Texas GOP Hubris Turns Around And Bites Them In The Ass

[dales]

My nephew lives in Austin, TX......

'A complete bungle': Texas' energy pride goes out with cold
PAUL J. WEBER
,
Associated Press
Feb. 16, 2021
Updated: Feb. 16, 2021 5:29 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Anger over Texas' power grid failing in the face of a record winter freeze mounted Tuesday as millions of residents in the energy capital of the U.S. remained shivering with no assurances that their electricity and heat — out for 36 hours or longer in many homes — would return soon or stay on once it finally does.

“I know people are angry and frustrated,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who woke up to more than 1 million people still without power in his city. “So am I.”


In all, between 2 and 3 million customers in Texas still had no power nearly two full days after historic snowfall and single-digit temperatures created a surge in demand for electricity to warm up homes unaccustomed to such extreme lows, buckling the state's power grid and causing widespread blackouts. More bad weather, including freezing rain, was expected Tuesday night.

Making matters worse, expectations that the outages would be a shared sacrifice by the state's 30 million residents quickly gave way to a cold reality, as pockets in some of America's largest cities, including San Antonio, Dallas and Austin, were left to shoulder the lasting brunt of a catastrophic power failure, and in subfreezing conditions that Texas' grid operators had known was coming.

The breakdown sparked growing outrage and demands for answers over how Texas — whose Republican leaders as recently as last year taunted California over the Democratic-led state's rolling blackouts — failed such a massive test of a major point of state pride: energy independence. And it cut through politics, as fuming Texans took to social media to highlight how while their neighborhoods froze in the dark Monday night, downtown skylines glowed despite desperate calls to conserve energy.

“We are very angry. I was checking on my neighbor, she’s angry, too," said Amber Nichols, whose north Austin home has had no power since early Monday. "We’re all angry because there is no reason to leave entire neighborhoods freezing to death.”

The toll of the outages was causing increasing worry. Harris County emergency officials reported “several carbon monoxide deaths” in or around Houston and reminded people not to operate cars or gasoline powered generators indoors. Authorities said three young children and their grandmother, who were believed to be trying to keep warm, also died in a suburban Houston house fire early Tuesday. In Galveston, the medical examiner's office requested a refrigerated truck to expand body storage, although County Judge Mark Henry said he didn't know how many deaths there had been related to the weather.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called for an investigation of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state's power grid. His indignation struck a much different tone than just a day earlier, when he told Texans that ERCOT was prioritizing residential customers and that power was getting restored to hundreds of thousands of homes.

But hours after those assurances, the number of outages in Texas only rose, at one point exceeding 4 million customers.

“This is unacceptable," Abbott said.

By late Tuesday afternoon, ERCOT officials said some power had been restored, but they warned that even those gains were fragile and more outages were possible.

The grid began preparing for the storm a week ahead of time, but it reached a breaking point early Monday as conditions worsened and knocked power plants offline, ERCOT president Bill Magness said. Some wind turbine generators were iced, but nearly twice as much power was wiped out at natural gas and coal plants. Forcing controlled outages was the only way to avert an even more dire blackout in Texas, Magness said.

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“What we’re protecting against is worse,” he said.

Still, Magness said ERCOT could not offer a firm timetable for when power might be fully restored. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Texas had requested 60 generators and that hospitals and nursing homes would get priority.

Thirty-five warming shelters were opened to accommodate more than 1,000 people around the state, FEMA said during a briefing. But even they weren't spared from the outages, as Houston was forced to close two on Monday because of a loss in power.

Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said the problem was a lack of weatherized power plants and a statewide energy market that doesn't incentivize companies to generate electricity when demand is low. In Texas, demand peaks in August, at the height of the state's sweltering summers.

He rejected that the storm went beyond what ERCOT could have anticipated.

“That's nonsense. It's not acceptable,” Hirs said. “Every eight to 10 years we have really bad winters. This is not a surprise.”

Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas in Austin, said the state's electric grid fell victim to a cold spell that was longer, deeper and more widespread than Texas had seen in decades.

Climate change should be factored in too, he said.

“We’re going to have to plan for more of this kind of weather. People said this would never happen in Texas, and yet it has.”

