What Really Happened During the Texas Power Grid Outage? 

Heck yeah!

Yes, it helps with understanding engineering by relating it with current events.

I'd definitely appreciate your level and knowledgeable take on issues relating to civil engineering

This was really interesting and informative, i knew that the grid was interconnected but had no idea it was to this extent. I think this is something that you should do if applicable from time to time but i do love seeing those water flume demonstrations :)

YES!!

Yes, but how many happened more than once?

@@sonofsisyphus5742 hmm

That's global climate change for ya.

@@slartibartfast2977 I see you read Adams. Nice.

@@norvillerodgersspeaks Richard Adams of Oregon State, yes.

Yeah this was super interesting to learn about. Apparently somebody did something right in order to avoid this disaster.

I can only imagine what was going on in the Central Grid Control room

Imagine if all those essential hospitals and other buildings' electricity collapsed...

@@chaz000006 A majority of hospitals have generator backups, as far as I’m aware.

@@arty_gangster 4 Minutes, no great, not terrible

Was it a Generac natural gas generator??

I'm a cheapskate. I have a kerosene heater and flashlights.

Heads up, another thing that can help in case your backup fails is heat packs. Can't place them directly near your birds but just having them nearby with enough insulation will help keep the area warm for them. Its an item usually kept by reptile keepers in case of power loss.

Hospital...or parrots....hospital...or parrots...sounds like your wife had her priorities.

@@josephupton3601 Hey, I mean, hospitals have backup generators too

Get a generator! This wasnt Texas' first black out fiasco. It kind of has a history of it.

Are they now convinced to buy that generator? Or do they think that they only need to use the generator in a once in a life time situation which will never happen again?

I was able to convince my family to purchase a whole house generator that can run on gas or propane... I was even able to convince them to get a big propane tank and have it full and ready just in case. However, my dad (who's an electrician), has still not hooked it up to the house and doesn't have the specific cord that you need in order to have it wired to your home… So it's kind of worthless if the power does go out, which is frustrating

Excellent post. I hope you are able to remind your family that it wasn't wise to ignore your wisdom. I'd mention it at least once per week.

I've worked in the power industry for 37 years and have owned a generator ever since I could afford one. They have saved the day quite a few times.

I'm an electrical engineer and can also concur.

Thanks for that information. I am seriously trying to learn more about energy and electricity management these days. . .at the practical level. Any resources you can recommend?

I visited a pumped storage facility in Japan (Kurobe Dam). I'm not sure how much efficiency loss there is, but it really seems like an elegant idea.

I worked in this field as a computational meteorologist and statistician. we evaluated locations of wind turbines with an eye towards estimating the impacts their intermittency would have on spinning reserve requirements. That ercot has ~30% wind power deployment scares me.

If this would have gone to blackstart I think everyone involved should have been grounded. I don't work in the electrical industry. I work in bad humor.

I didn't even notice that until you mentioned it!

Technically I guess this will forever be a current event, eh?

It's shocking.

At least you weren't re-volt-ed

It’s not yet history...

The storm was actually your dad returning to exact revenge on the unprepared during the 2015 testing. It was probably so important to him and it sounds like everyone else sorta blew off the importance of preparing for a Black Start. Have you watched the videos people took on the side of the highway that morning when the roads froze over instantly. I lived in South Dakota for a few years so we were totally aware the roads would have ice when it came. In Texas, they never saw temps drop the way they did and at 70mph a string of motorists hit a large patch of black ice and several motorists were able to hop out of their vehicle and scramble to the side of the road and record big 18 wheelers plowing through the pileup at full speed. Their brakes were completely useless on the ice. It was a horrific video to watch knowing that there were a bunch of cars that crashed into someone and May or may not have been injured but normally would have needed to be extracted from their vehicles with the jaws of life since any damage to the doors will almost always seal that door shut. Helplessly, cars that were crashed had to watch in their rear view as a big rig plowed into the back of them at full speed. If I remember correctly 6 people died in that pileup. The road froze over at around 5 or 6am so everybody was driving down the road at possibly the worst time since traffic picks up significantly and everyone is still waking up. Anyway, enough about me… My condolences for the loss of your dad. It sounds like he was pretty amazing.

A tad dry, but succinct. I reverted back to my mech engineering education and remembered one of the first things I was taught: Build to 2:1; maintain the works, because if the ratio falls below 1:1, it will fail. And yes, it's nice to be reminded of what might happen if maintenance fails to have a plan B. B is for Backup, but in this case?

Like it or not, this is a political issue. I can tell that Grady is trying to skirt around talking about the policy choices that led to the disaster, in order to stick to his expertise and avoid offending anyone, but it paints an incomplete picture and tbh comes across as somewhat wishy-washy.

@@NotofManRecords you don't really need evidence, ercot said they cut the power to keep what power remained active.

😂 true.

@@NotofManRecords Friend, I went to the connection on your comment and a page came up too small to read and was only on the screen for about 5-6 seconds then shuts off. I smell the rat you are pointing out. Thanks.

@@frother Oh, but didn't someone promise to make America great again? Or maybe he didn't mean Texas. Who decided not to regulate electric ⚡ power? Oh! The same people who brought you Trump and Rick Perry? Rick Perry was the Secretary of Energy!!! What's up with that? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Te2QFnUQfDw.html

Yes. This.

