[HN Gopher] Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power...
___________________________________________________________________
Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air
conditioning
Author : rntn
Score : 195 points
Date : 2024-07-13 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| mouse_ wrote:
| frustrated seems like an understatement
| gigatexal wrote:
| Not angry enough to get their elected officials to make the power
| grid changes needed to make it more robust to such things.
|
| I mean how can they when reps like Ted Cruz fly off to Cancun
| when the weather gets really bad.
| 39896880 wrote:
| Notice the deflection by the Lt Governor:
|
| "People have a right to be extremely frustrated with
| CenterPoint. People are suffering through terribly oppressive
| heat, a lack of food and gasoline availability, debris
| everywhere, and much more," Patrick said. "The poor and most
| vulnerable are suffering the most."
|
| Not, "People have a right to be frustrated with the
| government,"
| ta125865421 wrote:
| What is going on over there? Seems like crazy town. With the
| geriatrics and corruption, good god it looks dystopian from a
| rando aussie pov.
| FredPret wrote:
| Any country looks dystopian from the news.
|
| From the outside, your own country seems to have a
| dystopian liking for government control of speech and the
| internet.
|
| If your daily experience does not align with this
| perception, consider that Texans might be in exactly the
| same boat as you, perception-vs-reality-wise.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| The attorney general of Texas is openly corrupt and is in
| the middle of a criminal trial.
|
| Acting like Texas isn't uniquely shitty requires
| intentionally forgetting reality.
| FredPret wrote:
| The government of many places, like the EU and Australia,
| openly and regularly make moves to crack down on
| individual freedoms in favour of state power - and they
| aren't even _in_ criminal trials.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| > Not angry enough to get their elected officials to make the
| power grid changes needed
|
| Do you have the magic solution that makes them resilient to
| natural disasters short of burying every single power line
| underground? Which is not only impractical but insanely
| expensive. The infrastructure has been physically damaged or
| destroyed. You fired off a politically charged comment and
| offered no specifics.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Increased trimming of trees near power lines. Apparently
| CenterPoint spent significantly less than some of the other
| power suppliers on maintenance.
|
| I don't know that it would help in this specific instance,
| but connecting Texas to the rest of the power grid would
| likely make the system overall more resilient.
| blantonl wrote:
| It wouldn't have helped. Trimming trees is preventative
| maintenance so that simple wind gusts don't trip lines when
| branches encroach on power lines.
|
| The only way you can prevent damage from _falling trees_ is
| to completely remove them.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Then it might be necessary to remove or relocate the
| trees since Houston is so vulnerable to hurricanes.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| > I don't know that it would help in this specific
| instance, but connecting Texas to the rest of the power
| grid would likely make the system overall more resilient.
|
| Irrelevant wishful thinking. The outages are caused by
| localized physical damage. There is no shortage of grid
| power. Inter-ties to every grid in the world wouldn't help
| when the wires on the last mile have been physically
| destroyed.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Note that I said "I don't know that it would help in this
| specific instance"
|
| Previous outages have been caused by issues with the grid
| rather than lines. Apparently CenterPoint is predicting
| that this summer power usage will near the grid's
| capacity and supposedly CenterPoint is known for
| underestimating.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Okay, but none of that has anything to do with the power
| lines being physically mangled or toppled by wind.
| 547555 wrote:
| It targets the right. His comment won't get [flagged] even if
| it's a mind fart.
| tardy_one wrote:
| Improving a percentage of a net has reduced down percentage
| for a reduced timeframe, so it seems like there are obviously
| better alternatives to the hand wringing approach if the goal
| isn't actually to justify doing nothing.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Do you have the magic solution that makes them resilient to
| natural disasters short of burying every single power line
| underground? Which is not only impractical but insanely
| expensive.
|
| "Do you have any suggestions other than what would actually
| work??"
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| > _"The grid is a whole different issue which we're addressing,
| have been addressing, and will continue to address," Patrick
| said. "The power is down because the lines are down, and the
| transmission lines are down primarily because trees fell on
| them."_
| 39896880 wrote:
| Is the grid not composed of power lines?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Texas famously wanted to be "independent" from the energy
| market and has steadfastly refused attempts from the federal
| government to have it join regional grids for the purposes of
| redundancy and resiliency, saying it can handle its own needs
| just fine.
|
| Until every power grid failure, when they ask the Feds for
| relief money (this is notwithstanding that in cases like
| this, they are not just asking for money for the grid
| failures but the general aftermath of Beryl, but it is a
| component).
| wongarsu wrote:
| What he means (but can't say directly) is that this isn't
| like the last couple highly public Texas blackouts. This time
| the power is available, there is enough generating capacity
| online and connected, they just can't get it delivered.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, building the infrastructure in the cheapest way possible
| has consequences.
|
| Underground lines would not be vulnerable to falling trees. But
| they are a lot more expensive to install, and when they require
| maintenence for any other reasons.
| wongarsu wrote:
| As European I find it strange how few power and telecom wires
| seem to be buried in the US. What's up with that? I get that
| in rural regions digging a ditch isn't worth it, but the
| Houston area has pretty high population density and still has
| wires on poles.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Houston doesn't have high population density. It has a
| gigantic population over an utterly enormous land area. And
| that's why they "can't" build infrastructure correctly and
| cost effectively.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| A lot of the infrastructure was established when density
| was much lower, so it was built out in the cheaper way, and
| now changing it is more expensive than just keeping on
| keeping on.
|
| That and a lot of Europe got to do some involuntary
| infrastructure rebuilding in the 1940s that the US didn't.
| vel0city wrote:
| To be fair to the comparison and Houston, the vast
| majority of Houston didn't exist in the 1940s either.
| _heimdall wrote:
| My understanding is that its largely a byproduct of how
| many of our major cities developed. When power
| infrastructure was originally being run, our cities were
| much less dense than what was already in Europe. They
| installed power above ground because there wasn't the
| density to really support funding underground lines, and
| because above ground lines are easier to add to as the city
| does become more dense.
|
| I lived on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico for a
| couple years. The island gets hit with storms pretty
| regularly, two or three major storms in my lifetime if I'm
| not mistaken. All of the power lines were above ground
| until maybe 5 years ago for two reasons - the island had a
| pretty low density for full time residency and buried lines
| are expensive, and they were worried about issues with
| burying lines in a sand island that can quite literally
| move and shift after a major storm. It seems like the
| latter either isn't a concern today, and its a good thing
| because those power poles were always causing problems on
| the island.
| structural wrote:
| For comparison, the Houston metro area (which is basically
| just the original city limits + what used to be its suburbs
| but have really just all grown together) is the size of the
| entire country of Belgium.
| chasd00 wrote:
| If this happened every year they'd be underground.
| Situations like this aren't common enough to create the
| need for a real fix. They'll just patch it up and move on.
| wolfendin wrote:
| They are also a lot more vulnerable to flooding which is also
| a major issue in a hurricane
| epolanski wrote:
| To me it's crazy people run so much AC at home.
|
| It's like making global warming a worse problem with AC, so it
| gets hotter and we use more AC.
|
| I live in Rome, Italy, we had 40C (104F) degree max temperatures
| during day, and even at night it doesn't fall below 29C (84) and
| we survive without AC just fine, not just me but the rest of my
| family in their houses too, of course it is sometimes
| uncomfortable, but that's summer.
|
| The worst offenders though are the many shops that blast AC 24/7
| and have their doors open! Put some goddamn sensors and sliding
| doors!?
|
| I just can't look at it. Even worse, electricity comes and goes
| all time during summer and it's hard to work at times (I'm full
| remote).
|
| I'm fully convinced nobody gives two damns about global warming
| and our own impact. It's better to just ignore our actions and
| focus on evil corporations so we keep avoiding doing anything,
| maybe buy and change our EVs every 3/4 years as it didn't make it
| worse.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >To me it's crazy people run so much AC at home.
|
| Tell me you've never been to Texas in July without telling me.
| sojournerc wrote:
| AC isn't a problem if the energy feeding it is carbon neutral.
| With a strong mix of renewables and nuclear this is achievable,
| but instead we continue to burn coal and natural gas to provide
| base load.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Visited NYC several times. Metro was unbearable in summer
| because trains heated up outside and blasted the warm air
| into tunnels and stations through AC.
| sojournerc wrote:
| AC doesn't really create heat though, aside from minor
| amounts from the compressor/fan motors, it merely moves it
| from inside to outside, or into the metro stations as you
| mention.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Yes, AC moves heat from inside homes outside into the
| city.
| sojournerc wrote:
| My point is that it doesn't create heat, thus does not
| contribute to climate change on its own. Only the energy
| source that powers it potentially does.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Since ACs are pretty far from 100% efficient, they turn
| electricity into heat. There's also heat generated along
| with the electricity because generation isn't perfect
| either.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| How humid is it in Rome during the summer compared to Houston?
| blantonl wrote:
| No even in the same ballpark. Houston is literally built on
| top of a swamp. The humidity is _oppressive_.
| nytesky wrote:
| Average dew point July
|
| 62F Rome 74F Houston
|
| https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/italy/rome/climate
|
| https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/houston/climate
|
| Noticable vs humid and uncomfortable bordering on oppressive
|
| https://www.weather.gov/images/tbw/dewpoint/DewPointScale.pn.
| ..
|
| *edit to fix Houston dew point
| alephnerd wrote:
| > we survive without AC just fine
|
| There were 5,600 deaths across Spain, Italy, and Germany in the
| 2023 heatwave that could be attributed to a lack of AC [0][1]
|
| Just because you and your family have been fine doesn't mean
| others can.
|
| AC is a critical need in increasingly hot environments.
|
| [0] - https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/hotter-summers-kill-
| thousan...
|
| [1] -
| https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/339462/978928905...
| soared wrote:
| Homes/buildings in your area are built with not having AC in
| mind - window locations, shade, insulation, etc is all purpose
| driven. Homes in Texas and generally the US are built with AC
| in mind, so we can't not use it - it would get 104 inside.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I've also noticed that newer homes tend to have this problem
| more than older ones. They're better sealed thermally, so
| while they're more efficient to keep cool, when they get hot
| they stay hot for a lot longer. Great for winter, not so much
| for summer heatwaves.