Stephanie Murdoch, 51, began bundling up inside her Dallas condominium wearing blankets, two pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, a hat and gloves since the power first went out early Monday. She said she was worried about another blast of wintry weather forecast for Tuesday night and the possibility of her home's pipes bursting.

“There’s a serious lack of preparation on the part of the energy companies to not be ready,” Murdoch said.

In Houston, Barbara Matthews said she lasted in her home until Monday night. That's when the 73-year-old finally called 911 and was taken to the nearby Foundry Church, where dozens of other people were also taking shelter. On the ride there, she noticed a subdivision just down the road that had power.

“It is aggravating how some parts down the street have lights and then we don’t,” Matthews said. “When they said rolling blackouts, I took them at their word.”

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

Greg Abbott went on Fox last night and blamed the Texas blackouts on a congresswoman from New York and a green new deal that doesn't actually exist.

[BoSoxGal]

As was noted on Morning Joe - and I can attest having lived on the far northern plains of Montana - wind turbines are actually capable of functioning in extreme cold temperatures.

Texas bought the cheapest blades and housings for their windmills, materials which aren’t capable of operating under extreme cold conditions. So that explains why they lost their wind power, which accounts for 10% of their energy production. All the other energy production that went offline - coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear - is on account of having cut corners on all the other infrastructure, too.

Texas might rethink this approach, especially since extreme cold is likely to be a more regular visitor in future decades as the jet stream is being totally reshaped by global warming.

[Burning Petard]

I noted a rumor I received online Sunday evening that Texas was getting wiped out by Windmills freezing.
I heard on NPR yesterday morning an interview with the head honcho of the Texas electrical generating companies that their windmill farms were generating at 90% or better oftheir total capacity. The problem was in gas or coal fired generators that were shutting down because of the cold, and he could not predict how long it would take to get them back on line.

So it was old technology vs mythical climate change that has Texas in 'rolling blackouts' that last for 24+ hours before the blackout rolls on to somewhere else. Last time it was flooded flood plains where developers had built thousands of houses because 'they now had plans' to divert the water to somewhere else (where developers had built with similar promises.) Gotta love those Texas GOP non-regulating regulators.

snailgate

[ex-khobar Andy]

Let's get rid of all those regulations which stifle competition! ([/sarc] for those who need it.)

[Scooter]

Gives a whole new meaning to "from my cold dead hands".

[Econoline]

As was noted on Morning Joe - and I can attest having lived on the far northern plains of Montana - wind turbines are actually capable of functioning in extreme cold temperatures.

Texas bought the cheapest blades and housings for their windmills, materials which aren’t capable of operating under extreme cold conditions. So that explains why they lost their wind power, which accounts for 10% of their energy production. All the other energy production that went offline - coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear - is on account of having cut corners on all the other infrastructure, too.

Texas might rethink this approach, especially since extreme cold is likely to be a more regular visitor in future decades as the jet stream is being totally reshaped by global warming.

From The New Yorker:

I’m glad that there were plenty of authorities to try to set the record straight, but, of course, the truth was still searching for the winter boots in the back of the garage by the time the falsehoods had spread across the Internet. It’s particularly annoying because the bad-faith nature of the whole idea should have been obvious to anyone with an iota of geographical knowledge. Besides Texas, the biggest producers of wind power in the country are Iowa, Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Illinois, Kansas, North Dakota, and California. Except for California, all these places are situated to the north of Texas, and deal with much harsher winters. The idea that wind turbines cannot deal with cold weather is, prima facie, ridiculous: countries with huge wind-power installations include Germany, France, and Italy, all of which have managed in the past to host the Winter Olympics—and Italy is planning to host them again, in 2026. People have developed plans for building giant wind farms in Greenland to feed the European Union and the United States. If cold weather somehow made it impossible for wind turbines to operate, you would think someone would have noticed by now.

Cold weather can, however, make it hard to operate wind turbines if you don’t plan for it—installations of “cold-weather kits” prevent icing and freezing—and it appears that the Texas authorities didn’t plan for much. State officials, it turns out, had been gleefully tweeting at California authorities for months, making fun of them for not planning well enough to prevent brownouts when heat waves struck the West Coast. But tweeting—and a deep and abiding faith in markets to solve all problems—seems not to have been a good strategy when faced with a severe cold snap.

