On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:14:08 -0600, Jim Joyce
wrote:

On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 07:21:16 -0500, micky wrote:

Somone on NPR's Morning Edition excplained that the water in natural gas
is removed by the gas companies in the north, so thta it won't freeze,
but they didn't do that in Texas, so it did freeze.

I suspect they're not set up to do it even if they wanted to.

In Texas, like you said, the natural gas distribution system isn't
winterized. Likewise, the wind farms aren't winterized, which led to Gov
Abbott's bizarre claim that wind energy stops working in cold weather. I
guess someone should tell him that wind energy works just fine in cold
weather if you take steps to make it so. There are plenty of examples of
that around the world.

This isn't the first time the power grid partially collapsed in Texas as a
result of cold weather. Just like before, recommendations get made that
ERCOT should winterize their freaking equipment, but as before, they've
said they won't do it because it costs too much.

I suppose the customers have a say in that because that cost would
show up in their bill. These are cheap *******s and they might still
say no assuming this won't happen again any time soon.
You just have to think of those people who tied their bill to the
wholesale cost of power and got clobbered when the wholesale price
skyrocketed.
Other places are willing to pay extra for better reliability.
We actually understand we pay a little extra on our bills here in
Florida to cover storms. We had a "Storm Charge" on our bills for
years after Charley and Wilma but the extra we paid in on the regular
service charge was enough to cover the Irma damage so they didn't need
to tack on an extra charge to cover the shortfall.


And of course, the Texas electric grid is separate from the rest of
America, so they won't be regulated by the feds, but this means they
also can't take electricity from the rest of the country when they need
it, like last week. (Except for El Paso, which is connected to the USA
grid and iiuc not the Texas grid. )

There are actually 3 electrical grids in the US: West, East, and Texas.

Hence, no gas and no electricity.