At what point do people start losing it? Most don't have power and all of Houston is without water. Hell, my wife is working at TCH and they don't even have water. Things could get ugly.

H2Ag said:

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nortex97 said:

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Whitetail said:

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Smart meters...If 10,000 people on a grid were judged as who used the most to who used the least...and say each were given a score 1-10...could the utility turn off all the 9's and 10's by meter?

That would be one way to do it where the least number of homes are affected.

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Then the next step is to have your social media score evaluated into the equation as well (facebook/twitter/google etc), and let the government determine if your social/environmental contribution warrant the kilowatt hours you have been consuming. For that matter, if you should be allowed to have/charge a new phone at all.

That's what China does, and it works well for them, per Xiden. What could possibly go wrong?

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I have a little experience with these in the past. All smart meters don't have a remote disconnect feature. It was available at extra cost years ago. a lot of the utilities opted not to install. Load management is supposed to be one of the benefits of "Smart Grid". Seems to me a path to less painful outages in the future. Nortex is right though. Doubt the regulators will keep their greedy hands out of the cookie jar

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I do understand the intent/sales pitch, and full disclosure, I have Nest thermostats. But even there, the real intent is to give big brother a hand to 'help' efficiently set your temperature (and it is a bit pernicious about sneaking in and changing the settings.) To the extent a 'smart' meter eliminates the need for monthly meter maid checks, I support it fully, but regulating throughput is a likely end state, and it wouldn't stop just where I listed it, think about your power also being limited if you bought too much ammo etc.

After this experience, I will be more wary than before about sharing data/electrical dependence (getting a home generator etc.) But, something like half of Americans have a smart meter of some sort today, knowingly or not (about 90 million). I don't think the database generated has been consolidated/linked to census data, square footage/property tax data etc. yet, but I am admittedly more naive than I used to think. AI applications over the next 20 years will make this an inevitability, imho.

We use gas to mitigate the unreliability of wind. Our dispatch power failed.

LostInLA07 said:

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Interested to see the explanation

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They won't respond Abbott is talking about firing all of them

In North Eastern Lewisville we have been without power since Monday morning at 2 am. TEXAS New Mexico Power has advised us not to expect power before tomorrow evening after telling us previously to expect last night and then tonight. At this point wr just expect not to have power until Saturday when Temps rise.

What recourse would I have that my area appears to be targeted for no power. We know they can kick it on because we had a 10 minute burst at 2 am yesterday and that was called an error...and there was no resulting equipment failure. We are simply all being just left dark because they can.

htxag09 said:

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richardag said:

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htxag09 said:

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That's fine and dandy. I'm against wind energy as well. But it's simply irrelevant to use this time to explain how wind energy is unreliable. All our energy is apparently unreliable and it's just kicking the can down the road and not holding those responsible who should be.

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The unreliability of gas, coal and nuclear can be mitigated, the unreliable wind can not be mitigated since it relies on wind which is very inconsistent at best in most of the world.

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This is my point. I agree. However, politicians and people screaming this now is absolutely asinine. "Wind power is unreliable!!" Meanwhile our current thermal power system is failing at epic magnitudes. You're not wrong, but it's not relevant to what's going on. It's kicking the can down the road for the actual issues that caused this mess.

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I agree with you in that this complaint about wind power won't solve this current situation but it is relevant to how we got into this situation.

Zobel said:

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We use gas to mitigate the unreliability of wind. Our dispatch power failed.

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No argument with that.

I have a friend in South Florida that allows the power company to have a disconnect on his pool equipment for a cheaper rate. another coop i know of puts them on water heaters. Initiatives like that could make a difference is applied widely.

Sounds like it could assist in restarting a grid in the conditions ERCOT is in today, as well as utilizing that extra 5 or 6 GW of capacity ERCOT is letting go to waste right now...

I'm no EE but Im sure we could be smarter about this whole issue....

Is it me or did a crap ton of more power just become available? They are still keeping demand down.

ERCOT now showing capacity is 10GW above demand.

Wtf

Capacity hasn't men this high since I started screen shotting the app Monday morning.

Why the hell aren't more people getting power?

Some of that might be a plant that is online but not loaded. You can't bring a steam plant to full load instantly. Thermal expansion can be a problem. Some are 1% per minute or something like that. So the plant is online, maybe 600MW or more showing as capacity, but it may not be able to be loaded for a couple hours.

Maybe.

richardag said:

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htxag09 said:

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That's fine and dandy. I'm against wind energy as well. But it's simply irrelevant to use this time to explain how wind energy is unreliable. All our energy is apparently unreliable and it's just kicking the can down the road and not holding those responsible who should be.