|
| I used to live in an apartment built in the 70s which was a
| pain to cool or heat because it was so badly sealed. But the
| one benefit it did have is that on hot days with cool nights
| it'd very quickly cool off, without needing AC. My current
| place requires AC unless I mind waiting until 4am for it to
| cool off.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| It's pretty easy to temporarily "unseal" a house though -
| open doors/windows.
|
| A well sealed and insulated house takes less to cool too,
| though. It doesn't just help in winter.
|
| Sadly, in central Kansas where I live, it regularly forgets
| to get cool at night. Last summer we did our corn silage
| chopping at night and slept in the day, as we were getting
| burned trying to operate equipment. At night it was still
| very hot and muggy. IIRC the dewpoint was in the mid-to-
| upper 80s F.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| In places like Houston, which is effectively built on reclaimed
| swamplands, it's not the just the temperature, the humidity
| plays a huge part too. When it's 40C and humidity is at 100%
| and wet bulb temperatures are approaching 30+C, lack of AC
| becomes a life threatening problem. It becomes practically
| impossible to cool off and maintain a safe body temperature,
| especially for the very young, chronically ill, or elderly
| people.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Lowering energy usage doesn't solve the climate problem it just
| slows the devastation. We need to use clean energy regardless
| if it's for AC or for work to have a worthwhile impact on that
| half of things. From another view: it's better to live well
| sustainably than be proud of unsustainably living miserably. To
| do that we need to convince people to pay more for electricity
| generation instead of pointing out they likely wouldn't die if
| they used less dirty energy.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Many homes in the US are not build with stone but thin wood.
| Houses in Europe with stone take some time to heat up. We lived
| in a 100 year old house in Berlin and it took 2 months until
| the walls were warm. Also took some months in winter until
| walls are cold again.
|
| [Edit] This is not about insulation but heat capacity.
| bluGill wrote:
| such houses are great in mild climates, but the us is
| generally not mild.
|
| thin wood as an engineer has many advantages over stone.
| Stone seens stronger but often it isn't where strength
| matters while being stronger where it doesn't-
| bequanna wrote:
| Modern "stick built" homes in the US are well insulated and
| actually quite efficient. Stone walls would be a poor choice
| in most areas in the US due to extreme conditions.
|
| As you mention, once a stone house heats up in the summer,
| that is an incredible amount of thermal mass to cool. Your AC
| would run non-stop. Similar issue in the winter, super high
| heating costs in cold regions.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| This is not about insulation but heat capacity.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Heat capacity doesn't mean much unless the walls are
| several feet thick.
|
| The frost line where I live is around 5 feet deep into
| the ground- meaning that footings for any building have
| to be that deep to avoid shifting as the ground freezes
| and thaws.
|
| Summer months thick stone walls can be nice if you are
| able to keep humidity out, but if you don't and your
| walls actually stay cool you're dealing with a lot of
| mold and mildew since water will be condensating 24/7.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Whenever I visit Italy in the summer I check to make sure the
| hotel I've booked has AC. I got burned by that one hot summer
| in Milan.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Heh, just got burned by this in the Czech Republic. Far on
| the east side, hotel advertising A/C but it's only in a
| common area - not in the room itself.
|
| Just about drove me insane.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Here's a comparison of Houston and Rome climates:
| https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/9247~71779/Comparison-of-...
|
| Note the temperature and especially the humidity sections.
| epolanski wrote:
| I'm commenting on Rome though, my city. Not Houston.
| snailmailman wrote:
| The point is that Houston is both hotter and more humid.
| People have already died due to heat because of this loss
| of power. The AC is not a luxury but a _necessity_.
| epolanski wrote:
| I'm not commenting on the usage of ac in Houston (albeit
| it's nonsense to raise a city in such a place) but in
| Rome.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| I was there last weekend & for the day of the hurricane. This was
| just a cat 1 hurricane at the time it passed through Houston, and
| there was SO much damage. I can't imagine the city is remotely
| prepared for (god forbid, and idk how likely it is that far
| inland anyway) a cat 4 or 5. We were staying in a hotel that had
| a backup generator, but every single other building that was
| visible from our hotel had lost power during the storm.
|
| Everyone I talked to in the area lost power at home for at
| _least_ a day, and many people said they expected to lose power
| for a full week.
|
| I'm interested if anyone familiar with the local state of the
| grid knows whose "fault" the enormous turnaround time in
| restoring power is:
|
| * Not enough employees at the electrical companies
|
| * Infrastructure regulation (e.g. requiring buried lines in
| critical areas) is insufficient in Houston specifically
|
| * Infrastructure regulation is insufficient in Texas specifically
|
| * (or nationally? are there national guidelines for the power
| grid in various weather-prone areas?)
|
| * The Texas grid being separate from the rest of the country's
|
| * Other??
| blantonl wrote:
| This wasn't a "grid issue." It is a last-mile issue.
|
| It's specifically an issue with the sheer amount of above
| ground power lines and population density. There is no easy
| fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done
| to prevent something like this. Plus, what causes the same
| amount of power outages (wind damage) isn't going to be
| different between 90mph winds and 150 mph winds. The effects
| are going to be the same on the power infrastructure.
|
| The hurricane, while even a Cat 1, still brought what would
| effectively be a localized extremely severe thunderstorm over
| vast swaths of, and a direct hit upon, major population areas
| over the 4rd largest city in the country.
|
| New Orleans was in the same boat with Ida in 2021. There were
| areas of the city that didn't get power back for over a month.
| Everyone was furious with Entergy there, but there's just a
| simple reality with this stuff.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that
| can be done to prevent something like this"
|
| Regulations on the initial construction? In other words, plan
| ahead.
|
| But no, I must have my 'Freeeeedooooommmmm'.
|
| You can't force me to prepare.
| blantonl wrote:
| Yeah, well what about existing infrastructure? Most new
| construction already buries the last mile of power.
|
| But if you do have above ground power lines feeding your
| house, how likely would it be that you'd be in favor of
| having your entire backyard dug up for a couple weeks while
| they implemented this huge public works project? How likely
| would you be willing to shoulder the cost burden? And of
| course, it's just as simple as digging a trench and burying
| the lines, right? I'm pretty sure there isn't any buried
| oil and gas infrastructure in the Houston area.... right?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Sure, just stop complaining about not having power.
|
| Seems like everyone is ready to argue about how
| impossible everything is. Shrugs "guess it's impossible,
| we just have to go on like we've always have".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I would love it, personally. In addition to being
| vulnerable to wind and tree damage, above-ground power
| lines are very unsightly. Just compare any neighborhood
| with underground power to the ones where you can't look
| out of any window without seeing ugly poles and wires
| everywhere.
| FredPret wrote:
| Why didn't we think to regulate physics before!?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Does physics dictate how you build power lines? Where is
| physics the constraint on more hardened construction?
| Physics isn't saying, build above ground and 'low cost'.
| FredPret wrote:
| > Does physics dictate how you build power lines?
|
| Bro.
|
| Come up with a plan and a budget for your buried cables
| and sell it to the people of Texas who will have to pay
| for it.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| They are paying for it. It's either on the front end with
| regulations on more expensive construction, or on the
| back end with power outages, damage and repairs.
| FredPret wrote:
| Put that in your presentation to the Texans!
| rfrey wrote:
| Closer to regulating that providers of essential
| infrastructure acknowledge that physics exists.
| gmueckl wrote:
| What's wrong with below-ground power distribution for
| metropolitan areas?
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's time consuming and expensive to implement due to a mix
| of property rights and construction.
| foota wrote:
| "There is no easy fix" underground power lines for an
| entire city isn't easy.
| blantonl wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with it. But it would take lifetimes
| of money and time to retrofit a city like Houston to move
| all power infrastructure underground. And there is no way
| consumers would ever sign up for the cost to do so. It
| would be akin to building the Hoover Dam today. It would
| probably be one of the largest public works projects ever
| attempted.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Lifetimes of money, really? What is that measurement?
| Someone above said 2.5 million per square miles.
| Catastrophic damage from larger storms is often in the
| tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, so it feel like
| it would be in the best interest of most parties to
| embark on this project, even if it happens slowly.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Putting power lines underground wouldn't mitigate very
| much of that damage though, would it? I was under the
| impression that the vast majority of those multibillion
| dollar figures is water damage to buildings, cars, and
| other equipment.
| Qwertious wrote:
| A lifetime of money is ~$10M or so. That's $100k/year for
| 100 years.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's not lifetimes of money, but there are substantial
| costs.
|
| All of the existing distribution conductors need to be
| buried either by trenching or directional boring, all of
| the pole-mounted transformers need to be replaced with
| pad-mounted transformers , and all of the customer
| service drops need to be converted from overhead to
| underground.
|
| In another post, someone said about $2.5M per square
| mile, which isn't actually all that much money. If you
| figure half labor and half material costs (fairly
| standard for electrical construction) and labor costs of
| $100/hr (IBEW 66 journeyman lineman), that's 12,500 hours
| of labor, or a 6.25 person crew for one year to convert
| one square mile, and Houston is 637 square miles.
|
| ~4,000 person years of labor, 400 full time linemen could
| do the whole city in 10 years.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Houston is gigantic.
|
| Maintaining underground infrastructure can be very
| difficult.
|
| https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/9/16/repairing-
| under...
