Texas power use hits record high as heatwave lingers
Texas power use hits record high as heatwave lingers
Demand for power in Texas hit a record high on Monday as homes and businesses kept air conditioners cranked up to escape a heatwave.
Texas power use hits record high as heatwave lingers::Demand for power in Texas hit a record high on Monday as homes and businesses kept air conditioners cranked up to escape a heatwave.
If only the power companies had been repeatedly warned that this would happen, and given millions of dollars of taxpayer money to increase power generation potential.
Oh wait… They were warned of this? And they were given taxpayer money? And they illegally used it for stock buybacks instead? And nothing was ever done to prosecute the illegal spending? Yeah, that sounds about on par for Texas.
111Texas: The One Star State
42Whaat? But THAT would mean Republican lawmakers are pushing a dangerous and dishonest anti-government agenda that is, in fact, just a cover for greedy anti-consumerism! That can't be true!!
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I came to Texas this week for a vacation. Power has already been out here for 6 hours so far and was blinking on and off last night. Getting strong 3rd world vibes down here...
29Lucky you, you get the true Texas experience.
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Here we go with the Texas grid again. No matter what they get hit with they insist on remaining independent. Well actually it's the cold that gets them, but they have a problem they're not dealing with none the less.
19Can the grid handle it?
12The question of "can the grid handle it" is a complex question. ERCOT has some fun gauges on a dashboard view. I think those gauges only answer some things but not other important ones. E.g., there could be transmission bottlenecks within the grid that aren't represented on those charts. And such bottlenecks might only become a problem if generation were to fail in the right place(s). If we were to rely on importing from outside the grid, what are the limits of the DC ties--bot just their current flows, but their remaining capacity? There are also factors that aren't "the grid" but which will get lumped in with the same concept, too, like each independent plant supplying energy to the grid. (Those were the precipitating problem during Icepocalypse.)
12
If only they lived in a place where their was trees and water :/
9We've invented a machine that removes heat by producing more heat! Yay technology!
5If we get enough air conditioners and put them outside it'll fix everything.
1
Why is this still news? Something like this gets posted every week on Lemmy or Reddit and gets a ton of upvotes. The article even says that there is more than enough power. I have friends that live in Texas that haven’t had a single outage since the winter storms years ago. But still, there are comments that they’ve been warned that this would happen. Yes, they were warned and it seems to have worked, they’re doing just fine it looks like.
If this was an article on corruption or the lack of connection with the rest of the nation, that would be another thing. This is simply an article saying there is record power usage and they’re doing just fine.
-9Texans are worried because of the previous track record: The winter storm that froze people to death because the supply couldn't keep up with demand. Our grid was incredibly close to a whole shit down, which would have killed even more people. All of which happened because the people in charge of such things didn't prepare for a winter storm like that despite being warned that it was necessary like a decade ago.
And heat is no joke. So yeah, we worry. We have kids, elderly family and friends, pets, and healthy adults are also not immune. When demand skyrockets we get worried because people have already died and we don't want to see that happen again. We're also very aware of how often we're told things are "fixed" when nothing has actually been done. So we cross our fingers, and we sweat, and we hope the grid doesn't shut down and kill us. Sorry our worrying and upvoting of the topic bothers you.
21Tell that to my 92 YO aunt in Austin, she'll give you an ear full.
5