Texas Power Outages

[NowISeetheLight]

Just saw on the morning news there are outages in Texas. Found a neat website with a map. Quite a few counties having issues, some at or near 100%, at 4am. I wonder how its going to look at 12 noon.

https://poweroutage.us/area/state/texas

[czarjak]

1. Thanks Greg.

[NowISeetheLight]

2. Greg?

[czarjak]

4. Abbott!

[NowISeetheLight]

6. Ah

Now I get it! Not a good sleep night so sipping a Christian Bros Peach Brandy and 7UP at 4am. Won't be driving anywhere this morning. LOL

[Liberal In Texas]

15. As much as I can't stand Abbott this hasn't anything to do with a grid failure.

Those outages are where severe thunderstorms were tracking last night.

[czarjak]

19. Tick-Tock

[brewens]

3. When California had those brownouts cause by the Enron screwjob here in Idaho we

were asked to limit our power usage during peak hours to help them out. It made no difference to me because I worked those hours all of those days. We didn't hear too much bitching about that then.

I can just imagine today if we were asked to do that to help people in California. We'd have idiots cranking to a/c 24-7 intentionally. It would be better to say nothing.

[NowISeetheLight]

5. Wow

I hadn't heard of that so I googled it. Sounds like something that could happen. Especially nowadays.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/us/tapes-show-enron-arranged-plant-shutdown.html

https://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/enron.tapes/

[gay texan]

7. the one in west texas were caused by a storm last night n/t

[tanyev]

11. East Texas, too. Storm a few days ago.

[Igel]

16. Storm last night.

Real strong one.

Fence in the backyard is down.

Lots of trees down. Saw fences shattered on the way to my 3-hour gig doing make-up testing at my high school.

High school had no power. Mine came on at 5:31 this morning, sort of a surprise alarm clock a minute after my phone chimed me into grogginess.

https://www.khou.com/article/weather/houston-weather-bush-record-wind-gust/285-20cf39fd-9eaf-46eb-a931-b045f00a21f0

As the storms approached, they warned of the lightning and possible straight-line wind damage, and there was plenty of that across Southeast Texas. You can see some of that here.

The National Weather Service reported that there were trees down across several parts of the Houston area. It also noted a record Wednesday night. As the storms moved through, one gust at Bush IAH was clocked at 97 miles per hour. That was at 9:04 p.m., and according to the National Weather Service, that’s the highest gust ever recorded there.

I don't think Abbott ginned up the storms. Jus' sayin'. But that's the line N-NW of Houston.

[Johnny2X2X]

8. Dangerous

It hit 115 in Laredo Texas this week, was well above 105 in a number of bigger cities. The idea of being in 110 degree heat with heat indexes above 120 without any power is terrifying. Just beyond miserable and into dangerous.

[sarcasmo]

9. Vote for garbage, expect garbage.

[dlk]

10. There were outages in Houston after last night's thunderstorm

A family member let me know. There are usually power outages when it rains in Texas. The power grid there is a monument to the pervasive corruption.

[Torchlight]

12. Quite a few outages due to the violent weather over the past week.

Though I fully expect the grid to undergo partial failures at least twice this summer.

[mopinko]

13. if i lived in tx, i would absolutely have my own power source.

i’d have as many pv’s as my roof could hold. (confession- i do have a big array, about to buy a 2nd). it may not power me all day, but if enough ppl had them, it would cut the need at peak times.
i assume the market there is rigged against renewables, but hopeful the fed credits tip the scale for some folks. imho air conditioning and pv should ALWAYS be paired. even if it’s a couple panels wired to the unit.

[NowISeetheLight]

17. Generac

I had a gas generator at my house in SC. Being kind of semi-rural it was a good investment. I only had to use it a couple times but when I did power was down several hours.

[moonshinegnomie]

20. i have a portable generator and some portable air conditioners just in case

after snowpocalypse in 2021 im staying prepared

[Liberal In Texas]

14. These aren't grid failures.

Mostly due to the severe thunderstorms we've been having knocking out equipment and power lines. Also you get the occasional worn out transformer failing. Our power company employees are great in getting power fixed after these outages.

[FakeNoose]

18. Another interesting map (same source)

This website tracks power outages in the entire country, not just Texas. They identify the power companies by name and how many outages for each. This is a great resource!

I'm bookmarking this.