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Berlin, 3.645M citizen, everything underground. Houston,
| 2.302M citizen, ... "gigantic"
| bdcravens wrote:
| It's not a matter of population, but land. Berlin is
| about 345 square miles; Houston is 640.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Berlin including suburbs ("Speckgurtel") is ~1400 square
| miles.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| So approximately 1/7th the size of the Houston metro
| area.
| dwighttk wrote:
| When people are talking about Houston they are talking
| about Greater Houston: 7.5M people over 10,000 square
| miles
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Houston
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Greater Berlin also is much bigger than Berlin.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| This is silly. MSAs have near zero to do with a city.
|
| They are not talking about Greater Houston.
|
| For comparison, let's look at the Seattle metropolitan
| area
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_metropolitan_area)
|
| It includes Mt Rainier, which NO-ONE in the area would
| say is "in Seattle".
|
| It includes Bainbridge Island in Kitsap County, same.
|
| Glacier Peak, in the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National
| Forest, also definitely not "in Seattle".
|
| Mount Vernon, Olympia, North Bend, no-one would remotely
| call these "in Seattle".
|
| Not even for the purposes of international news and
| geolocation, they'd be "near" at best.
|
| To my point if you told residents of College Station or
| Galveston that they were just a part of Houston they'd
| look at you funnily.
|
| It's just more of our "America is unique, solutions that
| work elsewhere can't work here", and Texas likes to do
| that on a state level.
|
| Fun detail, most Texans, and many Americans, believe that
| the King Ranch is the largest cattle ranch in the world.
|
| Except... it's not. Anna Station in Australia is over six
| times larger, larger than Israel.
|
| In fact, if you put King Ranch in Australia, it'd only be
| the _seventy-fourth_ largest ranch in that country.
|
| The reality is far more mundane and depressing: there's a
| resistance to fixing some of these things because it'd
| mean acknowledging that mistakes had been made or "your
| way" of doing things is not the right or best one. And
| for far too many people, they'd sooner freeze to death
| than admit that.
| tohnjitor wrote:
| As I understand it, the topsoil in parts of Texas is only
| a foot deep or less and then it's solid bedrock. This is
| why most homes do not have basements.
| EasyMark wrote:
| That's not true in all of Texas for sure. I can vouch for
| it in Central Texas "hill country" 6-10"around my home
| and you will hit solid limestone. Makes a nice home
| foundation (provided it's not too porous)but I would not
| want to pay for a pool or basement here.
| Teknomancer wrote:
| Berlin, Germany is inland, with an elevation average
| around 34 meters above sea level. The ground soil
| composition in Berlin is primarily sandy, draining easily
| and lending itself exceptionally well to underground
| infrastructure development.
|
| Houston, Texas, is coastal and has an elevation that
| averages around 13 meters above sea level. The ground
| composition in Houston is primarily made up of clay.
| Houston soil is notoriously heavy and has issues with
| drainage in construction. It's poorly suited for
| underground infrastructure development.
| Symbiote wrote:
| How about Amsterdam, or London (outer London if you want
| a lower density).
| ggm wrote:
| you haven't seen the soil drainage pipes of Berlin?
| They're like a screensaver from the 1990s escaped into
| the real world.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Berlin also has the advantage, being generous on
| "advantage", of being completely rebuilt about 70 years
| ago.
| ggm wrote:
| When did the explosion of Houston's size and city take
| place? pre- or post 1945?
| gregw2 wrote:
| Some of both but mostly post-45.
|
| The quip is that two things made Houston possible: oil
| and air conditioning.
| spyspy wrote:
| Much more expensive to install and maintain, and while risk
| from wind and rain is lessened, you add the risk of any
| below ground construction accidentally severing cables.
| FredPret wrote:
| I'm not an electrical or civil eng, but I imagine it's very
| expensive to dig so many tunnels.
|
| Groundwater (especially for coastal cities) and people
| drilling holes would be very problematic too.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "not an electrical or civil eng. So let me explain how
| impossible everything is that I don't know about, and
| snidely say it's just 'physics'".
| hedora wrote:
| Assuming you don't hit rock, it's not bad.
|
| Power lines that are rated for conduit burial (which
| implies indefinite direct submersion in water is fine --
| conduits leak, even if they're not supposed to) are
| readily available and not particularly expensive vs.
| above ground lines. Most of the cost is in the conductor,
| and that's the same either way.
|
| If memory serves me right, you need to trench 6ft (which
| is usually done with a backhoe that has a narrow bucket
| and straddles the trench), then place a PVC pipe to act
| as conduit and fill the trench. The last step is using a
| (typically) pickup-truck mounted cable puller to pull the
| line through the conduit.
|
| If the wire fails, you can pull it out and put a new one
| in without retrenching.
|
| When you bury the conduit, you also bury a piece of
| warning cloth about one foot above it. If you see that
| while digging, then you should stop digging. (Also, call
| the "call before you dig" number before you dig.)
|
| There are also trenchless systems that I've seen used for
| fiber optic cables. It's basically a tiny little boring
| machine (like they use to bore holes for tunnels) on the
| end of a cable. One person steers the boring machine, and
| the other stands above ground with a metal detector that
| tells them where it is, and how deep.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Standard in most of Europe.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Nothing, but migrating to it is very expensive.
|
| Centerpoint, the physical electricity provider in Houston,
| has said it would cost $2.5M per square mile. Houston is
| 640 square miles. Regulations allow them to claw back costs
| on the bills. (For example, repairs from past storms are
| often paid for over the course of several years in the form
| of a bond that is applied to customers as surcharges)
|
| https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/ce
| n...
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| It seems like a lot, but a few billions of dollars also
| seems like a good deal to secure against increasing risks
| for severe weather. What's the total economic impact of
| future storms? To put it in perspective a single Patriot
| missile battery costs about a billion dollars and a
| single missile costs $4M.
| hedora wrote:
| There are about 3844 people per square mile in Houston,
| so that's $650 per person, amortized over at least 20
| years, which would increase the monthly power bill by
| about $2.70 per person (~ $10 / subscriber?)
|
| I'd guess that's less expensive than throwing out
| everything in the fridge / freezer every few years.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Penny-wise, pound foolish. This single 1 week power
| outage is going to cost Houston a _lot_ more than $1.6B.
| _wire_ wrote:
| Funny to think about these costs and the health of the
| national commons from a point of view of the Federal
| budget.
|
| For example, you point out it would cost 2 billion to
| migrate Houston's above-ground to storm proof below
| ground.
|
| If we could lop off 1/4 of the DoD and intelligence
| budget of $1T/yr and dedicate it to infrastructure, we
| could pay for 125 Huston-scale improvement projects per
| year. And still have the most expensive DoD in the world!
| But that would be misguided for "national security".
|
| Plus the Federal budget is essentially free money,
| constructed as needed, where such value is incarnated via
| the wealth of the commons, where such wealth is most
| truly incarnated by infrastructure.
|
| But for unknown reasons, such pragmatism is politically
| untenable.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > Plus the Federal budget is essentially free money,
| constructed as needed
|
| It's amusing and a bit scary that someone thinks the
| federal budget is essentially free money, constructed as
| needed.
| hedora wrote:
| The US dollar literally is constructed as needed. It's
| pretty darn close to free thanks to electronic banking.
|
| However, like all magic, using it has severe (and
| generally predictable) consequences.
|
| Unlike fictional magic, the consequences take 4 years to
| kick in like clockwork. That, and the US's two term limit
| meant that presidents get to print money without
| political consequence. Worst case, they lose the
| midterms, then run again while blaming the next guy for
| the problem they created.
|
| Hypothetically, of course.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Presidents don't print money. Congress approves stimuli
| in the form of spending. Spending is always inflationary
| in nature because it injects money into the economy.
|
| The Federal Reserve, nearly completely independent (for
| better or worse) from the Executive and Legislative
| branches, prints money in the form of quantitative easing
| and controls other levers through lending and interest
| rate strategies.
| yownie wrote:
| jfc you're like the spiritual avatar of
| /r/confidentiallyincorrect.
| galdosdi wrote:
| It's free if you spend it on a durable asset that is as
| or more valuable than the cash was, which can often be
| true of infrastructure. Your balance sheet goes up not
| down after the spend then.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| There are vanishingly few examples of infrastructure
| spending that don't turn into massive, wasteful
| boondoggles; perhaps the Interstate Highway system.
|
| The national railroad system a century prior and even the
| Internet were nearly entirely built with private funds.
| Qwertious wrote:
| The interstate highway system is arguably a massively
| wasteful boondoggle - it subsidises trucks at the cost of
| the far more efficient and less-polluting rail.
| massysett wrote:
| Railroads got massive subsidies in at least two forms:
| huge land grants, and the power of the U.S. Army to wage
| war on the native peoples who otherwise would have stood
| in their way.
| ericmay wrote:
| > For example, you point out it would cost 2 billion to
| migrate Houston's above-ground to storm proof below
| ground.
|
| The State of Texas had a budget of $188 billion [1].
|
| In 2023 they projected a surplus of $18 billion [2].
|
| Maybe they can budget it in?
|
| What the federal government versus state governments
| should pay for is a big can of worms, but I'm not sure
| why it seems so easy to just look at the DoD budget and
| says "there's money there let's use that" as if it's not
| doing anything or it's all waste. If anything
| (unfortunately) the DoD budget probably needs to be
| increased quite a bit given the geopolitical challenges
| we face.
|
| [1]. https://everytexan.org/2023/11/03/the-2024-25-texas-
| budget-t...
|
| [2] https://abc13.com/texas-legislature-2023-state-
| budget-surplu...
| vondur wrote:
| Houston is having some budget issues currently:
| <https://abc13.com/houston-budget-mayor-john-whitmire-
| city-se...>
|
| How much should the states bail out mismanaged cities?
| How much should the Federal Government bail out
| mismanaged states? Budgets aren't "free money" as you
| assert.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The general problem states see is that metropolitan
| regions are more productive and produce more taxes, so in
| many cases the state cannot necessarily wash its hands of
| cities.
|
| The largest municipal fiscal crises in the nation so far
| have been NYC in the '70s and Detroit. There is also the
| case of Puerto Rico, although one could argue the feds
| have more culpability there since its status as a non-
| state subject to federal laws makes a lot of avenues for
| resolving crises illegal.
| nostrademons wrote:
| There actually are a few problems with underground power
| lines, notably that maintenance & upgrades are much
| harder and more expensive, they tend to get severed by
| construction, they tend to get severed by earthquakes,
| and bad things result if the waterproof conduit around
| them is punctured.
|
| On balance I think they're probably worth it for areas
| prone to wildfire, but undergrounding all power lines is
| not a panacea, and there are a lot of hidden costs to
| undergrounding that become apparent only after they get
| old and you have to do maintenance.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In European cities where underground power lines are
| normal these issues aren't a problem.
|
| There might be costs (checking before construction for
| example) and it being normal it helps.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| What I've always heard whenever this subject comes up in
| Houston is that A) burying lines is expensive (and Houston
| is _very_ large), and B) Houston floods a lot.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| New Orleans and Houston are basically built on swamps. In
| New Orleans, you can't even bury people below ground, so I
| doubt you can do much with power lines underground.
| hedora wrote:
| It turns out we don't need to speculate:
|
| https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/64650dded34ec179
| a83...
|
| Most of the wells they sampled are > 100 ft above the
| water table. Some are as low as 12. The lowest is 2.83ft.
