Thread: U.S. energy crisis leaves millions without power in big freeze

(Bloomberg) -- The energy crisis crippling power grids across the U.S. showed no sign of abating on Tuesday morning as blackouts left almost 5 million customers without electricity during unprecedented cold weather.


To prevent the collapse of their networks, suppliers from North Dakota to Texas are having to institute rolling power cuts to limit demand. The severe shortages are likely to continue throughout Tuesday and the deep freeze is forecast to remain until Wednesday at least.

Officials have reported two people dead, likely from cold, according to the AP news agency. Medical centers are rushing to administer vaccines before they go bad. Flights are grounded. More than a million barrels a day of oil and 10 billion cubic feet of gas production are shut and massive refineries have halted gasoline and diesel output.


President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Texas, the worst affected state, making more resources available to help.


“I’ve been following energy markets and grid issues for a while, and I cannot recall an extreme weather event that impacted such a large swath of the nation in this manner — the situation is critical,” said Neil Chatterjee, a member of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The cold blast is just the latest in a chain of severe weather events that have shaken power grids and upended energy markets globally from Japan to France in recent months. They’ve all underscored how vulnerable the world has become in the face of increasingly unpredictable weather brought on by climate change and it’s raising questions about the global push to electrify everything from transportation to heating and cooling.


Almost 4 million homes and businesses were without power across Texas on Tuesday, based on utility outage data compiled by Poweroutage.us. Another 400,000 were down in a swathe of states stretching from Louisiana to Ohio and Virginia. Almost 250,000 were without power in Oregon.


In Mexico, over 4.7 million homes and businesses went dark after Texas’s shortages triggered cascading failures. But about 65% of those affected in Mexico had seen their power restored by midday, according to grid operator Cenace.

While temperatures are forecast to rise, the weather across the central U.S. will remain bitingly cold this week. Dallas, which was forecast to see a low of 2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 17 degrees Celsius) late Monday, will reach a high of 29 by Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. But by late Thursday, readings will drop back into the teens.


Such drastic weather conditions are rare, especially in parts of Texas. In Houston, the state’s largest city, roads were iced over and people braved long lines to refill household propane canisters. Traffic and street lights are down. Firewood is selling out. Grocery stores have run out of essentials including milk.


This week’s cold front caught Texas’s highly decentralized power market especially by surprise. The region’s grid is designed for hot summers, not ice-cold winters, but many households rely on electricity to heat their home. Utilities there haven’t had to carry out rolling blackouts since 2011.


Extreme weather events are happening more frequently, a shift that’s attributed to the changing climate. In response, electrifying sectors like transport and heating to use green power is seen as vital to elminating harmful emissions, but the world’s grid infrastructure may not be ready.

As electricity demand rises and grids rely more on wind and solar power, where supply oscillates with the weather, networks will have to increase access to back-up generation. In Texas, where both wind and gas-fired generation was hit by the cold snap, there wasn’t enough reserve power to keep the lights on.


Besides the impact on households, the cold is wreaking havoc on the energy industry itself. U.S. oil production has dropped by well over a million barrels a day, helping U.S. crude prices trade above $60 a barrel for the first time in more than year. The region’s refining complex -- which produces almost half of the nation’s fuel -- is struggling to limp along without power and gas supplies. Some of the largest oil refineries have shut altogether, threatening to reduce supplies of gasoline and diesel across the country.


Natural gas production has also been curtailed just as the cold caused demand to jump. At the Waha hub in Texas gas changed hands at $500 per million British thermal units on Monday, more than 100 times the price at the Henry Hub, the benchmark for the wider U.S.


Power plants with a combined capacity of more than 34 gigawatts were forced offline on Monday, including nuclear reactors, coal and gas generators and wind farms, Dan Woodfin, a senior director for grid manager Electric Reliability Council of Texas said. It’s not yet clear why. Early on Tuesday, power generation in Texas had yet to stage any significant recovery.


Wind power generators were among the victims of the cold weather, with turbine blades rendered inoperable due to ice -- a phenomenon that reduces efficiency and can ultimately stop them from spinning. Texas estimated that more than half of its wind power capacity had come offline.


At times, parts of Texas were colder than Alaska, according to the National Weather Service. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area it was 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Houston may pick up as much as 2 inches (5 centimeters) of snow overnight, along with ice and sleet, the National Weather Service said. It will get hit by another storm bringing ice and freezing rain Wednesday.


“The southern plains are in a cold pattern,” said David Roth, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. “It is going to take a while for them to break out of it.”

U.S. energy crisis leaves millions without power in big freeze

The US goes ever closer to becoming a 3rd world country

We’re lucky here. Weatherman says it will dip to -3 tonight which is the coldest its been all winter. If the power went out, we have a big backup propane tank to fire up the gas fireplace.

I hate rainy, freezing, February.

Texas deep freeze leaves millions without power, 21 dead


LUBBOCK, Texas, Feb 16 (Reuters) - A historic winter storm has killed at least 21 people, left millions of Texans without power and spun killer tornadoes into the U.S. Southeast on Tuesday.


The brutal cold has engulfed vast swaths of the United States, shuttering COVID-19 inoculation centers and hindering vaccine supplies. It is not expected to relent until the weekend.


