I did. You may have breezed by it. Monticello, near Mt. Pleasant, I think had three huge coal generators. There was a mine in Winfield, near Mt. Pleasant, as well as one here in Sulphur Springs. They are all shut down. You can thank Democrats!! If you voted Democrat, you voted for this misery.

How many new homes have been built beyond the grid capacity

Those coal plants closed mostly because they were no longer economically viable with all the oil and gas recoveries from the Barnett Shale and Permian Basin. It’s expensive to bring coal down from Wyoming and process it into electricity. Can’t compete with cheap oil and gas.

No doubt all the environmental pressures played a role but they would have opened back up in a heartbeat over the past 4 years if the economics had worked. We had a different president who changed most of those rules, remember?

In my small town alone, 1,000’s.

I can appreciate there are the popular topics to shake your fist at. This is simply a mechanical problem (stuff is broken or frozen) as it wasn't properly equipped/prepped and the most popular fuel (NG) has also had it's issues reaching places at the needed volume. The excess capacity works in the heat, not so much when it's cold. Why is that I wonder?

In 4-5 years, all of this will be largely forgotten from an industry perspective and "we" don't want to pay for the insurance. Heated wind turbine blades, annually winterized and tested plant gear, etc.

No different than my business... companies hate spending money on disaster recovery sites/high availability gear as it's insurance, just in case...The smart ones practice/test, annually. When something happens and they need it, it's worth it's weight in gold. Others half-[censored] it to make a check mark, and when they need to actually do it, they struggle. I think the latter identifies our current state of affairs.

As battery technology improves, I do think it will be interesting to see how home power storage (and even grid storage at some point) changes this for those that can invest in it. Ours has been mostly on/off hourly since Monday I guess, with storage capability here, might not even notice.

Charlie

"top state lawmakers called for investigations into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and Texans demanded accountability for the disaster. "

I hope they get to the facts, and politics don't cloud the subject.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/

Texas counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity, according to the state’s grid manager. Natural gas and coal make up the lion’s share, comprising 82%. Sure, some wind turbines glitched under cold weather conditions, but so did natural gas- and coal-fired power. That is partly because water intake facilities froze for these generators, just as they did in the last extreme winter seen in February 2011. At least some natural gas had to be redirected for heating rather than power, adding to the supply shortage.

Texas is an energy giant. This shouldn’t happen here. We have a large and diverse energy supply. The culprit here is a clear failure of preparation, period.

The blame game is already falling into predictable narratives. On the right, the problem is too much reliance on renewable energy. On the left, it’s privatization, Republican leadership and a failure to anticipate the effects of climate change. There’s some truth in most of it, but the focus needs to be on specific actions that were not taken, who’s responsible for them and how to prevent them from happening again. Solve specific problems rather than railing at huge ones.

It seems apparent that power generators haven’t done enough to winterize their plants, so shutdowns and failures kicked in just when the power was needed most. That extends to renewables, too, as wind turbines froze over. Natural gas transmission has been a problem as well.

These are big, but fixable, problems. The Legislature must dig in to identify the specifics and then act accordingly. A law enacted in 2011 gave the Public Utility Commission power to require generators to report on their abnormal weather preparations and file an emergency plan. Has that been done, and if preparations were inadequate, why didn’t anyone step in? Perhaps regulators need more enforcement teeth. That’s always a tough sell in Texas, but it’s clear these companies need a nudge, and perhaps help paying the bills.

It’ll be all too easy to forget this dreadful week when spring arrives. But it’s not just the occasional winter storm. Every summer, our power supply and grid are stressed by the extensive heat. We haven’t seen this level of failure yet during a summer, but it’s coming.

Never even been to one but I've been interested in them for some time now. Properly set up they produce electricity in two way. One is directly from the spinning turbine and the other is from the heat coming from the turbine (around 600 degree's) is used for steam generated electricity increasing their efficiency. When you look at the history of gas turbine generation you find interesting bits of info. One of the oldest ones was decommissioned after almost a 65 year run, not because of turbine failure but due to generator failure. Unlike other generation systems that take a considerable time to get up to operating speed the turbines are operating as soon as they start up. They can also be trailer mounted and used as a temporary system or back up. I just don't see a reasonable argument against them.

My BIL said the last time they had shed load was in 2011, their finding were for power plants to move all crucial equipment to an enclosed area...... the plant owners bitched about how much it would cost......and here we are. I got to think they will be forced to now.

The good thing is San Antonio is in defrost mode now. Hopefully the rest of the state will be able to get above freezing.

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I dont beleive this. The power grid problem is the same as the water supply and the roads. Nothing was designed to take on the massive increase of people moving here year after year when they were built. Texas isnt keeping up with the migration . Same problem cali has in the summer with there power grid. You dont rely on any capacity when its running at 98% all the time

“If this is legit”, then someone needs to be fired. Period. There was a decision made in Texas somewhere, and it screwed us all.

Someone always has to be fired, or a lawsuit needs to be filed....... its the American way.

Someone always has to be fired, or a lawsuit needs to be filed....... its the American way.

It is this time. We can plainly see the entire outline of Texas on that map. Our bordering states don’t seem to have that problem we do. So that means someone in Texas decided to run things a certain way. And that way sucked compared to how the other states did it. So yeah, I do think someone needs to be fired over this one.