Texas power use hits record high as heatwave lingers

www.reuters.com 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.

33 comments

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.
- Texas: The One Star State
- Whaat? 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!!
- I mean, even if everyone did everything right, the demand would still be record high, right? It's not like heeding the warnings would lower demand.
  
  Yes, but if they had invested it like they were supposed to, the grid capacity would be higher, so there would be less chance of failures...
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...
- Lucky you, you get the true Texas experience.
- I'm gonna call bullshit. Is this being reported anywhere? I know it would because it has been before. And if not I doubt you have or will provide any proof of it.
  
  Not sure why you would lie about something like this unless you're just looking to shit talk Texas.
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.
- Texas is comfortable. Try coming down south
  
  Much as I'd enjoy the rural environment and wide open spaces, it's 74F at my beach house right now.
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.
- Texans 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.
  
  Legit question: it's obvious that there aren't going to be any changes until Abbott and friends are gone.
  
  Why do y'all keep electing him?
  
  While I wholly support this bit of righteous outage… most of the comments here are going to be about the grid and the Republicans.
- Tell that to my 92 YO aunt in Austin, she'll give you an ear full.
Can the grid handle it?
- It seems fine as of this moment. Check back in a couple of hours. It's currently 105°F where I am.
  
  Still doing ok there, cowboy?
- The 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.)
If only they lived in a place where their was trees and water :/
We've invented a machine that removes heat by producing more heat! Yay technology!
- If we get enough air conditioners and put them outside it'll fix everything.

33 comments