Sadly, this is a true statement. The citizens of Texas are getting what they voted for. Even if my state offered to help with electricity, which it did in 2021, it isn't allowed because the state of Texas outlawed the help, saying: "Federal tax-dollar help, we don't need no stupid Federal tax-dollar help!" (sorry, went Blazing Saddles.) People died and the gov said it would never happen again, then made practically no changes to grid.

Supposedly, the policy was created to keep the energy groups from more fed regs and taxes. In the mean time, it's roll the dice with the weather forecast and peoples lives.

> don't need no stupid

Isn't that "I don't need no steenkeeng badge", from The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre? (I don't know Blazing Saddles).

Even if ERCOT was tied to all the states around it, it probably wouldn't have changed the outcome. The shortage alone was more power than the entire output of most of the the states surrounding Texas, which every state around was also near their limits.

So yeah, it Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and most of New Mexico sent all their power to Texas nobody in Texas would have lost power. Just everyone in all those other states.

No, because their neighbours would send them power. And so on. A larger grid is much stabler. It would also extend outside of the area badly affected by the snowstorm.

Simple proof, no where else in the US or any other developed country does such a situation arise. And even most developing countries have better connected grids. When southern Australia didn’t, it paid for that in rolling blackouts.

Loads of places in the US experience power outages from massive winter storms. See New York this year.

And once again you're just ignoring that pretty much every state even near those other states were also near their breaking points with many of those areas having rolling power outages at the time. It's not like the storm was only hitting Texas.

You're right in principle, but larger interconnections aren't a panacea.

The reality of Uri is that the neighboring regions to the north (SPP) and east (MISO) were on the brink themselves (grid emergency and rolling blackouts in SPP), and the import capacity from their neighboring regions (i.e. the midwest) was constrained; they couldn't import more power from their neighbors. If Texas were part of the Eastern Interconnection AC grid (i.e. connected to SPP and MISO), I think fewer people in Texas would have lost power and more people in Oklahoma. SPP and MISO just didn't have any more power in those areas to ship them.

SPP & MISO have been interconnected with each other forever, they're on the same AC grid. But the capacity between their systems is limited, hence the blackouts in SPP. They just never bothered to build out the capacity because it hasn't made a lot of economic sense. I think that's the best counterfactual example of "what would have happened if Texas didn't have their own grid", and it suggests that the storm still would have been a problem.

Wouldn't Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico pull power from Missouri, Georgia, and Arizona in that case?

There's more and more losses the further you're pulling it out. And all those states were also near their full capacity as well.

You get far out enough, and there wasn't the effects of a freak winter storm that brought below freezing weather and snow to a state that doesn't usually have them though.

Winter storm Uri had impacts from Mexico to Canada. It was a major storm for close to half the country. You probably didn't experience it much in Florida, but if you were in New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, or Connecticut it was a bad winter storm. Even parts of Minnesota were impacted with generation issues due to the massive natural gas supply drop. The storm spanned from Canada to Mexico, from New Mexico to Maine.

SPP had generation issues like Texas because of the massive drop in natural gas supply coupled with high demand and had rolling blackouts as well. MISO was the most impacted part of the country weather-wise and had practically no spare capacity, and PJM was also still under very heavy load.

You get far enough out and you start realize the rest of the country isn't a single grid. The east and west aren't very connected, and from the central US to the east there's really a few different grids with interconnections, which were all getting maxed out without trying to take on the shortfall in Texas.

There is no situation.

It’s Texas. That a foot of snow falling all over a state that doesn’t really have any snowplows caused an emergency is well, common sense.

It seems really stupid to stock up on snowplows in a place where it is frequently 70 degrees and sunny in February.

It seems really stupid to loose 200 billion USD in an avoidable event.

And I don’t know the word for the state of mind for risking losing that again.

You can but a lot of snowplows, interconnectors and backup plants for that money.

Reminds me of London, which of never prepared for snow as it never happens. Happened twice in the short time I lived there. Each time costing a lot more than a bit of preparation.

That’s just stupid. To be prepared for a foot of snow falling all over the state you’d need a fleet of plows the size of Buffalo, NYs in every city over 200,000 in the entire state.

And then a decade goes by before snow sticks past 10am?

not really, you just need a massive warehouse of pick up truck attachments and Venmo to pay back citizens for helping plow :)

Strange comment. In terms of snowfall, Buffalo is an extreme example. A bad, but not necessarily record setting, lake effect snowstorm like Buffalo gets seems like the sort of thing Texas probably won't experience until the next ice age. Texas could aim for a happy medium when it comes to snowplowing ability.

Being able to navigate the roads isn't a magical cure for a power grid that can't handle low temperatures, of course. It would make it easier for emergency vehicles and utility vehicles.

Think about how many snowplows are required to clear 100 miles of snow. Now think about rates of snow and rates of plowing. Now factor in total miles of roads.

You’ll find you need an epic amount of snowplows to be able to clear up after that storm.

And then remind yourself while you’re sipping on a lemonade on a sunny and warm February day in central Texas that preparing for unlikely extreme weather events is stupid. How about, here’s a fucking idea, plan for hurricanes instead?

Do they plan for hurricanes where you live? Well why not? I mean, think of the children……………

Tying into the national grid makes sense, but that does not strike me as an easy project. Would likely take years and many tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to get meaningful interconnects established. Plus whatever Texas->Federal code upgrades would have to come along the way.

Tens to hundreds of millions is less than the estimated $200 billion in damages, at least it was when I was in school. Seems like a bargain compared to even $50 billion in damages.

Texas politician's played a majority role as it's congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered and there are regular efforts to disenfranchise voters at the polls.

https://www.txdot.gov/content/dam/docs/maps/texas-legislatur...

Our elections here are not completely fair and it is disingenuous to place most of the fault on the citizens.