They are either "Texas bad" or "Wind bad" lmao

All they care about is creating sensational headlines, vs actually educating people to make their own decisions like this video does so well.

all for-profit news media operates under bias, read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent"

Shhhh, they're going to try and cancel him next. Fake news journalists don't like competition.

I have worked in the same field for over 40 years although not an engineer, as a contractor installing instruments and related items in power plants/refineries/chem plants ect. All of these power source plants have engineers to over see their needs to keep running in all kinds of weather...that includes having electric and steam tracing to keep instrumentation thawed out and working. Also having secondary back up instruments and power as well. To hear a plant went down because of frozen valves/instruments is hard to imagine. The natural gas pipes in isolated areas could be an exception, but even there they should have minimum insulation and possible electric/steam tracing

I bet she'd really like that! You should show her!

@@sfurules if she did not care for 35 years, what makes you think she will care now?

@@nemod3338 what the fuck are you talking about

Hear hear!

Are natural gas lines not usually buried where they wouldn't freeze, or are they kept above ground so they can be easily inspected?

@Angel A as a resident of iowa I was just thinking that myself..what do midwestern and northern states do different with their grid to avoid things like this from happening. I was under the Impression that most of Iowa's grid is powered by coal, with wind and natural gas filling the remainder. Wind mills up north must be built different to avoid freezing over?

Agreed.

I now have a massive amount of respect for you.

@Angel A The super short version is that Texas didn't winterproof, while I assume Iowa did. It's not an impossible problem to fix, but it *is* more expensive for companies to do over just letting people die. Especially when they have a near-monopoly.

Shouldn't Texas have winterized their system long ago? It isn't like this was the first cold snap that they had ever experienced, and everyone has been warned of extreme weather due to climate change. Since you are in the energy market, he didn't make very clear something the media did (or were they wrong) that Texas basically set up an independent infrastructure making it impossible to draw power from other states. Was the media correct? And if they are, why did Texas do that?

@@rabbit251 Given the historical trends, and even the future outlooks, this weather event was still easily well outside even the most conservative forecasts. Dropping down to the teens, or even single digits, for an extended number of days has never happened before. That being said, should precautions should have been taken? Perhaps. But as was pointed out, in a market economy system like ERCOT, there's no upside to layering on costs above and beyond what is typically needed. To your second question.. yes, most of Texas is on an independent grid. This was done primarily for political reasons, not technical reasons. By having a grid wholly within the boundaries of the Texas borders, the Texas power grid is in most respects not subject to federal regulation under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But while the Texas grid isn't tied to other grids in a balanced/synchronous system, the Texas grid can pull some power from other grids using DC ties, which it has a few of to some of the adjacent grids. He did note this in his video (that Texas pulled some power from other grids), but to make an analogy, it's a bit like using an extension cord from your neighbor's home to run your home. Fine for sharing some small amounts of surplus power, but nowhere near the connection needed to completely prop up a grid.

I don't think they did anything, are you sure it's a mandate not mere guidelines and recommendations. The major point of failure for texas was those natural gas pipes being frozen (solar and wind overperformed despite shills saying otherwise), the reason why they froze is because winterization costs money. Like the old saying goes: if you think safety is expensive, try paying for the costs of a catastrophic accident xD

@@rabbit251 ERCOT has always been an independent electric system and has never been connect to the electric systems in other adjacent states. By doing this, they avoid having to be regulated by FERC (Federal Electric Regulatory Commission).

@@marinbobster8663 What is so terrible about FERC? As far as I know, Texas is the only state that does this. Other states are interconnected for the reason stated in the video, because power usage doesn't stop at state lines and the grid system is a way to direct power so that there aren't any outages.

Thanks man!

Agreed

This kid of content is always appropriate, great vid!

Hi!

+

me too - cool guy

Roland, don't forget the creep of "alternate" energy into a larger and larger % of their grid. That's what failed

@@jamescollier3 Actually the biggest failure by far was Natural Gas power plants. In what way is that "alternate" energy?

@@owensmith7530 you got me Jussie

@@owensmith7530 so, you are convincing yourself the solar and wind were up and running? Lol

Thank you for sharing that here. I am so amazed at not only the premise of this video, but the vast quantities of people so thankful for an "unbiased, non-politicized explanation". As though including the fact that this happened after right-wing free-market ideologues deregulated their state power grid as much as possible, and that without that having been done, outcomes would have been way better for most people both in reliability and in price. The way the video is presented, as though it's all anyone needs to know about the situation, when that couldn't be less true.... says a lot to me about the creator.

Same in Ireland. They took a perfectly good grid system and gave it away to chancers.

I saw your post among the 14000+ now, lol. I'm in Waco, TX, so I was directly affected like Grady (video's author). Yeah, there's a reason why public utilities should be PUBLIC and not private. It's like medieval greed has taken over modern humanity.

Not saying any of you are wrong, but the big problem was gas supplying the utilities, not the utilities themselves.

Something that is needed by the public, like water, power, and sewer, should be run by a public utility. A public utility that operates in the interest of... the public. Privatizing public utilities is an idiotic political trend. And here I thought it was just an American thing - sorry to hear the UK has climbed on that bandwagon as well.

