Rolling Blackouts Question (Houston, Austin, Round Rock: office, electric, tree)

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

One Nuclear Reactor went offline in Matagorda County

https://www.lmtonline.com/business/e...ing%20capacity.



From what I understand, Nuclear Reactors take approximately 30 days to properly shutdown because Uranium still has to be actively cooled even when the plant is not producing power. Hopefully they're still able to cool the core.

Eh, it sounds like a controlled shutdown. The 30 days (or longer) shutdown refers to (or at least I think it does) a completely passive state. Even if not at a passive state, it may be safe for an extended period of time without active cooling.

[ericsami]

We went 21 hours without electricity.
My elderly relatives are still out after 31 hours.


Funny thing office buildings like Dell, Stadiums appears to have not lost their power.


Thank god we did not lose power on Monday AM hours when it was the coldest hours of the Storm.


I have wealthier friends who live by Lake Travis, West lake, Rolling hills, none of them have experienced outrages in the past three days.


call me a conspiracy theorists. but when are all done you can probably go neighborhood house prices to figure who had the most outage.

[Need4Camaro]

Dell probably has generators that are resilient to power outages for a short while but they have lost power to this a few times. The campus on Parmer in Austin did atleast. Not sure about Round Rock but they may be in a different grid.

Highland Park in Dallas also lost power so I have no conspiracy theories, it’s a true statewide rolling blackout.

[blakely]

Yeah, there's plenty of outages in Westlake, too. Several friends I know in 78746 who have been without power for 3 days.

It sounds like the folks who on the grids near hospitals and other essential services got lucky. There is a hospital in Westlake and its surrounding area has electricity. But sections of Westlake Hills, Rob Roy, Lost Creek, Davenport Ranch, and others lost power.

[ashbeeigh]

I’m at Montopolis and 183 and have not lost power or water. It looks like most if my area is with power, until you get to riverside and pleasant valley and that looks like it’s slowly being restored. My internet has only gone out for about two hours. I’m unsure what critical resources are nearby, unless the airport grid is really that large. I’m halfway worried that my power will go out after the fact. But for right now I’m counting my blessings, keeping my heater at 68, not turning on lights, unplugging appliances and leaving blinds closed at night and open during the day to help with temperature.

I also heard that the BSW hospital in Lakeway had its power shut off this morning. I’ve b n contacted by my part time job at an inpatient psychiatric hospital asking me to come in. No way in hell I’m doing that. I’m not risking someone else’s life to get there nor am I leaving my dog and cat here by themselves until god only knows when, even if they have a hotel fir employees.

[Bp25]

I know AE and mayor are blaming ERCOT but by looking at the timeline of events, I believe ERCOT has actually saved them from bearing the whole blame. AE started doing rolling blackout when ERCOT first asked them to and quickly failed to implement the "rolling" part or the blackout. When they could not turn on a couple of down circuits, they decided to leave them off and be done with rolling blackouts. In the mean time, ERCOT asked them to turn off more and AE has turned off all non-essential circuits.

Because of additional request from ERCOT, AE can shift the blame on them and not even mention that the first set of turned off circuits would still remain turned off regardless. AE just does not have a way to do fine grain rolling blackout when the grid is running without any margin.

[Need4Camaro]

Originally Posted by ashbeeigh

I’m at Montopolis and 183 and have not lost power or water. It looks like most if my area is with power, until you get to riverside and pleasant valley and that looks like it’s slowly being restored. My internet has only gone out for about two hours. I’m unsure what critical resources are nearby, unless the airport grid is really that large. I’m halfway worried that my power will go out after the fact. But for right now I’m counting my blessings, keeping my heater at 68, not turning on lights, unplugging appliances and leaving blinds closed at night and open during the day to help with temperature.

I also heard that the BSW hospital in Lakeway had its power shut off this morning. I’ve b n contacted by my part time job at an inpatient psychiatric hospital asking me to come in. No way in hell I’m doing that. I’m not risking someone else’s life to get there nor am I leaving my dog and cat here by themselves until god only knows when, even if they have a hotel fir employees.

I personally think you’re on the same grid as the airport. Some grids can be quite large.

[CarnivalGal]

Originally Posted by Bp25

I know AE and mayor are blaming ERCOT but by looking at the timeline of events, I believe ERCOT has actually saved them from bearing the whole blame. AE started doing rolling blackout when ERCOT first asked them to and quickly failed to implement the "rolling" part or the blackout. When they could not turn on a couple of down circuits, they decided to leave them off and be done with rolling blackouts. In the mean time, ERCOT asked them to turn off more and AE has turned off all non-essential circuits.

Because of additional request from ERCOT, AE can shift the blame on them and not even mention that the first set of turned off circuits would still remain turned off regardless. AE just does not have a way to do fine grain rolling blackout when the grid is running without any margin.

Not true. When they initially turned power off to parts of town, they were intended to be the start of rolling blackouts. But what they discovered is that even with those areas shut down, we still didn't have enough power on the grid, so they were unable to roll anything. In order to start rolling, they would have had to turn power off to critical infrastructure, like hospitals, emergency response, and water treatment plants. ERCOT thought by shutting power of to some areas at a time, it would be fine. Turns out they needed to shut down power to all the areas the could, just to keep the entire state grid from going out.

[CarnivalGal]

I do have a question about individual power shut offs. Everyone has seen the pictures of downtown Houston lit up like a Christmas tree while half of the cities residents are without power. Can't the electric companies shut down power to individual addresses? Like if there's an office building with no residents or a stadium, can't they shut off power to those addresses?

[Need4Camaro]

Originally Posted by CarnivalGal

I do have a question about individual power shut offs. Everyone has seen the pictures of downtown Houston lit up like a Christmas tree while half of the cities residents are without power. Can't the electric companies shut down power to individual addresses? Like if there's an office building with no residents or a stadium, can't they shut off power to those addresses?

I don’t know how it works in Texas but in Georgia, a utility vehicle would have to be dispatched per address to disable power, and my imagination stems to believe it’s fairly more complex on a massive structure such as a tower. Fortunately Downtown Dallas reduced their illumination.