Discussion: Texas cold
in: PG; PG > 2021-02-20
Feb 20, 2021 10:33 PM
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If I remember right - not always a given these days - you have a brother in Texas. Hope he and his family are doing okay.
Feb 20, 2021 10:48 PM
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PG:
They just flew off to Cancun to get someplace warm. Oops, wrong Texan.
My brother and his wife live in Austin, also their daughter in another part of town. No power for only about 48 hours and it doesn't seem like any burst pipes in either place, though not sure on the latter. So not fun, but way better than for a lot of people.
My brother and his wife live in Austin, also their daughter in another part of town. No power for only about 48 hours and it doesn't seem like any burst pipes in either place, though not sure on the latter. So not fun, but way better than for a lot of people.
Feb 21, 2021 11:11 AM
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I've been following the situation with some interest, given that I write the high-impact weather events section for the World Meteorological Organization's annual climate summary. I can't think of another severe weather event in any developed country which has led to power outages of this extent and duration due to a shortage of supply (as opposed to a failure of the transmission network, as might happen in a hurricane or an ice storm).
The cold wave in Texas was a rare event but not an unforeseeable one, probably a one in 30-50 year event in the present climate (the last broadly comparable one was in December 1989). One thing the events of last week illustrate is that in a commercial market, there is little incentive for generators to spend the money required to cope with rare events unless regulators force them to do so, and I get the impression that regulators in Texas don't usually do very much regulating. (In some climate risk contexts, although not this one, an interesting angle is the role of insurance companies and banks as de facto regulators - a planning authority may allow a building to be built on the beachfront, but if you can't get insurance for it or borrow money to buy it, that's a fairly strong disincentive).
Some of the rhetoric around this event, especially the (alleged) role of wind power, is also remarkably similar to what happened after a statewide blackout in South Australia in 2016. (In that case, the blackout was caused when a tornado destroyed one of the main transmission lines and that disrupted the system enough that the whole grid failed). Having been on the receiving end of plenty of fossil fuel industry talking points of American origin over the years, it now seems that we're exporting them to you...
The cold wave in Texas was a rare event but not an unforeseeable one, probably a one in 30-50 year event in the present climate (the last broadly comparable one was in December 1989). One thing the events of last week illustrate is that in a commercial market, there is little incentive for generators to spend the money required to cope with rare events unless regulators force them to do so, and I get the impression that regulators in Texas don't usually do very much regulating. (In some climate risk contexts, although not this one, an interesting angle is the role of insurance companies and banks as de facto regulators - a planning authority may allow a building to be built on the beachfront, but if you can't get insurance for it or borrow money to buy it, that's a fairly strong disincentive).
Some of the rhetoric around this event, especially the (alleged) role of wind power, is also remarkably similar to what happened after a statewide blackout in South Australia in 2016. (In that case, the blackout was caused when a tornado destroyed one of the main transmission lines and that disrupted the system enough that the whole grid failed). Having been on the receiving end of plenty of fossil fuel industry talking points of American origin over the years, it now seems that we're exporting them to you...
This discussion thread is closed.