Well, Houston just rode out Hurricane Beryl, and let me tell you, it blew

It's pretty weird to use something I've written about in the abstract for so long.

See full article...

 

[CrystalCowboy]

how is Houston a 'republican hell hole'?

In that it is in Texas; a Republican-dominated, heavily gerrymandered state.

Analysis: Gerrymandering has left Texas voters with few options

 

[killerhurtalot]

The 'low' cost of living in Texas/Houston is mostly an illusion. What you don't pay in taxes to the government (which pays for better and more diverse social services and the like that benefit you), you end up paying to for-profit private companies which only benefits the owners and investors. Either way, the money still comes out of your bank account. So you should be asking yourself if you want that money to go an unaccountable group of people who have repeatedly demonstrated an absence of a better nature, or to the somewhat-accountable local government that kind of, sort of works to the benefit of the local community?

It exists, but it's not anywhere near the big texas cities.

Source: I own sizeable property in a Texas bordertown (200k+ people in the general metro area) that's priced at $700/month.
Each unit is a sizeable 1100 sq feet, 2 bedroom/1 bathroom unit...

Guess else will blow your mind? The price includes water, sewer, and garbage.

This is only slightly below market rate, and the whole town is mostly the same cost at below $800-900/month for similar around 1000 sq feet units.

Edit: local big box stores (buccees, home depot, and etc) minimum wage is around $15/hour, and food is relatively cheap...

Well, pretty much anything is cheaper than Seattle area where I'm at lol.

Edit 2: I guess electricity costs are pretty damn high down there. My tenants are averaging $100-250/month per unit for the cost of AC usage. No idea how low they set the temps though.

 

[jezra]

In that it is in Texas; a Republican-dominated, heavily gerrymandered state.

Analysis: Gerrymandering has left Texas voters with few options

Houston, which is the focus of the topic, certainly prefers Democrats though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Houston

 

[jimlux]

The Houston area's energy grid is a fucking embarrassment. Absolutely nothing was learned from the 2020 winter storm, and all it took was a relatively weak hurricane - in a region that should be accustomed to hurricanes every few years at this point - to completely wreck the grid for millions. Meanwhile Centerpoint can't even be bothered to maintain an outage map and predicts it could take days to restore power in the midst of a 100 degree heat wave.

I cannot put into words the awful things I wish upon everyone involved in running Houston's infrastructure right now, from the governor down.

Ahem, I am informed by my Houston knowledgeable cousin that the Whataburger App is handy for knowing which Whataburgers have power, and if the local Whataburger has power, you probably do too.

 

[Doc12]

What I find hard to process is that Hurricane Ike knocked out power to 2.1 million customers in 2008. It was a much larger and more powerful storm. Large parts of Houston saw sustained hurricane force winds. A decade and a half later a comparably weaker Beryl (very few if any parts of Houston saw sustained force hurricane winds) knocked 2.3 million CenterPoint customers offline, or 85 percent. It's hard to understand how the resiliency of the transmission system (separate from the grid) seems to have gotten worse. A smart society learns, adapts, and improves.

The deregulation of electric utilities led to a long term decay in maintenance policies and investment decisions that gradually gutted the resilience of the local grid. The grid owners started to consolidate through mergers and acquisistions by taking on debt so have been systematically cutting expenses to fix their bottom lines.
I (briefly) worked doing line clearance (tree trimming around power lines) for Asplundh in the early 80s under contract with PEPCO in the DC area. The typical schedule back then was that residential streets were trimmed every 3 years. Nowadays line clearance is on a 5-7 yr schedule even here in Massachusetts (where we actually have a little backbone left in our regulators) and when the crews come through they do the absolute minimum possible, leading to a lot of unncessary power failures due to line shorting or downed lines.
Similarly, power handling equipment subject to wear (transformers, substation circuit breakers, high power switches etc) used to be replaced on a preplanned in-use lifetime schedule based on manufacturer's recommendation. Many utilities now only replace these on failure, once again leading to unneccesay outages.

 

[jimlux]

What I find hard to process is that Hurricane Ike knocked out power to 2.1 million customers in 2008. It was a much larger and more powerful storm. Large parts of Houston saw sustained hurricane force winds. A decade and a half later a comparably weaker Beryl (very few if any parts of Houston saw sustained force hurricane winds) knocked 2.3 million CenterPoint customers offline, or 85 percent. It's hard to understand how the resiliency of the transmission system (separate from the grid) seems to have gotten worse. A smart society learns, adapts, and improves.

Smart perhaps, if you’re optimizing for service availability. If you’re optimizing for shareholder value, then less reliable might be more profitable. Do you spend money on fixing or improving infrastructure? Or take the lost revenue when disaster strikes, and you can’t sell power.

