They say that everything is bigger and better in Texas! Well, that may or may not be the case, but at least we saw a little of the bigger this past week when ERCOT, the Texas power grid, almost did a big belly-up and froze us all to death in the midst of the recent Texas deep-freeze!
Brrrr! It got cold! Cold, mindboggling cold! The rolling power outages were evident all over Texas, with the exception of El Paso, Texas. El Paso is not on the Texas-only power grid, and they did not suffer the outages like the rest of Texans did. And suffer, many, many Texans did! Lack of heat, lack of water, lack of food.
The last great Texas cold wave in 2011 was not so different from this past one, but perhaps a little smaller in scale. Texans still shivered, and pipes still froze and broke. Texas drivers then and now still do not know how to safely drive on icy roads. At the time, I was working in the Dallas schools and coming home every weekend to the ranch. Dallas ISD, then and now, expects you to be at work, no matter the weather, the danger, or the amount of ice on roads.
I carefully drove up on North Central Expressway going south toward my school in West Dallas. If you know North Central, it has five lanes of traffic in both directions. We, very stressed out automobile drivers, were being very respectful of one another. We all kept our distance and were creeping along in low gear at 20-30 mph. In my rear view mirror, I watched a green jeep, a sporty four-wheel drive, come speeding down from the Plano area. Bopping along, he sped down the middle lane, hit a slick place, and spun in a complete 360-degree circle. By a miracle he did not careen into any of the rest of us. His jeep was green, and his face was too as we all crept on down the road to our destinations. Taught him! Ha! Maybe!
Typical mother, I coached my adult daughters to let faucets drip and to fill bathtubs with extra water. Both daughters did what their mother told them! My Dallas daughter was lucky. She has gas heat, so she and her family stayed warm and had water. My Austin daughter is on a well which had a pipe break, and while they had a fireplace to stay warm, they have been without water for almost a week. One bathtub of water did not cut it! No fun!
On the ranch, I listened to water drip the entire week. And while I loved knowing my pipes were open, I am a conserver of water, and the drips nearly drove me crazy! I was raised in west Texas in the middle of a horrible drought, so I try to conserve water, a serious business to me, but I still survived.
I laugh, but this past week was no laughing matter. People died in the cold. People burned furniture. People used anything to stay warm. Many suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning. People, even now, still suffer hunger and thirst. Homes lost power and had massive water breaks. Fire departments had no water to fight fires when homes were burning!
Animals suffered from the cold! Horses, cattle, goats, wild animals, you name it! All suffered! In fact, two of my old, old kitties died, and it made me so sad. They were both 17+ years old, and while they had good shelter and heating, the rolling outages took their toll on the cats, too. On again, off again, heating just didn’t do it for them, and the frozen water just made it too hard.
I have to say I was not impressed with Governor Abbot’s equilibrations this week. Slamming renewable energy when it makes up less than 13% of the total ERCOT energy resources does not exactly compute. All the energy sources, ALL of them, solar, wind, natural gas, coal, and nuclear were not winterized! Top that off with the knowledge that none of the ERCOT owners live in Texas and therefore did not suffer, and you have a real problem!
Insurance costs may go as high as 50 billion dollars to repair the leaks, broken pipes, all the damage done. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to winterize? Hope the good Governor and the legislature take that to heart. We will see.