Why Texas' mass power outages continue to happen

[SARose]

BY ALEJANDRA MARTINEZ AND EMILY FOXHALL
JULY 18, 2024

It’s become a familiar cycle: A powerful storm sweeps through a swath of Texas and takes the electric system down in its grip. Trees might bend and topple, crashing down onto a power pole. Sometimes the weight of ice pulls branches onto electric lines. Other times wind makes a wire spark, and that ember ignites a destructive blaze.

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After the disaster (2021 winter storm - info inserted by me) legislators decided Texas needed more power sources that could come on as needed. They required power generation facilities to make their equipment more resilient in winter weather. And they introduced financial mechanisms to try to get more on-demand power facilities built. Notably, state politicians allocated $5 billion to incentivize companies to build more gas-fueled power generators in the state. emphasis mine.

But those big efforts don’t help with how vulnerable the power poles and lines are — as continuous storms like Beryl make clear.

“The hurricane is throwing trees around, taking out wires,” said Michael Jewell, a longtime regulatory attorney. “It’s not that there wasn’t enough power. It was a fundamental problem with regard to, if you’ve got trees flying all over the place, they’re going to take down wires.”

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More

No money for tree trimming - Houston has TONS of trees.

No money to replace wooden poles with metal.

Just more money for Big Oil - all Abbott and Patrick donors.

Yipppeee!

[Probatim]

1. I think it has less to do with trees and power lines than the will to force utilities to upgrade.

I recognize you don't like the article either - the author should be ashamed to have their name attached to it.

[rickford66]

2. They can't keep up with the bit coin mining.

[duncang]

3. Going to check later.

After the storm I followed the transmission lines out in our neighborhood. I’m a retired electrician. I saw a tree which almost covered the transformer and wrapped around the drop to some houses. I did report it to city hall in person.

A day after we got power back a high voltage line dropped because it arced to a tree. Luckily they were still working in our area and had it fixed in a few hours. They did trim back that tree.

[SWBTATTReg]

4. I was watching something about Texas the other week or so ago (I think it was about the storms hitting Houston

yet again), and I was somewhat taken aback from the sheer number of trees, which a DUer did say that TX has a lot of trees. I always thought TX was mostly plains, no trees, etc. (I was wrong of course about that).

In Missouri, where we do have lots of trees (e.g., the Mark Twain Forest), lots of rivers running through the state, thus we have trees galore, they have taken a somewhat aggressive steps to trim tree foliage back from power poles and power infrastructure, all supposedly to reduce the number of outages due to tree debris against power poles etc. Also, we do have the occasional ice storms that hammer the state too. Of course, other steps can be taken such as metal poles vs. wood poles, in some areas put lines underground, etc.

Sure, they can't eliminate all of them at once (those trees whose limbs possibly could interfere w/ the power), but one must start somewhere. Perhaps in TX they can start and then continue the process as an ongoing process. Funny that the powers that be don't want to spend any more money than absolutely needed (so they can put more money in their pockets instead), but if one is not delivering power to customers, then no money is coming in for those days power is off.

[txwhitedove]

5. Houston area has a lot of trees, and trimming is done around power lines. However, there can be

tornadoes in hurricanes, hopping around indiscriminately in a swath of destruction. Main trees that fell in my cul-de-sac were huge 99 ft pines and some oaks, while my little bench pillows in front didn't budge. It was weird, scary, unexpected of a Cat 1 storm miles inland. Last hurricane to uproot 2 pines in my neighborhood was Ike in 2008, but this was worse. Trees down on houses, cars, power poles, transformers. Someone needs to do a true article of us and neighborhoods that pulled together and then celebrated when power came on after 8 days. We're tired but grateful.

[TBF]

6. If we didn't have a governor more concerned about DEREGULATION than anything else -

the companies might be forced to actually do the maintenance work needed - trimming trees, underground wires at least for high-risk areas like nursing homes etc. Instead, the focus is on profit for the owners. This is always where Abbott comes down. And republicans in Texas are on my last nerve - they complain, put in generators if they can afford it personally, and keep voting for a guy who cares only about himself and money.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

7. kick