A cold snap that, by the way, seems likely to be linked to the jet-stream collapse that comes when you warm the Arctic, as we have been doing by burning large quantities of fossil fuel. If you wanted to do something about that, you’d need more wind turbines. Funny about that.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Alone among the lower 48, the Texas electrical grid avoids hooking up to the national grid, as part of a deliberate avoidance of federal regulations. There's a good piece here (MSNBC) about it. It was totally a political act.

Texas' Perry: Enduring blackouts is better than federal regulations
Rick Perry wants Texans, who may be wondering whether their status quo is a wise approach, to resist the temptation to go in a more effective direction.

Millions of Texans remain stuck in misery today, as much of the state struggles with power blackouts, a lack of running water, and freezing temperatures. But as the Houston Chronicle reported, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) wants state residents to consider how conditions could be worse: Texas could, the Republican said, be part of the United States' energy system.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry suggests that going days without power is a sacrifice Texans should be willing to make if it means keeping federal regulators out of the state's power grid. In a blog posted on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's website, Perry is quoted responding to the claim that "those watching on the left may see the situation in Texas as an opportunity to expand their top-down, radical proposals."

The former governor was also quoted saying, "Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business. Try not to let whatever the crisis of the day is take your eye off of having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically, and strategically."

Perry, who also served as Donald Trump's Energy Secretary, added, "If wind and solar is where we're headed, the last 48 hours ought to give everybody a real pause and go wait a minute."

So, a few things.

First, as Perry really ought to understand by now, blaming renewable energy for Texas' ongoing crisis is demonstrably ridiculous.

Second, the former governor's insistence that Texas has "a resilient grid" is belied by the state's repeated energy breakdowns. It was exactly 10 years ago this month when the Lone Star State faced another rough winter, which Texas' power grid couldn't handle: demand for power spiked, and in 2011, just like in 2021, the system couldn't keep up. The same thing happened in 1989, too.

After the 2011 breakdown -- Rick Perry had been governor for about a decade at that point -- the nation's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission prepared a lengthy report on what went wrong, explaining to state officials that Texas' energy infrastructure simply wasn't designed well to handle harsh winter conditions. FERC made recommendations on improvements, warning Texas that systemic collapses would almost certainly happen again.

State officials ignored the warnings -- because they could. Texas has an independent grid that frees the state from the "burdens" of federal safeguards.

Indeed, the cruelty of Perry's comments this week is rooted in the idea that Texans facing crisis conditions should be thankful right now that their state has its own independent system of power. In the continental United States, every state has to answer to federal regulators -- except Texas, which goes its own way. (Note, other states in the region are experiencing similar weather conditions this week, but they're not struggling to the same extent.)

And so, when the state's power grid suffers systemic breakdowns, and FERC explains how to prevent similar crises in the future, officials in Texas have the luxury of saying in effect, "Thanks, but no thanks. We'd rather have blackouts than federal safeguards."

It's against this backdrop that Rick Perry wants Texans, who may be wondering right now whether their status quo is a wise approach, to resist the temptation to go in a more effective direction. Once this crisis subsides, it'll be interesting to see just how much of the state agrees.

[Scooter]

Ted Cruz could learn something about the real spirit of Texas:

Strangers took in a delivery driver for 5 days after she was stranded in the Texas storm

When a delivery driver's car began sliding down on an icy Texas driveway, the driver closed her eyes, praying she wouldn't hit the client's home.

She didn't hit the house but Chelsea Timmons' car crushed a flowerbed outside an Austin, Texas, home as a snowstorm paralyzed the state last Sunday. She didn't know it yet, but she would soon be grateful to end up in this particular driveway.

Homeowners Doug Condon and Nina Richardson checked on Timmons to try to help get her Toyota Rav4 up the driveway, but it was stuck. They invited her to wait for a tow truck inside their home.

"I'm just extremely fortunate that this is where my car crashed," Timmons told CNN. "It was in their flower bed. It wasn't in a ditch. It wasn't on the side of the road ... I was stuck someplace safe and warm."

The bad weather persisted a lot longer than any of them thought. Five days later, Timmons was still living with the couple.

Since Sunday, Texas has weathered a fierce storm that left cities without power, water and warmth for millions of people who aren't used to this kind of cold.

