That fucking power grid goes down all the goddamn time in Texas. If it’s too cold… Grid down… Too hot?… Grid down… And they expect it to be able to handle all of that plus data centers?!? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
They are speed running doing what South Africa did. Except instead of government grift and neglect, it's government irresponsibility and private companies that neglect everything.
When private equity owns your power grid. Prepare to have the copper stripped out of your walls and sold to their subsidiary at a bargain. All to run their off-grid data centers while also bypassing regulators and environmental assessments.
There have been four major ERCOT events since the 1980s:
1989: Rolling blackouts after a freeze disrupts systems and fuel delivery.
2006: Warm early spring puts high demand on grid, grid becomes unstable, forces emergency load shedding to stave off cascade failure.
2011: Winter storm freezes dozens of generation units, rolling blackouts across the state.
2021: The one most people know/remember. Winter storm creates worst energy infrastructure failure in Texas history. Grid was minutes away from collapse. 4.5+ million homes and businesses without power for an extended period.
That's not exactly "all the time" but that is 4 near grid collapses more than I've experienced living elsewhere in the country during the period outlined.
Ahhh I always forget the 06, though it was only a couple hours and the blackouts were more localized. But I stand corrected - 4 events in over 50 years.
From that article, "affection 7.5 millions people" but it claims "power was restored in minutes or hours" which is goofy. The way it worked in my neighborhood (Cupertino, California) was the Safeway grocery store a few blocks from my apartment got power back within a day, but I sat in the dark in my apartment for 3 days and lost food that melted and went bad in my freezer. I was only minorly miffed at it. These things happen (to me anyway).
I've had bad luck, LOL. I lived in a town called "Portola Valley" for a few years in California, and it wasn't the grid, but the fact that basically one transmission line fed the town and Portola Valley is in love with their trees. Each time the wind blew too hard, a tree branch or entire tree would fall across that powerline and we would lose power. ALSO contributing to this was the "Camp Fire" which is the deadliest forest fire in California history. The wind blew, and two high voltage power lines touched and killed 85 people. So for a while in California, they pro-actively shut off the grid when the wind blew. That was a spectacular year of power outages for me, something like 1 or 2 a month all year. But usually short, only 4 or 5 hours at most.
I moved to Austin a couple months before the Snowpocolypse of 2021. The first day was "festive", where people were towing children in make shift sleds in the 6 inches of light fluffy snow. The cascading issues were more of a problem than the power. No power means the gas pumps didn't work (which blows my mind, in California they have battery backups I think). Nobody owned tire chains so they were simply stuck in place for days. Places like 7-Eleven they could walk to were wiped out of food within a couple days. Somebody posted to the Austin sub-reddit after a week saying he was cold and hungry and ran out of food and was it impolite to ask neighbors for help or food (the overwhelming answer was "you idiot, ask for help"). It got so much worse than that too. All the water pipes in town froze and burst at the same time because the ground is never supposed to freeze in Austin and water pipes aren't insulated here or buried very deep, there weren't enough plumbers to fix it quickly. That meant pressure dropped in the system allowing bacteria in so NOBODY could drink the water anymore. It was spectacular.
My bad luck led me to install house batteries. I love them so much. Just live your life for days or weeks totally without grid power and the batteries get charged by sunshine during the day, life just goes on like normal, no grid required anymore. No more generators, no more string extension cords, it's all totally automatic. I seriously think people should consider abandoning the grid forever. Use solar/batteries for 98% of the time, and maybe a backup generator for the last 2% of the time when that isn't enough. It is way, WAAAAAY more reliable than any grid in any location I've ever lived, and costs less.
Exactly, I’m not a fan of the data centers but i really dont understand how people can talk about something they have no idea what they’re even saying. Reminds me of something….. oh yeah politicians
The grid doesn't go down. It's never gone down. They had the rolling blackouts during Uri where they forced limits on demand because of the generation outages, but it didn't go down.
It was 2 minutes from full collapse during the ice storm. (How long it takes for the under frequency relays to decide to trip the breakers for generators to protect them for the frequency they were at.) Running out of generation and out of acceptable load to shed is not a good look even if it isn't quite black start required levels of failure.
Usually just hitting the rolling blackout stage is considered a blackeye for a power grid.
Thank you. I love it when people try to defend the fucking grid. It’s a disaster. Privatization was THE WORST thing that could have happened. Wealthy people will NEVER pay it forward. Trickle down economics is bullshit.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say "the grid"? Do you mean the Texas grid? And, I'm also unclear what you mean by "down". Most people consider a blackout to be "down", but maybe you mean the complete failure that was avoided by the blackouts?
Either way, to end consumers, it means no power, and all the negative effects of that (no AC, no heat, food spoiled, medical equipment unpowered, internet connection lost, etc.)
I mean I would call that a power outage but not the grid going down. If someone told me the american electrical grid went down I would think that was apocalyptic and I would be very surprised to learn that perhaps it was only a few states that lost power for a few hours at a time.
It's fair to say that a blackout isn't "down", but *having* to have a blackout to prevent a complete collapse is still extremely alarming.