| Here's the relevant bit of the schema XML document for
| the CSV the produced: <attr>
| <attrlabl>DTW23</attrlabl> <attrdef>
| December 2022 through March 2023 depth to groundwater in
| feet measured from land-surface elevation
| referenced to NAVD 88 </attrdef>
| <attrdefs>U.S. Geological Survey</attrdefs>
| <attrdomv> <rdom>
| <rdommin>2.83</rdommin>
| <rdommax>453.97</rdommax>
| <attrunit>feet</attrunit> </rdom>
| </attrdomv> </attr>
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I used to live in a neighboring parish to the west of New
| Orleans. If you dug more than 3 feet into the ground, you
| were hitting water. Driving pilings is a sloppy mess.
| yread wrote:
| In Amsterdam the ground water level is also very high but
| people manage to put lines in the ground
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| So this is weird, but I never saw people buried above
| ground in Amsterdam like in New Orleans. What the diff?
| Even if cremation is common now, it probably wasn't a
| hundred or two years ago?
| robocat wrote:
| Swamp is a poor excuse IMHO. Plenty of my city
| Christchurch is built on swamp. yet it has slowly been
| replacing HV and LV power poles with underground cabling
| for about 50 years now, although there is still some
| remaining. We don't get hurricanes so I'm not sure of
| reasons for us using underground cabling. NZ is no where
| near as wealthy as Texas so Houston should be able to
| afford to do it too.
|
| Christchurch gets earthquakes instead of hurricanes:
| http://db.nzsee.org.nz/SpecialIssue/44(4)0425.pdf
| atmavatar wrote:
| I'm getting strong "'No way to prevent this' says only
| country where this regularly happens" vibes.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| It's funny to me that folks counter criticism of Texas by
| saying lefty California also has outages. It's like,
| sure, they do -- so why not show that a right-wing
| government can do better? What is the actual point of the
| counterargument?
| gosub100 wrote:
| I think "vibes" is a new weasel word that subtly absolves
| the author from any responsibility to connect cause and
| effect. There's a whole lot more to writing than
| announcing what "vibes" you get.
| bluGill wrote:
| Moles, mice, things walking/driving over the top. There is
| a long list of things that make underground not nearly as
| reliable as it sounds.
| bequanna wrote:
| Underground electric distribution is considerably more
| reliable than overhead lines. Animals digging up the wire
| is much more rare than an outage created by an animal
| crawling up a pole and grabbing the line/transformer.
|
| Underground electric is quite widely used in the Midwest
| and is cost effective vs. overhead lines even in sparsely
| populated rural areas.
| 15155 wrote:
| Below-ground power distribution is cheaper in sparsely-
| populated rural areas than overhead lines because utility
| companies can trench the lines directly through anyone's
| field or in any random ditch - there's no directional
| boring required (until customer delivery possibly.)
|
| Add in the fact that you no longer risk trees taking down
| lines when they are unkempt and ice-covered and it is
| probably _much_ cheaper.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Doesn't seem like it would be cheaper anywhere.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Source? The grid was far more reliable where I've lived
| with underground than overhead lines. Kind of hard to
| believe. Sounds like that would only happen if your city
| cheaped out on the conduit material.
| bluGill wrote:
| Been thirty years since I lived there, but when I lived
| where there was a coop electric they had data showing
| underground was overall less reliable. Maybe things are
| diffarant now.
| adolph wrote:
| > Moles, mice, things walking/driving over the top
|
| I wonder if anyone has started an environmental impact
| statement about burying lines. For example squirrels,
| possums, etc use them as bridges over streets, birds use
| them as observation/socialization spaces, especially some
| flocks of migratory grackles (maybe?) that have a giant
| winter rookery on the lines around a grocery store.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Isn't there a third option: _redundant_ overhead power
| lines?
|
| In the transmission (long haul) part of the grid, there's
| already a lot of redundancy. But not as much in the
| distribution (last mile) part.
|
| If you increase redundancy, you should be more resilient to
| e.g. trees knocking out power lines because there are
| multiple paths in more parts of the network.
|
| I doubt full redundancy (two lines to every customer) would
| be realistic, but an increase in redundancy seems like a
| more practical way forward than just starting over
| completely with underground lines.
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| I don't think the difference between the power grid and the
| power utility is clear to most people. The grid is a
| statewide wholesale electricity distribution network which
| consists of generators, substations and high voltage long
| distance transmission lines. The utility is in charge of
| taking the power from the grid and delivering 110/220V to end
| customers, i.e. homes and businesses. This hurricane caused a
| lot of damage to the utility infrastructure. The grid
| performed fine.
|
| Some people bring up the storm Ian in 2021. Winter storms are
| fundamentally different disasters. Cold snaps drive up local
| electricity demand sharply and this is the kind of thing that
| can stress the grid.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > The utility is in charge of taking the power from the
| grid and delivering 110/220V to end customers, i.e. homes
| and businesses.
|
| Sorry to be pedantic, but most US businesses have 208/120V
| or 480/277V three-phase electrical services. There are some
| old existing 240/120V three-phase high-leg delta (aka
| bastard leg) delta services. [0] Delta-wye transformers are
| the most common type today, that's where you get the
| 208/120 and 480/277 services from. [1]
|
| Larger commercial/industrial customers can have their own
| medium/high voltage substations and premises
| wiring/distribution.
|
| Medium voltage is 2.4kV to 70kV with 4160V and 13800V being
| the most common for commercial/industrial applications.
| High voltage is roughly 100kV to 1mV.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-wye_transformer
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > Sorry to be pedantic
|
| Why apologize. You're in the right place for pedantry ;)
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > Sorry to be pedantic, but most US businesses have
| 208/120V or 480/277V three-phase electrical services.
|
| Sorry to be pedantic, but define "business". As someone
| who's worked on many job sites doing commercial
| electrical work, it's not as common as you imply that
| there's three phase service running to a business. Do a
| lot have it, yes, most, no. Literally everything else you
| said I'm aligned with.
| hedora wrote:
| I disagree, and I speak from experience.
|
| We've been repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons
| here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts hit
| both of the last two years. Our area looses a lot of roads to
| mudslides, and of course we have extended power outages.
|
| Having said that, the first year, PG&E only delivered one
| nine of availability last year, and this year, they're closer
| to two nines.
|
| The difference is that they actually trimmed the trees
| (residents have been asking for this for years), and they
| replaced most of the Regan-era telephone poles (the old ones
| had bent into all sorts of interesting arcs, and the data
| lines used be held up by being tied to nearby tree branches).
|
| So, for a Cat-1 to be as bad as it is in Texas, I assume the
| issue there is the same as here in California: Graft at the
| utility company, and corruption at the state house.
|
| We know for sure that Texas has these issues because they
| continue to refuse to winterize the grid. They could do so at
| minimal cost -- I think they just have to buy more expensive
| grease and install insulation sleeves when they run above
| ground pipes -- and the vast majority of states in the US do
| this. As a result, every time they get a 10-year snow storm
| the whole state loses power (and those storms are probably
| now 1-5 year storms thanks to climate change). This has been
| a well-publicized problem there since at least the 1990's, so
| they've had more than enough time to fix it.
|
| The last time they had a big winter storm, the power outage
| cascaded to a catastrophic failure at a refinery that feeds
| 20% of global PVC production. This is why you couldn't get
| materials to repair drainage or plumbing during the tail end
| of covid.
|
| As to your point about it being an urban area:
|
| The higher the population density, the easier the technical
| challenges become for this stuff. The amount of line to
| maintain per customer drops, and so does the density of
| hazardous trees, landslides, etc. The main challenges are
| around permitting, etc, but those processes are supposedly
| very lax in Texas (which is a good thing IMO).
|
| I do agree they should be burying lines whenever possible.
| Everyone should do that. Modern equipment means it's a lot
| easier than you'd think.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Houston actually has relatively low population density
| compared to other metro areas with only 3,842 people per
| square mile, and across the MSA (Houston is extremely
| spread out), that number is much lower. (Compare to, for
| example, Union City, NJ, with 54,138 persons/sq mile.)
| There are some 7.5 million people spread out across more
| than 10,000 square miles across the greater Houston area.
|
| Also, the water table is very high, and hurricanes
| completely flood entire areas, so transformers etc are
| often completely underwater. It's just not feasible to bury
| sensitive equipment when the entire area is under six or
| ten feet of water.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| TLDR Texas is hosed as climate change accelerates and
| there is no will to pay to build resilient infra.
| Godspeed y'all.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I don't think it's really possible to predict what will
| become of Texas. One could imagine such a big, resource-
| rich state finding ways to work collectively for the
| better of all, though obviously that's naive to the point
| of nearly being a joke. Still there is a lot going for it
| in some sense. Politicians may not care about the people,
| but their beloved businesses also need infrastructure, so
| at least there's that.
|
| I've lived in Texas my entire life and there are aspects
| of it that I love, but I do have vague plans to move
| north once my remaining ties to the state dissolve.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Would you bet your financial success or life outcome on
| Texas making rational policy leading to potentially more
| favorable outcomes for its citizens (based on all
| available evidence)?
| alexk307 wrote:
| Did you read OP's post?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Yes. I am also familiar with the technical challenges and
| cost of improving last mile electrical distribution to
| withstand hurricane force conditions where burial is not
| an option (whether because of a high water table or
| potential surge conditions, where equipment is suspended
| at a height above ground level on permanent scaffolding
| or pedestals). It is expensive, not impossible. It is a
| choice, and there is a cost. It's cold, hard economics.
| The politics are whether to spend or not spend, and the
| outcome of that decision.
| downrightmike wrote:
| And the flood zone maps are out of date and were not
| really accurate to begin with and they are purposely not
| updated.
| ethagknight wrote:
| You lost me at "climate change induced typhoon".
|
| Comparing an "Bay Area typhoon" (very hilly) to low and
| flat Houston with a direct hit is disingenuous at best.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Don't worry, he saw a clogged storm drain in Pac Heights
| once, he's got this.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| He does speak from experience!
| jwkpiano1 wrote:
| The elevation of Houston is _higher_ than the elevation
| of SF. Yes, there are many hills, and the _max_ elevation
| is obviously higher, but there are also plenty of low
| lying areas and areas at sea level.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Hills make a huge difference impeding winds across the
| land, storm water drains much faster. Has a hurricane
| ever hit San Francisco? It's not a real comparison,
| typhoons in the area, to a direct hurricane.