This is the devil’s bargain with deregulation. Yes, the prices are lower, because that 5 9’s reliability costs a lot more than 1 Nine.

There is also a growing tendency to temper the “keep the lights on at all costs” approach: they turn power off, to avoid starting a fire and then being liable for starting the fire. The “public safety power shutdown” is well marketed and has small costs (foregone sales of power during the shutdown) and little downside. While “keep the power on” costs something (maintenance costs) AND speculative huge damages.

One can argue that the regulators should have kept on PG&E and SCE’s case to say “your liability for the fire is because you didn’t do maintenance and replacement”. I think, though, it would be hard to indemnify them and explain to all the millions of people who suffered from the fire “Well, they did the best they could, so it’s truly an “act of god””

 

[scrowder@umich.edu]

What I find hard to process is that Hurricane Ike knocked out power to 2.1 million customers in 2008. It was a much larger and more powerful storm. Large parts of Houston saw sustained hurricane force winds. A decade and a half later a comparably weaker Beryl (very few if any parts of Houston saw sustained force hurricane winds) knocked 2.3 million CenterPoint customers offline, or 85 percent. It's hard to understand how the resiliency of the transmission system (separate from the grid) seems to have gotten worse. A smart society learns, adapts, and improves.

Well, the Texas grid, ERCOT, is a unique beast, by design. It's separate from all of the rest of the country's grid so that ERCOT isn't subject to federal oversight. If they were part of a larger grid that crossed state lines, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could force them to spend money on resilience like the rest of the country does. TX gets to not be messed with and has these sorts of grid implosions as a regular part of doing business the TX way. If you're interested in learning more about ERCOT's unique setup listen to the July 3,2024 Volts podcast. Spoiler alert: Texas has more and longer blackouts than most other states.

 

[jbk]

Smart perhaps, if you’re optimizing for service availability. If you’re optimizing for shareholder value, then less reliable might be more profitable. Do you spend money on fixing or improving infrastructure? Or take the lost revenue when disaster strikes, and you can’t sell power.

This is the devil’s bargain with deregulation. Yes, the prices are lower, because that 5 9’s reliability costs a lot more than 1 Nine.

Except it didn't lead to lower prices. 'Deregulation' down here just means a government-mandated middle man is injected into the process (who of course has to get their own profit).

 

[LesDawg]

Based on my year on Starlink I developed a love-hate relationship. Loved the speeds, and loved that It Just Worked. Hated the total absence of user support, and the hubris. When I bought my Dishy Starlink made very clear that one must have a clear view of the northern sky. Lucky me! I do! But after about 6 months of happy service the company quite unaccountably decided to point my dish to the East instead of North. Unlucky me, I have a brick wall and a forest to the East. Starlink had rendered my service useless. After weeks of trying, I finally reached a putative Starlink human being, who steadfastly refused to repoint my dish North.

The moral of the story is that, wonderful as it is when it works, you shouldn't get too dependent on Starlink, because a fish rots from the head down.

 

[Drizzt321]

I'm a bit surprised you don't have a starlink backup already!

For next time, you can probably put a post in the ground, or have some brackets you can easily attach a pole (1.5" 8-10'?) that you can stick the Starlink up above your roof and get somewhat better view?

 

[tigerhawkvok]

What I find hard to process is that Hurricane Ike knocked out power to 2.1 million customers in 2008. It was a much larger and more powerful storm. Large parts of Houston saw sustained hurricane force winds. A decade and a half later a comparably weaker Beryl (very few if any parts of Houston saw sustained force hurricane winds) knocked 2.3 million CenterPoint customers offline, or 85 percent. It's hard to understand how the resiliency of the transmission system (separate from the grid) seems to have gotten worse. A smart society learns, adapts, and improves.

I might suggest, it's easy to understand, just hard to justify.

Just invest nothing into social services and infrastructure, and what you had will get worse. Easy-peasy.

 

[ColdWetDog]

Based on my year on Starlink I developed a love-hate relationship. Loved the speeds, and loved that It Just Worked. Hated the total absence of user support, and the hubris. When I bought my Dishy Starlink made very clear that one must have a clear view of the northern sky. Lucky me! I do! But after about 6 months of happy service the company quite unaccountably decided to point my dish to the East instead of North. Unlucky me, I have a brick wall and a forest to the East. Starlink had rendered my service useless. After weeks of trying, I finally reached a putative Starlink human being, who steadfastly refused to repoint my dish North.

The moral of the story is that, wonderful as it is when it works, you shouldn't get too dependent on Starlink, because a fish rots from the head down.

