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Texas Republicans on blackouts: Liberal politicians, Obama, and free market are to blame!


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Spent the last 3 hours helping neighbors repair busted pipes. The plumbing aisle at Lowe’s was a mad house. It’s only get worse once Friday rolls around and the temps go above freezing for everything in north Houston and up. 

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16 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

 

 

Ah misread that.

Still though having outside power would help mitigate things. The primary problem though is Republicans obsession with deregulation. States north of them are being hit by the same weather and aren't having these problems.  That is because they actually require their power to be winterized. 

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20 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

 

 

 

I would say that is the fault of the fossil fuel plants not being adequate, not green energy. We have coal and natural gas plants running in -45 weather. It costs more, but you can prepare for these occurrences. Obviously you want all forms of generation to be able to run in the cold, but of the two, fossil fuel is more important at times like these.

 

Edit - also, not meaning to attack you about this! Addressing that in general to the people in society blaming green energy as if it's the sole fault.

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1 minute ago, Air_Delivery said:

I'd also add that wind turbines can be winterized too. Extreme cold is a problem for all power generation.

 

Exactly. Obviously you do not necessarily need to winterize in Texas the same way you do in Canada, or even Michigan, but there need to be minimum requirements for freak occurrences to ensure stable generation.

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I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s not generally accepted practice to design facilities around temperatures that fall 30% outside of the average range for a given area :p 

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Obviously the solution is to distribute a bunch of beautiful, clean coal and a bunch of old timey furnaces that exhaust directly into your house that you can use in an emergency. That way only liberals will die since they won't want to roll coal on themselves! 

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1 minute ago, Jason said:

Obviously the solution is to distribute a bunch of beautiful, clean coal and a bunch of old timey furnaces that exhaust directly into your house that you can use in an emergency. That way only liberals will die since they won't want to roll coal on themselves! 


I’m just going to have my own grid, thank you very much

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31 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s not generally accepted practice to design facilities around temperatures that fall 30% outside of the average range for a given area :p 

I would hope its an extremely common practice, for example average low for Feb. 16th for my area 18, record low, -15.  Records are often no where near the average.

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WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM


I was told this wasn’t happening elsewhere :p

 

But this goes directly to my point that the other grids are short of surplus and the Texas shortfall couldn’t be made up by them. The Texas interconnection actually does connect to the Eastern interconnection but there was no surplus capacity to buy from there.

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1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s not generally accepted practice to design facilities around temperatures that fall 30% outside of the average range for a given area :p 

 

 

Why not? Is the cost of preparing for such events vs not that significant? That seems hard to believe since plenty of other regions do make such preparations and so it's hard to imagine the savings outweighs the costs for when these tail events do happen.

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3 minutes ago, legend said:

 

 

Why not? Is the cost of preparing for such events vs not that significant? That seems hard to believe since plenty of other regions do make such preparations and so it's hard to imagine the savings outweighs the costs for when these tail events do happen.


I’m certain that literally none of us know the cost to winterize even just Houston for sustained temps in the single to low double digits, which has never happened in recorded history :p 

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20 minutes ago, sblfilms said:


I’m certain that literally none of us know the cost to winterize even just Houston for sustained temps in the single to low double digits, which has never happened in recorded history :p 

I'm absolutely certain if we don't radically cut carbon emissions AND ALSO prepare for more wacky and crazy and ZaNy weather, were going to continue to be un and underprepared for future climate catastrophies all over this country

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8 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I'm absolutely certain if we don't radically cut carbon emissions AND ALSO prepare for more wacky and crazy and ZaNy weather, were going to continue to be un and underprepared for future climate catastrophies all over this country


This seems likely. The poles of the extremes for weather will continue to move further apart in every place in the world and that makes preparation more difficult (and more costly)

 

I’ve said it twice already here, but it’s such a wild bit of trivia here: more than 100 counties in Texas had HIGH temps on Monday that were lower than the previous LOW record. That is bananas.

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5 minutes ago, sblfilms said:


This seems likely. The poles of the extremes for weather will continue to move further apart in every place in the world and that makes preparation more difficult (and more costly)

 

I’ve said it twice already here, but it’s such a wild bit of trivia here: more than 100 counties in Texas had HIGH temps on Monday that were lower than the previous LOW record. That is bananas.

Climate change is like Tide detergent; Makes the highs higher, and the lows lower. (Whites whiter and brights brighter for those lacking the reference. It may not be Tide. Whatever) The trend is overall upward, but the oscillations are more and more wild. The point is you're adding energy to an already unstable system.

