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Comment by gwoplock | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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/

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...

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.

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