Not as bad as Myanmar (14%), Internet connectivity in Texas has been declining today. According to NetBlocks, which normally monitors government imposed outages, reports network connectivity at 68% in Texas.
Texas operates a separate electric grid, with limited interconnections to the rest of North America. For political reasons....
For those with long memories, ENRON a Texas based corporation, once upon a time drove rolling blackouts across California in order to make billions.
See also, regional maps here. Thanks to CAIDA and the IODA project.
Poweroutage.us posted a terrific map, showing the jurisdictional borders of the Texas power outages versus the storm related power outages elsewhere in the country.
Sometimes infrastructure planning failures are not due to "natural hazards."
I suppose having some kind of home backup solution wouldn't be too bad right now, even though you may still not get access to services. But at least, you can brew some coffee, and charge your pulse oximetre.
Mark.
How about letting us Texans have more natural gas power plants or even let the gas be delivered to the plants we have so they can provide more power in an emergency. Did not help that 20% of our power is now wind which of course in an ice storm like we are having is shut off… Lots of issues and plenty of politics involved here…
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Ercot has already released actual documentation of the outputs. Wind is NOT the biggest loss here. Even if wind was operating at 100% capacity, we’d be in the same boat due to gas and fossil fuel-related generation being decimated. Estimated 4GW lost for wind doesn’t make up for the 30GW+ estimated being lost from fossil fuels.
I only interject because people are already pointing their fingers at renewables being the cause here and trying to pawn off the blame to wind/solar to further their agendas to reduce renewable energy R&D and adoption. Sure, wind isn’t perfect, but looks like solution relied on failed in a massive way.
Did I see somewhere that gas lines also got frozen, or was that just the windmills?
I feel for you and the rest of Texas. Cold weather has never been my thing.
Mark.
That much generation loss from a wind farm would surprise me.
Mark.
Electric prices on the Texas spot market are $9,000/MWh. Normally they are less than $15/MWh. During the summer months, Texas spot market prices have gone to zero because it has excess summertime wind turbine capacity. I suspect those are computer generated artificial prices, because there is no excess capacity for sale. Sorta like the fake Amazon maketplace prices on out-of-stock products.
Netblocks is now reporting Internet outages (about 70% availability) have expanded across northern Mexico due to Natural Gas shortages for power plants in Mexico because of the demand in Texas.
Strange the massive shortages and failures are only in one state.
The extreme cold weather extends northwards across many states, which aren't reporting rolling blackouts.
Total population is a pretty big difference as you go north, as is how well infrastructure is actually prepared for snow/ice and cold temperatures in general.
I’ve been without power all day and have no doubt I’ll cross the 24-hour mark here in a handful of hours.
sounds familiar, even connected to a much bigger grid
Isn’t that a result of ERCOT stubbornly refusing to interconnect with the rest of the national grid, out of an irrational fear of coming under federal regulation?
I suspect that trying to be self-sufficient works most of the time–but when you get to the edges of the bell curve locally, your ability to be resilient and survive depends heavily upon your ability to be supported by others around you. This certainly holds true for individual humans; I suspect power grids aren’t that different.
Matt
If there was a state-wide blackout, they’d need to restart from the national grid anyway. Why not have some standing interconnection agreement with them anyway, that gets activated in cases such as these? Sorry, unfamiliar with U.S. politics in this regard, so just doing 1+1. Mark.
Going at it alone can be beneficial sometimes, sometimes it's not.
Almost exactly 4 years ago we were out up here in Michigan for over 120 hours after a wind storm took out power to 1 million homes. Large scale restoration takes time. When the load and supply are imbalanced it can make things worse as well.
I’m hoping things return to normal soon but also am reminded it can take some time.
We now have a large generator with automatic switchover after that event. Filling gas cans every 12 hours to feed the generator is no fun.
Are the power lines buried like in Europe where I live?
I really think using poles is crazy and global warming guarantees enough atmospheric turbulence to make it untenable. Florida is moving to bury power lines.
The problems with renewables is that you can’t switch on or off and there is no good storage solution.
However, the issue in Texas is probably exposed power cables. In Europe they are buried and we have far milder weather than the States.
Anyone wants to provide some details on where the system has faltered? It is transmission? Or generation? Or just everything in general? 
I agree. Germany spent well over 200 billion Euros on wind and solar subsidies and over 85% of the country’s energy consumption is still non-renewable. Wind power is randomly generated. I really don’t to depend it for either personal or business needs.
Isn't that a result of ERCOT stubbornly refusing to interconnect with the rest of the national grid, out of an irrational fear of coming under federal regulation?
Yes. This has been widely documented in numerous articles, both very recently and previously.
I suspect that trying to be self-sufficient works most of the time--but when you get to the edges of the bell curve locally, your ability to be resilient and survive depends heavily upon your ability to be supported by others around you. This certainly holds true for individual humans; I suspect power grids aren't that different.
If there was a state-wide blackout, they'd need to restart from the national grid anyway. Why not have some standing interconnection agreement with them anyway, that gets activated in cases such as these?
Sorry, unfamiliar with U.S. politics in this regard, so just doing 1+1.
"Sorry, unfamiliar with U.S. politics in this regard, so just doing 1+1"
You don't understand Texas politics relative to the United States at large.
Which is fine, but this is a state that had deliberately prevented interconnects (see: ERCOT, above) into any extended national grid, principally to evade the resulting exposure to Federal regulation.
Texas [politicians] are constantly threatening to secede.
- John