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The unreliability of gas, coal and nuclear can be mitigated, the unreliable wind can not be mitigated since it relies on wind which is very inconsistent at best in most of the world.

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What's the saying, you get what you pay for. You can't buy the wind blowing and you can't buy sunshine

Wondering the same thing. It could be they are waiting to make sure it stays online/is stable? You know once those who have been out of power for 3 days hit the grid, demand is going to spike like crazy.

I have been told by a reliable source that Highland Park and University Park have had zero rolling blackouts.
If true, I'd be interested in why?

Probably on a circuit with a hospital or some other essential load.

SECTAMU#1 said:

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I have been told by a reliable source that Highland Park and University Park have had zero rolling blackouts.
If true, I'd be interested in why?

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Completely false

LostInLA07 said:

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Probably on a circuit with a hospital or some other essential load.

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Or the home of a board member or C-suite of the local TDU

SECTAMU#1 said:

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I have been told by a reliable source that Highland Park and University Park have had zero rolling blackouts.
If true, I'd be interested in why?

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I just spoke with someone who lives in HP but has no power.

Zobel said:

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Some of that might be a plant that is online but not loaded. You can't bring a steam plant to full load instantly. Thermal expansion can be a problem. Some are 1% per minute or something like that. So the plant is online, maybe 600MW or more showing as capacity, but it may not be able to be loaded for a couple hours.

Maybe.

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~3MW a minute

Tanya 93 said:

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Out of curiosity, how long and what can you run on a generator?

Do you put it in the back of your truck to fill or does it take a lot of gas cans?

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My oldest brother had a generator he used for welding that was mounted on the back of a truck. We also had a generator that you would hook up to the PTO on a tractor. Either of those were enough to handle the farm.

aginlakeway said:

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SECTAMU#1 said:

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I have been told by a reliable source that Highland Park and University Park have had zero rolling blackouts.
If true, I'd be interested in why?

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I just spoke with someone who lives in HP but has no power.

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I too have spoken to someone in HP, and their electricity only comes on every eight hours for about an hour at a time.

JayHowdy! said:

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aginlakeway said:

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SECTAMU#1 said:

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I have been told by a reliable source that Highland Park and University Park have had zero rolling blackouts.
If true, I'd be interested in why?

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I just spoke with someone who lives in HP but has no power.

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I too have spoken to someone in HP, and their electricity only comes on every eight hours for about an hour at a time.

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Yep. So the post that said "Highland Park and University Park have had zero rolling blackouts" is wrong.

itsyourboypookie said:

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They are hauling coal to oak grove power plant down hwy 7 by kosse.

With the 175 ton dump trucks they mine with #getherdone

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Where do they normally get their coal from? I thought coal thermal kept 30 days of fuel on hand

After having power for only about 1-2 hours ever 8 hours, we've had power in Carrollton now since 7am (knock on wood). Not sure what changed or how we got away from the "**** this particular area" curse that we had, but I'm thankful.

However, now I have a Pavlovian response that anytime I hear something click or I blink in a weird way I think that the power went out and go into survival mode.

WTF would we be selling outside of Texas?

itsyourboypookie said:

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They are hauling coal to oak grove power plant down hwy 7 by kosse.

With the 175 ton dump trucks they mine with #getherdone

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I heard both their units are down and don't expect to be back online until next week. You hear anything?

hbc07 said:

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After having power for only about 1-2 hours ever 8 hours, we've had power in Carrollton now since 7am (knock on wood). Not sure what changed or how we got away from the "**** this particular area" curse that we had, but I'm thankful.

However, now I have a Pavlovian response that anytime I hear something click or I blink in a weird way I think that the power went out and go into survival mode.

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My wife turned out the only light that was on in the room and I thought the power had gone off.

To make money of course.

SECTAMU#1 said:

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I have been told by a reliable source that Highland Park and University Park have had zero rolling blackouts.
If true, I'd be interested in why?

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That is not true.

Multiple big pipelines into Mexico... Pipelines to Chenier for LNG, in sure there are others.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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itsyourboypookie said:

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They are hauling coal to oak grove power plant down hwy 7 by kosse.

With the 175 ton dump trucks they mine with #getherdone

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Where do they normally get their coal from? I thought coal thermal kept 30 days of fuel on hand

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Train. It's frozen.

Charpie said:

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WTF would we be selling outside of Texas?

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Would have expected this earlier, but better late than never. In Abbott's defense he may not have known until today, but someone did and should have spoken op ASAP