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Notes -
We've talked recently about wind power. With the Pacific Northwest in an extended cold snap (by our standards at least), I wanted to share some graphs of the situation.
The first three links on this site show production vs load in various combinations. #4 shows everything at once.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/default.aspx
The attached image shows the familiar habit of wind falling off during stable lows: we are getting a slow flow of freezing air from the north, which can't run the windmills sited for east-west wind (and wouldn't be fast enough to do any good anyway)
We're currently importing power and running gas plants flat out, which means the hydro isn't keeping up. Going to be a lot of demand charges local utilities will have to smear around during summer. But people with grid-tied solar are using kwh credits as if their summer production is worth just as much as today's urgent demand.
If you have a similar resource in your area, check it out. Get an idea of how your power is generated and routed. Start thinking about it as a nuts and bolts issue like you're the engineer in charge, and pretty soon abstract redditism arguments about energy policy will bore and disgust you.
/images/17388655894044788.webp
Comparable information for Texas can probably be found here. Not something I can really explore on my phone, though.
We’ve got an interesting case for two reasons. First, the infamous Texas Interconnection. Our link to the rest of the country is highly limited, which keeps us away from certain federal regulations. Second, we had a moderate disaster back in 2021 when that infrastructure groaned under winter weather. Over 200 people died, making Texans much more aware of our grid than the average American.
Here’s Senator Ted Cruz leaving his constituency for a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Cancun. Naturally, this was completely forgiven by the time he faced reelection.
Texas did pass bills subsidizing on-demand generation, though I do believe one of them was actually regulating a different initiative out of existence. This is probably a good thing, and we’ll probably be ready for whatever natural disaster hits next. Either way, Republicans will see no electoral consequences whatsoever.
What's the dividing line between a "moderate disaster" and a "major" disaster? Your link says 246 deaths - 246 out of the ~25 million ERCOT customers dying is a small percentage of customers dying... but that's just the number of customers who suffered the worst measurable consequence, not the cumulative damage caused attributable to the outage.
Shrug. I have no idea how much money and time was lost to the storm.
Well, how many deaths constitutes a "major disaster?"
1 day worth of American driving deaths is around 120 people. I think a "disaster" should be something larger than a couple days of typical accepted fatalities.
But of course this is subjective and neither I nor netstack can provide a definitive answer.
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Again, I don’t know. My intuition isn’t exactly calibrated for this.
Katrina obviously counts. I’d have said Sandy counted, and this was probably on par, so sure. Major disaster it is.
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It’s not about time and money. I had no “damages” (other than lost wages while work was closed), but that week was the coldest I have ever felt in my life.
Same here, with the exception of some brief exposures in college sports.
We were boiling water on our natural gas stove for the chance to feel a little warm. It was awful and I don’t mean to downplay that. I couldn’t tell if @sockpuppet2 was upset that I was understating it or was setting me up for some sort of gotcha.
Neither, I was just curious how you classified disasters, since "moderate disaster" is a weird combination of words.
Ah. Fair enough.
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