How many BLF members in Texas are needing to break out the Lanterns and Flashlights lately?
Just reading about the outages going on. scary that it can happen this early in the year before summer even sets in.
Must be a lot of personal generators going on.
Where we live the power is PP&L and for the most part it is rock solid. And when it does go down the service truck depot is only like 4 miles away so they respond quick.
Anyway hope you all are fairing well.
Thanks,
Keith
Here in Florida we have FPL. We used to call them Florida Power and Flicker, but the last few years its been pretty stable. They did a lot of upgrades since the 2004/2005 Hurricane Seasons. Now, usually the only time something happens is when some idiot takes out a power pole, or another idiot grew a tree right under the power line and a branch took it out.
I can't fully comment on the situation due to BLF rules.
I hope that Texas can get their act together, or else Texans will continue to suffer. 
Too many electric cars overloading the system of wind turbines — just a thought
Another thought — If we all go out and buy electric cars — will half of us be stranded on the side of the road
6 power plants out. 2900MW lost production.
Looks like most of the power outages are in a single area around Somervell Co. And a few other areas.
Most of the rest of the state has power. Better than 0.1% outages
Driving back from Dallas Friday, when we passed the windmill belt, many were not spinning. Whatever that means.
Still, it’s frelling hot. Was outside grilling. Had the ceiling fan a’blowing.
I used to have a swamp cooler on the back porch for just such occasions.
All the Best,
Jeff
oh, FYI here is a TX power tracker site:
The main problem in Texas comes from dipshit greedy management decisions and not properly upgrading the grid.
Renewable power sources have been shown to be the most reliable back in February of last year, and since Texas has a lot of sun and a lot of wind, Texans should install as much capacity as possible, as well as finally activate the interstate power interconnects and give their installations some much needed upgrades.
That obviously won’t happen though for reasons that most of you probably know about, and the fact that a decent number of pseudo-elected people hold a lot of stakes and are influenced by people in the fossil fuel industry.
Here is a thoughtfully done video about EV’s & their practicality.
As far as I am concerned the main players are Hydro, Nuclear, Coal, Gas & Oil.
That is where the money should be invested.
Anyway, the main reason gasoline is more expensive is because of speculation and profit seeking, not really supply.
I’d like to see a lot more solar on homes and in well planned new communities. Stick solar on every roof and some fields. Peaks summer usage just seems to happen with peak sunshine. As for “it’s about the money” of course it is. I don’t work for free not many either do. If alternate energy makes money then it sells. Oil companies have been dumping lots of money into alternatives. USA infrastructure is not properly maintained no hiding that.
@texas shooter, that’s not what I meant.
I meant it in the fact that there are a lot of conflicts of interests and dirty money being thrown around.
Very few large entities are playing by the rules, or modify the rules to make it harder for other players to do stuff.
Hugh piles of stinking rules. My blame goes mostly to the forth branch of government, bureaucracy. No body writes a 14,000 page spending Bill without an army of paper pushing Bureaucrats. How many laws and counting? Nice thing about bureaucrats is they write rules that get enforced as law with real penalties. Look at all the commerce codes, pork on most bills. Bureaucrats breed new government jobs for themselves by themselves.
When your at the top of the food chain your legal department submits the bids that few can for contracts. Having worked for County government I prayed that the second lowest bidder would win just for better than average gear. My old department is sitting on several hundred unissued Tasers. Why, well Taser has no competitor so we didn’t have to get multiply bids. So Tasers got purchased. But it gets better, there are multiple holster makers for the weapon and we need at least three for our county purchasing department to release the funds. No body but Taser made the bid, this was 5 years ago. So I’m a little leery of any Bureaucrat.
Anyway, my Texan friends, I suggest you prepare for stuff 
Why were there 6 plants all offline at once in TX? Doesn’t anyone coordinate these things? And why so many issues recently?
EV owners are going to be in for a shock in the next year or so. Natural gas prices in 2020 were down to ~$2.00/MMBtu. It’s currently $6.78. If you think the electric companies are going to feel sorry for their customers and eat the difference, I have some great swamp land in Florida to sell you.
