221–230 of 462 posts
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Houston is gigantic. Maintaining underground infrastructure can be very difficult. https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/9/16/repairing-under...
Berlin, 3.645M citizen, everything underground. Houston, 2.302M citizen, ... "gigantic"
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 sum…
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.
Just about drove me insane.
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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.
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?
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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…
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 di…
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-...
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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
so that's one comparable. Surely there are other First World cities that have storms?
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.
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.
(I live in Dallas)
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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 da…
> 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/…
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.
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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 s…
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.
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 d…
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.
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.
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.