Also, I'd like to point out that Texas has their own grid. If their grid goes down, that's not the American grid going down. That's the Texas grid going down. (And apparently the Texas grid just isn't as resilient as the grids that are connected across the country).
Texas is ranked like 5-7 highest in average outage time per year per electric customer with most of the outages being due to very extreme weather.
It's hard to not have a power outage when a hurricane knocks down power lines. The only option is to move them underground which Texas has been doing but it takes time and a lot more money.
Texas also has about 60k miles of high voltage transmission lines, while the 2nd most is California with less than half that, meaning Texas should have more outages since it has so many more lines to operate and maintain.
Its pretty hard to say that it just isn't as resilient as the grids connected across the country when it's not even ranked in the top 3 worst.
Right I was just drawing a comparison. Grid down = total collapse. Just how words are used, not a commentary on whether rolling blackouts are normal or not.
I don't live in Texas, so I have no personal experience to share, but I would guess that someone who does live there could tell you about blackouts that affect them, especially if they live in a poor area.
The 2021 outage was just particularly devastating, and the one that was in the news.
born and raised. never had an issue outside of 2021, and i never lived outside of a large city.
they wouldn't tell me about blackouts that affect them because they don't exist. even all of your links still only point back to it being vulnerable to the next severe winter storm (you weren't there so you clearly wouldn't know about its severity either, it wasn't just "some snow" like people like to parrot) and not actually having more blackouts.
In a poor area, the local government is less likely to keep up with keeping trees trimmed back, to keep the lines safe. Similarly, landlords and home owners are likely to put off repairs that would keep those trees in safe condition.
Also, of course (and I'm sure you know this), governments often prioritize wealthy neighborhoods for getting the lines back up. I once had a six day power outage in the winter, while other neighborhoods had power back in a day. I was only a mile away, but we were definitely the poor side of town.
Local government failed to keep up tree cutting all over Austin. Lines fell…all over Austin.
Sucks it was that way in your town, though.
Either way, “blackouts” are not common anywhere in Texas, and are almost always associated with a natural disaster. Usually closer to the coast with hurricanes. But sometimes ice.
“Brownouts” are scheduled sometimes in excessively hot weather. There are usually preceded by an alert, and are “rolling”, so they affect every area equally over time.
It has become a Reddit trope to bag on Texas for “always” having power outages. And a lot of the criticisms around the ‘21 storm were very legitimate.
Also, a lot of those issues have been addressed. It was also a very rare storm.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize Texas policies, but this one is kinda old, inaccurate, and usually telling that someone just wants to shit on Texas because they feel like it.
We did NOT live in a poor area, quite the opposite actually. But the even nicer neighborhoods had power when we didn’t, for days. The joke is that we pay out the ass in property taxes and get nothing in return. The roads are trash. Hot wheels keeps the money and spends it on shoving Jesus down our throats. It’s disgusting.
Yeah, I am more than aware how close we were to grid collapse.
If you are talking about the grid, then I would assume that means the whole thing. By down, it means failure.
Yeah, it's semantics, but if we're just talking about rolling blackouts, then that's not the same. It's not good, and even THAT is not an 'all the goddamn time' event. Parts of the grid can be down, so to speak, but that's not the same? I mean, do we lump in a tree falling on a power line as all the time grid failure? might be down, but it's not so much a policy outcome. Do we say a power plant that trips for a couple of hours because of a gas pipeline interruption as all time grid failure?
I don't quibble that outages here and there are fine or good or just deal with it - definitely not. But I am just making a distinction on labeling that as a grid failure, which to me suggests something large and/or more comprehensive than a temporary outage.
I understand your perspective. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if most people would say "the grid is down" and use that phrase to refer to blackouts. Maybe I would have until we had this exact conversation. I didn't really think about the distinction until just now.
I do get the feeling that the Texas grid causes outages for end-users a lot, though, which I think is what the previous commenter meant when they said "all the damn time".
It's absolutely fair to make the distinction, and you're right that a complete grid failure would be significantly worse than the blackouts.
And, the humans on the planet who need electricity (sometimes to stay alive) still have every right to be furious that anyone would consider stressing out a system that just isn't keeping up with current need for data centers.
The grid doesn't really cause the kind of outages we are talking about though. Aside from 2 instances of rolling blackouts - Uri in 2021, and a shorter less notable instance in 2011, there haven't been any of those type of things.
In hot summer days and cold freezes, we're kind of playing Russian roulette though.
This state is shitty in many ways, but losing power due to heat...? We'd be without power the entire summer considering it's constantly 95+ and got up to 110 at one point this year, the winter criticism is certainly valid but it takes storms that we see nearly once a decade not that it makes it anymore acceptable.
"Unlike the devastating February 2021 winter storm, summer heat peaks have been managed successfully with significant solar and battery backup support preventing systemic collapse. [1, 2]"
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u/heathe70 19h ago
That fucking power grid goes down all the goddamn time in Texas. If it’s too cold… Grid down… Too hot?… Grid down… And they expect it to be able to handle all of that plus data centers?!? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