Can't you put a big magnet in front of the dish and confuse it?

 

[Fatesrider]

Now, we're the self-styled energy capital of the world. I wish we would take some of that can-do energy to become a little more proactive about protecting our community from severe weather and a little more outspoken about the perils of a warming world and the need to bring the Earth's temperature down a degree.

The last 12 consecutive months have been the hottest ever recorded.

While 2023 "only" averaged 1.18 C above preindustrial times, the last 12 months have averaged 1.64 C above preindustrial times.

This is the future. It's (probably) not going to stay as hot as it's been for the last 12 months going forward. But having a whole year worth of months in a row that shatters the Paris Accord target of 1.5 C APT 27 years before the deadline to keep the temps below that is not exactly comforting.

It'd be nice to give a fever reducer to Planet Earth, but I don't see that happening. The tipping points, if nothing else, will finish what mankind started.

 

[Drizzt321]

Can't you put a big magnet in front of the dish and confuse it?

LOL

 

[crazyworld]

Except it didn't lead to lower prices. 'Deregulation' down here just means a government-mandated middle man is injected into the process (who of course has to get their own profit).

Have a property in a power co-op monopoly next to an open market area and it's much more expensive with the power co-op monopoly that charges $43.50/mo. just for the connection while open market providers often have $5-10 customer fees and the power co-op is 2-3 cents per kWh above market rates on electricity. Austin Energy as a city owned utility is better, but still the politicians use it to bring in $115 million in taxes to the city and the Austin Energy CEO is the highest paid city employee making over $475k.

 

[caramelpolice]

the Austin Energy CEO is the highest paid city employee making over $475k.

Oh no! Meanwhile in Houston:

https://energyandpolicy.org/centerpoint-raises-ceo-pay/

 

[sarusa]

The one day I was in Houston, it was hot, humid, very dirty, and it stank. But I'm willing to admit there's a lot of room for sampling error there.

 

[Boskone]

The Houston area's energy grid is a fucking embarrassment. Absolutely nothing was learned from the 2020 winter storm, and all it took was a relatively weak hurricane - in a region that should be accustomed to hurricanes every few years at this point - to completely wreck the grid for millions. Meanwhile Centerpoint can't even be bothered to maintain an outage map and predicts it could take days to restore power in the midst of a 100 degree heat wave.

I cannot put into words the awful things I wish upon everyone involved in running Houston's infrastructure right now, from the governor down.

Dunno about the rest, but Centerpoint does have an outage map. I was keeping an eye on it at work, as it was useful in determining whether an "OMG system down" notification for a customer site was serviceable or not.

It's been going 503 occasionally, but I suspect it's getting somewhat more use than normal right now.

 

[5.0]

I've lived in Houston for 40+ years and for 30 or so the state has been governed by Republicans.
I am never as disappointed as I am in my family, neighbors, and fellow Texans than by their unanimous crying and whining about the lack of electricity during times like now; public policy has created this outcome and they continue to vote enthusiastically for people promising more of the same.

Baffling.

 

[DeepGeek]

I was commenting on this to my wife last night. Her folks live in Houston and always have (and are currently without power like many others). I can well understand how local power gets clobbered by these storms, but the core grid infrastructure doesn't seem to hold up very well. Of all the places in the world, I would have expected this particular grid to be significantly hardened. But it seems not to be the case. Perhaps there are good reasons for that, but I wonder how it gets excused or explained.

My best wishes to everyone down that way.

By core grid infrastructure, do you mean the high-voltage transmission lines? A couple of 345 kV branches are forced out, but that's it. JOR->NORTH BELT was out for 22 hours. White Oak->Jeanetta will be out for four days.

There is no meaningful grid congestion due to the hurricane. The grid can handle a Cat 1, the generators can produce enough power and the high voltage lines can deliver it. It's the local poles and wires that cause power outages for folks.

Now, the damage to the line by US290 in the Derecho... that was unexpected. Didn't cause any congestion though, enough power can flow up from the southwest. But overall, it was the local poles and wires that failed in the Derecho in May too.

 

[Drizzt321]

I've lived in Houston for 40+ years and for 30 or so the state has been governed by Republicans.
I am never as disappointed as I am in my family, neighbors, and fellow Texans than by their unanimous crying and whining about the lack of electricity during times like now; public policy has created this outcome and they continue to vote enthusiastically for people promising more of the same.

Baffling.

Do you point out that this is the result of what the public policy, by the officials they elected?

 

[jazzylarry]

Yeah, you don't want to visit Houston nor live there. Ideally you want to find the good parts elsewhere. The instant condensation on your skin when you step outside 6+ months of the year is something you have to experience to even believe.