Officials in Texas drew criticism as the state energy grid repeatedly failed, forcing rolling blackouts. Freezing weather stilled giant wind turbines that dot the West Texas landscape, making it impossible for energy companies to meet escalating demand.


University student Corbin Antu found a way to snowboard in the flat West Texas plains town of Lubbock. He clung to a tow rope as friends in a pickup truck pulled him up and down silent white streets.


"This is my first time snowboarding out in Lubbock. Trust me, it's not disappointing," Antu said. "There is so much powder out on the ground it feels like it's Colorado almost."


DEATHS, NO POWER, VACCINE DELAYS


At least 21 people have died in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Missouri including four killed in a house fire in Sugar Land, Texas, where the power was out, according to police and local media.


President Joe Biden assured the governors of hard-hit states that the federal government stands ready to offer any emergency resources needed, the White House said in a statement.


Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a midday news conference that 1.3 million people in his city remain without power. The city is looking for businesses that still have power to open their doors as warming centers.


"It's critically, critically important to get the power restored as quickly as possible. It's priority number one!" Turner said.


Officials in south Texas warned citizens to not bring grills or propane heaters indoors. Hospitals have treated people for carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to heat icy homes using those items.


Turner said vaccination centers in Houston would remain closed on Wednesday and probably Thursday. The Texas Department of State Health Services said vaccine shipments around the state would be delayed.


"No one wants to put vaccine at risk by attempting to deliver it in dangerous conditions," department spokesman Douglas Loveday said by email, adding "it is not safe for people to be out across much of Texas."


In neighboring New Mexico, a state spokesman said by email there were delays in some Pfizer vaccine shipments, which were expected to be brief.


The deep freeze grounded operations at the Houston Ship channel and curbed output in the nation's largest oil field: the Permian in West Texas. Several oil refineries remained offline.


FREEZE WILL LINGER


Storms dumped snow and ice from Ohio to the Rio Grande through the long Presidents Day holiday weekend, and treacherous weather was expected to grip much of the United States through Friday. Forecasters predicted up to 4 inches of snow and freezing rain from the southern Plains into the Northeast.


"We're calling it Storm System No. 2, with very similar placement to the previous storm," said meteorologist Lara Pagano of the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.


An Arctic air mass descended over much of the country, pushing temperatures to historic lows on Tuesday, Pagano said. In Lincoln, Nebraska, a reading of minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 35 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday shattered a record set in 1978 of minus 18F (minus 27C).


In typically toasty Dallas-Fort Worth, minus 1F (minus 17C) broke a record set in 1903 of 12F (minus 11C).


"It's just dangerous," Pagano said.


With more than 4.4 million power outages in Texas alone, authorities shut down inoculation sites and scrambled to use 8,400 vaccines that require subzero refrigeration before they spoiled after a backup generator failed, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said. Doses were rushed to area hospitals and Rice University to be injected into the arms of people already at those locations and who did not have to travel on slick roads.


In the Southeast, a low-pressure system that developed along the Arctic front created fuel for storms that unleashed at least four tornadoes, said meteorologist Jeremy Grams of the weather service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. One ripped through the Florida Panhandle and two through southwestern Georgia on Monday.


The fourth, most severe twister left three dead and homes flattened after it swept overnight through North Carolina's coastal Brunswick County in the state's southeastern corner between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the local sheriff's office said early on Tuesday.


After a brief lull on Tuesday, rough weather including potential twisters was expected to return on Wednesday into Thursday, Grams said.


"Those very same areas could be impacted - that will include tornadoes and damaging winds," he said.


https://news.trust.org/item/20210216231852-hdt01

Originally Posted by misskit

Officials in Texas drew criticism as the state energy grid repeatedly failed

Privatisation and deregulation does wonders . . . but they're always open to Federal money.

Secede? Go on then

But, but Trump made the US independent in energy resources didn’t he?

Thats what Trump supporters would have us believe anyway.

As far as climate change impacts are concerned, the current rash of extreme weather events may, or may not be caused by anthropogenic climate change. It may be part of the long term cyclic changes in weather conditions, or perhaps weather events are magnified by anthropogenic inputs on a global scale? Just a point to consider, rather than support a finite position on it?

Originally Posted by misskit

If the power went out, we have a big backup propane tank to fire up the gas fireplace.

can you cook in the fireplace ?

Never thought about it, but I guess I could if necessary. At least boil water for coffee or noodles. Maybe s’mores and a mess.

It isn’t cold here. 16 degrees.

It's more a Texas thing than a U.S. thing.

Deregulations has it's downside.

It's more a Texas thing than a U.S. thing.

Deregulations has it's downside.

At least 20 people have died across the country as water pipes burst and lines wrap around grocery stores


Erum Salam, Oliver Milman, Maanvi Singh and agencies
Thu 18 Feb 2021 02.37 GMT


315
Anger over Texas’s power grid failing in the face of a record winter freeze is mounting, as millions of residents remained shivering, with no assurances that their electricity and heat – out for 36 hours or longer in many homes – would return.


