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On Texas: Fire Them, Fire Them All
Between 2005 and 2008, I worked as a principal engineer for Amazon where I had technical oversight responsibilities for a significant chunk of the Amazon.com retail website. Amazon is one of the most operationally competent companies on the planet but such competence doesn’t happen by accident.
The level of operational availability that Amazon achieves on its website is a consequence of intentional planning and foresight and it comes at a cost. To maintain availability in the face of unexpected events, substantial excess capacity is continuously maintained. At the time I was there, our operational doctrine required us to provision 150% of our expected peak load and to spread that total capacity across three separate geographies. This allowed for the possibility of losing an entire geography without losing the ability to still serve 100% of peak website requests. At one point while I was there, we were using fully 10% of our entire available capacity merely to probe the system for availability problems so that we would discover them before our customers did. A customer-visible problem caused by an engineer could be a career-ending event at Amazon during those years.
Part of my job was to serve on the “availability team”, which consisted of senior technical personnel who were tasked with doing an unforgiving postmortem analysis of every single event that affected the availability of the website. This “after-action” analysis was, to a certain extent, ruthless, and we did not play kissy-face games regarding human mistakes. Typically, if someone brought the website down due to having failed to follow operational best practice, he would be summarily fired. And the pre-firing interrogation could be…painful.
Which brings me to Texas.
As I write these words, I have been without power for 15 hours overnight and the temperature is 19 degrees outside. We were without power also the night before and the temperature was 1 degree in the morning. We’re doing well enough because we have a gas fireplace and we have rearranged the living room furniture – squeezed up close to the hearth we can generally maintain a situation where we’re not completely miserable. But others are not so fortunate and some are, quite literally, dying.
Something is seriously and dangerously amiss when websites are maintained with more competence and care than the competence being applied to the maintenance of the power grid which keeps actual human beings alive. There are preening politicians and bureaucrats in Austin who put plaques on their walls celebrating their “green” sensibilities, having supported the expansion of wind power and deepened Texans’ dependence on it. These politicians and bureaucrats should be made to stop licking the boots of the Greens and, instead, be frog-marched to the high plains of northwest Texas, and be made to lick the frozen turbines sitting motionless there, at least until they thaw enough to start turning again.
Texas has increased its dependence on wind energy to the point that 23% of Texas power is generated by wind turbines dotting the prairie landscape. But at the first unfortunate weather event, half of the wind generating capacity folded like a cheap suit, sending paroxysms of dysfunction throughout the power grid, leaving millions of Texans without power when they needed it most.
But that is not even the worst of it. The collapse of the power grid in the face of a mere 10-20% loss of generating capacity suggests we have been running the grid, something that human lives depend upon, with catastrophically thin operational margins. (We have apparently been running our healthcare system the same way, given the panic that ensued at the outset of the pandemic when we were besieged by a continuous alarmist drumbeat to “flatten the curve” lest we overwhelm ‘the system’.)
What the winter of 2021 has taught us is that the politicians and bureaucrats of Texas are less competent than the lowliest software engineer at amazon.com.
It appears 2021 is going to continue what started in 2020 when the “experts” and politicians were exposed for the pompous, fraudulent grifters that they are.
Fire them. Fire them all.
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Yes. AND. Part of the regulations and rhetoric is “sustainable energy:” wind and solar. For political reasons, and only political reasons, they cannot possibly be counted as assumed to provide zero percentage of required, PLUS they were federally rigged as free money. Failing to make your users partially dependent on wind or solar means you are an unrepentant evil polluter who is destroying the planet and especially harming environmentally vulnerable minority communities.
Wouldn’t power outages and lack of heat etc, impact minority communities more?
Great news!
Which means the Biden EO is basically cost-free to him, while making him look “tough” to the Greenies.
But ineffectual makes up for that blue steel look.
City dweller in Houston here. We were out 34 hours and got it back Tuesday am, but no water waking up Wednesday. Everyone I’ve spoken has battered spouse syndrome, fearful the power won’t stay. That said, there are people who were out much longer and some still are out. Went foraging yesterday and there seemed to be a burst of stores selling what they could – even some restaurants were open. Concerns about the restock are growing…. most importantly in terms of parts to repair damaged homes. If broken window economic theory was true, Texas would be set for explosive growth. Shame it’s not.
It appears as if there is a shutdown of all types of sources across Texas, some simply resulting from energy demand beyond what can be supplied even if all sources are up and available, others due to the weather making the sources themselves incapable of operating. This is a failure of government policy to recognize and provide for a situation now being experienced and cannot be blamed on any one policy or direction undertaken previously. It’s on everyone. If this had been anticipated many energy production and delivery approaches would have been handled differently.
Some useful data on these events:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/02/17/did-frozen-wind-turbines-impact-the-texas-freeze-heres-the-data-n1426208
I think there was a comment earlier with text referencing the fact that when possibilities for events like this in Texas with low probability are raised in the planning stage those discussions get shut down usually because of costs. Old geezers like me and maybe some really knowledgeable and experienced people like @olesummers are frequently shutdown when they may actually know something. I remember, during the Katrina hurricane, reading where the Native Americans told the French colonists that the New Orleans area was not an ideal location to settle their people because the site was below sea level and would be easily flooded. They weren’t heeded either.
