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Comment by huhkerrf | Hacker News Reader

This just shows how you know only the talking points. The power outages are not due to lack of central planning, it's very explicitly the reverse. If Texas were hooked up to the rest of the country, those outages would not be a thing. It's the purposeful regulation that has caused those problems.

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So you're saying when the Texas grid fails, it's because of over overegulation. But the solution to those failures is to tap into the national grid, a grid that follows stricter FERC regulations.

This argument doesn't make any sense.

No, I'm saying it's because of _poor_ overegulation.

I guess you’re saying that the current status is mandated by the design of the grid. Which is true, but that status would be best described as “deregulated” rather than “purposeful regulation.”

Lack of regulation and oversite around weatherization and redundancy is the main source of our problems. The Texas’ grid is market based and so unregulated that it’s not connected to the national grid so it can avoid federal regulation.

I recommend this podcast to anyone interested https://kutkutx.studio/category/the-disconnect-power-politic.... I learned that our current Texas grid was designed by Enron.

Every single state surrounding Texas was also suffering from power outages due to the winter storm in 2021, despite all of those states being part of the non-Texas interconnections. The outages in those states weren’t as bad, but even if Texas was better connected to them, there’s no guarantee that they would have had any power to share.

I was personally without power for 72 hours in sub zero temps. Every night I went to bed and wondered if my kids would be alive when/if I woke up. You know what that feels like?

I can’t do anything to *guarantee* you’ll never experience it, but I can take steps to decrease the chances or decrease the severity/dueation. I think my kids are worth it. Even if it’s not a *guarantee*.

Now that’s out of the way. I recommend you listen to the podcast. Really. Even if you lived through it. Even if you think you know everything about it. You will learn something I guarantee. It’s well produced and an easy listen. It’s an eye opener too. “The Disconnect”

Your condescending appeal to emotion does nothing to change the facts. My family and I too lived through the winter storm, going multiple days without power. It doesn’t change anything about what I said. The national-vs-local-grid topic is a red herring, as even the non-Texas grids were without power. If you want to actually change things, you need to acknowledge these facts rather than letting yourself be controlled by emotion.

> The national-vs-local-grid topic is a red herring

I used that in passing as a measure to show how violently against regulation texas is. It was a throwaway sentence that apparently missed its mark.

> It doesn’t change anything about what I said

What did you say? I heard "we shouldn't try to make it better if it's not GUARANTEED to make it better." I countered with "it's worth trying." I think that's not your recollection of events. Maybe you're saying that the grid not being connected to the national grid didn't cause it to go down?

I'm saying that the craptastic market-focused enron designed grid system is awful and the lackluster political response afterward is not confidence inspiring. We can and should do better.

> My family and I too lived through the winter storm, going multiple days without power

That sucks. I genuinely hope you don't have to go through another one like it.

> facts

I gave you my source of facts (podcast), besides living through it. I'm not hearing different facts or sources from you. Is there something misleading or wrong about the podcast you want to highlight? Other than you're against connecting to the national grid, what are you advocating for?

> The power outages are not due to lack of central planning

It is 100% due to lack of central planning. The outages were caused by a lack of winterizarion of natural gas pumps which was a known issue in Texas but the lack of regulation meant companies could just ignore the problem. Why invest in winterizing when you can just jack up prices and make even more money when they freeze and there’s not enough power to meet demand?

There’s a reason the power doesn’t go out in the winter anywhere else in the country when it gets below freezing and it’s not “a lack of regulation”.

Winterization was a problem but it was also a problem for other regions that are part of FERC. You’re latching onto the wrong problem. FERC has updated guidelines since that storm.

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