Note: Politicians are very RARELY engineers of any stripe. (But some 'play one' on TV)

@@sealyoness You're right, although Jimmy Carter was an engineer as is Chairman Xi of China, I believe.

@@donk73 , Please... as though most politicians think beyond their bank accounts.

It's really a tragedy that we're still relying on the outdated power grid that operates on the knife's edge of disaster like this, when we have the technology and ability to have much more stable, robust and fault-tolerant grid

@@donk73 - Yes, Jimmy Carter is a Nuclear Engineer and served in the Navy Nuclear ship & submarine corp.

To be honest, I'm surprised you don't have way more subs

This very clear, and helpful.

@@jasonbourne1961 These things take time...

YES!

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This. I have friends in Texas, and after confirming they're okay, just went back to my normal life. Lived through brutal cold and also through power outages, but never both at the same time in a state that just isn't built for such cold.

Yes an unbiased technical report is much needed

I agree, Im in northern New England and power outages are nothing new here, especially in ice storms. It's why most of us keep a supply of wood somewhere. I can only imagine (and deeply sympathize) with this kind of storm what people must have been going through.

While this was a generic version of what happened what really happened may not be so simplistic where Capitalism and self preservation may have enter into the picture...

Agung Priambodo a totally “unbiased” report made by someone who belives in climate change lol.

Ben! I love when my favorite RU-vidrs also watch each other!

The legend has spoken

I watch the same content as Ben! I'm cool by proxy! And yes, excellent video. I have yet to find any other video/site/or source that could explain the causal factors without including a political bias. I don't live in Texas, and just wanted to understand this event. Thank you, as always, for the excellent content

Great to see someone using a social media platform to share and support the facts.

Naturally, it is always preferable to get your information on a technical subject directly from the experts. Through malice or otherwise, news outlets often misrepresent the data.

Mainstream Media has to make everything political. That's why.

Main stream means that people working there are just mainstream people. They don’t have the knowledge needed to make a coverage of anything.

@@vexedmirage4678 Bingo. Western mainstream news is every bit as "controlled" and "designed" as the state-media in places like Russia and China is. Western media absolutely DOES NOT CARE one bit about "truth". Their "agenda" is 100% top priority. And their agenda will change depending on who the controller-class billionaire media-magnates want to protect or smear next...

Individual content creators are the news!

Because youtubers can focus on topics and go in depth. They can take time to do thoughtful research, and MSM needs to cover current events, like two shootings that made national news. Most people do not care or have the knowledge to learn an in-depth topic like this, so the media has to tailor it's news for the general population. Besides, doing actual research will take time away from the TV Show Ancient Aliens

Considering how much of a brain drain SA has suffered, that is not surprising.

Is it South Africa that has the cool ripple generators on the substations to tell electric heating element equipment to power down? I always thought that was a really clever implementation which in the UK would probably have been done using hugely complicated and fragile mobile telephony infrastructure or radio. It also predated powerline ethernet by some years, which is a similar technology. Shame it has to be used at all though and I can only imagine your frustration living in a country which can't seem to stay in the first world by keeping the lights on - and so avoidably, too.

Should have let the men in charge that built it to begin with

@@OkenWS I grew up in Johannesburg in the 80's and 90's and there was an extra relay (of some sort) installed next to the main electrical distribution board in our house that the energy provider could signal remotely (I have no idea how) to disable the water heater and reduce load on the grid.

..but still dumbed down so the rest of us get it; this guy is magical!

Yes

Fred Rogers comes to mind.

The media was trying to convince us that capitalism caused the outages and not a freak winter storm. What a bunch of shmucks.

*entire state goes through a record-breaking and deadly power outage* Most of Texas is under one power grid.

He reminds me of my differential equations professor. Some might say he is a monotone bore, but the lack of inflection helps keep my ADD silent.

I flew my plane across TX on Christmas day. Below freezing and I saw all the windfarms doing nothing (it was dead calm). That's why wind/solar means that you still need the 100% oil/gas infrastructure. You don't get rid of anything because of cold and calm nights....

As someone who just moved down from Illinois, it's fascinating how much of an issue this was of people being unfamiliar with how to handle this. My power cut out for an entire day, and I just pulled out my cold weather clothing and low-temp sleeping bag. Not every northerner has cold-weather-emergency supplies, but enough people do that when the power goes out it's a lot less worrying.

a well insulated house and a good wood stove eliminates the problem

Try 5 days...I'm still livid!!

@@pettersaethre The issue is that wood heating doesn't work in cities. There aren't enough trees, nor is there infrastructure to dispose of the waste ash for hundreds of thousands of homes.

@@GideonMesser well there is pellets for example, and some ovens can take kerosene ..but my suggestion in any case were for stand-alone homes in the suburbs and countryside

We produce, belive in climate change, belive in covid and last but not least, free health care for everyone. For that we have cheap stable power, happy citizens and low death numbers. Thats how we do it up north.

The biggest visible difference, i think, is going to be the distribution of types of energy generation. At least in north america, theres a lot more water and more hydroelectric dams when you go north. This is significant because once a dam is built, it can act as a massive power store because of all the water that can be sequestered. It's relatively cheap then, in preperation for peak energy demands, to add a pipe, a generator, and keep it offline untill its needed

@@polarbearchimney Interesting theory since the death rate 'up north' is higher than the USA.