I think there are numerous repercussions in this Texas disaster related to the push for wind energy. Tax subsidies are a big one. It also sounds like there was some short-changing in the construction of nuclear, natural gas and coal-fired power generators to insulate and heat the facilities and equipment. There’s plenty of blame to reach all participants.
But I expect it’s easier to retrofit regular generating facilities with insulation etc, than it is to make wind turbines weather-proof.
No question about that, too bad that wasn’t done.
On the plus side, they now have ample evidence for its necessity, and it will be a lot less expensive than retrofitting windmills.
When I was a child we had home heat generated from a coal stove in our house. We had a coal bin or pile outside and I had plenty of experience bringing in coal. I was involved in a real-estate transaction a few decades back in which the homeowner who had died had installed a large tank underground in his yard where he kept his heating fuel. He also had a generator in case he lost electricity. This would not have been unusual for a rural location but this was in Arlington, Virginia. So there are individuals who know to prepare for government failures. But it takes work and cost money.
I still see ads for Generac home backup generators – and my brother got one for his place in the cold pacific northwest – but unless you get the LP (propane) version and have a large tank of your own that you keep full, it’s still dependent on natural gas supply.
I edited my comment to correct ‘cold stove’ to ‘coal stove’.
I am seriously contemplating a whole home 200-300 amp generator with auto-switch to kick in when the power is out. It could be fueled by both natural gas or LPG, if I wanted to also get a large tank. I currently have a 46 amp/240vt gasoline generator. It’s a real pain, but not as big a pain as not having any power for many days in a row. The problem with natural gas has come to light in Texas. Apparently some of the gas supply was stopped at the wellhead due to freezing. Also it involves purchasing expensive equipment and high installation costs, as well as ongoing maintenance expense. It sure would be comforting, except for the fact that all the neighbors would want to share your home during a power outage.
I can’t remember the source- but several years ago I read an article that claimed if you exceed 20% of your power generation from wind & solar it threatens the grid stability b/c of the varying nature of power output from such sources. The article claimed that was based in experience in Denmark. I have a relative with significant experience in the electrical power generation field (worked with the #1 and #3 companies in the field- the smaller firm was a leader in wind turbines) and he also believes that to be the case.
addendum- I am sure if you have the mother of all battery banks you can overcome a fair amount of the grid instability from wind/solar- but that would obviate much of its “green nature” ( lithium mines aren’t ecological wonderlands). A friend of mine said he read that Texas had 14 seconds of reserve power for the windmills- I told him that was just enough time to yell a few obscenities.
We are getting more and more examples of putting responsibility for functions that have formerly been chosen by individuals but are now under government control for delivery to the masses leading to unintended results, at least in the view of those who are damaged. A major feature in these situations is the lack of readily available alternatives for people to choose.
Examples: Medical care, education, and now we see some results in utility services.
I’m happy that we have had mostly states handling the Covid pandemic response so we can see what is working and what is not. That doesn’t mean I like everything about that but I’m glad it is not all being handle out of Washington. And that is without even making a comment on the people in Washington.
A concern with a large propane tank is it becomes a bomb if someone starts shooting in your area or maybe sets it up to explode…
Keeping large quantities of any kind of fuel around, has those risks.
It is being reported that 5 of the 15 ERCOT board directors are not Texas residents and also that information has been scratched from the ERCOT website. Do all those connected to government operations think all the voters are stupid?
No. But it’s said most people get their news from Facebook, so not a very risky dodge.
Actually a TV show tried to test this and found that it was impossible to detonate a propane tank even with specially made cartridges that fire from a single casing, one large bullet to pierce the tank and several smaller bullets to strike the steel and ignite the escaping gas. (Just don’t smoke around them.)
(Tracer rounds might work, but they didn’t try them.)
My neighbor works at the civic center in north east Austin. She says that they are expecting millions of gallons of water tonight and tomorrow to arrive from Florida, Kentucky and other locations. She says the city is planning to distribute water (how much?) to Austinites until mid March.
I think it’s time to visit the family in Virginia. If we can get enough gas to leave town, that is.
This was interesting:
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_content=1613676421&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
What about disconnecting the “pipe,” opening the valve, and lighting it?
That would cause a flame and likely set the house on fire. So there’s that. My big tank near the road for easy refill is a cause for concern, for sure.
I’ve been in Texas since 2004 and have never seen anything like this before. We had a bad ice storm in 2006 that shut down everything for a couple of days, but no water or power problems. There was a cold snap in 2011 or so that made the streets icy, but again, no outages. There have been occasional power outages due to lightening strikes and other such disasters, but those only last a few hours at most. According to the UT Football News, multiple days of sub-freezing weather has not happened here since 1951–maybe not once in a century, but once in a lifetime for most people including me.
Absolutely. We have been here since the late 80’s and have never seen this sort of weather. If the temperature drops below freezing and stays there for the entire next day and night, that is an unusual freeze in south Texas or the hill country. As you said, this is a once in a lifetime event for most people. I’m really curious to see if ERCOT produces real changes. I read an article this morning where the ERCOT chairman was stating that the rolling outages saved the grid from “catastrophic failure”. Isn’t that what we already pay them to do?
I’ll bet those ERCOT chairmen didn’t have power outages in their homes out of state.