Amid the tales of people struggling to survive, a few stories of hope showed that Texas hospitality is the real deal.

Timmons, who lives three hours away in Houston, said she makes weekly trips to Austin because the delivery market there pays a little more. The 32-year-old picked up one last delivery on Sunday as the snow picked up, thinking she would have time to make it home.

She'd struggled to drive into the hilly neighborhood at midday to deliver the groceries, which were already a day late and included steaks for the couple's planned Valentine's Day dinner.

"I was going down very slowly, remembering to tap my brake," Timmons said from her hosts' home in Austin. "I tapped more aggressively and it just still kept sliding. My heart just dropped as I just slid right towards their house and I just closed my eyes and just prayed that I did not hit these people's home, that I did not damage my car. I just knew — definitely knew — if I hit their home, that was my tip."

She texted the couple to let them know she was there with their groceries and that she was stuck.

Condon came outside and they tried to get her car up the steep driveway. Timmons said she tried to wait in her car and call AAA for a tow, but Condon invited her inside.

With no-contact deliveries, Timmons was used to sanitizing before and after she dropped off the items, in addition to wearing a mask and keeping her distance, she said.

"They invited me inside and of course, at that point, I was just feeling very awkward coming into a stranger's home. But they were super kind," she said. "When they invited me in, I sat with my mask in their kitchen for about two hours."

She kept calling for tow truck updates and went back out to her car to wait. A few hours later, the towing service said they wouldn't be able to make it to the area safely, due to the storm, she said.

"As soon as we found out that AAA couldn't come and the conditions were getting worse, it seemed silly to even imagine that she would go to a hotel," Richardson said. "It didn't even occur to us."

Richardson and Condon had just received their first Covid-19 vaccine shot a week before as part of phase 1B. The couple said they were not going to let Timmons sit out there in the cold.

Daytime turned to night and soon dinner was upon them. It was Valentine's Day and the couple made steak with blue cheese, broccoli and a salad. It was a much better meal than Timmons imagined she'd be getting that night, she said.

"That was definitely not how I expected my Valentine's Day to go," Timmons said with a laugh. "We had a great dinner and I sat, I was warm, I was fed and it was just amazing and I thought it was just going to be for one night, but here I am, day five."

In the meantime, Timmons learned that back at her apartment in Houston, the power had gone out. If she had in fact made it home, it would have simply been to live there without power.

Each day, they would monitor the weather and Timmons and Condon tried to make progress on her car. They shoveled small parts of the driveway and tried to inch it back up, bit by bit.

"We were using a broom and a spade to be able to clear the driveway as best we could," Condon said. "We thought we had it cleared enough for her to be able to get up. She got up about halfway and got stuck."

Every time Timmons suggested leaving to get a hotel room somewhere, the couple worried about what situation she would find herself in.

"'Our guest bedroom is better than the Hampton Inn,'" Timmons said the couple told her. "'If you leave, what are you going to eat? Are you sure you can make it there all the way?'"

As the days went on, the group became chummy and it was just like Timmons was a guest staying in the couple's spare bedroom.

"We've had kind of an exciting week with crazy weather and a surprise guest, which turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience," Condon said.
The couple's dogs, Crosby and Haddie, soon began sitting on Timmons' bed and snuggling up to her.

"She just became kind of part of the family pretty quickly," Richardson said.

Simmons helped the couple prepare meals. Someone would boil the pasta and someone else would work on the other parts of the meal, Richardson said.

Timmons made a coconut cake to thank the couple. "We were definitely the beneficiaries of her baking," Condon said.

For Condon and Richardson, they hope that others would have done the same for a stranger needing help.

"We would hope that if our daughters were in a situation similar to Chelsea, that there would be someone that would treat them like we treated Chelsea," he said. "I don't think we ever thought twice about it."

The couple and Timmons said they plan on staying in touch. On Friday, the weather let up and Timmons safely made it home to Houston on a sunny day with clear roads.

"I am so grateful that they were not only able but willing to let a complete stranger into their home in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a storm ... with no hesitation," Timmons said. "They just opened their doors, opened their home and said, 'Come in and relax.'"

"I'm just so grateful for them and so glad that this is where I ended up out of all the driveways in the world," she said.

[Big RR]

Ted says he would have done that, but he had to go somewhere.