What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

Re:What went wrong with the Texas power grid? by rconti on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:10PM (#26161294)

Well, yeah, the populated areas of Texas happen to be insanely cold right now at this moment we've cherry-picked, and the populated areas of California happen to be.. checks thermometer between 55-65f right now. (Bay Area, Sacramento, LA, San Diego).

Also, Texas heating is HEAVILY reliant on electricity (heat pumps), since they're used as air conditioners in the summer. Presumably this means CA has a lot more forced air natural gas, like my house. Of course, I keep hearing ads encouraging me to replace my polluting "methane gas" furnace with a clean, efficient electric heat pump....

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Re:What went wrong with the Texas power grid? by s0rce on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:18PM (#26161364)

I didn't think about heat pumps that makes sense. I had electric heat pump for heat when I lived in WA state. Worked well with cheap hydro power.

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Re:What went wrong with the Texas power grid? by StillBored on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @11:12PM (#26162601)

Yas, there are heat pump systems designed to work at fairly low temps. Those aren't the ones they install in TX, where its just a cheap reversing valve on a stock R410 system. AFAIK they don't even necessarily have aux heat (my mother's in FL didn't) and even if they do, after a decade or two it might not even work and no one would know.

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