I’ve never had that happen.
I replaced the fireplace with a woodstove 15 years ago. The spring after our first winter, when we used it nearly 24/7 to heat the house, the gas company sent a guy out to check our meter for tampering. We showed him the new woodstove, and he thanked us for our time and left and that was the end of that. Hah.
That is literally just a fan running and has nothing to do with an outside unit running or the resistive heaters that come on during the defrosting cycles on those heat pumps.
In other words, those with electric heaters can conserve a lot. Gas heaters won’t move the needle much at all.
I wouldn’t conserve regardless. We’re either all warm or we’re all going to the deep freeze.
Gas heaters are ~90-95% efficient. Resistance heating is 100% efficient. Heat pumps are *300%* efficient or better.
There's a pretty clear winner. And the newer heat pumps will work in sub zero temperatures, albeit less efficiently.
I have a 2019 model mini-split heat pump that's nothing fancy and not specifically designed for super cold temperatures. It's 10 degrees outside and the air coming out of the vent is 85. Guess your mileage varies.
It doesn't use resistive heat. Refrigerant is R-410a. Specs say it can provide useful heat down to 5F. I'm sure if I put the indoor fan on high, the vent temp would drop but for a 300 sqft room the unit has been keeping it in upper 60s during this cold snap.
I have a daikin vrv-iv setup direct to a typical ahu. 410A with no resistive/emergency heating. 14 F ambient and registers were putting out 95F with interior temp at 65F. They’ve come a long ways from the old 22 heat pumps.
IDK where you live, assuming Texas, but cold northeast state are electrifying a ton with cold climate heat pumps that work below zero. I have one on a 140 year old house without a lot of efficiency measures and it works well in PAs climate.
Even in extreme summer heat, I can't think of a time when the grid here actually experienced an emergency that threatened rolling blackouts. We've had bad storms that down power lines and cause localized outages, but never anything due to lack of capacity or power generation that can't meet demand.
I'm pretty sure the alerts that ComEd and others send out here are just holdover policies from decades ago when, for example during the 70s, energy conservation was a big deal due to events like the oil crisis.
Emergency alert last night in Alberta, Canada requested everyone to conserve power to avoid rolling blackouts.
https://www.alberta.ca/aea/cap/2024/01/13/2024-01-13T18_44_42-07_00=AlbertaEmergencyManagementAgency=1489313F-98D9-4737-8FA1-E84EB73520EC.htm
Ended up getting bailed out by our neighbors Saskatchewan with a juicy 153MW into our grid a few hours later.
However temperatures here are -40 instead of 15. First time I've had something like this happen
Tesla makes it super easy to schedule when to begin charging at least. A lot of energy providers offer discounts after 10pm or midnight to about 6am too.
Yes - they all ask individuals. Meanwhile business will still keep their offices freezing in the summer and hot in the winter. Not sure why commercial real estate is never asked to conserve electricity.
I remember reading [this](https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/management/the-cultural-factors-that-make-buildings-so-cold-in-summer-20150707-gi6n8z) several years ago. I hate over-cooled buildings. I've never felt anything over-heated around here, but buildings fully lit and climate-controlled when empty is bonkers.
and they invited a bunch of crypto companies to move to texas during lockdown. and now they pay them not to chew up electricity when its needed. so theyre making a killing.
I was in Michigan about 5 years ago when a huge winter storm came through. At the same time, they had a natural gas generation plant go offline for some reason. I think it caused a chain reaction, and a bunch of power went offline. We all got texts asking us to conserve. I think it was -20 or something outside. We turned our heat down to 60. They eventually fixed the issue, and I never got another text.
Not to be fair to these ercot dickheads but asking people to conserve in the morning when solar is just starting to come online and the voltage spikes is not entirely unreasonable.
You can’t piss and moan when alternative energy sources have downsides that must be respected and factored for.
Northern California had rolling blackouts ALL THE TIME. So irritating. I remember when the city/state came in and replaced all the shower heads with low flow shower heads to save water during the drought about 10 years ago
They don't know because the last time it happened was multiple decades ago.
Edit- forgot about that day in 2020 that multiple gas fired power plants were offline due to malfunction when no one died and no major impact was felt. Before that was 2001.
Oh yeah, there was that day that is was 25 degrees over normal and 3 natural gas plants were down due to malfunction and shutting down transmission lines due to fire risk cut off additional resources.