I would think the biggest differences isn't in the electricity production, but rather insulation of both buildings and water supply and general preparedness. Did an experiment this winter no electricity with outside temps in the -20C for three days. Inside temp never went below 5C and I think the majority of healthy people in colder climates have enough wool to stay comfortable at this temp outside.

@@jeremyg9323 My state does not generate hydro and we get by in very cold weather. One major difference is the insulation of infrastructure; Texas had outages due to hardware failure and gas lines freezing, but we don't, even when temps go sub-zero.

It was below freezing in my house. We were without power for about 5 days. It went off and never came back. Lots of people were getting it sporadically. Mine went down and didn’t come back until it was over. I live in a house on blocks. Built in the. 40’s. No insulation. Except a little bit in the attic. It was rough.

The only help for it is to bail the energy companies out and give them a huge tax break. Anything less would be like an admission of being short sighted!

Interesting

Yes

Thank you!

"Few people realize how complex power generation and dispatching are." and it's only going to get a lot more complex and I think that means we'll see more energy storage.

"There is a lot of heat in liquid water." Taking cold showers feels less freezing now. :) But seriously... this is very good advice in freezing temperatures. I'll have to remember this.

I love an engineer willing to admit that they over-explain something !!

Engineer thanks another engineer for non-engineer speak. Ok.

@@EmeryJude I think his point is that if it had been an engineer speaking to another engineer, the average person would have been lost after, oh, say, the first two minutes.

Retired EE here, I agree enough detail for people that want to know, without the Geek Speak we get into too often

@Astron Baits Yes, but you introduce a host of other problems. Not the least of which is the challenge of raising and lowering the voltage. (You want the voltage high to keep current low, to reduce power loss in the lines. But you certainly don't want 5000 volts in your house wiring.)

Great stuff here . We love Texas, everyone is cooking ! Check out our Chefs recipes and tools ....

Well, it didn't explain why this happened in Texas and why this doesn't happen in other states, which is extremely important information. I mean, you don't have to finger point to explain something like that, just explain why it happens in Texas, and what measures other states have in place to prevent that from happening, that Texas didn't have. Obscuring what happens is not "no spin," it's covering up what happened.

@@ReddoFreddo Other states have a totally different electricity usage model. The difference comes in how electricity is purchased. Under the Texas wholesale model, you USUALLY have very cheap electricity. Under the direct revenue model of other states, we pay a high premium for electricity ALL the time because we don't have but one company to buy power from.

​@@bens.5127 So what is it about that wholesale model that caused this disaster?

@@ReddoFreddo i'm no expert, but i think it might have been that just one company was supplying power to everyone, meaning if they went down it was over for everyone. Also, i've heard that texas has an isolated power grid from the rest of the nation, meaning they couldn't receive supplementary power from other states that weren't hit.

Yeah, when we get severe weather its usually a major problem as if we were to prepare for these what ifs the costs would not be worth it. That said, I still hold Duke Energy in contempt for their complete lack of preparation, like trimming trees near lines on a 6 month basis to help alleviate the issues that wind and ice bring and thus spending even more money to fix the issue after people are without power for days.

@@Sovek86 The utility I work for got hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Generation wasn’t a big problem but distribution got slammed from the high water and wind. Since then they have invested $2.5b to raise switchyards and modernize gas lines. This is after the fact of a 500year type storm. The cost is passed to residential bills but with minimal impact. I think it may be hard for a utility to convince the Board of Public utilities or rate payers that they want to invest billions -just Incase-. Now in Texas they have a reason, hopefully they all do the right thing.

So... how DO you properly prepare a power plant for such a winter?

@@DubioserKerl Once the “winterization” systems are installed the maintenance is mostly routine checks to verify heat trace (pipe warming) systems are still operational as they are not used during weather greater than 50°. Making sure summer repairs have been reinsulated. Making sure large openings in buildings can be closed off during harsh weather. The video showed natural gas lines freezing up which would happen off our property so I can’t speak to that effort. I have seen frost on our natural gas lines in August after a pressure reducing regulator so I could see real trouble when temps drop if there is moisture within the flow of gas.

@@christashik9524 Thanks for your comments, Chris. What are the downsides of having your plant "winterized" if you're not experiencing cold weather? The average winter day in most of Texas probably sees highs in the 50's lows in 30's or 40's. Could it do more harm than good to prepare every winter for this 100 year storm? Are you aware of any core engineering differences between plants built in cold and hot climates? 30% of Texas's power comes from wind. Those farms are in far west Texas where summers are very hot.

Hi, I'm from Iceland and we deal with crazy winter storms all the time. Plus my father operates a hydro-electric plant. 99% of the time all is good with the electric grid in those storms, oc helps that heating is something like 80%(forgot exact percentage) geothermal and there are generators at every volcano juice pump station as I like to call them. What I'm wondering is if every other Texan and their grandma turns on a space heater for every room in those cold storms?

I'm in Waco. Lost power from Monday night till Friday morning. So did most of my family and friends. It was four days of frozen hell, living in tents inside the living rooms of the houses with most firewood left. The kiddos got shipped to the houses still powered (next to hospitals and police depts), or shipped out of the county.

