Houston area frustrated as it enters 6th day without power, AC in punishing heat
Hundreds of thousands in southeast Texas endure sixth day without power post-Hurricane Beryl, seeking shelters, food, and water. CenterPoint Energy faces backlash as pregnant residents and half a million customers remain affected.
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Hundreds of thousands of southeast Texas residents are enduring a sixth day without power and air conditioning following Hurricane Beryl, leading to a scramble for cool shelters, food, and water. The outages have left hospitals, schools, and water treatment plants struggling for resources, sparking frustration towards the main utility provider, CenterPoint Energy. Pregnant residents like Jordyn Rush are particularly affected, facing sleep deprivation and health concerns. CenterPoint Energy aims to restore power to 350,000 customers by Sunday, but half a million may remain without power until next week. The situation has led to dangerous consequences, including carbon monoxide poisoning from generator use. The US Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency for Texas due to the severe heat and limited electricity access. The crisis has reignited concerns over the state's power grid, prompting investigations and criticism towards utility providers. Displaced residents like Destinee Rideaux are facing hardships reminiscent of previous natural disasters, highlighting the ongoing challenges faced by vulnerable populations in the region.
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Houston Is on a Path to an All-Out Power Crisis
Houston faces power crisis post-Hurricane Beryl, affecting 2.2 million people. Fragile infrastructure leaves 854,000 customers powerless, causing economic losses, food waste, and medical service disruptions. Residents struggle with generators and gas shortages, raising concerns about future storm preparedness and infrastructure resilience.
30 commentsEveryone I talked to in the area lost power at home for at least a day, and many people said they expected to lose power for a full week.
I'm interested if anyone familiar with the local state of the grid knows whose "fault" the enormous turnaround time in restoring power is:
* Not enough employees at the electrical companies
* Infrastructure regulation (e.g. requiring buried lines in critical areas) is insufficient in Houston specifically
* Infrastructure regulation is insufficient in Texas specifically
* (or nationally? are there national guidelines for the power grid in various weather-prone areas?)
* The Texas grid being separate from the rest of the country's
* Other??
One of the problems I see is that people aren't prepared. I live my life by the motto "Be Prepared" (see username). One of the Merit Badges I teach is Emergency Preparedness, and with camping, my Scouts are okay going without electricity and electronics. Even if you're not interested or able to participate in Scouting, swing by your local Scout Shop and pick up an Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge booklet and learn what you can do to Be Prepared. It doesn't extend to just hurricanes.
An obvious question is: why doesn't Houston have underground power? It turns out that Houston really shouldn't exist. It's built on a swamp. It's also hot so heat dissipation is an issue. So it's expensive [2]. Houston is also famous for its lack of zoning [3]. Combine this with a lot of really old neighbourhoods that don't, for example, have sufficient setbacks to bury cabling and you have a hot mess.
It's also worth pointing out that Houston is one of the worst urban sprawls on the planet. It's almost as large as LA with slightly more than half the population.
It's accurate to describe Houston as a low-lying car-dependent hellscape built on a swarmp with no urban planning in a hurricane zone.
[1]: https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2021-07-22/texas-elec...
[2]: https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2024/05/24/burying-...
[3]: https://therealdeal.com/texas/2023/03/16/dont-say-the-z-word...
Incredibly, my fiber internet never went down the entire time. That part of my infrastructure is buried and they back it all up with proper generators.
For some real numbers for Houston specifically in the middle of the hot summer months, input 77002 (a Houston metro zip code) into Texas govt's electricity provider search engine https://powertochoose.org/ ; it will show most plans are around 12-14 cents per kwh, down to 10.9 c/kwh on a variable 12 month 500kWh plan.
Houston Is on a Path to an All-Out Power Crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40951647 - July 2024 (68 comments)
- due to climate change alone AND business predatory practice alone infrastructure are very vulnerable and there is no easy fix at infra level;
- p.v. and batteries for large slices of the inhabited planet where they are meaningful AT CHINESE PRICES are an expensive backup that can pay back itself even without emergencies.
Corollary: doing our best to annihilate companies who makes absurdly high margins on p.v. and batteries and do individually our best to be covered. Personally I eat my fingers a bit when 4 years ago I decide for a small (8kWh LFP) backup with only 5kWp p.v. instead of 10kWp/30kWh witch would give me enough also in winter in case of a blackouts. In summer I can be autonomous since local climate is hot only during the day, no need of A/C from early evening to mid-morning.
