Your claim that being on a separate grid caused the outage is too strong to be supported by the data in the article, which is why he doesn't make that claim. Additional data could come out either in favor of or against your claim: although the interconnect bandwidth was fully utilized (edit: txlpo78 points out that it was not fully utilized), we need solid data on whether Mexico and the neighboring states facing similar struggles could spare significantly more capacity. If not, then having more interconnect bandwidth would not have helped much. If they had power to spare, then the interconnects were indeed a problem.
No one is attacking regulation. Virtually everyone I've seen is in agreement that better regulation is necessary in this situation.
Rick Perry specifically attacked regulation.
https://news.yahoo.com/rick-perry-suggests-texans-prefer-191...
As a side note, Rick Perry is pretty much irrelevant to Texans AFAICT. Perhaps that's why he's making these unsolicited, strong statements.
As in, he was the federal regulator who failed here. There's a self interested reason to bad mouth federal regulation to avoid blame
However, his strict anti-federal stance goes back many years. He did not adopt it or even emphasize it to make excuses for this situation. He's just like that.
Present Governor Abbot followed Perry and Abbot is just the opposite of advanced.
He had plenty of time to improve the situation, whether it was regulation or ERCOT reorganization or any number of other details that ratepayers have already paid for for decades, no one else was in a stronger position to do something to make up for Perry's Bozoness.
And Perry,
>He's just like that.
Even less advanced.
What's the opposite of advanced anyway?
I thought so.
I agree with your statement in the sense that, as I posted above, he was only criticizing one specific type of regulation. But if that is your take, or if you have a similar point to make, you really need to spell out exactly what you mean. Your current comment comes off as "you're wrong" without any helpful explanation. But, as I explained, his choice of wording is not at all unreasonable. It's very difficult for anyone to know how you think he's wrong if you don't spell it out.
As a data point: the interconnects were not fully utilized, as the Eastern DC tie had to be severed yesterday because power emergencies in the Eastern US meant that grid had no electricity to spare.
for posterity:
DC Tie Flows
DC_E (East) -595
DC_L (Laredo VFT) 0
DC_N (North) -218
DC_R (Railroad) 0
DC_S (Eagle Pass) 0The North tie connects to the Western US grid in Oklahoma, while the East tie connects to the Eastern US grid near the border with Arkansas/Louisiana. They’ve been fluctuating between 0-600 this week depending on how much power has been available on those grids.
> the Midwest went into a power emergency of their own, and ERCOT was no longer able to import approximately 600 MW.
What the article shows is that:
* Texas's power providers were not adequately winterized.
* The regulatory standards of the larger grids would not have caused them to be so, even if they were subject to them.
* Nearby states suffered outages due to the cold as well, even though they're connected to the larger grids.
* It is unlikely that Texas could have made up the loss in generation power -- estimated to be as much as ~45GW at times -- by drawing on the other states. States near to Texas don't generate nearly as much power and power is not like sunshine, diffusing evenly over the grid from every point.
I read the parent comment as grappling with the sort of basic thought I had reading this piece (I read all of it, because it's interesting): OK, NERC doesn't require Texas to winterize to the point of safeguarding against an event like this week. OK, other power suppliers in other states have outages. But none of the other states have giant winter blackouts like Texas had this week, and most of them have worse weather. It's hard to square that with the topic paragraph of this post.
Not exactly true. SPP the grid operator for OK and the area immediately east of Texas did have to go to EEA3 twice and implement rolling blackouts
https://spp.org/markets-operations/current-grid-conditions/
>Feb. 15 at approximately 12:10 pm. While still under EEA Level 3 and after exhausting reserves, SPP directed member utilities to implement controlled, temporary interruptions of service.
>Feb. 16 at 6:15 a.m. SPP declared an EEA Level 3. System-wide generating capacity had dropped below current load of approximately 42 gigawatts (GW) due to extremely low temperatures, inadequate supplies of natural gas and wind generation. SPP directed member utilities to implement controlled, temporary interruptions of service.
On the Electricity front, Austin Energy screwed the pooch, because they had too much of their capacity tied up in "essential" service branches. So they had to isolate the few non-essential branches with high downtime to effectively shed load.
You can give Texas crap, but at least let it be accurate crap.
At a press conference, a spokesperson said they had to cut 6.5% of load for 3h21m on Tuesday.
https://youtu.be/NUa3AKdCYvM?t=693
(Also under the SPP region myself, just in Kansas City)
I'm also in it, and have heard many reports of rolling blackouts earlier this week when it was at Level 3.
SPP press conference https://youtu.be/NUa3AKdCYvM?t=693
West Texas near El Paso is not on the ERCOT grid and they winterized properly after the last big snow storm so it's absolutely possible to have been prepared for this in Texas.
Corporations, corporations, corporations...... it really gets old hearing people blather on like this. Large, bureaucratic organizations, whether private monopolies, private companies, corporations, and yes, governments all have similar issues.
He cites in the article that these events all had precedents, but attempts to change the NERC rules were ignored/halted in the early 2010s.
Turns out that when you are a biased person who just reads the first few sentences and rejects the article due to the ensuing cognitive dissonance, you miss things.
And he goes into detail and discovers that this is basically the case. And sure, other providers in other states also have problem. Which means ... regulators should be more on the ball. So his summary is correct despite there being more details.
It's like someone can't comprehend that if corporations didn't systematically hamstring it, regulation could work, that regulation and leadership did work for a good fraction of the 20th century.