|
| It's also extremely expensive to mitigate, maybe it
| should be done, but the GP was hand waving it all away.
| Commenter even "disagreed from experience" and then cited
| a totally different experience.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Nonetheless, there are no recorded instances of large
| storm-induced floods in the SFBay area that I'm aware of.
| Do you know of any?
|
| Fires, earthquakes, heavy rains causing mudslides that
| have actually killed people: yes. Some very localized
| flooding around the Russian River happens all the time.
| The Guadalupe River in San Jose flooded a few years ago.
| But storm surge from the ocean? nope, nope.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| There was a pretty bad flooding event portrayed in the
| documentary movie San Andreas.
|
| https://youtu.be/jvIGFhqbe0c?si=ZCaVjWjw-oi84HgD&t=1m39s
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I was laughing too. Yes the legendary typhoons slamming
| into SF yearly, how could I forget.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also live in SF Bay Area, but my sister lived in Houston
| for ~20 years and I grew up in the Northeast (and got hit
| by hurricanes Gloria and Bob as a child).
|
| What we saw with the winter storms of 2022 and 2023 was
| nothing close to what Houston or even the NY area gets with
| a hurricane. Bay Area topography is hilly; most of the wind
| is broken by the Santa Cruz mountains. I'm in one of the SF
| Peninsula canyons that's known for being particularly
| windy, and we saw maybe 70mph gusts and 30mph sustained. A
| Cat 1 hurricane (like Beryl, Bob, or Gloria) has 75mph
| winds _sustained_ with gusts up to 100mph. A Cat 5 (like
| Katrina at the height of its strength; it made landfall as
| a cat 3) has 150mph sustained winds and 200+mph gusts.
|
| Hurricane Bob knocked out power to eastern Long Island NY
| for 2 days in 1991. Hurricane Sandy (also a Cat 1 at
| landfall, but a direct hit on NYC) knocked out power for 2
| weeks. The problem is not unique to Houston or Texas. PG&E
| has plenty of its own problems, but the reason fewer poles
| went down our winter storms (and they still did go down;
| Cupertino was without power for almost 2 days) was simply
| because the wind was less.
| alexk307 wrote:
| What are climate-change induced typhoons? How are those
| quantified?
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I also wondered this. How do you tell the difference
| between a climate change induced typhoon and the
| alternative? Maybe its obvious to the down voters, but
| you have at least two people here you could potentially
| teach something to.
| alexk307 wrote:
| You don't - that's the point.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay
| Area), and hurricane-force gusts
|
| What the Bay Area has seen is _nothing_ like actual
| hurricanes.
| lolinder wrote:
| To quantify the winds we're talking about, the record-
| setting winds in the Bay Area this February peaked at
| 100mph gusts, with 18 stations recording values between
| 80mph and 100mph [0] (Pablo Point, out in the middle of the
| Pacific, recorded gusts of 102mph, but I'd consider that an
| outlier). Notably, all stations recording values higher
| than 80mph are on mountain peaks, not anywhere near
| population centers. In most of the Bay Area the gusts
| didn't exceed 60mph [1].
|
| During Hurricane Beryl, 17 weather stations in the (very
| flat) Houston area recorded wind gusts _in excess_ of
| 100mph. 30 stations recorded gusts in excess of 90mph [2].
| Beryl 's sustained winds were about 65mph, in excess of the
| _gusts_ that most of the Bay Area experienced in that
| February storm.
|
| All of which is to say: other commenters are right, it's
| useless to look at what you experienced in the Bay Area and
| compare it to even a small hurricane.
|
| [0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/05/map-where-wind-
| reache...
|
| [1] https://underscoresf.com/the-belated-weekend-catch-up-
| record...
|
| [2] https://houstonlanding.org/these-houston-areas-
| received-the-...
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Consider earthquakes. Preparation and infrastructure are
| what matter. If you don't do the prep, you'll have a
| hundred thousand dead from a 6.0. But if you do the prep,
| you'll have relatively trivial damage from a 7.0.
|
| Texas power, thanks to their 'we don't need no
| regulamazations' attitude, has shown itself to be
| woefully underreported repeatedly in the last few years.
| reaperman wrote:
| > So, for a Cat-1 to be as bad as it is in Texas, I assume
| the issue there is the same as here in California
|
| The CEO of Centerpoint was the CFO of PG&E and the CFO of
| Centerpoint came from PG&E as well. So you're more right
| than you know!
| holbrad wrote:
| >climate-change induced typhoons
|
| Tell me your uninformed, without telling me.
| richrichie wrote:
| > repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons here
|
| There, found another cult member.
| m463 wrote:
| Can they bury power lines in houston? I thought the water
| table was pretty close to the surface.
|
| (if you want a swimming pool, dig a hole!)
|
| EDIT: ok I looked
|
| it seems there are two kinds of lines - transmission lines
| and distribution lines.
|
| Distribution lines can be buried, but it might not be good
| in hurricane prone areas that are prone to flooding.
|
| transmission lines are hard/expensive to bury, since the
| insulation requirements are technically challenging.
|
| The hurricane seems to have taken out some large
| transmission lines in addition to distribution lines.
|
| I wonder if maybe redundant lines might be cheaper than
| buried lines?
| smelendez wrote:
| Ida in New Orleans was a real mess and exposed a lot of
| issues in the city besides electricity.
|
| Because power was out for so long, everyone threw out a ton
| of food, but there was no trash pickup in some cases for
| weeks because of staffing shortages and contract disputes, so
| there was stinky trash and huge swarms of bright blue flies
| everywhere. At one point, the mayor suggested people could
| drive their own trash to the transfer station--after it had
| been sitting out in 95 degree heat for weeks.
|
| There also was no proper street cleaning, which meant streets
| and sidewalks were full of storm debris, including things
| like roofing nails. The lines at tire repair shops were
| wrapping around the block.
|
| Entergy's meter reading and billing also got completely
| thrown off. I moved shortly after Ida, and it took months to
| get any bill at all in the new place, and I only got my final
| bill for the old place this year, almost three years later,
| no longer living in Louisiana. (They also never actually sent
| me the bill or turned on my autopay, so I only knew it was
| time to pay when the power went out).
| matt_heimer wrote:
| I think there is also a tree maintenance issue, the same
| problem that lead to fires in California. I'm 2 blocks from
| where one of the tornados touched down during the derecho and
| close the transmission lines that were heavily damaged. We
| were without power for 5 days after the derecho and only 1
| day this time. If you look at where power was least impacted
| and restored the soonest for Beryl it is the same area that
| was most impacted by the derecho.
|
| I think the derecho took out a lot of the problematic trees
| and branches.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| This last mile - lines/etc - are also partly what make
| trivial matters like _' extended cold periods'_ a problem. I
| hate it here in TX
| silverquiet wrote:
| I see people talking about deficiencies in the Texas grid, and
| that may be true but hardly seems relevant to Houston; it's the
| Houston grid that seems to be acutely problematic. In fact, it
| occurred to me that with much of Houston still offline, the TX
| grid is probably less stressed than usual and a look at the
| dashboards on ercot.com would seem to confirm this - capacity
| is well over demand.
| bdcravens wrote:
| The state grid is problematic at other times, but in the case
| of storms, it's irrelevant when a fallen tree takes out a
| physical power line. It's more of a "last mile" issue.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The solution to last-mile problems is fewer miles. Fact is
| metro Houston takes up 15x more land than is really called
| for. A factor of 15 makes a significant difference in the
| cost of wires, pipes, and roads.
| dingnuts wrote:
| it's totally irrelevant. there was a wind storm in a region
| where burying power lines is impractical
|
| without wireless power transmission I'm not sure what people
| want.
|
| Where do you put lines that can't be buried or blown over?
| fragmede wrote:
| SimCity and Elon Musk to the rescue! See, we put satellites
| in space with giant solar panels on then and then just beam
| the energy down from space, directly to a receiver dish
| mounted on your rooftop, next to the starlink dish.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I live in an area northwest of Houston.
|
| We had similar outages (though not as long) in May (serious
| storm, but not a hurricane)
|
| In many cases, it's the result of winds knocking trees into
| powerlines. I feel like preventative maintenance could mitigate
| this. A big factor is likely our deregulation: the electricity
| provider isn't the company billing end customers.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I live in Seattle's Ballard area, but work with people on the
| east side. Big storms blow down branches all the time on the
| other side of the lake, causing power outages. We have less
| trees here in Seattle, comparatively, or maybe Seattle power
| and light is better at tree maintenance, but ya lots of trees
| = lots of power outages from what I can infer.
|
| Some richer communities on the east side bury their lines so
| power outages are more rare.
| jtolmar wrote:
| Downtown Ballard had a lot of power outages over the last
| two years. Apparently they were using a different
| transformer than everywhere else, all of which are getting
| old, and some procurement mistake lead to the spare parts
| being back-ordered by a year.
|
| (This is second hand through a neighbor who actually went
| and bothered them about all the outages, so there are
| probably mistakes.)
| zacharycohn wrote:
| Using different equipment from the rest of Seattle is
| very Ballard.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, I live on 60th, so 4 blocks north of market, and it's
| weird that they get power outages to about 56th or 57th
| while we never do.
| vel0city wrote:
| The delivery price is regulated like it was pre-deregulatuon
| and is a separate line item in pretty much everyone's bill.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| It's obvious that everyone wants to blame it on their favorite
| villain, whatever that is.
|
| A more rational approach would be to look at comparable cities
| and see how _they_ cope with big storms, whatever the storms '
| cat numbers. My guess is, no matter what comparables you pick,
| Houston comes out on the bottom.
|
| Maybe it IS deregulation! You can be in favor of it in general,
| and still admit, "OK, maybe in this instance it didn't work."
| That doesn't mean you're giving free rein to the people in
| favor of the government regulating _everything_.
| blantonl wrote:
| The issue was _exactly the same_ with Ida and New Orleans in
| 2021. Areas of the New Orleans metro area were without power
| for 3 weeks or more
| AlbertCory wrote:
| so that's one comparable. Surely there are other First
| World cities that have storms?
| vel0city wrote:
| Sprawling cities with millions of people that experience
| Gulf hurricanes?
|
| Miami, which also experiences massive power outages when
| they're hit with even category 1 hurricanes.
