TX: ERCOT failing because...Hot Temperatures

[WMS]

I was talking to Discovolante, and so I used discovolante's standard for use in my argument. I personally would have hewed to a tougher standard, but even in that case, the power grid is performing not bad. In any case, I was here during the Texas outage, and I even started a thread asking people if they were being affected.
It's laughably silly in any case to decide how good the Texas power grid is on basis of a freak weather event. And yes, as a citizen I feel an obligation to help keep power usage under control.

1. The “freak weather event” didn’t utterly cripple any other state the way it did Texas. Texas failed because our grid was woefully unprepared for an event that other states were ready for, and our leaders need to be honest about that. So yes, I think it’s fair to judge our infrastructure based on performance during the freeze.

2. The topic being discussed in this thread is ERCOT warning that the grid might fail again NOT because of a freak weather event, but because the grid is not currently capable of handling regular Texas summer heat.

1. No other state impacted by the freeze was as far south and as warm as Texas, making it an apples-and-oranges comparison. In any case I was not the first person to bring the freeze in as an argument.
2. Raising warnings in this manner is smart because it is highly likely to lead to people cutting their power use. The most efficient way to prevent any brownouts is to warn people that they might well happen. And it's not really a lie either. No one loses in this scenario.

10 years ago, a similar severe cold weather event hit New Mexico and West Texas. Due to Texas’ failure to winterize their gas pipelines and facilities, supplies to New Mexico dropped severely, and the New Mexico agency in charge had to make hard choices about who got gas heat and who didn’t.

Fortunately, New Mexico’s electrical grid didn’t fail, and space heaters and the like kept people alive. As opposed to, say, Texas.

Texas had warning of this problem. Texas chose not to do anything about it. Just like this winter.

Texas chooses not to do anything about a lot of problems.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I was talking to Discovolante, and so I used discovolante's standard for use in my argument. I personally would have hewed to a tougher standard, but even in that case, the power grid is performing not bad. In any case, I was here during the Texas outage, and I even started a thread asking people if they were being affected.
It's laughably silly in any case to decide how good the Texas power grid is on basis of a freak weather event. And yes, as a citizen I feel an obligation to help keep power usage under control.

1. The “freak weather event” didn’t utterly cripple any other state the way it did Texas. Texas failed because our grid was woefully unprepared for an event that other states were ready for, and our leaders need to be honest about that. So yes, I think it’s fair to judge our infrastructure based on performance during the freeze.

2. The topic being discussed in this thread is ERCOT warning that the grid might fail again NOT because of a freak weather event, but because the grid is not currently capable of handling regular Texas summer heat.

1. No other state impacted by the freeze was as far south and as warm as Texas, making it an apples-and-oranges comparison. In any case I was not the first person to bring the freeze in as an argument.
2. Raising warnings in this manner is smart because it is highly likely to lead to people cutting their power use. The most efficient way to prevent any brownouts is to warn people that they might well happen. And it's not really a lie either. No one loses in this scenario.

10 years ago, a similar severe cold weather event hit New Mexico and West Texas. Due to Texas’ failure to winterize their gas pipelines and facilities, supplies to New Mexico dropped severely, and the New Mexico agency in charge had to make hard choices about who got gas heat and who didn’t.

Fortunately, New Mexico’s electrical grid didn’t fail, and space heaters and the like kept people alive. As opposed to, say, Texas.

Texas had warning of this problem. Texas chose not to do anything about it. Just like this winter.

Texas chooses not to do anything about a lot of problems.

That's not at all a perfect comparison because New Mexico is very different topographically and climatically relative to Texas, but at least it's not a crazy comparison. And the event from ten years ago was not as bad as the cold weather event this year, I think (could be biased because I don't remember 10 years ago as vividly as now and my neighborhood was hit pretty hard this time around), but it's close enough to be a valid comparison.
Regardless of these issues (and I get the nagging feeling they verge into nitpick territory), I feel obligated to congratulate you for being the first critic here to actually make sense overall. I agree some winterization has to occur. A Texas state legislator has proposed a bill to introduce fines in case of stoppages, and that strikes me as a good law to pass.
More generally, as I in fact hinted at earlier, the way the state is ran is overly deferential to businesses. So yes, the state government does choose not to do much about many of its problems because in the eyes of those in charge of the state government, because either they aren't problems or solving the issue would be too expensive or both.
There's room to critique the way the state is run as it is. There isn't any need to go into hyperbole territory.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/MichalKleinRN/status/1405663185605120006

(Not perfectly accurate - there's only one electric helicopter on Mars - but it still nails it.)

[WMS]

I was talking to Discovolante, and so I used discovolante's standard for use in my argument. I personally would have hewed to a tougher standard, but even in that case, the power grid is performing not bad. In any case, I was here during the Texas outage, and I even started a thread asking people if they were being affected.
It's laughably silly in any case to decide how good the Texas power grid is on basis of a freak weather event. And yes, as a citizen I feel an obligation to help keep power usage under control.

1. The “freak weather event” didn’t utterly cripple any other state the way it did Texas. Texas failed because our grid was woefully unprepared for an event that other states were ready for, and our leaders need to be honest about that. So yes, I think it’s fair to judge our infrastructure based on performance during the freeze.

2. The topic being discussed in this thread is ERCOT warning that the grid might fail again NOT because of a freak weather event, but because the grid is not currently capable of handling regular Texas summer heat.

1. No other state impacted by the freeze was as far south and as warm as Texas, making it an apples-and-oranges comparison. In any case I was not the first person to bring the freeze in as an argument.
2. Raising warnings in this manner is smart because it is highly likely to lead to people cutting their power use. The most efficient way to prevent any brownouts is to warn people that they might well happen. And it's not really a lie either. No one loses in this scenario.

10 years ago, a similar severe cold weather event hit New Mexico and West Texas. Due to Texas’ failure to winterize their gas pipelines and facilities, supplies to New Mexico dropped severely, and the New Mexico agency in charge had to make hard choices about who got gas heat and who didn’t.

Fortunately, New Mexico’s electrical grid didn’t fail, and space heaters and the like kept people alive. As opposed to, say, Texas.

Texas had warning of this problem. Texas chose not to do anything about it. Just like this winter.

Texas chooses not to do anything about a lot of problems.

That's not at all a perfect comparison because New Mexico is very different topographically and climatically relative to Texas, but at least it's not a crazy comparison. And the event from ten years ago was not as bad as the cold weather event this year, I think (could be biased because I don't remember 10 years ago as vividly as now and my neighborhood was hit pretty hard this time around), but it's close enough to be a valid comparison.
Regardless of these issues (and I get the nagging feeling they verge into nitpick territory), I feel obligated to congratulate you for being the first critic here to actually make sense overall. I agree some winterization has to occur. A Texas state legislator has proposed a bill to introduce fines in case of stoppages, and that strikes me as a good law to pass.
More generally, as I in fact hinted at earlier, the way the state is ran is overly deferential to businesses. So yes, the state government does choose not to do much about many of its problems because in the eyes of those in charge of the state government, because either they aren't problems or solving the issue would be too expensive or both.
There's room to critique the way the state is run as it is. There isn't any need to go into hyperbole territory.

Well, I admit the opportunity to tweak Texans over something they do worse than Far Northern Chihuahua was irresistible

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well, I admit the opportunity to tweak Texans over something they do worse than Far Northern Chihuahua was irresistible

Never change, New Mexicans! Lol.