Corollary of the corollary: built modern well insulated homes is needed, not only to consume less as a whole society but also to live well individually.
WRT the local utility, I can appreciate that they have some hard choices ahead. There are two branches of possible futures: one where many more people are charging cars etc and require more power to domiciles; two where battery deployment at the edge bears the brunt of peak loads and requires a lower constant trickle or even nearly nothing as PV is more broadly deployed.
That shows a gaping misunderstanding of electricity.
For that to be possible in this situation, the assisted living and nursing homes would have to have their own, dedicated power plant that is knocked out by a hurricane, separate from the knocked-out power plants for anything else. Then you prioritize fixing that power plant first.
That would require them to be on their own dedicated circuits, separate from everything else in the same city block. And for the problem to be local to them, and not the outage of a big power station far away.
Idea: maybe these homes should have their own wind, solar and generators, not to be 100% reliant on the grid.
Any area near coast line is going to disappear over the next couple of decades due to climate change.
[1] https://www.axios.com/local/houston/2024/03/19/texas-populat...
Houston Is on a Path to an All-Out Power Crisis
In my neighbourhood in northern germany about 5% of the houses have them. They pay for themself in about 5-10 years.
edit: spelling
I think for a rich sunny region like texas, best answer is resiliant microgrids with rooftop solar and powerwalls.
I mean how can they when reps like Ted Cruz fly off to Cancun when the weather gets really bad.
Root cause seems to point towards prioritizing shareholder value over providing services, and lack of regulation enabled by Texas laissez-faire handling of utility providers.
A short timeline: In 2014 CNP reported ‘excess revenue’ but were allowed to keep it https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/10/20/texas-puc-leave....
In 2020 a major activist investor put a large stake in CNP https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2015/12/14/billiona.... The owner of that private equity group also happens to be a major donor to the political party of the current Texas governor, who appoints the commissioners who regulate public utilities (https://theintercept.com/2020/10/15/paul-singer-hedge-fund-r...).
Texas electric utilities are regulated in theory, but in practice this regulation seems lax or at least not proactive. This was readily apparent in the 2021 freeze (Uri): https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/10/21/texas-re...
And later in 2021 CNP also made direct political donations to Texas politicians: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/04/texas-energy-industr....
It doesn’t seem like Texas has done much to improve regulation since the 2021 failure. https://www.tpr.org/environment/2022-11-17/texas-lawmakers-a...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/why...
It’s hard to see how these apparent conflicts of interest (and lack of regulation or consequences) don’t create an environment where a state supported monopoly can abuse their position by putting short term profits first.
> “The grid is a whole different issue which we’re addressing, have been addressing, and will continue to address,” Patrick said. “The power is down because the lines are down, and the transmission lines are down primarily because trees fell on them.”
It's like making global warming a worse problem with AC, so it gets hotter and we use more AC.
I live in Rome, Italy, we had 40C (104F) degree max temperatures during day, and even at night it doesn't fall below 29C (84) and we survive without AC just fine, not just me but the rest of my family in their houses too, of course it is sometimes uncomfortable, but that's summer.
The worst offenders though are the many shops that blast AC 24/7 and have their doors open! Put some goddamn sensors and sliding doors!?
I just can't look at it. Even worse, electricity comes and goes all time during summer and it's hard to work at times (I'm full remote).
I'm fully convinced nobody gives two damns about global warming and our own impact. It's better to just ignore our actions and focus on evil corporations so we keep avoiding doing anything, maybe buy and change our EVs every 3/4 years as it didn't make it worse.
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Extreme heat, exacerbated by climate change, disproportionately affects vulnerable populations. President Biden issued a Hazard Alert to protect workers. Mitigation strategies include reducing emissions and enhancing community support during heat waves.
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Hurricane Beryl, a Category 5 storm, hit Grenada and Carriacou as a Category 4. It's fueled by warm ocean temperatures, setting records as the earliest intense storm. Forecasters warn of more powerful storms due to La Niña conditions. Residents in hurricane-prone areas should prepare.
Houston Is on a Path to an All-Out Power Crisis
Houston faces power crisis post-Hurricane Beryl, affecting 2.2 million people. Fragile infrastructure leaves 854,000 customers powerless, causing economic losses, food waste, and medical service disruptions. Residents struggle with generators and gas shortages, raising concerns about future storm preparedness and infrastructure resilience.