|
| > The rains caused flooding, and the combination of rains
| and winds downed trees and power lines, leaving 1.45
| million people without power.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
| alexk307 wrote:
| Houston is a low-lying coastal city surrounded by rivers and
| bayous whose population has increased 10x since 1950. Not
| really an ideal situation to build out that kind of housing
| for millions of people in floodplains.
| tzs wrote:
| > I can't imagine the city is remotely prepared for (god
| forbid, and idk how likely it is that far inland anyway) a cat
| 4 or 5.
|
| In the past they've never had a cat 5. The last cat 5 was Carla
| in 1961. The last cat 3 was Alicia in 1983. The last cat 2 was
| Alicia in 2008 (although that was actually east of Houston and
| just hit Houston with its weaker winds).
|
| Climate change should make such storms more likely to form, but
| it should also change ocean and air current patterns which
| could affect the chances they make it to Houston.
|
| The list I got those from noted that in 1961 air conditioning
| was still novel, which makes me curious. How did people deal
| with the heat in Houston before air conditioning?
|
| The average July temperature in Houston nowadays is 4.2 (2.3)
| higher than it was in 1970, and climate change tends to cause
| more extremes, so I'd guess that the highs are also higher and
| extreme days more common, so maybe AC has become more of a
| necessity nowadays?
| wongarsu wrote:
| > How did people deal with the heat in Houston before air
| conditioning
|
| I imagine at first it was really drafty homes, and later on
| big ceiling fans everywhere
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I'd expect the population of Houston in those days was also a
| little more self selective, in that of you couldn't deal with
| that heat, you probably didn't want to live there anyways.
|
| There's a reason a lot of southwestern cities like Phoenix
| started booming in population when AC became more readily
| available.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Probably right, but also you don't miss what you've never
| had. Not having air conditioning was just normal.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| It might have been normal but people are people and would
| still seek out more comfortable climates. And if you
| stretch the definition of air conditioning a bit, we've
| had that for about as long as we've been living in semi
| enclosed spaces. Running a fire at night to keep the cave
| warm is air conditioning. Building your home to have
| water flowing under the floors so that you can cool or
| heat the floors passively (I believe the Romans were
| doing this) is air conditioning. Hanging a wet towel to
| allow the water to evaporate and cool the room a little
| is air conditioning.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Before the 20th century people seeked out arable land
| that could feed them reliably, any comfort the climate
| provided was a very distant concern.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Arable land and climates comfortable for people tended to
| have a very large overlap until the the invention of
| modern irrigation techniques like center-pivot
| irrigation. Before that, you need pretty special
| conditions to be able to successfully farm in many of the
| places in discussion.
|
| Arable land that isn't habitable for weeks or months out
| of the year wasn't terribly valuable or sought out.
| throwup238 wrote:
| There were a lot of behavioral adaptations that don't seem as
| practical now because the extremes are so much hotter and
| more frequent. Porch sitting, the siesta, outdoor sleeping on
| porches and roofs, etc. were all ways to mitigate the heat.
|
| Wealthier people built big houses with lots of thermal mass
| and tall ceilings while poorer people lived in shotgun houses
| with aligned doors and porches that created constant airflow.
| vondur wrote:
| If I remember correctly, Houston is one of the most Air
| Conditioned cites on earth. In the older days, Houston was
| much smaller with less concrete and paving that holds the
| heat in, making the entire area warmer. Plus, older houses
| were designed for the climate that they were in. Now, every
| place in the US basically gets the same house design
| regardless of the climate.
| alexk307 wrote:
| Why start at 1970 when Houston has a temperature record back
| to 1889? Start in the 60s and the jump is far lower. Or any
| other year and the difference changes.
| christophilus wrote:
| I've lived through a lot of big hurricanes. Cat 1 storms can be
| worse than more intense storms, as they are often slower-
| moving, so they can dump a LOT more water per square inch. Not
| sure if that was the case here, but it doesn't necessarily mean
| they'd fare significantly worse under higher category storms.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Hurricane Ike was a category 4 that traveled nearly directly
| over Houston in 2008. (It wasn't a category four when it passed
| over, since, like all major storms, they weaken as they move
| inland.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike
|
| Burying lines, especially in historic areas, is incredibly
| expensive and not necessarily a panacea either, although it
| helps. Is it worth it?
|
| Realistically, for the millions upon millions of people that
| live in the greater Houston MSA (and of course except for those
| who rely on power for healthcare equipment, who really need to
| invest in a small generator or get to a shelter), it's far more
| cost effective to simply deal with power outages every decade
| or two.
|
| During Ike, large parts of Houston, especially to the
| northeast, were literally underwater, so power wouldn't have
| helped anyway. The number of utility crews lined up along
| highways _from other states_ , even from thousands of miles
| away, in the immediate aftermath of Ike is both inspiring and
| enlightening, especially when you recognize that they were
| going into a disaster zone, likely without a nice hotel to go
| back to or even running water after working a 12 hour shift.
|
| So, no, it's just part of living near the coast in a hurricane-
| prone area. If you don't like it, move somewhere else.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I think part of the argument is that it's like that the
| number of these events will double or trouble, or even become
| yearly with climate change.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Yes, that's the argument. Of course, some of it remains to
| be seen, because as of now we're not actually seeing more
| or more intense storms compared to historical averages (at
| least that we know about).
|
| Houston has, on average, one large storm event every decade
| or so, and that hasn't really changed much over the last
| 100 years. https://www.weather.gov/hgx/major_events
| two_handfuls wrote:
| We're probably about to see more and more intense storms
| over the Atlantic. Hurricane Beryl is the earliest
| category five Atlantic hurricane in records going back
| around 100 years ([source](https://www.bbc.com/news/artic
| les/c9r3g572lrno)).
|
| So it's just a matter of time.
|
| Also, looking at your source, I see 2 tropical cyclones
| between 1900-1950, 3 between 1950-2000, and then 8 in the
| 24 years since. To me that looks like an increase in
| tropical cyclones over time.
| mturmon wrote:
| (Not an expert, but try to follow climate science as part
| of $Dayjob. It's always hard to write quick summaries in
| Earth Science, because the system is very complex.)
|
| We have to be careful about what is meant by "these
| events".
|
| According to the sources I was able to find [1,2], sea
| level rise (SLR) is perhaps the dominant driver for the
| increasing damages from tropical cyclones (TCs). Models
| show some increase (I'm not finding any support for 2x or
| 3x though!) in the number of high-intensity TCs, and TC
| intensification is expected to be more rapid.
|
| But the underlying SLR will make even smaller TCs more
| consequential - even if the number of storms of a given
| intensity does not change.
|
| [1] specifically says this. And if you look at the
| consensus report [2], they spend most of their time
| discussing SLR, in effect as an amplifier for all the
| trouble a TC can cause. Only in one sentence in a very long
| discussion do they claim that TCs are themselves worsening,
| and the statement is quite nuanced:
|
| "For example, hurricanes are intensifying more rapidly and
| decaying more slowly, leading to stronger storms extending
| farther inland with heavier rainfall and higher storm
| surges..."
|
| So if you interpret "these events" as "high dollar damage
| TCs", you are correct. But not in the raw number of TCs of
| a given intensity.
|
| And you are right that the situation is quite dire already:
|
| "Annual frequencies of both minor and moderate coastal
| flooding increased by a factor of 2-3 along most Atlantic
| and Gulf coastlines between 1990 and 2020" [2]
|
| The same source says models predict a 5-10x increase in
| flood events by 2100, which is truly staggering. The
| recommendation of the GP commenter ("If you don't like it,
| move somewhere else") seems to be poorly informed about how
| important adaptation will be.
|
| [1] https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/a-force-
| of-nat...
|
| [2] https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/9/, and expand
| out "key message 1".
| poikroequ wrote:
| It's likely a combination of multiple factors. Texas, being a
| red state, most certainly has a stronger climate denial
| sentiment, which is going to affect policies and regulations.
| Texas may be unprepared because major hurricanes were uncommon
| in the past. Global warming means hotter temperatures which
| makes long power outages more unbearable. And probably other
| reasons I can't think of.
|
| I expect things will improve, but it may take some years. As
| these events become more common and people have to suffer every
| year, voters are going to get fed up, and Republicans would be
| foolish to keep up their climate denial stance.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Texas may be unprepared because major hurricanes were
| uncommon in the past.
|
| Maybe, but no. Texas has its history of major hurricanes.
| While maybe not as popular of a target as Florida and New
| Orleans, but Houston definitely has as much of a bullseye on
| it as a trailer park in a tornado.
|
| Harvey was predicted well in advance that it was going to be
| a devastating storm. For days ahead I saw the up to 40" of
| rain and thought that couldn't possibly be correct. Then it
| happened. Houston took little action and then acted shocked.
| Of course, Houston has it's own unique set of problems with
| their lack of zoning rules plus so many other things without
| having to make some climate denier argument that's not
| necessarily wrong but just horribly out of place
| poikroequ wrote:
| I just know what I hear. Power outage during freezing
| temperatures in winter time, and their response? No
| handouts, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. As if people
| in a major metropolitan city can just go into the nearby
| woods and gather firewood.
|
| Politics is definitely a factor.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Politics is definitely a factor.
|
| It's also election year. The state agencies didn't submit
| the emergency declaration work _before_ the storm hit
| like they usually did in years past - this is not their
| first rodeo, so it can 't be explained by ignorance.
|
| Also, Houston _is_ Harris county, so not exactly the
| governor 's or legislature's favorite voting county.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Centerpoint applied for $100 mil in funding from the
| department of energy in 2023 to make their lines more
| resilient to wind and storms and were turned down.
|
| It's not nearly as clear cut as "red = head in sand"
| akira2501 wrote:
| > This was just a cat 1 hurricane
|
| _just_. The definition of "just a cat 1" is winds from 75 to 95
| miles per hour. There is some debate over whether it picked up
| to cat 2 levels just before it made landfall and reweakened to
| cat 1.
|
| > Other??
|
| Political corruption preventing elected officials from actually
| enforcing any laws or authority over Centerpoint.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/the-real-problem-in-texas-d...