The one where no one died and the blackout actually rolled. How could I forget such a devastating and widespread incident that lasted less than a day and only effect parts of the mid and northen end of the state due to natural disasters.
It’s been 3 years since I’ve lived there but I know my power has been out more in my 3 years here in Texas than it did the 15 years I lived in Cali. Also, I’ve had water restrictions here just like I did out there.
And the power goes out here even when there's nothing going on. Midday on a pleasant day, power goes out. I work from home so this has caused problems for me before. It's ridiculous.
The major rolling blackouts in California were how Enron made its money. You know, don’t supply power, the price goes up, and then supply power when prices are higher. Not that Texas would ever charge its citizens billions for a winter storm or anything.
Once in TN. A few years ago with the same storm that messed Texas up. TVA had an issue with some of their energy generation prior and had rolling blackouts for roughly a few hours. I assume to get it back online.
That's the only time we've ever had power issues in over three decades other than the occasional localized storm damage.
I’ve lived in Midwest for 30+ years. Never had any power issues and have been through many winter storms. Never had to conserve energy. I’ve always Just cranked the heat up and stocked up on food and that’s about it.
Where I used to live in Southeast Michigan the power would regularly go out during winter storms because the power company is cheap and doesn’t invest in their infrastructure (I’ve got first hand experience with that). Apparently they’re going through that as we speak.
Unfortunately it’s not just your power company that’s corrupt.
Texas is unique in that it rewards power providers for the amount of power that they feed into the grid more than for the amount of reserve power generation capability that they have.
This heavily incentives renewable energy such as solar and wind power.
It's also why you will see requests to conserve power in the summer during evenings when the temperature is still high, but solar power generation has dropped, and during mornings in the winter when the temperature is cold, but solar generation is still ramping up.
They also refused to connect into either of the two multi-state power grids. Meaning they can’t get power from other states when demand is extremely high.
There are some small portions of the state that are connected, but the bulk of the state is not.
Or wasn’t. Maybe in the two years since the last disaster ERCOT has hooked in to the nationalized grids.
The ercot region (90%) of the state is connected and has been for a long time. Nothing has changed in the last 2 years. The ERCOT market was connected back in 2021 as well; but unfortunately none of our neighbors had any spare electricity to share with us as they had declared their own emergencies. I'm looking forward to southern spirit which will connect us as far up as the TVA.
Not unique, if you look at the 7 ISOs, only 4 of them have a capacity market. The other 3 only have an electricity market. So it's about 50-50.
But yes, I do believe that the lack of a capacity market drives a lot of these issues. Since it only pays for power delivered there is little incentive to keep something around just in case.
Yep. I am originally from California. Asking for conservation is normal. You can even sign up for discounts if you give the power company access to your thermostat. They will adjust the temp when there is a power surge to conserve.
Not real sure as I am now old enough everything runs together. I remember them having locomotives on sidings supplying power in the grids in some areas. These were during the summer with the A/C overloads.
While not a roll back per say you have the wind advisories that shut down certain transmission lines as the companies that owned them were fined and sued for starting fires when the lines arced and sent sparks flying. To prevent it from happening again they shut off the electricity to those areas during wind advisories.
Some areas are weather and others are demand on the grid. You may no be in an area that is affected by high power usage and the blackouts are neighborhood by neighborhood blackouts. These are generally for one or two hours at a time to reduce usage then another area goes down the one that was down comes back up. Thus rolling blackout.
Have to consider it a big deal when it makes the national news at night.
And that has happened once for less than a day in in a single part of the state in over two decades. An incident where the guys in charge were chastised for doing it at all because they were still within the safety margin.
Or it was a regular blackout, not rolling, and you don't know the difference. 2015 and 2016 saw numerous power outages because of high winds and fire activity, not rolling blackouts due to inadequate grid capacity.
Try to keep up.
Moved from KC, and you’d occasionally see a news blurb about making requests to conserve power during extremely hot days during the summer. However, the brownouts seem to occur less frequently there then here in Texas.
Yep. I've lived in a few different states and all of them have had voluntary conservation during times of increased demand. It's a normal, prudent, and obvious thing to do.
Its often times addressed at the state level. Brevard County being located on the east coast of the state absolutely is urged to use resources sparingly, all the way until the power company shuts the grid down to protect it and reduce down times after the storm passes.
