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by cal5k 852 days ago
Outside of unusually severe weather in 2022 and a subsequent outage, what is your evidence for this claim?

I've been living in Texas since 2022 and the grid has anecdotally been just as reliable as anywhere else I've lived. Unusually crazy winter weather knocks out grids all over - back in '98 the ice storm in the Northeast US & Canada knocked out power for millions of people for up to 2 weeks in some cases.
2 comments
ok_dad 852 days ago
They’ve had major issues with weather preparedness even in the aftermath of those major events, where the grid nearly went black. Even the northeast outages I’ve recalled from my life haven’t gotten to the point that they were talking about the grid going black if things didn’t go well, but either way, these extreme weather events will only increase in the future.
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cal5k 852 days ago
What do you mean "going black"? That's not a technical term any grid operator uses.

They have various conservation strategies to manage peak demand if it exceeds capacity, like asking for voluntary conservation and/or rolling blackouts in extreme cases, but every grid operator does contingency planning like this. The Texas grid handled historic demand levels over the summer just fine.

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ok_dad 852 days ago
Generally blackouts are controlled somewhat and can be caused by protective circuits to ensure generators stay online when the load becomes too great for the generation. In Texas, the blackouts were so vast and the generation sources were absolutely not prepped for cold weather, so there were questions as to whether they would have enough generation on certain circuits to bring the grid online in days rather than the horrible scenario of a black start for large swaths of the Texas grid, which could have taken weeks or months. Going black is the term I’ve heard used in my industry circles for the grid requiring a black start.
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ImPostingOnHN 851 days ago
If your question starts out by disqualifying answers, you might be approaching confirmation bias.

That week or two of failures, even if it was the only one ever, is enough to prove the claim.

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