What Really Happened: Why The Texas Power Grid Failed
It would seem we are not out of the woods in Texas after our 2021 winter storm. Our infrastructure took a hard hit, and we are still working two months later toward a full recovery. ERCOT recently asked that Texans conserve energy, via twitter.
Last night, I got a pretty rude awakening as the power went out for just a bit, right before midnight. There were no storms, didn't seem to be any issues that I knew of. Then I remembered this alert from ERCOT. It made me think that our local provider might have been working on issues. They could have taken the power down during a low usage time to make some repairs.
I may never know why the power went off last night, but at least it spurred me to take a closer look at what happened to our power during winter storm Uri February 13th-17th 2021. With our current 24 hour news cycle, things like this go to the background, while new stories are pushed to the waiting masses. So I dug a little deeper.
After watching this video (above) from Practical Engineering, I feel more informed about the Texas power grid situation. These explanations can be boring and long, but this kept my interest. It was in plain English that I could understand, not just for engineers.
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Will this "once in a lifetime" event happen again? We might never know the answer, until it does. We are living through a lot of firsts in the first 100 or so days of 2021. You might want to take advantage of getting a small generator during the Texas Sales Tax Holiday For Emergency Preparation Supplies. Just incase.
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