Image reads: “we’re flying electric helicopters on Mars yet you can’t turn on your clothes dryer in Texas. That’s because scientists are in charge of Mars, and Republicans are in charge of Texas”
Image reads: “we’re flying electric helicopters on Mars yet you can’t turn on your clothes dryer in Texas. That’s because scientists are in charge of Mars, and Republicans are in charge of Texas”
What’s this about not turning on your clothes dryer?
It looks like they sneaked by without major outages so far this winter.
In 2021 they had pretty catastrophic failures that killed between 246 and 700 people, depending on definitions and sourcing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
Due to climate change, TX has been experiencing unreliable electrical service in winter because ERCOT is a deregulated, market based electrical grid. This has incentivized the network to avoid making the grid reliable in extreme cold weather to minimize cost, so the extreme cold they’ve experienced has cut power to millions of people in Texas.
They didn’t weather proof the grid in either direction, extreme heat causes grid failures too as they overload it from everyone running a/c and several components failing due to overheating as well.
Its got to be one of the worst run grids in the world, if not the worst. Grid wide failures due to weather conditions not even considered extreme a couple hundred miles to the north.
3rd world problems
It’s not just because they’re deregulated but also because the Texas grid isn’t connected to the rest of the country because “muh freedumb”.
they pay cryptominers to not cryptomine.
ERCOT paid bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms $2.5 million in September for voluntarily reducing its energy consumption as Texas’ historic heat wave pummeled the state’s battle-tested energy grid.Oct 5, 2023
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/2023/10/05/heres-what-ercot-paid-a-bitcoin-miner-to-curtail-electric-use-this-summer/
Texans are ugly and therefore can’t turn anything on.