 

[caramelpolice]

Dunno about the rest, but Centerpoint does have an outage map. I was keeping an eye on it at work, as it was useful in determining whether an "OMG system down" notification for a customer site was serviceable or not.

It's been going 503 occasionally, but I suspect it's getting somewhat more use than normal right now.

They had an outage map, but it's been down since May. Right now all they have for outage tracking is this near-useless thing which basically just shows the total number of outages (not even divided by region or city!).

 

[HiWayne!]

I miss the hell out of the food in Houston. And HEB. The weather is atrocious.

 

[H. Pylori]

Governor Abbott: "HA HA HA HA! No."

Weasel Abbott is conveniently out of the country on a "trade mission".

 

[Beleg]

What I find hard to process is that Hurricane Ike knocked out power to 2.1 million customers in 2008. It was a much larger and more powerful storm. Large parts of Houston saw sustained hurricane force winds. A decade and a half later a comparably weaker Beryl (very few if any parts of Houston saw sustained force hurricane winds) knocked 2.3 million CenterPoint customers offline, or 85 percent. It's hard to understand how the resiliency of the transmission system (separate from the grid) seems to have gotten worse. A smart society learns, adapts, and improves.

I lived in Brevard County, Florida, for a few years (same county that contains KSC and Canaveral SFS). Lived through the extraordinary bad year of 2004: 2 direct hits (Frances and Jeanne); near miss with Charley.

Never lost power. Some areas of the county did, but several parts of the grid were rock solid. We evacuated for Frances, to family in Orlando. Even had a tree fall on my parked vehicle in Orlando. Of course, they lost power. Stayed in place and "hunkered down" for Jeanne, no problem other than all of the rain. Eight miles inland, but only 22' ASL.

 

[clackerd]

A smart society learns, adapts, and improves.

Yeah but we live in the US

 

[DeepGeek]

Well, the Texas grid, ERCOT, is a unique beast, by design. It's separate from all of the rest of the country's grid so that ERCOT isn't subject to federal oversight. If they were part of a larger grid that crossed state lines, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could force them to spend money on resilience like the rest of the country does. TX gets to not be messed with and has these sorts of grid implosions as a regular part of doing business the TX way. If you're interested in learning more about ERCOT's unique setup listen to the July 3,2024 Volts podcast. Spoiler alert: Texas has more and longer blackouts than most other states.

The blackouts around Uri were unforgiveable and ERCOT's fault for not shedding load fast enough to maintain frequency in a Level 2 Emergency as well as the fault of the gas infrastructure for not hardening. The ERCOT CEO, Bill Magness, had to go after that.
But ERCOT are not responsible for folks losing power in a hurricane. There was plenty of power during the storm, reserves were high and LMP (the cost of power) was cheap - actually negative in Houston zone as Beryl came ashore.

Folks in Houston are without power after a hurricane because the local lines and poles are vulnerable. Maybe now is the time to discuss burying, vegetation management and resilience, but ERCOT has nothing to do with it (this time).

Texas consumers have plenty of blackouts - but more due to the local utilities than the grid.

 

[thecastle2]

I live near the coast (Texas city, south of houston), and in our new neighborhood we never lost power or internet and had 80mph winds gusts. None of our houses had damage, but had a few fallen trees.... Everyone around us is without power, so yes new infrastructure works and is resilient against storms. To that I'm thankfully. Its all the old building without buried Internet and power lines that are so vulnerable to these storms. I too have lived in Houston since 1999. My other home in League City had 0 damage as well and power, but lots of neighbors lost tree's and fences, and roofs (ours was replaced recently). some is luck, some is taking the time to get the details right on construction.

 

[HysteresisEnabled]

Based on my year on Starlink I developed a love-hate relationship. Loved the speeds, and loved that It Just Worked. Hated the total absence of user support, and the hubris. When I bought my Dishy Starlink made very clear that one must have a clear view of the northern sky. Lucky me! I do! But after about 6 months of happy service the company quite unaccountably decided to point my dish to the East instead of North. Unlucky me, I have a brick wall and a forest to the East. Starlink had rendered my service useless. After weeks of trying, I finally reached a putative Starlink human being, who steadfastly refused to repoint my dish North.

The moral of the story is that, wonderful as it is when it works, you shouldn't get too dependent on Starlink, because a fish rots from the head down.

The moral of the story (which you've told before) is you didn't follow the instructions. The Starlink app tells you where you need a clear view which includes west and east besides north. I had trees to the west so I put a mast on my roof to get the required view. You gambled and you lost. Your really expect Starlink to make a special version of their software for you that doesn't optimize dish pointing to best utilize the network?

