Power Reliability
Texas has its first major blackout in 50 years (2.8M customers), due to a freak storm, failing wind power, a nuclear reactor having to be shut down, and poor planning. In the same time, California has yearly failures that impact more people, and the national grid has collapsed on far larger scale a half dozen times. So California Progressives and the ignorant left all pounce to say, "Nya nya" and pretend this shows that Texas is stupid to not be on the national grid, and have more problems like they do. That's what healing, and unity looks like to progressives.
We relocated back from California to Texas (we had lived in Texas prior).
California
- California (which is on the national grid) ranks dead last in power costs (being up to 3x the price of other states), and is also last in power reliability: 51K blackout events and 51M customers impacted over 5 years.
- They gaslight their customers (pun intended), by pretending that brownout's, blackouts and PSPS's (Public Safety Power Safety : e.g. turning off the power to prevent brushfires) are different things. In 2020 they had a brown out that turned off power to 5M customers (for a few, up to 5 days), and their FakeNews claimed it was "the first time since 2001" (when they turned off power to 1.5M), but they ignore that yearly PSPS events were denying 2M+ customers power for days on end, and the other blackout events didn't count
- PG&E promised PSPS's for the next 10 years.
Texas
Texas has their own Power Grid, and in 2020 Texas (ERCOT) screwed up their forecasting:
- Texas normally has some of the cheapest power in the nation (far cheaper than California)
- Texas being more spread out (less dense) and more extreme weather, does have a fair amount of minor outages, but they are still ahead of California reliability
- Texas takes a lot of power-plants offline for winter (peak demand is summer) -- and in 2020 they had a confluence of events. A freak snow storm hit all of Canada, and most of the U.S., and brought single digit temperatures into Texas. (Worst in 30 years). Simultaneously, Texas's wind turbines seized up (taking a good chunk of Winter Power offline), a Nuclear Power Plant had a sensor failure (and they took it down for safety), and uninsulated gas pipes froze up (reducing capacity).
- The one in 50 year event caused the Power Grid to collapse, and impacted 5M customers
Conclusion
California progressives never miss an opportunity to divide, gloat and just be douchebags. So they pounced and pointed and mocked Texas. "Ha ha, they should have been on the national grid: Texas pride got them". Never mind that I was also in the midwest (Ohio) when one of the largest power outage in the U.S. happened that took out 45M customers on the national grid (and 10M in Canada) -- and this was the first event like this that got Texas in 50 years.
Part of the reason Texas didn't want to be on the national grid is all the problem is had with major outages:
- Wikipedia: Northeast blackout of 1965 - 30 million people
- Wikipedia: New York City blackout of 1977 - Thirty-five blocks of Broadway were destroyed when power went out and New Yorkers looted 134 (45 set ablaze).
- 1982 West Coast Blackout impacted 5 million people
- 1996 Western Blackouts (2) - Idaho, Montana, Utah, New Mexico, California and Arizona (2M people), California had another one that got 4M people a few weeks later
- 1998 North Central U.S. - 3.5 million customers
- Wikipedia: Northeast blackout of 2003 - 55 million people
- 2011 - 2.7 million in California
- 2012 - Derecho blackout 4.2 million customers for 7-10 days
- 2012 - Hurricane Sandy power went out in 24 states for up to 2 weeks
So yes, Texas does their own thing. And yes, they had a rare event that got them once in 50 years (technically twice -- there was another similar but smaller event in 2011). The difference is Texas can fix it without getting permission or regulation from Biden and the Democrats. California criticizing Texas power is the pot calling the kettle black. And Texas being it's own grid has likely prevented much bigger blackouts from happening to them. Since progressives are willfully ignorant, they will attack before studying.
Remember the timing of this blackout -- it happened right after Joe Biden (a) shut down an energy pipeline from Texas to Canada (b) it was right after he reversed a ban on China bidding on American Energy/Grid infrastructure. So the Democrats (Californians) definitely want to distract from that stupidity and change the narrative, and the easiest way to do it, is point fingers. But whether it was a plan to distract, or just their own ignorance on what they were doing to make it worse while criticizing others, doesn't change things. They did nothing to help the situation -- and a lot to divide us. The path the progressive left always takes.
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