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I don't think people understand how large a fuck up the #TexasBlackout is. Too many are talking about how this is freak weather and it was unforseen. It wasn't. It was seen in 2011. A thread.
ERCOT had to cut power to a least a million Texas homes during a record-breaking cold snap in 2011. That year saw significantly colder temperatures, roads unpassable with ice and snow, and led power facilities to go offline due to the cold.
They ended up importing power from Mexico to fill the gaps. Later in a document titled "Winter Weather Readiness for Texas Generators" A bunch of energy plant operators in ERCOT service areas did a post mortem on what went wrong and what they could do to fix the issues they saw.
In this document they said "the event was so severe that the National Weather Service issued a Wind Chill Advisory for most of the state. North Texas saw record-setting sleet and snow, blizzard conditions and temps below freezing for well over 100 hours."
"Snowfall was seen as far south as San Antonio. Dallas-Fort Worth reported hundreds of water main breaks, and ERCOT reported a new record peak of 56,334 megawatts. This led them to call it a 1 in 10 year event."
"The resultant convective heat loss suffered by many power generation facilities was judged a 1 in 25 year severity." But here is the kicker:
"Generating unit issues that affected reliability were mostly attributed to frozen instrumentation due to convective heat losses greater than instrumentation design, faulty instrumentation heat tracing or compromised insulation."
Why does this sound familiar? From Dan Woodfin, a senior director for ERCOT in Bloomberg about this year:
10 years ago they promised to deliver a white paper discussing the 2011 weather event, share lessons learned and best practices among other generator operators, and come up with winter readiness guidelines all to be completed and reviewed by April of that year.
As part of the Winter Weather Guidelines section 4.2.1.2 Plant Management:
Was this implemented? Who oversaw it? If it was implemented, why are we seeing the same power issues and lengthy outages for the same reasons exactly ten years later on something they judged a 1 in 10 year event?
Governor Abbott is blaming it on the Green New Deal. Others are saying it's wind powers' fault. I say don't pay attention to the hand the magician is pointing to....whoah, that was dumb. I don't know how to end this.
I just know that they knew this was possible, it happened before and now I'm pooping in the cold in a toilet that I have to flush with water I melted from snow so...
Here is a link to the document:
http://www.ercot.com/content/meetings/other/keydocs/2011/20110608-OTHER/Winter_Weather_Readiness_for_Texas_Generators1.doc
http://www.ercot.com/content/meetings/other/keydocs/2011/20110608-OTHER/Winter_Weather_Readiness_for_Texas_Generators1.doc
@Frontsteps has information on warming centers and is helping Austin's homeless population stay safe on the ground. https://twitter.com/Frontsteps/status/1361081342386204675
Also Austin Pets Alive had a pipe break and could use your help: https://twitter.com/austinpetsalive/status/1361801958806482947
Amplifying this thread to give the disabled tips on handling their first Texas winter from @Imani_Barbarin https://twitter.com/Imani_Barbarin/status/1361329803979325451
@dox_gay put together a list of resources for those facing this weather crisis https://twitter.com/dox_gay/status/1361838753682227202