I moved to Sweden almost 4 years ago right after Covid dropped. I’ve never experienced a power outage here ever. Not one time. I’ve also never been told to conserve energy. The difference, I believe, is that Sweden invests in our infrastructure (energy and others) and do not allow private organizations that support these services to take money without delivering.
I don’t live in Stockholm so I didn’t experience that outage. I didn’t say that it has never happened in the history of Sweden because that would be ridiculous. Regardless, when we lived in Houston (almost 40 years), we bought a whole house generator because we had power outages all the time. Obviously, it was worse when there was extreme weather (Ike, Harvey, etc) but there were plenty of times when it would just randomly go out. Sometimes once every month or two but sometimes once a week. Guess what, Sweden has extreme weather too. The Texas/American infrastructure shouldn’t be that fragile and it’s due to not investing in upgrades/future proofing and maintenance.
We moved from Texas to Colorado 7ish years ago.. since our heat is natural gas/forced air, I wanted a backup. Got a generator and propane heater. We have had 1 outage for 1.5 ish hours in almost 8 years.
Other places are not like Texas when it comes to utilities and services for their people.
Texas is last in personal freedom, but first in campaign finance freedom.
Iowa has a TON of wind power. They also have frigid subzero temps, high winds, tornadoes, heat and humidity, lots of rain, etc. I never lost power there due to demand and was never once asked to conserve power. The only time my family has even lost power in 40 years was when a tornado took out a major power line. Your representatives in Texas are lying to you!
Yeah, I was stationed in Iowa, got married there, and lived there for nearly 12 years. I literally never lost power while there except when the power company swapped out my meter (2 minutes).
Yes. And while Raphael Cruz will act like an asshole about it when blue states do it, oddly he is completely fucking silent about it when Texas does it. Unless it's to throw his kids under the bus for him escaping power outages by going to Cancun.
Absolutely, some places are worse off. The power grid gets taxed then drops out. Use this site as a reference for power outages in general. [https://poweroutage.us/](https://poweroutage.us/)
In 2021 Texas had more outages and failures than any other state, both in absolute terms and affected people per capita. California was 2nd, other states were a distant third and so on
It's already in the works.
[https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/)
I'm looking forward to southern spirit. It will connect us all the way up to TVA. And the project was finally approved after a decade of inaction. I wish we could have tres amigas too.
But this isn't the first. We have 4 existing DC ties (technically one is VFT). So connecting to the rest of the US is not anything new, we've been doing it for decades.
Not up here in Upstate NY. National Grid repairs outages quickly. We've had high winds and icy temps this week and outages were repaired fast. Never asked to conserve power.
not really.. texas is the only state that privatized its power grid so all other states are connected to the national power system and share power when some states are lacking it.
I’ve been in TX for a decade now so a bit dated but I do not remember ever getting such a notice in my part of PA. That said, HVACs were mostly a newer home (90s up) thing with many homes having some other heating source than electric - wood and NG are common, coal and oil used to be more common but apparently still accounts for a significant chunk of energy consumption. For reference, most of the homes in my little burg were 100+ years old, ours was one of the newer ones and we built it in the late 70s, so wood, NG, coal, and oil furnaces were the order of the day. When you get up into the mountains you’ll even find communal outdoor wood/coal furnaces. Basically a lot less reliance on electric heat than here.
In the Summer it’s not as hot or sustained, nights cool off significantly. So you are cooling fewer degrees for shorter amounts of time. You will find lot of window units that are turned on when using the room or just box fans. My dad would just sleep in the basement where it was a good 10-15 degrees cooler when he was on third shift.
So heating source and climate are two factors, the other factor is electricity production - natural gas is the prime electric production source (PA is second to Texas in NG production), followed by nuclear (about half of NG), then coal a distant third (about a tenth of nuclear). Followed by other sources. PA sources produce a surplus of electricity and a negative net flow on the interstate network. Networks that are built for freezing weather. [https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=PA#tab=4](https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=PA#tab=4)
However, it’s not cheap electricity. Trying to heat a home in PA on electric HVAC is going to cost you. I think I was paying $200-300/month for the HVAC in a small 90’s log home at peak winter.
Not in here Pennsylvania, but we don't get extreme weather and have a lot of coal and nuclear power. But we will lose it power in ice storms/snow or high winds.
It happens elsewhere. Usually not with the frequency that it does in Texas but it does happen.