@@dannistjana901 I am in north Texas I didn’t lose power but I did end up having to boil water for 4 days. I don’t think people had time to turn on their space heaters before things went down. Our leaders here in Texas just didn’t think it was important enough to deal with winterization of the power plants due to the he fact we just don’t see weather that bad often. Our leaders are busy pushing bullshit bills to leave the US that will go nowhere.

@@JS-ls8st Here's just how fucked that is most of the power plants that went down went down 10 years ago due to a cold snap that wasn't as bad as this one and they did nothing to fix it. And in another decade when it happens again it will probably not be fixed and in another decade and in another. This is like the people who build their houses on a volcano and rebuild it when it erupts.

@@PenneyThoughts Had a winter a while back where a pipe burst in Sweden. We had to turn the water off for about 2 weeks in the middle of winter, which meant no heating. Was a smidge cold but not bad enough it couldn't still be reasonably comfortable with just body heat and warm clothing. I can't imagine it getting cold after just 4 days without heating. Your houses really must have no insulation at all to not retain any heat during that time.

I’m an American, but on the Canadian border, and like you, I couldn’t understand how Texas couldn’t hold out for it like we do.

@@meme-xn6wr it largely came from not having insulation in houses I think

@@meme-xn6wr lack of insulation. No snow plows, no salt trucks. Systems at every level with cold weather preparedness as an afterthought.

Look up heat waves in New York and Paris. Lots of people dead in the Paris one.

@@meme-xn6wr winterization is insanely expensive. Same reason you don't pay for options on your car you won't expect to need....like buying a 4x4 package if you only stay in the city. Same reason a house in Alaska may not have central AC. I mean, to pay for that level of winterization and the aided maintenance costs of it every day of the year for the next 30, 50, or maybe hundred years and only MAYBE needing it..... I could name so many things that could benefit more from literally 50 years of funding

Yes I agree. This is really professional !

Every journalist should be required to watch this to see how professionals do it.

"I don't want politics involved in this disaster, that obvilously is the result of political decisions and developments."

I feel like I'd like his opinion. After 15 mins, what do we do now? A trusted opinion can be valuable

@@sapinva It's not journalists jobs to educate, but inform. All news is supposed to do is tell you what happened (i.e. what's new.) They're heralds, not teachers. Journalists are the filter and lens so the public feels engaged, understanding the topic isn't part of that equation.

that is the fault of the people not knowing what and when to do some thing.. even if the in ground valves were froze heat them up turn them off put insulation in the box

yeah ive been out of my apartment for over a month now because of water damage lol

We had a pipe burst in the garage after the second day of outages and the plumber we called said they had about 500 calls ahead of us. It took almost a week to get water again, and we had kept the faucets on and cabinet doors open as was suggested.

@@stevepittman3770 that is why every home wner need to know how to fix a small problem,, have pex pipe, on hand a torch some 1/2" copper to pex fitting solider and past an a $30 crimp tool water line repairs are so simple, with just a hand full of tools and parts. any one can do it, if you set your mind to it, there no excuse with all the videos on here.. lean the basic things in life, the next one you may not live to tell. there will be worse a head. a back up wood or pellet stove and a stock of pellets or wood on hand, sure you may never need it but again on a cool night nothing bats sitting in front of a fire and when shit happens again and it will you will stand a better chance servicing.. all you water lines are in a dumb place up in the attic, there the 1st to freeze if they are copper or pvc they will brake, pex can freeze and never brake, you dont see us here in the north with any water lines up there or in any out side walls

main135s i dont know were your comment went ,, got your notice but it not here, but you are right, people need to learn the basics to live though, know mater what they are use to. the world been in its normal change for some time, and this will happen again next year again,,

Lots of schools around where I live (near Austin) got damaged too, not fun :/

Think of how much energy you dump during a cooling season. Cold just bites the bones so it catches our attention. Ps I live in a 110 year old house and I was shocked at what air sealing and insulation did for my power bill.

@@tysleight Lots of people rent and insulating the place isn't their choice though.

There are heating oil based heaters. Of course, being texas, you don't see the cold as much. Thus the lack of insulation and lack of backup/secondary/alternative heating solutions

@@porcorosso4330 I'm curious as to why southern homes aren't insulated? Insulation can regulate both cold and heat

But Texas is the _lone_ star state: being special snowflakes is their whole thing.

His viewpoint is purely political in the human sense. He cares about and respects his fellow human enough to give them facts without intent to spin.

LOL... It was political. One just has to read between the lines to figure out the politics on display. Subtle, yes. Non-political? Nope.

@@marmac83 That seems a stretch, so care to elaborate on your opinion....? 🤔

@@marmac83 consider that you weren’t “reading between the lines” but rather watching this video from [what I can only imagine] your highly charged politicized viewpoint. Our brains will see things a certain way if primed and expecting it - call it a “filter”, if you will. It’s like seeing faces on the moon: there’s not actually a face, it just looks like that because our brains are wired to look for anything face-like.

