- Unlike most other states that safely endured the February 2021 storm, Texas had stubbornly declined to require winterization of its power plants and, just as critically, its natural gas facilities. In large part, that’s because the state’s politicians and the regulators they appoint are often captive to the oil and gas industry, which lavishes them with millions of dollars a year in campaign contributions.
TL;DR - Texas ain't winterized shit since last year.
And wouldn't you know it?:
It's pathetic that not only do I have to plan for a possible days-long electricity outage, I've now drawn up plans to possibly leave the state for weeks, if the grid fails completely. Just spent a few hours gaming it out, figuring out what I'll need and where I'll go.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott Is Inviting Bitcoin Miners to Stabilize Electrical Grid:
- The governor is depending on Bitcoin miners to pause operations when ordered to do so—particularly when energy demand surges.
The honor system! I'm sure the crypto mining companies will sacrifice millions in shut down and start up costs because they really care about their fellow Texans... just like the oil and gas companies.
Unless things are truly winterized, somehow, I guess magically, the grid will eventually fail completely. Maybe in a few days. (But probably not, honestly, because the polar votex is not predicted to extend a big tendril toward Houston.)
Regardless, our leaders and energy CEO's are essentially gambling with other peoples' money and lives, and if they really, really lose, the only consequence is that they might not get re-elected. Might not.
Hey man, that was like a hundred year storm or something so we're due for 99 years of sunny air conditioned winters. #texasstatistics
lol I fucking hate this guy https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/02/02/texas-abbott-power-outages-freezing-storm/ Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said “no one can guarantee” there won’t be power outages in the state during a winter storm expected to hit a wide swath of the nation starting Wednesday, despite his promise months ago to the millions affected by last year’s freeze that the lights would stay on this year.
If I were a data-scraping online activist I would most likely have already built a twitter bot that grabs power outage tweets and their geolocation and then cross-references a Texas outtage grid with racial demographics. I would be primed and ready to go to paint 'em all up as a bunch of civil-rights-abusing sacks'o'shit. I'd likely have a class action lawsuit template ready to file. I'd probably even be ready to pump a bunch of images and videos of black and brown people in the dark, ready to grab them and push them the minute they hit the intarwebs. The Texas Republican Party seems to be hoping that they'll be able to ride out a crisis of racism, greed and deaths-from-hypothermia, rather than planning a way out of a crisis of racism, greed and deaths-from-hypothermia and unless I have grossly overestimated the resourcefulness of their opponents, they are in for nearly as rough a time as they are poised to create for their non-Republican constituents.
The plan all along was protect power with redistricting and then hope that enough minorities buy the 'fiscal conservatism protects you from paying for *them' blather to keep the demographic shift from wiping them out before the next round of redistricting. I don't think they'll survive the demographics forever, but it won't be quick and I won't be surprised if the TX GOP still has power the next time we redistrict in 2030.The Texas Republican Party seems to be hoping that they'll be able to ride out a crisis of racism, greed and deaths-from-hypothermia, rather than planning a way out of a crisis of racism, greed and deaths-from-hypothermia
LOL your villains aren't even clever ROFL I wonder how that played out You get to do that ONCE. If i were the bad guy in a Dukes-Of-Hazzard/Smokey & The Bandit-grade farce involving an orangutan and Daisy Dukes, I would make moves like this.All across Texas, grid operators were moving as quickly as they could, blacking out more and more neighborhoods, but they were running out of options.
When ERCOT and the PUC realized what was happening, officials decided to bypass the market and, on Monday evening, manually set prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour. (By comparison, the average hourly price in 2020 was $25.73.)
Wait, was someone planning to pay miners the cost of electricity to shut down during a price surge? I assumed this was a free market 'they'll shut down on their own when it's too expensive' plan that ignored a net increase in demand will still cause an increase in prices.
That's exactly the issue. The decisions made by grid operators that saved the grid from complete failure hinged on assessments down to the minute. Relying on mining companies to react quickly enough to an escalating crisis is a mistake. Not that I have any faith in the grid operators, btw.
O'Doyle definitely rules Texas, hahahhah. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. The forecast has already become less severe, and it doesn't look like the cold will be as widespread and sustained as last year. We probably won't even have rolling blackouts! What a funny thing to say, in the wealthiest country ever. Actually, in the event of a total grid failure, my plan is to head to El Paso. What gives me the edge are the two spare five gallon gas tanks I've just purchased (gas pumps require electricity to operate), and the fact that probably almost no one else knows that El Paso isn't on the Texas grid (and there'll be no way of finding that out in the event of total grid failure, either). If I'm wrong, the penalty is... I have to refill the car's gas tank with the spare tanks in my garage in a few weeks. Sad thing is that if absolutely nothing bad happens this winter, I fully expect no winterization of the grid to ever occur. The ~$100 billion in damages last year wasn't enough. Merely a speedbump. The O'Doyle Texas family van simply must find the largest sheer cliff face in existence to drive itself off of.