I had a partial hardware failure in the router (still had internet) due to multiple power hits during an ice storm. Starlink support quickly sent me a new router and cable free of charge which fixed the problem.

 

[daveishereagain]

Based on my year on Starlink I developed a love-hate relationship. Loved the speeds, and loved that It Just Worked. Hated the total absence of user support, and the hubris. When I bought my Dishy Starlink made very clear that one must have a clear view of the northern sky. Lucky me! I do! But after about 6 months of happy service the company quite unaccountably decided to point my dish to the East instead of North. Unlucky me, I have a brick wall and a forest to the East. Starlink had rendered my service useless. After weeks of trying, I finally reached a putative Starlink human being, who steadfastly refused to repoint my dish North.

The moral of the story is that, wonderful as it is when it works, you shouldn't get too dependent on Starlink, because a fish rots from the head down.

Ahhh, "Move fast and break things!" isn't so trendy now, eh?
He's not you savior, kids. He's just a grubby rich guy looking for the latest sucker.

 

[OrvGull]

The moral of the story (which you've told before) is you didn't follow the instructions. The Starlink app tells you where you need a clear view which includes west and east besides north. I had trees to the west so I put a mast on my roof to get the required view. You gambled and you lost. Your really expect Starlink to make a special version of their software for you that doesn't optimize dish pointing to best utilize the network?

I suppose this is one of the reasons people say it's not for urban users. Rural users will likely own all the nearby trees and be able to cut down as many as necessary, urban users may not.

 

[SportivoA]

While I admire your sense of duty to providing updates to the city, flooding is no joke and no-one benefits if you're swept away crossing high waters during the storm. Besides, if the internet is down across the city it's unlikely many residents would be able to access your updates.
All this is to say stay safe out there, pretty please?

https://www.weather.gov/safety/flood-turn-around-dont-drown
View: https://youtu.be/CxSgwRQaCqw


And, if in the dark, no one will be there to watch you get swept away.

 

[mhalpern]

The Houston area's energy grid is a fucking embarrassment. Absolutely nothing was learned from the 2020 winter storm, and all it took was a relatively weak hurricane - in a region that should be accustomed to hurricanes every few years at this point - to completely wreck the grid for millions. Meanwhile Centerpoint can't even be bothered to maintain an outage map and predicts it could take days to restore power in the midst of a 100 degree heat wave.

I cannot put into words the awful things I wish upon everyone involved in running Houston's infrastructure right now, from the governor down.

reckless endangerment or manslaughter charges?

 

[mhalpern]

Agreed. One thing that would help is to stop promoting the use of rocket fuel.

not even remotely a noticeable fraction of pollution, also it is less polluting than trying to get a cable connection to everywhere around the globe

 

[galahad05]

I truly lament that Space City Weather's "Hype Free" pledge lasted only a few months. I am not sure in which part of the city you live, but overall Beryl was a big meh and nothing more. 24 hours later my neighborhood is back to normal, in sharp contrast to Ike & Harvey. If you are committed to science and not catastrophism, there is plenty about Beryl that is worth discussing; e.g., why so small and why didn't it intensify more, given the surface temps? Did the SAL over the Gulf Coast right now prevent that from happening?

2024 seems to be a typical La Nina hurricane year. If it beats 1933 or 1950 for ACE that would be notable, but the fact that the worst hurricane seasons were so long ago doesn't fit the breathless hyperbole we've seen from you. Stick to the actual science.

Oh this is gonna be good.

 

[stevenkan]

Eric, how were you able to sign up for service if you didn't already have some sort of Internet access? Does the dish come up in some basic mode to allow you subscribe through it?

 

[daveishereagain]

I truly lament that Space City Weather's "Hype Free" pledge lasted only a few months. I am not sure in which part of the city you live, but overall Beryl was a big meh and nothing more. 24 hours later my neighborhood is back to normal, in sharp contrast to Ike & Harvey. If you are committed to science and not catastrophism, there is plenty about Beryl that is worth discussing; e.g., why so small and why didn't it intensify more, given the surface temps? Did the SAL over the Gulf Coast right now prevent that from happening?

2024 seems to be a typical La Nina hurricane year. If it beats 1933 or 1950 for ACE that would be notable, but the fact that the worst hurricane seasons were so long ago doesn't fit the breathless hyperbole we've seen from you. Stick to the actual science.

I fail to see any 'catastrophism (SIC)' in Eric's report of his personal experience during the hurricane. It wasn't meant as a scientific discussion but just a retelling of his exploits during it. We're so glad you're fine, See you in church.