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quote:
Texas secession talk fades amid winter storm, power outages

It wasn’t that way back — just some days and weeks, actually — that some Texas political leaders have been speaking in regards to the virtues of seceding from the USA.

On the finish of January, a state legislator filed a invoice geared toward making a legislative committee by referendum “to develop a plan for achieving Texas independence.”

The measure shortly won the endorsement of state GOP Chairman Allen West, who stated the measure aimed to present Texans “a proper to voice their opinions on a vital challenge.”

It’s possible you’ll not hear a lot of this rhetoric for the time being. That’s as a result of Texas’ want for help from exterior its borders has reached a excessive degree of urgency.

As many as 4 million residents, or about 15% of the state, spent a lot of the final weekend with out electrical energy as a result of the state’s energy grid buckled underneath an onslaught of ice, snow and subfreezing temperatures. The company overseeing the state’s energy grid stated Tuesday that it can’t predict when electrical service will likely be restored to all residents.

On Saturday, Gov. Greg Abbott appealed to President Biden for an emergency federal catastrophe declaration. Biden promptly delivered, releasing federal help to circulation into the state by the billions of {dollars} (and with out first insisting on an expression of non-public fealty to the White Home, not like a former president I may identify).

Let’s get a number of issues straight right here. Because the excessive climate struck late final week, the folks of Texas have suffered by harsh, life-threatening circumstances by no fault of their very own. Federal emergency support and providers exist exactly to answer such a state of affairs wherever within the 50 states it happens.

We must always all be grateful that the federal government continues to be geared up to render succor to Texans to take care of the hazards and vicissitudes of pure disasters, and we should always be a part of collectively in wishing the perfect for Texans — and residents of the various different states the place the outbreak of extreme climate during the last week or so has positioned life and limb in danger.

Nonetheless….

Texas political leaders haven’t been above mocking different states, reminiscent of California, of their instances of want. Right here’s Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) chortling over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emergency attraction to Californians to preserve power throughout a warmth wave final August:

“California is now unable to carry out even primary capabilities of civilization, like having dependable electrical energy,” Cruz tweeted on Aug. 19. “Biden/Harris/AOC need to make CA’s failed power coverage the usual nationwide. Hope you don’t like air-con!”



https://allcybertruck.com/2021...storm-power-outages/

Lucky for them Biden isn't opposed to "red state bailouts".


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Aw hell. First the snow and now this.



ROTFLMAO


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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It's turtles all the way down.



https://twitter.com/lara_hand/.../1361460058530308096

quote:
Volunteers are racing to rescue thousands of cold-stunned sea turtles off the coast of Texas as a record-breaking deadly winter storm drops temperatures below zero degrees.

Conservation group Sea Turtle Inc. told CBS News Wednesday morning it has already rescued over 4,000 turtles, reaching capacity at its facility in South Padre Island and sending overflow to the city's convention center. Officials believe the total number is even higher.

Executive Director Wendy Knight told CBS News SpaceX provided the organization early Wednesday morning with a large enough generator to restore power to its main facility and heat water for the turtles, which can't survive in cold water.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/4...-texas-winter-storm/


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Happenings in Texas.

https://www.boredpanda.com/win...-us-state-texas-pic/


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Fantastic pictures! ThumbsUp


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Life is short. Play with your dog.

 
Posts: 34795 | Location: Hooterville, OH | Registered: 23 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Mattress Mack comes to the rescue again in Houston.

quote:
For Tina Rios, her family and hundreds of other people, shelter from the winter storm that has left much of Houston without power or heat came from an unusual place: a furniture store.

Sitting at one of the many tables on display Wednesday inside Gallery Furniture’s cavernous showroom, Rios, 32, explained how she “started stressing really, really hard” after her suburban Houston mobile home lost power at around 4:30 a.m. on Monday and she, her husband, Eric Bennis, and their three children were soon able to see their breath inside. After spending one frigid night there, they realized they needed to find somewhere warm to wait out the blackout, not so much for the parents, who grew up in New Jersey and are used to cold, but for the children, ages 3, 9 and 10.

“They’re Texas babies,” said Bennis, a 31-year-old tow truck driver. “This is the first time they’ve seen white on the ground.”

They heard Gallery Furniture’s owner, Jim McIngvale, had opened his main store in north Houston as a shelter, so they made the hourlong drive from Channelview.

