Cold As My Ex-Wife's Heart

As some of you are only too aware, schools, homes and businesses throughout Texas were without electricity at least temporarily yesterday as rolling brownouts swept across the state. The brownouts resulted from surging demand for electricity due to the near-record cold weather sweeping the state, and woeful lack of preparedness on the part of of power plant operators. Throw in the bungling and blatant favoritism of local officials in distributing what power they do get, and we end up with 'the huddled masses' - literally.

The official version - from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's office (apparently Gov. GoodHair couldn't get his blow dryer to work):

"Due to severe cold weather conditions, ERCOT, the entity in charge of ensuring our electrical grid's reliability, was forced to institute rolling brownouts to protect against our statewide power grid going black. ERCOT advises that cold weather knocked approximately 50 of the 550 power plants in Texas, totaling 8,000 megawatts, offline this morning and also resulted in increased demand for electricity.  Lack of adequate winterization and preparation appear to be a major cause of the outages."

More specifically:

... many Texas power plants broke down because they’re not designed to handle lengthy cold spells.

... more than a day of very cold weather can lead to exposed pipes and other equipment at Texas power plants freezing. Unlike states like Illinois or New York where lengthy cold weather is expected, Texas power plants don’t have all of their equipment insulated or protected in the same way.

Starting a couple of days ahead of the cold weather we were warned to wrap our pipes, protect our plants, and bring our pets indoors. Don't power plant operators and government officials watch the news? Or do they think that, just because they are ignore so many laws and regulations, they can also ignore the laws of physics?  

Burst water pipes at two plants forced their shut-down. That triggered the power outages. Natural gas power plants that should have provided back up had difficulty starting for a couple of reasons. First, cold temperatures reduces the volume, and hence the pressure of a gas (remember your high school physics?) That led to low pressure in the gas lines. Contributing to the problem is that there is typically small amounts of water in natural gas pipelines. During cold weather this water can freeze and clog valves or cause them to stick.

On the bright side, our friends south of the border have agreed to help out by sending something other than illegal aliens and drugs north.

Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission agreed to transmit 280 megawatts of electricity to Texas between Wednesday and Thursday night.

A commission statement said the electricity would be transmitted at interconnection points in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, and Piedras Negras, which sits opposite of Eagle Pass.

Give 'em credit. Gracias.

Wrapping things up, Dewhurst said the demand placed on the Texas grid was nowhere near peak capacity. He said he was frustrated by the situation.

Gee, thanks, Dave. We are too. Now what are you going to do about it?

UPDATE: Here's some words of wisdom from a person who works in the power generating industry in another state. He knows far more about the problems caused by cold weather than I do.