough to cause serious frost heave on most foundations, but it can and does burst water pipes not buried deep enough. So you take the extra step and bury the water pipes deeper. And still, some water pipes freeze, but not so many, so you can deal with it.
I like how the governor is now wanting an "investigation" of the problem. That's not what he really wants, he wants an "investigation" to shift the blame to anyone but himself and his ilk.
Politicians want investigations when there's demand for change now and the politician doesn't actually want to change anything. Investigations require time. In fact, a politician can make an investigation stretch out for as long as they need. The politician says they're investigating the issue as long as the public is upset. Once the public has moved on and people aren't as upset, the politician can close the investigation saying "nothing that needs changing" and move on without changing anything.
they're shutting off power "strategically" which means to the poor neighborhoods (unless you're lucky enough to live next to a hospital and still in a poor neighborhood).
There's a picture floating around of a total blackout in a neighborhood and in the distance you can see the skyline of corporate owned skyscrapers lit up even though they're all empty with the pandemic.
Thats actually partially incorrect. The power companies designate certain zones critical infrastructure that they don't turn power off at. This includes hospital, fire, police, grocery, and government buildings. If you live close enough to that zone, your power stays on too.
Because of the amount of power they had to save, some areas like mine bounced between two zones. Some areas had to turn every house off but critical infrastructure. I had 1 hour on 1 hour off. Now if the police/fire are
The regulators tried a gentle "regulation bad, freedom good" approach, now people are dead, maimed, and financially harmed so corporations could save a few bucks.
Remember, this is Texas we're talking about. It wasn't the regulators who forced this "regulation bad, freedom good" approach. Libertarians in Texas gutted the regulations. Libertarians crippled the ability of regulators to demand changes from the corporations they regulate. Libertarians constantly say we can't have "big government" and "red tape" and "outdated regulations."
Well, this is what happens when regulations regarding weatherizing and the ability to enforce those regulations are gutted by a poli
I've lived in TX for most of my 50 years on this planet and this is the worst winter storm I've seen. Stop making things up, regarding this being a fairly common occurrance. I have about 6 inches of snow on the ground in my yard. I've never had snow stick overnight in 20 years of living in this house.
They did ignore the recommendations, which I understood were funded in some cases. There is nothing free market about utility companies. Their entire existence is as regulated monopoly. This is a simple example
The same lie over and over. Never gets any more true. It is NOT a fairly common occurrence, and at this point it is clear that you do not live in TX and have no idea what you are talking about.
Ice is found all over the world, and in many parts of America too. Who is to blame are those who didn't take into account ice, especially considering it's not actually the first time.
Your post reminded me of a training course I attended, quite a few years ago now. I think it might have been a Kepner-Tregoe course on Problem Analysis, but it could have been something a bit more esoteric on lateral thinking.
In Canada, they get a lot of trouble with ice forming on power lines and bringing the lines down. The lecturer on the course explained a conversation he was party to, where he was called in to brainstorm solutions with the Canadian Power Company engineers... Remember, this is wild,
I don't think I've ever seen a helicopter used to clear a line. You can send out some guys with a long stick to whack them, or you can just put power through them and melt the ice off.
It was the ice. (Score:5, Interesting)
It was ice.
A friend lives in Houston. During the event I looked at the radar and o.O FZRA.... freezing rain and just below him, just south of his house, pinned on my radar by gps by being there a whole buncha times in the past 15 years, snow.
I lived the exact scenario in Grand Forks ND in 1997, when I was a wx guy there.
Rain, ice, rain, ice, rain.. only I didn't know about the ice. "Airman, where did you chip that piece of clear ice from?" "From the flagpole." *gulp*
THen it snowed. Oh man it snowed, and for once, it wasn't that nodak powdery dry stuff, it was the heavy wet stuff. Inches per hour. The weight on the already ice-encrusted wires and poles....
Every power pole from Bemidji, MN to Devils Lake ND snapped like burnt matches. We lost power for two weeks. April 1997. THat event was the nail in our coffin. The melt from that one jammed up the Red River and well... wasn't pretty.
I was married, then... so me and the wife bugged out to Devil's Lake and stayed at the first motel with power and vacancy.
It really was a sight.. all that snow on the ground, and every pole, snapped.
It was the ice. Guaranteed. What I saw on the radar the other night gave me the creeps.
(wtf lameness filter post looks like ascii art? Then how do you explain the ascii art that gets posted here all the time?!)
Re: It was the ice. (Score:5, Interesting)
Close. It was the decision to not winterize the equipment.
While this freeze is bad, a freeze like this is not "once in a lifetime", but easily seen as about every few years. 2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
After 2011 there was a commission that identified a bunch of winterizing steps that should be required. The companies agreed to take them as recommendations... And then they ignored them. They claimed that they were the experts, they knew what they were doing, and they would take adequate steps. They didn't need it as a mandate, because freedom. And the market would choose.
Then after a decade, NONE of the recommendations were implemented.
The regulators tried a gentle "regulation bad, freedom good" approach, now people are dead, maimed, and financially harmed so corporations could save a few bucks.
Re: (Score:2)
2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
Huh. Had a texan (forget what town, ebay vendor i bought from) told me today this is a '100 year event')
If it truly as frequent as you say that Texas gets clobbered by blizzards... then yeah, they need to armor it against that.
