Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 462 posts

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#311

Post by bluGill »

galdosdi wrote: post #158
bluGill wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#312

Post by epolanski »

snailmailman wrote: post #179
epolanski wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm commenting on Rome though, my city. Not Houston.

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 .

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.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#313

Post by bdcravens »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #138
bdcravens wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of population, but land. Berlin is about 345 square miles; Houston is 640.

Berlin including suburbs ("Speckgürtel") is ~1400 square miles.

If you includes the suburbs, the Houston area is roughly 10,000 square miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Houston#Geography

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#314

Post by brianwawok »

jsjohnst wrote: post #227
quickthrowman wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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.

Basically just factories yah? And like large hotels. Your random strip mall business is very happy with a standard 200 amp 240V service.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#315

Post by slater- »

anonfordays wrote: post #294
freen wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take any metric you like: child mortality, educational outcomes, hunger, per capita income, media income, purchasing power parity, you name it. Compare those cities to traditionally Republican run states. Try it. There is a very very good reason why the best and brightest leave rural republican areas and move to the big cities: it is better in almost every way we measure human wellbeing.

You cannot compare states to cities. >Compare those cities to traditionally Republican run states The South was traditionally ran by the Democratic Party.

[flagged]

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#316

Post by hooloovoo_zoo »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #36

Germany has overengineered and expensive utilities, but I'm happy sometimes that all power and telephone lines are underground.

Much more complicated in Houston than Germany. Aside from the density which has been mentioned, Houston regularly floods so the lines would frequently be underwater. Plus, the rise and fall of the water table causes the ground to expand and contract. That’s why the sidewalks are constantly buckling.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#317

Post by nocoiner »

xyst wrote: post #298

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...

Houston isn’t particularly near the coast, believe it or not. And the flood control infrastructure has been dramatically improved since Harvey. This occurrence seems to be a failure of the local transmission and distribution monopoly.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#318

Post by roenxi »

sdenton4 wrote: post #279
lolinder wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

I can't walk by this comment without noting that their 'we don't need no regulamazations' attitude resulted in a large populous state which people want to migrate to. The other large US state, California, has electricity prices that appear to be 2x higher [0]. And their migratory trends are not encouraging.

People underestimate the heavy burden of a strong regulatory state. High standards and high costs. All in it the Texas approach looks to be pretty good even if it means you have to be prepared for an emergency. I actually lost power for 24 hours recently so I can sympathise; a widespread outage would be horrific for an unprepared person. But being prepared for emergencies is a much more resilient approach in the long term and better than the quite substantial risk of overregulating.

They have a very healthy attitude.

[0] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#319

Post by megaman821 »

epolanski wrote: post #8

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…

The world uses vastly more energy for heating homes than cooling them. It would be more energy efficient to live in the desert using AC than burning natural gas for heat in northern countries.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#320

Post by throwaway4220 »

bsder wrote: post #299
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 .

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/2013/HAIL.png

Here is a hail map.

https://solarpower.guide/solar-energy-insights/infographics/...

Here is a rough solar install map

I think it’s not necesarily true that people avoid Solar because of hail, although anecdotally I know a friend who is reluctant for this very reason

That being said, flooding happens very often and yet homes in Houston are not flood proof.

And let’s not get into the whole cheap energy from carbon sources being subsidized

Post reply on HN