February 18, 2021 ☼ texas ☼ energy ☼ power-failure ☼ gop
Source: The Texas Tribune - Link
Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday.
As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worse-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.
The quick decision that grid operators made in the early hours of Monday morning to begin what was intended to be rolling blackouts — but lasted days for millions of Texans — occurred because operators were seeing warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid.
Thank goodness there were some competent people looking at the graphs. Now they just have to build in some resiliency. That will take some money in the form of raised rates or taxes and reliance on scientific expertise. I’m not sure the Texas GOP has that kind of political acumen.