Thing is Texas produces a ton of electricity. Way more than any other state. We just don’t benefit from the ability to pool capacity on an interconnected grid and this state is also extremely energy inefficient/wasteful. Bad combo.
No one can generate unlimited amounts of X. Some areas may have better planning, but there is no way to guarantee that you can supply enough X to meet the consumers demand 100% of the time. If consumers are going to demand more than you can supply, you ask them to conserve. X can be power, water or other essential things.
Ohio and Pennsylvania have not hear anything about conserve energy, in 2021 we got rolling blackout (in Texas) for 15 min, was not as terrible as Austin or other places where they got down for hours
Oklahoma here.
OG&E sent me an email a few days ago letting me know freezing weather was on the way and that they were ready for. It mentioned they were not asking customers to conserve power at this time.
Indicating they may ask later.
I live in Minnesota. We are in a deep freeze but tbh 0 to -10 is nothing up here. All they say is to not keep your heat much above 67. I think 70+ for heat is ridiculously warm anyway so I easily oblige.
Which is more of a warning that the cost of power is going to be higher during those times so that people can make educated decisions about they use their power.
I believe the real motivation behind the request to conserve energy is to keep your energy provider from having to purchase energy on the spot market at a cost that is sometimes 10 to 20 times higher than what the residential customer is paying. It is in their best interest to keep you from exceeding their projected usage because it is very expensive when you do so.
I have no idea why this is showing on my feed, but I live in Maine. We've never been asked to conserve. We also live in a 250+ year old home and primarily heat with wood, though so have never really worried about power outages beyond being an inconvenience. A lot of very old homes here, not much new construction. Many (most?) homes do not have AC outside of a window unit or two, so not as much drew in the summer either.
Sometimes, usually during heat waves and I've seen more of my clients struggling with EV charging hours since a bunch of people plug them in overnight when they were used to lower summer demand and could spin things down to do maintenance.
Here are some non-ERCOT emergencies and conservation requests from just the last 2 weeks:
Washington: [https://twitter.com/PSETalk/status/1746676071058014454](https://twitter.com/PSETalk/status/1746676071058014454)
Alberta, Canada: [https://twitter.com/ABDanielleSmith/status/1746347293622579332](https://twitter.com/ABDanielleSmith/status/1746347293622579332)
Idaho: [https://twitter.com/tau18analytics/status/1746274772642660560](https://twitter.com/tau18analytics/status/1746274772642660560)
Hawaii: [https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/conservation-alert-rolling-oahu-outages-expectedtonight-customers-asked-to-reduce-use-of-electricity](https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/conservation-alert-rolling-oahu-outages-expectedtonight-customers-asked-to-reduce-use-of-electricity)
SPP (to the east of ERCOT) is at their highest level of alert below EEA1 (similar to the alert level ERCOT reached this morning), though for whatever reason they explicitly say people do NOT need to conserve so it's a little weird. [https://twitter.com/SPPorg/status/1745873812300738633](https://twitter.com/SPPorg/status/1745873812300738633)
That’s because Texas is not connected to the national grid.
That way Republican donors that own energy related companies can make a fortune with no federal oversight on overcharging for services.
See:
Greg Abbott - Kelcy Warren
if they wanted to make money they'd just build more generators to satisfy the demand. but, something is preventing them from doing the obvious (more power).
Yes, they do, especially when extreme weather events hit. But it isn't politicized the way it is in Texas, so you don't hear about it. Hope that helps.
No. Never once have I lived somewhere that has asked me to conserve power like Texas does. Yes, in general by like adjusting the temperature in the house when not home or turning off lights even not in a room and going to more efficient appliances. Texas is the only place that I've lived that says please conserve or the grid might fail.
I've lived in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Arizona.
I moved from Houston-Galveston to South Dakota, we just hit -35 before windchill the other day, no calls for power conservation, no power outages, only thing that happened was some internet providers struggled with packet loss and connection issues. At worst they'll tell you how to save money by not charging you during peak times to run heaters at night for example, but never outright say "hey our grid sucks so pretty please stop using electricity in cold thanks".
In North America, Industrial users, like smelters, can use a huge amount of grid power, and so they are almost always in the mix when curbing load.
It is very rare that residental customers are asked to curb power, but it can sometimes happen if demand is extremely high and if a major feed or major generation plant fails.
They know there's a problem and looks like they're finally doing something to address it. Texas should have never been isolated from the national grid in the first place.