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Germany has overengineered and expensive utilities, but I'm happy
| sometimes that all power and telephone lines are underground.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Utilities are much cheaper in Germany than for example
| California. At least it was when I lived there.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Another poster pointed out that the cost of moving lines
| underground is really only a one time fee of about $5 per
| person per month for about 10 years. This does not seem too
| expensive for a permanent increase in reliability. One thing I
| will miss about living in Manhattan is the power never ever
| went out, at least not due to the distribution grid.
|
| And, it's a minor, minor thing, but as a bonus, having lines
| out of sight is very nice.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Per person per month for 10 years is a ridiculous unit to
| choose. Europe benefits from being very dense. The US grid is
| way more spread out.
|
| Undergrounding costs are around $1M per mile. The US has
| millions of miles of lines.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Look at the numbers and it's not so crazy. This is a last
| mile issue, not a full grid issue.
| chgs wrote:
| Americans like to think they're a special case.
|
| Houston has a higher density than say Magdeburg
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I'm only including distribution numbers in my figures
| here. Transmission does not make sense to underground.
| fragmede wrote:
| I get that America is big, but the amortized per-person
| cost is what's relevant. If something costs $10 M per mile,
| but there are a million people per mile, suddenly that's
| not all that expensive. I'd pay more than $10 to not have
| my power go out for a week after a big storm that's likely
| to happen again in a few weeks and next year and the year
| after. A backup generator costs way more than $10.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The amortized per person cost is obviously not going to
| be constant when the demographic density and line mileage
| changes. That's why it's a foolish standard
|
| There's NEVER 1M customers per mile in a distribution
| system. There's only going to be a few thousand per
| substation. Half of the line miles will have customer
| counts in the tens or ones.
| fnfjfk wrote:
| Were you here in 2012 for "SoPo"?
|
| https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/29/16560706/hurricane-sandy-
| an...
| chgs wrote:
| I was in New York during hurricane sandy, staying in a hotel
| on I think 28th street.
|
| Really weird seeing complete darknesss to the south with just
| a march of flashlights coming uptown to charge their phones
| in Duane Reade.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The water table in Germany and the water table in Texas are two
| different things. Notably, the city is right next to a giant
| body of salty ocean water, which is why they get hurricanes in
| the first place, but it also severely complicates the process
| of creating underground utilities.
| sangnoir wrote:
| This argument would be more convincing if Houston didn't have
| _any_ underground infrastructure.
| issa wrote:
| My wife is from Germany and one of the weirdest things for her
| in moving to the US is that the power goes out.
| ndr42 wrote:
| I'm curious, Texas seems to get a lot of sun - how common are
| private solar installations on the roofs? Combined with a battery
| you could lower your electricity bill and would be safe from this
| kind of problem.
|
| In my neighbourhood in northern germany about 5% of the houses
| have them. They pay for themself in about 5-10 years.
|
| edit: spelling
| blantonl wrote:
| Solar installations in suburb cities in Texas are extremely
| common.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the vast ghettoes and low-income areas
| in Houston all install solar panels and Tesla Powerwalls? Many
| people in hardest-hit areas struggle paycheck to paycheck- if
| they're working at all.
| ndr42 wrote:
| No I do not. I was not aware of the vast ghettoes. But some
| kind of middle class has to exist as the article headline
| talks about air conditioning - in Germany air conditioning is
| not common even in the upper middle class - this may be
| different in the US - idk.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| in the US many people expect their houses to always be
| between 68 and 72 degrees fahrenheit (or some other
| ridiculous numbers), year round.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Air conditioning is very common and very cheap here - you
| get little window units for a few hundred and such.
| chasd00 wrote:
| "Vast ghetto" is a bit extreme but a lot of the gulf coast
| is very poor indeed. Texas has plenty of very poor
| neighborhoods as does Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida
| right in prime hurricane paths.
| vel0city wrote:
| It turns out the climate of Houston and Germany are pretty
| different. Who knew.
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| Germany is _way_ farther north though. Houston is further
| south than Israel, about the same latitude as Kuwait City
| and the Sahara Desert. The temperature averages 20-30degF
| warmer than Berlin (33-40degC), or put another way, Berlin
| 's record high temperatures are a typical day in Houston.
| Also very humid since it's right near the ocean. Comparison
| charts:https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/9247~75981/Compar
| ison-of-...
|
| So yes, air conditioning is very common there, even if
| you're poor that's one thing you will try to find a way to
| get.
|
| In the ghettos it's normally an old window unit, not
| central AC. Also shotgun shacks, which are houses setup
| with a straight-through floorplan so that if you open the
| front and back doors the whole thing becomes kind of a wind
| tunnel. Not as good as AC, but better than nothing.
|
| In those neighborhoods, you'll also often see people
| (especially elderly and children) hanging out at the
| neighborhood church or mom and pop store, where there is
| air conditioning, if they don't have AC or it isn't
| working.
| galdosdi wrote:
| This is what financialization is for -- allowing homeowners
| to get "free" panels in exchange for paying back out of the
| savings over the years. Leasing panels is not uncommon.
|
| If these kinds of services don't exist in enough quantity,
| government subsidy could help.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > allowing homeowners
|
| They don't own the homes. They likely rent them.
|
| > government subsidy could help.
|
| More government money going directly over the people who
| most need it into the hands of the people who least need
| it. The property owner class redirects another crisis to
| their benefit.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| Solar installations are common and growing. I put one on my
| Houston roof this year. However, battery backups to allow you
| to keep the lights on with your solar when the grid is down are
| much more expensive. Many people have gotten gas backup
| generators in the past few years instead.
| bob1029 wrote:
| My power was out until ~4am today.
|
| Incredibly, my fiber internet never went down the entire time.
| That part of my infrastructure _is_ buried and they back it all
| up with proper generators.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| I'm in the affected area. The contractors that they used to
| install the last mile fiber didn't do a great job. They not
| only damaged other cables like the coax but "buried" isn't how
| I'd describe the fiber. In the easements the fiber is only a
| couple inches below ground at most, in some places it was above
| ground and I had to bury it myself.
|
| I do wish Comcast (and Tmobile) would use generators instead of
| battery backups. We get about 4 hours of internet when the
| power is out and I run the home router off of a generator.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Houston Is on a Path to an All-Out Power Crisis_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40951647
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Houston Is on a Path to an All-Out Power Crisis_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40951647 - July 2024 (68
| comments)
| spamizbad wrote:
| Why is Texas infrastructure so brittle? It's a wealthy,
| prosperous state unencumbered by regulation or legacy stuff that
| tends to cause issues in other states.
| msie wrote:
| We all know...
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Seems like this was a problem with last mile delivery, which
| isn't a uniquely Texas problem. Oregon and California have had
| plenty of major outages due to wind and cold snaps in the last
| few years as well.
| while_true_ wrote:
| Not true about California. Outages in storms are highly
| localized. Some rural areas get power turned off but only
| when fire risk is extreme. There have been no large cities
| without power for a week like Houston.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Not a week, but just earlier this year there was a storm in
| the SF Bay Area where there were many people without power
| for 3-5 days. Most of the damage was due to last mile
| transmission failures from debris. And I'm sure that had
| the storm been in the hurricane strengths, the damage would
| have been even worse.
|
| Portland too had that major cold snap where power was out
| due to last mile transmission problems. I know at least one
| city in the metro area that sped up their plans to bury
| their power transmission because during that storm large
| parts of that city were without power for days.
| krapp wrote:
| You've answered your own question. The incentives of capitalism
| "unencumbered by regulation" and the necessities of investing
| in and maintaining infrastructure are often at odds.
| bluerooibos wrote:
| See the crumbling privatised water infrastructure in
| London/England as another example of this. The companies in
| charge allowed the infrastructure to crumble all whilst
| paying out massive shareholder dividends and holding huge
| amounts of debt. Then they dare to ask for government
| bailouts and increased utility bill prices. Someone explain
| how that's even allowed.
|
| As usual, socialism for the losses, capitalism for the
| profits.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| It's worse than that. Those massive debts are from loans
| from a loan company. The parent company of the loan company
| is also the parent company of Thames water.
|
| It's all a massive scam. It would be better if companies
| were not able to own other companies.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Profit does not rise proportionally with costs as reliability
| increases (i.e. it costs a lot of money to make it more
| reliable, but you don't get to charge substantially more). The
| electric company monopoly does not have incentives to spend
| money to be more reliable. All the downsides of widespread
| power outage are externalized onto the customers.
| freen wrote:
| Huh, odd that profit seeking behavior doesn't maximize the
| public well being in the case of natural monopolies.
| grecy wrote:
| Same reason healthcare, higher education and many other
| necessities of life are horrifically expensive.
|
| Ever increasing profit.
| namesbc wrote:
| It is the lack of regulation that is the problem here. The
| power company is incentized to make higher profits year around
| by not preparing for a disaster.
| nxm wrote:
| PG & E is "heavily regulated" and yet Newsome allowed them to
| not upgrade power lines which eventually caused massive wild
| fires
| dehrmann wrote:
| The fact that PG&E, in a much more regulated and liberal
| California, also has power problems is interesting and
| valid, but Newsom's only been governor since 2019 (the Camp
| Fire was 2018), so you can't put that much blame on him,
| and there are decades of blame to go around.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Are you judging it to be "brittle" based upon popular headlines
| or some insider information?
| cocacola1 wrote:
| They're likely basing it off the fact that so many people
| have been without power for so many days.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Houston has always been a wreck. This is just another example.
|
| (I live in Dallas)
| mardifoufs wrote:
| We had a power outage in March for like 4 days, that spanned
| the entire city of Montreal last year. We were lucky the
| weather was pretty warm. This type of stuff just happens
| sometimes.
|
| We also had a 2 weeks long power outage 20 years ago. Again, in
| Quebec
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| In spite of (or perhaps because of) the constant repairs after a
| major storm every 10 to 15 years, Houston actually has one of the
| lowest energy costs in the United States:
| https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...
|
| For some real numbers for Houston specifically in the middle of
| the hot summer months, input 77002 (a Houston metro zip code)
| into Texas govt's electricity provider search engine
| https://powertochoose.org/ ; it will show most plans are around
| 12-14 cents per kwh, down to 10.9 c/kwh on a variable 12 month
| 500kWh plan.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| does it matter how cheap it is if it's not available?