“I know people are angry and frustrated,” said Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, who woke up to more than 1 million people still without power in his city on Wednesday. “So am I.”


Between 2 and 3 million customers in Texas still had no power, nearly two full days after historic snowfall and single-digit temperatures created a surge in demand for electricity to warm up homes unaccustomed to such extreme lows, buckling the state’s power grid and causing widespread blackouts. Meanwhile, people’s water pipes are bursting and hours long lines have been wrapping around grocery stores as people search for food.


Jasmine Mabute lives in the Bridgeland suburb in north-west Houston. Like many Texans right now, a lack of power and heat isn’t her only concern. Her own water pipes burst on Tuesday, cutting off supply to her home.


“Yesterday my mom called – she’s in the Philippines right now – and she said ‘make sure you fill some pots up with water just in case the water goes out.’ In my head I was like ‘Why would the water even go out?’


“Funnily enough, I took a shower and 30 minutes later and my brother tried to wash his hands and he said that the water was out.”


There is also now an official “boil water” notice in Houston, with concern rising over the quality of drinking water. But people with electrical appliances are not able to boil water due to the lack of power.

Anger mounts over Texas power blackouts as icy cold maintains its grip | Texas | The Guardian

'Republicans are so desperate to let fossil fuels off the hook, they're blaming AOC and the Green New Deal -- which hasn't even happened yet -- for something that's happening in Texas RIGHT NOW.'

The severe winter storm has, among some Republicans, been used to open up a new culture war around the expansion of renewable energy, which is a stated priority of Biden in order to address the climate crisis.


“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, told Fox News about an ambitious but not enacted plan to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states, to make sure that we’ll be able to heat our homes in the wintertime and cool our homes in the summertime.”


Abbott’s attack contradicts the operators of the Texas grid, which is overwhelmingly run on gas and oil, who have confirmed the plunging temperatures caused gas plants to seize up at the same time as a huge spike in demand for heating. Nevertheless, images of ice-covered wind turbines, taken in Sweden in 2014, were shared widely among conservatives on social media as proof of the frailty of clean energy.

Fucking planks.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Anger mounts over Texas power blackouts as icy cold maintains its grip | Texas | The Guardian

Also from that Guardian article.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman behind the Green New Deal platform, said that Abbott was “blaming policies he hasn’t even implemented for his own failures” while the renewable energy industry also hit back.


“It is disgraceful to see the longtime antagonists of clean power engaging in a politically opportunistic charade misleading Americans,” said Heather Zichal, chief executive of the American Clean Power lobby group.

Another rupublican LIAR



This is informative generally about the power structure in Texas.

Originally Posted by Cujo

It's more a Texas thing than a U.S. thing.
Deregulations has it's downside.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Another rupublican LIAR

Luckily for Trump, he is no longer to be blamed...
But wait a bit, Can't he be blamed?

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Luckily for Trump, he is no longer to be blamed...
But wait a bit, Can't he be blamed?

Try blaming the governor of Texas instead..

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

Blaming this on climate change is a bit of a stretch. There are two such references to this in the short article, probably two too many to. This idea of blaming all extreme weather events on climate change seems a bit over the top. I'm not a sceptic but I am uncomfortable with these repeated references.

Anyway, good luck to the folks down there. Stay warm.

Perhaps the science is too complicated for you.

Global warming causes climate change.

The warmer it gets, the more disruption there is to existing climate cycles, ergo the likelihood of more extreme or anomalous events.

"Look there goes another extreme or anomalous weather event" is a scientific observation not a "repeated reference".

"Look, there have been 20 extreme or anomalous weather events" is evidence of climate change.

Sounds about like slimy Senator Ted Cruz!


Nobody is sure where Ted Cruz is, but many are speculating he flew to Cancun after Texas' deadly winter storm

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is under fire after unverified images suggest that he left Texas on Wednesday.

Claims circulated on Twitter that he had flown to Cancun. Cruz has yet to comment.

MORE

Nobody is sure where Ted Cruz is, but many are speculating he flew to Cancun after Texas' deadly winter storm

Originally Posted by misskit

Cruz has yet to comment.

Photo inside the aircraft has been made available.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Perhaps the science is too complicated for you.

Perhaps, science never was my strongest subject. I've never claimed to be an expert in the area. What I am more adept at is witnessing the generalities that are rampant in the news media at all levels from local to national and beyond regarding the phenomenon. My bullshit meter functions well and I sense the field is rampant with generalizations, exaggerations and game playing. The mainstream media knows pretty much Jack Shit about the subject.

Climate change is real. The consumption of fossil fuels is the primary cause of the phenomenon. I'm 100 percent in agreement. I remember folks like David Suzuki way back in the early seventies warning that we had 20 years maximum before it would be to late to act. He was spouting the same lines in the nineties, again the same message, twenty years at the max. He's still delivering the same fundamental doomsday message.

I favour a more measured approach than what is being promoted at the current time. The pain caused from these aggressive "climate change" inspired government policies is not distributed equally as we all know. It's unwise and a question of simple bad management practices and policies that is causing millions of people to go from a decent living income to welfare overnight. This is not right and cannot be tolerated.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Over and out.
































s cannot be tolerated