The failure was political but also went far beyond it in exposing another more sinister level of corruption that's been ripping us Texans off for decades. Grady only very briefly touched on the true cause of the issue: The Capacity Model vs The Energy Model. We used to have the Capacity model, where generators who were not running at full capacity still got a small reimbursement to help pay the bills between times where that capacity was needed because maintaining power plants ain't cheap. The wrong people got their hands into the Public Utilities Commission and their child ERCOT, got rid of the Capacity Model and instituted the Energy Model. This effectively subsidized wind generation and penalized thermal generation for two decades. ERCOT is non-profit but the people who make it up are very much for-profit. Foreign investment, especially from China, built wind farms all over the high plains to cash in while thermal stations got hit from every side by the EPA, ERCOT making them throttle down so wind farms could sell all their power first, and increasing fuel costs. In reality, every megawatt of wind power should be backed by a megawatt of thermal, and in the Capacity Model it was. That's no longer the case. We went from 6% to 28% wind and lost thermal capacity in the same time frame. It's a recipe for a disaster that finally hit and it again looks like the culprits are going to get away with it.

Absolutely. As a texan, I make an effort not to laugh when I hear one of the more northerly states is in the grip of a devastating heat wave that would constitute an unusually cool summer here. I am disappointed that it seems to be a one-way street.

@@CptJistuce The interesting thing about those devastating heat waves from a residential perspective up here in the north is that our homes are properly weatherized. We just lack a cooling method that is cost efficient in most cases. Homes have gas heating, not heat pumps. So, there's no central cooling in the summer.

I'm not sure how you think I'm making fun of this? Just pointing out how strange it is that a single country can have vastly different weather conditions.

@@CptJistuce As someone who lives in Utah, I used to think it funny that a half-inch of snow was enough to close down the South -- but it wasn't until I spend several years in New York State, and saw the kinds of effort that *they* had to put into snow removal (that dwarfs anything Utah can do), that it sunk in that different environs/regions have different norms they have to deal with, and going out of those norms is going to be hard, because leaving those norms is so rare.

@@Rafael_Fuchs I live in New England, and the biggest issue is unshaded west- and south-facing windows with no low-e coatings, partially due to cost cutting by builders and partially due to old-fashioned carelessness about unwanted solar heat. Plus brain-dead mid-20th century owners painting window frames shut. Even without AC, old houses that have properly shaded and operable windows are okay to live in during the summer.

I emailed your story to several other people - thank you for sharing! Did your natural gas go off as well? Or was it just electricity and water?

@@axontech Electricity/water

Yes, a really understandable explanation on the power grid side! Now we need one for the financial (and political?) effects, once they are played out! That's going to be a while!

159 likes and no comments...

Would you even consider it... a chilling thought?

@@samthegreatestpickle1632 Take my upvote and get out

Hear hear

Exactly. If CNN were to do an in depth study, there is no doubt in my mind that they would lay 100% of the blame at Trump's feet. It truly is a sickness - T.D.S.

@@Darren51283 meanwhile Fox doing the same would probably try to blame it on Obama somehow (well, they might have got around to blaming Biden instead by now). Dyadica's point is well made, and you're only serving to provide an example of the partisan bias that drives the problem.

@@laurencefraser Whatever, but the difference between Fox and CNN is that Fox tries to get the truth out whereas CNN is nothing but absolute 100% B.S., 100% of the time.

And both of you are the problem for politicizing this.

Yeah, the graphs were bad.

Maybe it should have said unavailable instead of out.

As a native English speaker in Texas, I though the same thing when I read "generation capacity out," but I quickly realized that it meant outage, not outgoing.

@@whuzzzup Not bad, just not fully explained. That was really the one downfall of this video

I agree. I think having “less electricity=higher line” is just hard to interpret. A properly framed graph of the drop in total grid capacity would have achieved the same effect while being easier to read, in my opinion.

was there a question of why or was it just what happened?

was there a way to protect the water from freezing?

@@Redmanticore presumably how do you protect the reactor (particularly the coolant pumps) if this kind of loss of power and/or water happens. i.e what back up systems are needed, how do you shed heat without water to the heat exchangers etc, etc, etc...

@@Redmanticore Small part of it, but it heavily focused on licensing and regulations. And what differs form the canadian system and how this would literally never happen anywhere else because the texas grid is ran by agencies that don't see the value in investing in infrastructure as much as immediate costs. They knew about this and we were asked about safety margins and how cold is too cold basically, and what is the baseline.

@@morscovium8881 and no one asked you for your comment either buddy, don't need you to tell me what I can and can't do lol

At least TV don’t have nickocado

well this was kinda the result of youtube. People turned off the cable networks so they had to create more clickbait news casts that reacted faster then youtuber could get their content out. Cause of that less experts were consulted unless they favored a extreme view. Even youtube has extreme right or left publications but its definitely easier to find someone to simply inform you on a subject with caveats in their knowledge gaps in the topic/situation.

The news should just shut down completely and have this guy do all of the nightly news! Great job! Can you explain the plandemic in detail? Just kidding. Lol 😂

It is dumped down, not much, but it is.

Was it insightful? So after spending nearly 17 minutes listening to this guy, can you summarize what specifically makes power grids in colder climates more resilient than the ones in Texas? Can you even name a single factor?