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| That's something you could decide for yourself and vote by
| moving there or away. Many residents of Houston would gladly
| tolerate an occasional outage to not see prices go up, and
| critical services like emergency services, hospitals, and
| datacenters all have generators, so it seems to be something
| that can be worked around with a bit of effort and expense.
| protastus wrote:
| It seems that it's cheap because they're cutting corners on
| infrastructure.
| kibwen wrote:
| And then go begging for disaster relief and emergency funds
| from the federal government, so the rest of the country gets
| to cover the costs. Privatize the profits, socialize the
| losses.
| kkfx wrote:
| My two takes:
|
| - due to climate change alone AND business predatory practice
| alone infrastructure are very vulnerable and there is no easy fix
| at infra level;
|
| - p.v. and batteries for large slices of the inhabited planet
| where they are meaningful AT CHINESE PRICES are an expensive
| backup that can pay back itself even without emergencies.
|
| Corollary: doing our best to annihilate companies who makes
| absurdly high margins on p.v. and batteries and do individually
| our best to be covered. Personally I eat my fingers a bit when 4
| years ago I decide for a small (8kWh LFP) backup with only 5kWp
| p.v. instead of 10kWp/30kWh witch would give me enough also in
| winter in case of a blackouts. In summer I can be autonomous
| since local climate is hot only during the day, no need of A/C
| from early evening to mid-morning.
|
| Corollary of the corollary: built modern well insulated homes is
| needed, not only to consume less as a whole society but also to
| live well individually.
| adolph wrote:
| Something that did go well is water movement. It was neat to see
| the bayous rise to just below the flood point then stay right
| there as the weirs of flood mitigation ponds take off the excess.
| I'm looking forward to checking out the data to compare the
| rain/flood gauges compared to past events. [0] Thank you federal
| tax payers for contributing to this effort!
|
| WRT the local utility, I can appreciate that they have some hard
| choices ahead. There are two branches of possible futures: one
| where many more people are charging cars etc and require more
| power to domiciles; two where battery deployment at the edge
| bears the brunt of peak loads and requires a lower constant
| trickle or even nearly nothing as PV is more broadly deployed.
|
| 0. https://www.harriscountyfws.org/
| more_corn wrote:
| Get rooftop solar and a battery.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Note: this isn't a power grid issue. Texas is famously not
| connected to the national grid [1]. This is an issue of downed
| power lines.
|
| An obvious question is: why doesn't Houston have underground
| power? It turns out that Houston really shouldn't exist. It's
| built on a swamp. It's also hot so heat dissipation is an issue.
| So it's expensive [2]. Houston is also famous for its lack of
| zoning [3]. Combine this with a lot of really old neighbourhoods
| that don't, for example, have sufficient setbacks to bury cabling
| and you have a hot mess.
|
| It's also worth pointing out that Houston is one of the worst
| urban sprawls on the planet. It's almost as large as LA with
| slightly more than half the population.
|
| It's accurate to describe Houston as a low-lying car-dependent
| hellscape built on a swarmp with no urban planning in a hurricane
| zone.
|
| [1]: https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2021-07-22/texas-
| elec...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2024/05/24/burying-...
|
| [3]: https://therealdeal.com/texas/2023/03/16/dont-say-the-z-
| word...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > It's almost as large as LA with slightly more than half the
| population.
|
| Geez. I thought LA was quite bad already.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Here are some comparisons I like to use that really put
| things in perspective, particlarly for Europeans:
|
| 1. The Greater Houston Metro Area is larger than Wales;
|
| 2. Greater Houston has fewer people than London but is almost
| _twenty times the area_ ;
|
| 3. IIRC if liad out the Greater Houston area over England it
| would stretch from London to Birmingham;
|
| 4. Greater Houston is, in fact, larger than several states
| _including New Jersey_ ;
|
| 5. Greater Houston is more than half the size of Switzerland.
| Scoutmaster wrote:
| Yesterday I spoke with a Generac (home standby generator)
| dealership owner in the Houston area, and they are getting
| swamped with calls (80 a minute at times) and they have 20 people
| manning the phones.
|
| One of the problems I see is that people aren't prepared. I live
| my life by the motto "Be Prepared" (see username). One of the
| Merit Badges I teach is Emergency Preparedness, and with camping,
| my Scouts are okay going without electricity and electronics.
| Even if you're not interested or able to participate in Scouting,
| swing by your local Scout Shop and pick up an Emergency
| Preparedness Merit Badge booklet and learn what you can do to Be
| Prepared. It doesn't extend to just hurricanes.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEb9cL3-kf0
| jmward01 wrote:
| We live in a society and preparing as a group means that we can
| efficiently use resources and focus our energy on things that
| are interesting instead of everyone being overly prepared.
| Everyone going out and buying a generator is expensive,
| wasteful and incredibly inefficient. Why isn't it reasonable to
| just expect reliable infrastructure and quick responses to
| issues?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Maybe it's unreasonable to expect reliable infrastructure
| after getting many examples of how the infrastructure is not
| reliable.
|
| You and I are highly unlikely to be able to fix the
| infrastructure; we can, however, be prepared for doing
| without it.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Due to occasional failures we should now throw our hands up
| and label systemic undercutting, and poor governance as
| unfixable.
|
| Because things are bad sometimes let's excuse unlimited
| incompetence when expected situations are ignored and cause
| inevitable catastrophic failure.
|
| Sometimes plans fail so let's excuse failure to plan.
|
| When a huge storm blows through with minimal fuss because
| preparation and regulation was taken seriously let's
| downplay the risk and deregulate and dismantle safety
| apperatus as they are clearly unneeded....
|
| It goes on and on... why did we hire these security guys we
| never have breaches, why did we hire these sys and network
| admins everything always works, why do we have all these
| pesky earthquake codes no buildings have fallen recently...
|
| After nearly 40 years I still can't understand the mental
| gymnastics required to be so obdurate. It's just nihilistic
| slash and burn thinking isn't it.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I think it is better to put that energy into improving
| things and building a better future for everyone. As a
| country it feels like we have forgotten that we can work
| together to do big things. I still think we can.
| wnevets wrote:
| texas and not having power go together like a horse and carriage
| nxm wrote:
| Meanwhile in California...
| wnevets wrote:
| How many people don't have power in California?
| iftheshoefitss wrote:
| haarp 20.0 goes dummy on bro
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Deregulation is a terrible idea for life supporting and necessary
| utilities, power specifically. By deregulating the market,
| everyone is forced to compete for a finite amount of transmission
| ability for low profits, each one trying to undercut the other
| IMO. It completely destabilized the Texas power market. At this
| point, it may be worth considering putting the Texas power grid
| into some type of federal receivership.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Texans basically should view grid independent home solar as a
| minimum requirement.
|
| Between this and the ice storm s couple years ago Texas has
| shown itself incapable of utility grade service.
|
| In general I think the disaster resilience afforded by home
| solar is simply not valued enough by subsidies and incentives
| policies.
| standardUser wrote:
| Texas is a highly urbanized state and a significant number of
| families don't have the ability to install home solar, so it
| cannot be viewed as 'minimum requirement' and some other
| solution is neccesary.
| chgs wrote:
| Maybe people could club together and form some form of
| group which provides that minimum requirement for the whole
| area. You could perhaps have an equal say in the group, and
| have a meeting every few years where you elect some people
| to run the thing on your behalf.
| quitit wrote:
| My guess is it'll meet the same fate as municipal
| broadband. (i.e. It is explicitly outlawed in Texas.1)
|
| 1. https://law.justia.com/codes/texas/2005/ut/002.00.0000
| 54.00....
| standardUser wrote:
| Or the state government could implement a regulatory
| regime that ensures its citizens have reliable
| electricity. A feat the other 49 states seem to have
| mostly accomplished.
| bsder wrote:
| > Texans basically should view grid independent home solar as
| a minimum requirement.
|
| And then hail punches through your solar panels and you have
| to pay for that.
|
| If there were a cheap, easy solution, _people would have done
| it already_.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think this is just confirmation bias. We have plenty of power
| outages, some that last longer than this (the 1998 ice storm in
| Quebec took down the power for weeks). Last year we were out of
| power for 4 days, again right in the middle of Montreal. It
| just seems like HN likes to see stories about the Texas power
| grid, since I don't even remember a story about Montreal's
| outage last year hitting the front page for long.
|
| I don't think anyone could argue that Quebec has a deregulated
| power grid, it's the complete opposite in fact. Power
| generation, distribution, and last mile connections are all
| nationalized.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Centerpoint applied for $100 mil in funding from the department
| of energy in 2023 to make their infrastructure more resilient
| and were denied.
|
| If you want to blame politics, this is a case of national
| bureaucracy getting it wrong than deregulation.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I don't know that this event is a great example for your
| argument.
|
| An entirely different energy market model (MISO/Entergy) was
| also heavily impacted. The Woodlands, Conroe, et. al. are on a
| completely different grid. I don't get to pick a "retail
| electricity provider" and I live 20 minutes from people who
| can. Doesn't seem to matter.
|
| All markets hit by Beryl are approximately the same degree of
| screwed, regardless of any specific underlying ideologies.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I was directly hit by Beryl, and just got power back today. For
| us, the issue was trees taking out the power lines. We live on
| acreage with a lot of pecan trees, and lost 4 of them in the
| storm. 2 of them toppled over on the power line. I personally
| don't think that Centerpoint has done a bad job here, Houston is
| a large land mass and there is no way that you can get everyone
| back online with as much wind damage as we sustained much quicker
| than what happened. This storm was so much different than Harvey,
| which was a flood event. We did have some flooding but nowhere
| near that level with Beryl. Really, its just one of those
| situations that just sucks, and there isnt a whole lot you can
| really do about it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| One option is multiple feeds to most streets.
|
| Ie. If power lines at one end of the street get felled by a
| tree, power just comes from the other end of the street
| instead.
|
| High voltage distribution lines can be done the same - every
| transformer getting fed from at least 2 places.
|
| Obviously with many lines down, such a system might leave
| everyone with power, but total power deliverable is still
| lower. For that, you need smart metering that integrates with
| consumers distribution boards such that at times of stress on
| the power network, less important loads are turned off by
| default (ie. Pool heaters), whilst lighting and fridges stay
| on.
|
| Nowhere in the US does that for consumers yet I don't think.
| xyst wrote:
| I'm surprised people still live in that area. The aftermath of
| Harvey in 2017 would have been the eye opener. Yet the area sees
| a massive influx of residents every year [1]
|
| Any area near coast line is going to disappear over the next
| couple of decades due to climate change.
|
| [1] https://www.axios.com/local/houston/2024/03/19/texas-
| populat...
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