“We came in and they welcomed us with open arms,” said an emotional Rios.

As utility crews raced Wednesday to restore power to nearly 3.4 million customers in Texas and other parts of the U.S. while another blast of ice and snow threatened to cause more chaos in places that aren’t used to such weather, McIngvale, known as “Mattress Mack,” said Houston has been good to his business and his employees and that he was just doing his part to help.

“We all have a responsibility for the well-being of the community and we think this is our responsibility,” said McIngvale, who later walked around the store greeting people and offering them doughnuts and kolaches — Czech pastries that are popular in parts of Texas.


https://www.kcrg.com/2021/02/1...-after-winter-storm/


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Ted's not having a good week.

quote:
Sen. Ted Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico, with his family this week as Texas dealt with a winter storm that as of Thursday still has left 500,000 without power, Fox News has confirmed.

Photographs of Cruz, R-Texas, at an airport began circulating on social media late Wednesday, with people alleging that the senator had left the state for Cancun amid a major crisis. A Republican source told Fox News that the allegations Cruz was traveling to the Mexican city are true.

"The photos speak for themselves," the source said.


https://www.foxnews.com/politi...t-power-crisis-texas

More here:

https://www.politico.com/news/...eather-crisis-469760


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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“With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon,” Cruz said in a statement that left it ambiguous as to whether he planned to return so soon, or abruptly changed his ticket as the condemnation mounted.

At the Houston airport, he toted an expanded rolling bag that most travelers would consider far too big for one overnight, and too big for overhead stowage, plus a beach bag. Thursday afternoon at the Cancun airport, he had the same expanded rolling bag.


https://www.dallasnews.com/new...reeze-without-power/

Meanwhile, Beto was busy ...

https://twitter.com/BetoORourk.../1362280019863564291


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Power is back on for a lot of people but the water situation is a disaster.

quote:
Power began to flicker back on across much of Texas on Thursday, but millions across the state confronted another dire crisis: a shortage of drinkable water as pipes cracked, wells froze and water treatment plants were knocked offline.

The problems were especially acute at hospitals. One, in Austin, was forced to move some of its most critically ill patients to another building when its faucets ran nearly dry. Another in Houston had to haul in water on trucks to flush toilets.

But for many of the state’s residents stuck at home, the emergency meant boiling the tap water that trickled through their faucets, scouring stores for bottled water or boiling icicles and dirty snow on their stoves.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0...is-winter-storm.html


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
ERCOT officials spent 40 seconds on winter storm preparedness at Feb. 9 meeting


quote:
“It is actually going to be winter here pretty soon. As those of you in Texas know, we do have a cold front coming this way. We’ll probably see our winter peak later this week or in the very early part of next week. And Operations has issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everyone is up to speed with their winterization and we’re ready for the several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way.

“So more on that in the next couple of days, but it does look like we’ll have a little bit of winter weather to contend with during the course of the rest of this week. We do have a cold front coming this way.”

https://www.statesman.com/stor...-meeting/4507805001/


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Some pertinent commentary on the Texas electrical outage: https://www.dallasnews.com/opi...-electricity-market/

This doesn't address all the factors that led into the blackouts, but running a competitive electricity market while securing reliable operations under nearly all conditions is a much more challenging prospect than when area-wide utility operations were under the control of regulated monopoly utilities. You're left with trying to impose market-based conditions to encourage a wide number of parties to act not just in their own economic interests, but also the interests of the public at large.


This became more complex with the separation of electrical suppliers from the transmission system operators and the distribution companies that delivery electricity to the end users. Further complicating this is the proliferation of generating sources independently operated, or in the case of local solar connected to the distribution system, operating essentially autonomously without any centralized control.

The task of balancing supply and demand has always had some complexities, but it has become more and more complex in recent years. In addition, the mix of suppliers and users has resulted in new problems of maintaining stability of the entire system when accidents or storms disrupt portions of the system. The huge black-outs that occurred in the northeast a number of years ago show what can happen under such circumstances, where events cascade into catastrophe.

Coincidentally, I received the latest issue of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Power & Energy magazine in the mail yesterday. The focus of the entire issue was reliability and resiliency of the electrical grids throughout the world. The lead article focused on ERCOT and the challenges they face as renewables, primarily wind, make up an increasing part of their available generation. At one point in time last May, wind generation made up 59.3% of the total power being generated on their system.