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1 hour ago, sblfilms said:


I’m certain that literally none of us know the cost to winterize even just Houston for sustained temps in the single to low double digits, which has never happened in recorded history :p 

 

I definitely do not. But is Texas energy really all that much cheaper than other places that do winterize? If not, then why would it be any less affordable than it is elsewhere?

 

There might be something to it, but in general, I think people do a bad job planning for tail events, even when the cost of tail events is *substantially* more than the cost to prepare for it, so it also wouldn't be surprising at all to learn that the people thinking they're going to save money are just doing a bad job.

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6 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I definitely do not. But is Texas energy really all that much cheaper than other places that do winterize? If not, then why would it be any less affordable than it is elsewhere?

 

There might be something to it, but in general, I think people do a bad job planning for tail events, even when the cost of tail events is *substantially* more than the cost to prepare for it, so it also wouldn't be surprising at all to learn that the people thinking they're going to save money are just doing a bad job.

 

Just like letting bridges collapse during rush hour is really really fucking bad but we let it happen because no politicians are willing to stick their neck out for the funding. 

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22 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I definitely do not. But is Texas energy really all that much cheaper than other places that do winterize? If not, then why would it be any less affordable than it is elsewhere?

 

There might be something to it, but in general, I think people do a bad job planning for tail events, even when the cost of tail events is *substantially* more than the cost to prepare for it, so it also wouldn't be surprising at all to learn that the people thinking they're going to save money are just doing a bad job.

It is better lately but in San Diego we would go through cycles of wildfires => everyone screaming why wasn't more done to prepare => funds to fight fires cut/diverted when people forget about fires => more wildfires

 

 

Officials cut corners when they can because all they care about is the next election and not having a disaster isn't something they can point to.

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Parts in Austin are now shutting off water. It’s actually getting really bad for some people. Grocery stores open for 5hrs and are run dry. Some gas stations are empty.

 

 Many people I hear have no power, no water, no gas. Apple Campus in Austin is completely shut down and is looking wrecked.


in other news, I’m completely fine in my ivory tower as I enter day 3 without power.

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9 hours ago, thewhyteboar said:

 

 

If an elected official said to me that their response to a disaster like this is to "think outside the box to survive" and for me to come up with a "game plan" then they need to understand what that means is that I'll just take all your stuff (with violence, as necessary, to protect my family) and then you get to think outside the box. That is my "game plan."

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29 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

If an elected official said to me that their response to a disaster like this is to "think outside the box to survive" and for me to come up with a "game plan" then they need to understand what that means is that I'll just take all your stuff (with violence, as necessary, to protect my family) and then you get to think outside the box. That is my "game plan."

Republicans will say "durr durr I need my guns to fight tyranny" and then vote for a government who tries to actively kill them.

:thinking:

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How have republicans turned the idea of investing into some liberal communist China evil?  Investing in education, health, infrastructure or the environment all bad. 

It's like they want to keep people dependent on shitty low paying jobs, while keeping you uneducated and dying early in life so you are not a drain on "everyone".

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38 minutes ago, Ominous said:

How have republicans turned the idea of investing into some liberal communist China evil?  Investing in education, health, infrastructure or the environment all bad. 

It's like they want to keep people dependent on shitty low paying jobs, while keeping you uneducated and dying early in life so you are not a drain on "everyone".

Reaganomics have hurt America more than Al Qaeda could ever dream.

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So the issue is becoming more and more clear on the gas side. Because of the substantial pipeline infrastructure, gas fired power plants in Texas have very minimal holding tanks. Two things happened that made that a major problem.


1. The natural gas wells, particularly in the Permian, were frozen which caused an immediate drop in production.

 

2. Some major pipelines froze which slowed transmission of the gas that was available in storage tanks in places like Houston which house a massive amount of the natural gas reserves for the nation

 

Seems like the “simple” fix is to add more local storage capacity for the gas plants.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Ominous said:

It's like they want to keep people dependent on shitty low paying jobs, while keeping you uneducated and dying early in life so you are not a drain on "everyone".


Did you really just come to the realization that capitalists like cheap and easily replaced labor?

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26 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

So the issue is becoming more and more clear on the gas side. Because of the substantial pipeline infrastructure, gas fired power plants in Texas have very minimal holding tanks. Two things happened that made that a major problem.


1. The natural gas wells, particularly in the Permian, were frozen which caused an immediate drop in production.

 

2. Some major pipelines froze which slowed transmission of the gas that was available in storage tanks in places like Houston which house a massive amount of the natural gas reserves for the nation

 

Seems like the “simple” fix is to add more local storage capacity for the gas plants.

 

 

Turns out JIT isn't robust.

 

I wonder, is there any appetite from Texas politicians to force utilities to build and maintain massive and expensive holding tanks? Because I can guarantee they won't do this on their own.

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