But ... I swapped DRT for RDR. In English, that means when I was given a forecasting job in school, I was given Del Rio. When I saw the high temps, and the fact that officer parking had awnings, I'm like "too hot for me." So I swapped some poor soul for RDR... Grand Forks AFB. OMG
Re: It was the ice. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
There is no "National grid." El Paso is part of the Western Interconnect. The dividing line between Eastern and Western runs roughly down the middle of the Great Plains. There are a handful of AC-DC-AC interties between east and west with a total transfer capacity less than 2GW -- that is, about the capacity of a single large generating station. No one's ever made a viable economic case for increasing that capacity.
Re: It was the ice. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that it covers all of Texas; the 2011 events were more localized IIRC. Ice kills a number of things, and the lack of diversity (by being part of a larger grid) makes a number of small failures have much larger impact.
I thought Texas had several interconnects with neigboring states, but it is possible they are just DC links. Interconnections add complexity (DC reduces that complexity some), but for a major event like this they can be a huge benefit.
The thing that should be investigated is
Re: (Score:1)
e belongs in the citizens for not having enough generators and fuel properly stockpiled on their property. A more liberal bias might suggest that insufficient work was done for the common good.
May I suggest all those right leaning folks use their own roads from now on ?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it always leftists that try to legitimize genocide against others, all the while holding themselves in some obviously false semblance of superiority that gives them the license to decide who should live and die?
How convoluted does your internal morality need to be for you to declare your own virtue while calling for the deaths of anyone that dares to think differently than you?
Re: (Score:3)
I thought Texas had several interconnects with neigboring states, but it is possible they are just DC links.
They have 3 links. The capacity of those links are a drop in the bucket of this problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. TX occasionally has ice storms that do significant local damage. This is nothing like that.
"If I take a Texas mindset, the blame belongs in the citizens for not having enough generators and fuel properly stockpiled on their property."
Indeed, although that is only one TX mindset. You could expand on that to include "those citizens need to hurry up and freeze to death, problem solved."
Re: It was the ice. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Huh. Had a texan (forget what town, ebay vendor i bought from) told me today this is a '100 year event')
They are setting low temperature records that lasted ~100 years. But:
1. Those records are often for that particular day,
2. If you set a new record at 12F, the power generation problem isn't all that different from when it was 15F last time, even though 15F was above the record.
Point is, you prepare for the mean, and suck it up in the extremes
No, you build your power generation to handle 100-year events. At least, you do if you're in either of the federally-regulated power grids. Yes, there can still be distribution problems, but the generators could produce power.
Re: (Score:3)
Funny how there are so many "storms of the century". I remember as a little kid at my grandmother's in D.C. and they had the "worst blizzard since the Knickerbocker" whenever that was. People skiing down Connecticut Ave. Seems like extreme weather is guaranteed once in a while but people tend to forget there will be a next time.
Re: It was the ice. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you don't prepare for the mean, that would be just stupid. You prepare for what could reasonably be expected, and, ideally, calculate the tradeoffs in odds and costs between preparing for something worse and dealing with it if it happens.
For example, in Chicago the frost line is 42" below grade. That is, foundations and sewers have to be buried under 42" of cover so you won't get freezing damage. But, by code, water pipes have to be buried 60" below grade, because the frost line occasionally drops below 42" during unusually extended, unusually cold weather. That won't really hurt sewers, which typically run less than half full, and won't be enough to cause serious frost heave on most foundations, but it can and does burst water pipes not buried deep enough. So you take the extra step and bury the water pipes deeper. And still, some water pipes freeze, but not so many, so you can deal with it.
Re: (Score:2)
2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
Huh. Had a texan (forget what town, ebay vendor i bought from) told me today this is a '100 year event')
Maybe 2011 feels already like a century ago. ;)
Re: (Score:3)
I like how the governor is now wanting an "investigation" of the problem. That's not what he really wants, he wants an "investigation" to shift the blame to anyone but himself and his ilk.
Re: (Score:3)
Investi
If you're well do to you're just fine (Score:2)
There's a picture floating around of a total blackout in a neighborhood and in the distance you can see the skyline of corporate owned skyscrapers lit up even though they're all empty with the pandemic.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The regulators tried a gentle "regulation bad, freedom good" approach, now people are dead, maimed, and financially harmed so corporations could save a few bucks.
Remember, this is Texas we're talking about. It wasn't the regulators who forced this "regulation bad, freedom good" approach. Libertarians in Texas gutted the regulations. Libertarians crippled the ability of regulators to demand changes from the corporations they regulate. Libertarians constantly say we can't have "big government" and "red tape" and "outdated regulations."
Well, this is what happens when regulations regarding weatherizing and the ability to enforce those regulations are gutted by a poli
Re: (Score:2)
I've lived in TX for most of my 50 years on this planet and this is the worst winter storm I've seen. Stop making things up, regarding this being a fairly common occurrance. I have about 6 inches of snow on the ground in my yard. I've never had snow stick overnight in 20 years of living in this house.
They did ignore the recommendations, which I understood were funded in some cases. There is nothing free market about utility companies. Their entire existence is as regulated monopoly. This is a simple example
Same lie, over and over (Score:2)
The same lie over and over. Never gets any more true. It is NOT a fairly common occurrence, and at this point it is clear that you do not live in TX and have no idea what you are talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
It was ice.
Ice is found all over the world, and in many parts of America too. Who is to blame are those who didn't take into account ice, especially considering it's not actually the first time.
Re: (Score:2)
In Canada, they get a lot of trouble with ice forming on power lines and bringing the lines down. The lecturer on the course explained a conversation he was party to, where he was called in to brainstorm solutions with the Canadian Power Company engineers... Remember, this is wild,
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think I've ever seen a helicopter used to clear a line. You can send out some guys with a long stick to whack them, or you can just put power through them and melt the ice off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Apparently the Chinese have been experimenting using drones with flame throwers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]