Powerless in the Heat: Texas' Failing Grid and Republican Negligence

[Shell_Seas]

How partisan politics leave Texans in the dark and sweltering heat.

https://www.lonestarleft.com/p/powerless-in-the-heat-texas-failing




While Hurricane Beryl hit Texas as a Category One on Monday, currently, 1.2 million Texans are still without power, and there is no word about when it will come back on. It matters a lot since the Harris County area is under a heat advisory, and temperatures this week have been over 100°.

Yesterday, Spectrum customers in the San Antonio and South Texas area had their phones and internet down for the entire day. Spectrum stated that Hurricane Beryl caused third-party infrastructure issues.

In a first-world country, such as the United States of America, robust and resilient infrastructure should be a given, especially for essential services like electricity and internet connectivity.

Over the last 24-hours, Republicans have bombarded my social media posts about Texas’ failing infrastructure. They were calling me “stupid” because it’s expected to lose power in a hurricane. “It’s not a political issue,” they said.

While it’s true that hurricanes and severe weather events can cause power outages, the frequency and duration of these outages in Texas point to deeper issues in infrastructure resilience.

[duncang]

1. This was a cat 1 hurricane

And when it made it to deep red Montgomery county it was a tropical storm. Yet it almost wiped out all the power in the county. As I drove around there wasn’t any noticeable damage to businesses or homes other than trees that fell on houses. No sign ripped down, no building trash in parking lots or on the road. ERCOT and the puc were supposed to look at reliability after the Texas winter storm. But they turned a blind eye to wind damage.

I’m a retired electrician so I was interested in what happened in our town. I drove along the transmission lines to check. It was all tree damage. I also noted trees that were still standing. There were trees that you could barely see the power line or transformer on the pole. I don’t know how much it will help but I went to city hall and told them about it with locations. I emphasized it wasn’t will they cause the next outage but when. Things like that affect reliability and supposedly ercot and the puc are over it but they failed again. The electrical companies are responsible for clearing lines and those agencies should be responsible for making sure things like that are taken care of.