@bobvoeh We used to call them Flicker Power & Light over here and they certainly lived up to the name. While they have gotten better since getting spanked hard by the 2004/2005 hurricanes, their grid on the west coast of Florida is sorely lacking. Still lots of outages. Worse, they manage to pump out some of the goofiest power on their lines, to the point that even commercial UPS units can’t seem to handle it, and Lord knows I’ve tried many different ones at my workplace, and they all still drop the ball when FPL goes weird.
I do remember the rolling blackouts we used to have back in the 1980s with FPL, particularly when it was very cold out. Electric resistance heating uses a ton of kWh and when you normally use heat <14 days/year, it makes no sense to install anything better.
I was in the utility industry many moons ago. What people don’t realize is that it is such an amazing human achievement! The largest machine in human history by far. Everything east of the rocky’s is interconnected and synchronized to 1/60 of a second — except for TX!
Truly much modernization is needed to accommodate intermittent and highly distributed sources but the fact remains that the grid is an unbelievably powerful machine that offers nearly unfathomable benefits to humanity.
I don’t understand the thinking of TX to choose to reject this amazing human advancement. Then again they allow the level of genius that will allow gigantic power plants to pretend that they don’t have to account for the fact that water will freeze because it so rarely does in TX.
They don’t plan for “the 100yr storm”. Never do. Airports that rarely see snow don’t invest in plows, deicers, jet-dryers, etc. Sewers are only scaled for heavy rains, not monsoons. Cell networks expect to have dropped calls on Mother’s Day because they don’t plan for 100% usage, but less than that.
Problems happen when you do get that 100yr storm.
In some respects, the US electrical grid is a victim of its own success. In many areas it’s consistently reliable. As a result, people aren’t prepared for it to not be there.
In my area in Florida, not so much. Outages happen weekly here and I know quite a few people who have generators.
I remember when I was working in Alaska for a decent-size company (500 employees) and was shocked that they didn’t have generators. They looked at me like I had 3 heads for asking. Even when the 7.1 earthquake hit in 2018, power outages were absolutely minimal, just a blink at the office.
And yes, most (all?) Florida airports lack de-icing equipment. They employ various techniques, usually just dragging the frosty airplane into the sun with the leading edges facing the sun. Usually doesn’t take long.
Well the TX controlling board ERCOT has made some huge blunders. And is likely to continue that trend.
But, in 2019 - 28% of the total wind energy in the US was generated in Texas.
There’s like over 33,000Mw from wind.
There are regions that have windmills as far as the eye can see and then some.
Take a look at all the wind farms
But I agree with others. Every house out here should have solar on the roof.
Haven’t seen a cloud in weeks.
All the Best,
Jeff
I’m not entirely familiar with Texas’ climate. I’m in Florida, have had solar for 25 or so years, and actually have to admit that for Florida, grid-tie solar isn’t exactly great for reliability or the environment.
At first blush, solar looks like it’d be the ideal power source for “The Sunshine State” but it’s far from it. Sure, as the sun comes out it gets hot and people turn on their aircons, and the solar cells start pumping out electrons. Works great until clouds form from the heat and humidity, which happens every summer day in Florida. Shade a solar cell 20% and you’ll get an ~80% drop in output. Multiply this by thousands of solar installations and MW of power input in the grid suddenly disappears. BUT the load on the grid doesn’t.
Large commercial power plants like the utilities operate were designed for efficiency over everything. Power companies are usually for-profit, so this makes sense. Similarly, less fuel burn translates into environmental benefits to keep the regulators happy. Win:win. Power plants like to run at consistent outputs. Unlike a geared car engine, these things are large turbines which take some time to ramp up / ramp down to make adjustments. Add in renewables such as solar and wind and their variability. Remember those clouds in the previous paragraph? Yep, these power plants can’t handle those. So how to utilities handle the gap? “Peaking” plants. a.k.a. diesel generators. Or worse, heavy fuel-oil ones. So all of that energy which was being “cleanly” produced by the solar panels will now be produced by the most inefficient and dirtiest power a utility has. Oops.
I’d imagine out in Phoenix solar might be great if you can keep the panels cool enough.
We have weather similar to Phoenix.
Solar panels are very popular here, but I don't think they have to be cooled. 
@raccoon city: I’m not sure about “modern” panels, as mine are quite old, but my panels put out noticeably more power when they’re cool(ver) versus broiling in the sun. On my old setup they were directly attached to the dark shingle roof. Moved them to the tin roof on the patio with a large gap between them & the roof and they’re definitely putting out more power because of it.