But the more important thing is this: Did it get the point across? After spending nearly 17 minutes listening to this guy, can you summarize what specifically makes power grids in colder climates more resilient than the ones in Texas?

@@purelogic3595 That was not a topic covered in the video, so that's a straw man argument to ask for exactly that.

@@efulmer8675 Okay, so tell me what you did learn from this video. Nothing?

@@purelogic3595 No, it wasn't nothing. I learned about the makeup of the Texas power grid, the geographical distribution of the grid, the frequency tolerances of the grid, the timeline of events during the power outage, and that going into the comment section was a really bad idea.

Talking about grid stability, my profs always explained that voltage stability really isnt a problem, but frequency on the other hand could become dangerous

@@elhartzer1639 both can become critical. Look up the NERC term Interconnection Reliability Operating Limits (IROLs) and keep in mind the context that voltage stability limits and other System Operating Limits (SOLs) can be elevated to IROL status. All frequency issues are inherently system-wide due to the synchronism of the system, but only some voltage stability issues are system-wide, depending on their severity and impact on surrounding transmission facilities.

In Germany we had large-ish (meaning like 0,x Hz) deviations in frequency some years ago that were visible for lots of people. It's because a lot of clocks in the public (bus stations for example) run on the grid frequency. So when the frequency changes slightly and stays for example below 50 Hz for a longer time, all those clocks will deviate several minutes(!) from the real time.

@@whuzzzup that's a concept called Time Error. Most clocks don't use the mains frequency to drive their clocks (edit: anymore), instead using crystals to generate known frequencies, but yeah time error is still tracked for that reason, and if it's too bad then a Time Error Correction (at least that's the NERC term) will be instituted.

@@marshallc6215 yeah, you're totally right. I thought about it and voltage and frequency depend on each other of course. Still, huge frequency changes can damage or destroy all sorts of turbines connected to generators as they are build very precisely.

The scary thing about this is that this is what an essentially random event can do to our grid. A coordinated attack on any key piece of infrastructure at this time would have been devastating. Tens of thousands would have surely died. It reminds me of something I saw ex special forces comment on: it would only take 12 special forces members to leave more than 90% of the US without power indefinitely. Modern society is extremely fragile.

DSiren Sirenite well good that Texas has an independent grid!!

Too bad it was a half truth lie. www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46836 There's the actual data.

@@Quantum-Bullet Texas' grid being independent is part of what led to this issue in the first place. If it were connected to the Eastern or Western grids, power could have been pulled from them to make up shortfall. 'Unfortunately' for Texas, that would mean the Texas section would be subject to Federal regulations as well.

oh damn im dumb.

Oh no

As long as he reduces the frequency that he does though... but hold on... reducing the frequency is bad too. Damn it!

@@paddington1670 Yeah, my brain STILL hertz...

fml didn't caught it either my brain has too high latency...

Were you able to avoid water damage? I live in MN, and the construction methodology of homes in TX is interesting to me.

The first night of the storm, I sat in my home with power, heat, and internet. Because we here in the north know how to manage a few inches of snow and cold.

Hope you enjoyed it here, and I hope we were hospitable hosts. We had our own outage issues, but we came out relatively unscathed fortunately. We were in Phase 3 "we're about to go offline any second" territory for several days, but it never seemed to hit a point where we needed long-term shed-offs.

Boohoo. I went a month without either after Sandy.

I watched a real-time simulation of one done by real operators. The simulation is a large, coordinated event for operators in the whole power pool. It's certainly an event we never want to happen, but could definitely make for a cool video!

@@TenTries Where and when was this

@@skyhappy At the utility I worked for and it was a few years ago. It's an annual exercise that I got to sit in on one day (out of the two). I was designing some systems to protect from a system-wide blackout around that time. So, seeing the restoration process was eye-opening.

Has a black start ever happened? Maybe only in a local area.

The power company in my area had the equipment for a black start. Since merging with another entity they removed it and four powerhouse facilities in support of the green energy initiative. The core of the single plant black start capability was a single locomotive engine type genset that would have spun up gas turbines and starting energy for the steam turbines. (Edit: most of our state operates as a monopoly and had the capability to isolate from the grid originally but that is no longer possible...)

amazing huh

It’s the Journalist JOB to report what the Governor and other Government leaders DO and SAY about the situation. In fact It would Be dereliction of their duty if they didn’t it. You’re placing the blame on the wrong people. Reaching for that Low Hanging Fruit of “it’s all the Media’s fault” says more about you than the subject at hand😉👍

@@maddeusdoggeus1 Uh no Devil Dog (Thank you for your service) they're not just supposedly to BLINDLY report whatever politicians say and leave it at that. Yes ofc they need to report what all has been said, but they are also supposed to DIG IN and find out the truth of what ACTUALLY happened so they can call out said public officials appropriately. Not spin a narrative that it was all O&G's fault (Left mainstream news) or renewables (Right leaning, mainly fox news).

@@idontneedthis66 First thing Said..... Was the Texas Governor coming out blaming renewables... The “Leftist” Media of course fact checked what he said and what FOX “News” was tryin to run with. So if Fact checking the BS they where pushing from literally Day One isn’t doing their jobs I Don’t know what is. This “Shoot the Messenger/Blame the Messenger” game that FOX has played for So Long to Gain Market Share and that the Pathological Lying Narcissistic Draft Dodging shitbag Trump took to a whole New level is A Poison that rots our Democracy.

