Frustrations are mounting across southeast Texas as residents enter a fourth day of crippling power outages and heat, a combination that has proven dangerous – and at times deadly – as some struggle to access food, gas and medical care.
More than 1.3 million homes and businesses across the region are still without power after Beryl slammed into the Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday, leaving at least 11 people dead across Texas and Louisiana.
Many residents are sheltering with friends or family who still have power, but many can’t afford to leave their homes, Houston City Councilman Julian Ramirez told CNN. And while countless families have lost food in their warming fridges, many stores are still closed, leaving government offices, food banks, and other public services scrambling to distribute food to underserved areas, he said.
Connecting to any of the other interconnects would make absolutely no difference in this case, where the issue is a hurricane knocked down trees and power lines. The Texas grid has functioned just fine every single day since the 2021 ice storm that landed it in the news. What’s happening here is a local outage like would happen in literally any city that experiences a severe weather event
Edit: Lots of downvoting but no one explaining how connecting to another interconnect would make any difference at all here. For context, Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Sandy made landfall with the same sustained wind velocity. Sandy knocked out power to over 6 million people for days in NY and NJ
sigh
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/14/texas-national-power-grids/
https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2024/02/u-s-rep-greg-casar-files-bill-to-connect-texas-grid-to-rest-of-the-country/
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/texas-could-be-required-connect-with-other-states-electric-grids/
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2022/02/16/419278/texas-could-connect-to-national-power-grids-without-losing-autonomy-former-grid-regulator-says/
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/ferc-texas-minimum-interconnection-standard-18272050.php
Uh…none of these say anything about how connecting to another interconnect would affect anything about these Houston outages. The Texas grid has been up and running this entire time, the current outages are due to downed power lines in the Houston area
And if Texas demanded interconnections between individual Texan providers Houston might not be facing almost a week-long electical shutdown.
Sharing is caring, buddy.
You don’t understand how electrical grids work at all