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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

"Over the last few days I read online people saying that Texas' power outages had been caused by Texas being on its own grid… deregulation… Not following national standards…"

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.

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The article finds fault particularly with the national standards not being adequate, and specifically points out that the standards in Texas are more strict than the national standards. He goes on to give some details on the enforcement of those Texan standards. In this case, following national standards as opposed to Texas's standards would have led to an even worse disaster.

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.

> although the interconnect bandwidth was fully utilized, we need solid data on whether 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.

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.

Thank you for that data. Your other comment is very helpful too[0], although I look forward to seeing some good hard data. I've been a bit spoiled by how much detailed data ERCOT provides.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26187282

Can you provide a source for that?

http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225369

> the Midwest went into a power emergency of their own, and ERCOT was no longer able to import approximately 600 MW.

It feels like people are blaming other networks for needing their planned-for emergency capacity and not dropping everything for TX

People are attacking texas' less interconnected system for being "independent" and others are pointing out more interconnections from places with no power to spare would not have helped.

Assuming there is a planned extra capacity/planned expected failure rate/additional set of regulations and guidelines, its not mainly the literal "connectedness" of the grids, but the "independence" part that is being attacked, specifically being independent from federal oversight.

If I'm reading http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_condi... right there is no power across the DC_L (Laredo VFT), DC_R (Railroad) and DC_S (Eagle Pass) HVDC ties.

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)  0

For reference, the Laredo, Railroad, and Eagle Pass ties are all connections to Mexico’s power grid. They’ve been at zero most of this week because Mexico is also dealing with major power outages along the border, and so they don’t have any electricity to share.

The 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.

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...

He's not speaking against all regulation, only a specific subset of regulation, namely federal. (I apologize for being unclear: I did not mean to imply that all regulation is accepted equally, merely that nearly everyone accepts that stricter regulation at some level of government is necessary to prevent future blackouts. Many Texans would demand state-level regulation but would spurn federal). I'm not sure why he even brought it up, to be honest. It seems irrelevant to the current situation. Tougher state regulations are a foregone conclusion, and the applicable federal regulations (such as those applying to gas suppliers) are not something Texans have any influence over at this time.

As a side note, Rick Perry is pretty much irrelevant to Texans AFAICT. Perhaps that's why he's making these unsolicited, strong statements.

He recently ran the department of energy, didn't he?

As in, he was the federal regulator who failed here. There's a self interested reason to bad mouth federal regulation to avoid blame

You are correct that he held that position under Trump and bears responsibility for problems with federal regulations.

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.

Perry was governor in 2011 when it was undoubtable improvements were necessary if another freeze like that were to be mitigated to a greater degree rather than exacerbated like we have seen occur instead.

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.

No, that source does not validate your claim. Rick Perry did not "attack regulation".

I'd like to try to gently point out that this isn't a very helpful way to comment. Perry did make very strong statements that show hostility to federal regulation. I myself would not characterize it as "attacking regulation", but it's not completely unreasonable to. One should allow for that kind of difference in viewpoint—speaking from experience, quibbling about precise wording won't get us anywhere, so it's usually better to allow your opponent (or partner) a generous amount of leeway. (Sometimes there are exceptions, as defining something as a "riot" or "insurrection" can be the whole crux of an issue, but this is rare compared to number of times that debate over wording completely derails a discussion).

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.

The article definitely does not discover "...that this is basically the case.". It's hard to understand why you wrote that; it can't be based on a fair reading of the article.

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.

It's unfriendly to the site to write the same comment verbatim in multiple places. Please just use a link or something.

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.

> But none of the other states have giant winter blackouts like Texas had this week, and most of them have worse weather.

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.

MISO, the grid that covers parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and more also had to do this: https://www.entergynewsroom.com/news/entergy-forced-initiate...

Texas didn't experience rolling blackouts. Texas had day plus power outages over 25% or more of the state. That's far worse than rolling blackouts.

I mean, like, maybe a simple threshold matter here is: did any significant area outside of Texas have to issue boil-water orders because they couldn't run water systems?

The issue with water systems in Texas is thar we have them terribly networked. Water for Lockhart's towers come from the next town over who shut down their pumps. Lockhart blew a main which brought pressure below what was necessary to push water to the testing site for certification of being safe to drink..

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.

I assume the subtext is that the answer to my question is "no, other localities haven't lost water treatment in their winter outages" --- those outages apparently not being severe enough to impact water delivery.

Yes, Louisiana and Tennessee: https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/article_3ed2a512-7... https://wreg.com/news/watch-mlgw-provides-water-update/

Looks like SPP is back at a "conservative status" rather than emergency status now, which is good.

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)

SPP went back to Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) Level 1 not long after 6 pm, just like they did 5 minutes earlier to Level 2 yesterday, Wednesday the 17th: https://spp.org/markets-operations/current-grid-conditions/

I'm also in it, and have heard many reports of rolling blackouts earlier this week when it was at Level 3.

There were outages elsewhere, but not as severe and not as widespread. No one is saying that the NERC-regulated areas handled a 100 year storm without flaw. Just that they did it a lot better than Texas.

Other states had rolling blackouts, but to say that that’s equivalent to what’s going on in TX is patently ridiculous.

Wasn't the Texas plan to have rolling blackouts?

Yes, it was. And then the power production fell so low that they went from rolling blackouts to just blackouts.

I think the important thing to take away is every state needs to prepare for more extreme weather, regardless of current regulations. While the larger grids don’t require winterization, northern regions already experience cold temps and don’t need regulations to prepare for them. Whatever readies Texas for these extreme events is enough, whether it is regulations or proactiveness.

It's weird that the link provided talks about El Paso failing but El Paso outages were as far as I can tell limited to short term outages similar to most other parts of the country under similar conditions. https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/local/el-paso/2021/02...

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.

Yes there is a lack of regulation around winter weatherization. However, this is not a Texas only problem, in fact the PUCT requirements for weatherization exceed the current NERC standards and are similar to the new requirements that should be approved in November. Also standards for weatherization were proposed to NERC all the way back in 2011 but they were rejected.

Yes, the lack of regulation around winter weatherization. Lack of regulation is a product of the broad trend to deregulation. California has suffered PG&E's despicable policies fueled by deregulation, that have also killed dozens of people and caused billions of dollars of property loss. So it's not a Texas only problem. But it certainly is a behavior of Texas (Government, regulators and industry) problem just as California's problems are a behavior of California (Government, regulators and industry) problem.

Other grids certainly could do even more to harden their power systems against extreme weather events. But Texas is clearly suffering the worst and most prolonged outage of all the states during this cold snap.

Did you read the article? He explicitly stated that the NERC standards, if implemented, wouldn't have prevented the issues.

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.

You are completely correct. Regarding your first and last sentences, the C19 invasion of HN has normalized "Did you read the article?" style comments, though this is explicitly recommended against in the guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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