", all bases loaded" that almost sounds like a "base load" pun. :-)

Nope it was the democrats!

@The Puppymaster Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons, Packed up and ready to go Heard of some grave sites, out by the highway, A place where nobody knows . . . .

and stop voting for GOP.

@@tomstdenis I'm not an American but from what I can see is that the major difference between Democrats and Republicans in US is mostly symbolic. They both seem utterly beholden to their corporate sponsors. The GOP a bit more so but to me the problems run much deeper than one party. I do hope for the future of the US, though. I'm really hoping future generations will clean up the mess. Have a nice day, and thank you for your comment.

@@MrTigerpirro Thanks for that balanced reply. I think too many people in America feel they have the answer to these political questions without really understanding what we're actually signing up for. We get too stuck up our own asses to understand we need to focus on working together as citizens to speak with our government (no matter the side in charge) about what we might need and find compromises and real solutions therein.

@@user-sj1tx5uy8f "Balanced"... such an American response. No, the problem runs much deeper than one party, but this isn't a case of "they're both just as bad as each other. You totally missed the mark.

@@MrTigerpirro both "parties" are actually businesses and the corruption runs deep in both. i implore everyone to be more engaged in local elections and realize that the best way to fix your party of choice is to be active in primaries.

go solar, I would install solar myself, if the power in India wasn't so damn cheap.

The Texas mess was caused by bad planning and corruption too!

@@FG-vf7pq YEP...Texass is as corrupt as they come

@@FG-vf7pq and libertarianism!

Load shedding used to be a daily occurrence throughout South Asia; still is, in many suburban and rural areas. When we were young in the late 90s, soon as the power went out (mostly in the evening), we stopped studying and hung out on the rooftops with friends, goofed around and sang songs. most houses were 2-3 stories and close enough that the brave kids could jump from their rooftop to their friend's (2 meters or so). Luckily none of us died lol

I remember that!

I would say it is actually better to stay in ERCOT territory now because they have made the mistakes and are preparing for the next such event, where other utilities may not be taking such measures since they didn't have a catastrophe. For the cost of moving you can get a small propane generator or a couple solar panels with battery to provide you power during an outage.

Right? 😅😅😅🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦 Welcome to our world. They are worried about 1 week, try 13 years!!

My bru 🤣

People from Texas like myself weren't built for this. Texas wasn't built for this literally. We aren't accustomed to cold weather like this. So therefore we weren't prepared for it. Otherwise if we were built like south Africa or any other area used to this weather. We would be ready a week or 13years like you are.

@@santiagogranados2243 The thing is that Texas has a highly unregulated power grid. So while the industry standards are that critical infrastruture should be winterised, and the industry had been forewarned that it was at risk, Suppliers in Texas were able to cost the cost of preparation as 'optional'. Ask yourself: Why is it that wind turbines in New England can continue opperating in colder weather while Texas wind got shut down? Because suppliers were ALLOWED to buy the cheaper solutions. Why were so many power sources vulnerable to being shut down when water froze? Because they were ALLOWED to avoid investing in insulation and heaters, something every other location in the country has as standard. So yes. Texas wasn't built for this. But that's because Texas CHOSE not to built for it, even though they had been warned that they needed to.

@@kurttruk2 it’s partly choice, but it’s also largely practical. Truly preparing every aspect of the energy system in Texas (gas, wind, coal, cooling pumps at a gulf coast nuclear installation, etc.) to survive 500-year extreme class temperature event with 100% reliability simply doesn’t make economic sense. Millions of dollars would be spent on features that might never get used over the lifespan of the installed equipment. It would be like sizing every air conditioning chiller in North Dakota so that it could handle a week of Houston heat and humidity. Or sizing the street drainage plumbing in San Diego so that it could handle a New Orleans tropical storm rainfall rate. Or sizing the cooling system on a 4-cylinder bone stock Toyota so that it could actually run 500 miles wide open at Talledega in July without blowing a head gasket. YES, corners were cut and shouldn’t have been, but a perfect state of readiness is not realistic either. There’s a middle ground with sufficient (but not perfect) reliability, at a reasonable expense to consumers and taxpayers.

As a Star Trek fan I thought the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition were showcased in Texas back in February. Rule #162 came to mind: "Even in the worst of times someone turns a profit."

All he had to do was turn off the water main and open the taps, there would be no water pressure to burst the pipes. The wood story is horrible, people who live in cold climates don't act like that, they depend on each other.

Every time a disaster like this happens sick people will hick the prices of needed goods and essentials.

@@info781 Nope. Don’t assume that will work. If you’re not equipped to purge water lines out with compressed air, you will have freeze burst. (Easy to get freeze plugs in various places, then it will freeze burst between.) Letting the furthest tap run at a fast drip can keep a system intact, because the water flowing from underground is about 50 degrees. Also open cabinet doors to keep it a little warmer under sinks. I’m a plumber in cold country. We deal with some of this every year. (Little, individual tragedies,)

One of my elderly coworkers told me that a plumber charged her $800 to cap off a broken PVC pipe.

There are always and will be human scavengers, waiting for an opportunity.