Large base load units such as coal and nuclear plants along with some forms of gas-fired generation have inherent advantages in their ability to support the system during abnormal conditions. Other considerations, both economic and environmental, encourage other sources, but those sources bring new and sometimes difficult to solve problems for system operators.

I'm not advocating a retreat to the older sources, but I have a great deal of sympathy for the engineers and system operators who are trying to integrate the new generating sources into a secure electrical grid. I hope they are not trampled by the other factions promoting their own specific agendas without a clear understanding that not everything that might seem desirable is also practical.

Big Al


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Money seems to buy the most happiness when you give it away.

Why does everything have to be so complicated, all in the name of convenience. -ShiroKuro

A lifetime of experience will change a person. If it doesn't, then you're already dead inside. -MarkJ

 
Posts: 7365 | Location: Western PA | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Glad you weighed in; I've been reading up and it seemed like much of what's out there is spin from people who are involved, so it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Seems like the Dallas Morning News has some good reporting. I saw this earlier today:

https://www.dallasnews.com/bus...nts-and-cheap-rates/


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Most board members don't live in Texas.

quote:
Top board leaders of Texas’ embattled power grid operator said Tuesday they will resign following outrage over more than 4 million customers losing electricity last week during a deadly winter storm, including many whose frigid homes lacked heat for days in subfreezing temperatures.

The resignations are the first since the crisis began in Texas, and calls for wider firings remain in the aftermath of one of the worst power outages in U.S. history.

All of the five board directors who are stepping down, including Chairwoman Sally Talberg, live outside of Texas, which only intensified criticism of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. The resignations are effective Wednesday — a day before Texas lawmakers are expected to sharply question grid managers and energy officials about the failures during hearings at the state Capitol.

Another candidate for a director position, who also does not live in Texas, said he was withdrawing his name.

Four of the departing board members acknowledged “concerns about out-of-state board leadership” in a letter to grid members and the state’s Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT. During the crisis, ERCOT officials removed contact information for board members off its website, saying they had become the target of threats.

“Our hearts go out to all Texans who have had to go without electricity, heat, and water during frigid temperatures and continue to face the tragic consequences of this emergency,” the letter read.


https://apnews.com/article/tex...34a99d4a47ea2c4624a7

thoughts and prayers


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Ought to make ‘em live in Texas until the problems are solved.


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Life is short. Play with your dog.

 
Posts: 34795 | Location: Hooterville, OH | Registered: 23 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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This article identifies failures in gas supply and consequent loss of gas-fueled generation for the largest part of the blackouts in Texas. It seems likely, given the Texas system's large percentage (53% as of 2019) of gas-fueled generation.

Electricity is not a commodity that is easy to store. There are a few utility-sized batteries coming into use and some hydro plants and pumped storage plants can provide some extra power to the system, but their contributions tend to be miniscule in most systems, Texas included.

When demand threatens to exceed supply, more generation is brought into service if it is available. Failing that, load must be decreased or the voltage of the entire system will collapse and shut down everything. The first to go are typically industrial facilities such as alumininum smelters and electric arc furnaces that can be shut down and restarted without great difficulty. Beyond those interruptable loads, the only resource available to system operators are area blackouts, usually deployed as rolling blackouts to more or less share the misery. I'm sure many Californians recall the times of rolling blackouts that have occurred in that state.

The collapse of generation in Texas was so steep and severe that, while the grid was saved from total collapse, the restoration of power cut due to rolling blackouts did not take minutes or hours, but rather days in many locations.

The interrelationship of gas production and electricity generation is becoming a bigger problem as gas took over a big part of electricity generation in large areas of the country. I know that the California electric grid operator, CAISO, actively works with the two major gas suppliers, PG&E and SoCalGas, to minimize the combined impacts on gas supply by primary gas users and what are regarded by the gas suppliers as noncore users including electric generators.

It's a complex problem, made more difficult because the controls are not directly on the participants in the grids, but through market-based incentives to secure the desired results.

Big Al


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Money seems to buy the most happiness when you give it away.

Why does everything have to be so complicated, all in the name of convenience. -ShiroKuro

A lifetime of experience will change a person. If it doesn't, then you're already dead inside. -MarkJ

 
Posts: 7365 | Location: Western PA | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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