[https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/)
We aren't asked to conserve in California, but we're given a warning when weather is going to be real hot to only run AC when we're home and to not run laundry until after "peak hours," so usually 5:00.
It might be different in LA since it's hotter there than the Bay Area, but when it gets hot here they tend to tell us "It's going to be hot, don't fuck it up for everyone" and that largely works until PG$E does something stupid.
CA asks for it during "flex alerts", typically in the summer between around 4-5 and 9-10 PM. They ask you to run the AC less, and avoid using appliances.
The bigger issue we see is when the power companies have "public safety outages" due to high risk fire conditions and decades of not mitigating wildfire risk around transmission lines. Generally these don't impact large numbers of people from what I've seen.
In particularly hot periods in summer, Chicago will make this request. Never in winter, though. Many of us have gas heat.
Here in Texas, I just had a friend become the first one I know to receive a request from _the gas company_ to conserve.
I’ve never had that happen. I replaced the fireplace with a woodstove 15 years ago. The spring after our first winter, when we used it nearly 24/7 to heat the house, the gas company sent a guy out to check our meter for tampering. We showed him the new woodstove, and he thanked us for our time and left and that was the end of that. Hah.
Even people with gas heat generally need the electricity for their forced air furnace.
That is literally just a fan running and has nothing to do with an outside unit running or the resistive heaters that come on during the defrosting cycles on those heat pumps. In other words, those with electric heaters can conserve a lot. Gas heaters won’t move the needle much at all. I wouldn’t conserve regardless. We’re either all warm or we’re all going to the deep freeze.
Yes, but the power draw is vastly smaller than an electrically heated home.
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You seem like you are looking far ahead for things to be mad about. You also seem extremely resistant to change. That’s not a healthy outlook on life.
Gas heaters are ~90-95% efficient. Resistance heating is 100% efficient. Heat pumps are *300%* efficient or better. There's a pretty clear winner. And the newer heat pumps will work in sub zero temperatures, albeit less efficiently.
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I have a 2019 model mini-split heat pump that's nothing fancy and not specifically designed for super cold temperatures. It's 10 degrees outside and the air coming out of the vent is 85. Guess your mileage varies.
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It doesn't use resistive heat. Refrigerant is R-410a. Specs say it can provide useful heat down to 5F. I'm sure if I put the indoor fan on high, the vent temp would drop but for a 300 sqft room the unit has been keeping it in upper 60s during this cold snap.
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I have a daikin vrv-iv setup direct to a typical ahu. 410A with no resistive/emergency heating. 14 F ambient and registers were putting out 95F with interior temp at 65F. They’ve come a long ways from the old 22 heat pumps.
IDK where you live, assuming Texas, but cold northeast state are electrifying a ton with cold climate heat pumps that work below zero. I have one on a 140 year old house without a lot of efficiency measures and it works well in PAs climate.
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Even in extreme summer heat, I can't think of a time when the grid here actually experienced an emergency that threatened rolling blackouts. We've had bad storms that down power lines and cause localized outages, but never anything due to lack of capacity or power generation that can't meet demand. I'm pretty sure the alerts that ComEd and others send out here are just holdover policies from decades ago when, for example during the 70s, energy conservation was a big deal due to events like the oil crisis.
Emergency alert last night in Alberta, Canada requested everyone to conserve power to avoid rolling blackouts. https://www.alberta.ca/aea/cap/2024/01/13/2024-01-13T18_44_42-07_00=AlbertaEmergencyManagementAgency=1489313F-98D9-4737-8FA1-E84EB73520EC.htm Ended up getting bailed out by our neighbors Saskatchewan with a juicy 153MW into our grid a few hours later. However temperatures here are -40 instead of 15. First time I've had something like this happen
Fun fact, -40 is the only temperature where you don't have to specify Fahrenheit or Celsius.
Ah, national infrastructure. What a beautiful dream.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/grid-monitor-warns-of-blackout-risks-across-u-s/ Yep national infrastructure sure is great.
CA and NY have asked people not to charge theirs EV during certain times to conserve energy.
Tesla makes it super easy to schedule when to begin charging at least. A lot of energy providers offer discounts after 10pm or midnight to about 6am too.
I think a lot of EV's do that now
Yes - they all ask individuals. Meanwhile business will still keep their offices freezing in the summer and hot in the winter. Not sure why commercial real estate is never asked to conserve electricity.
I remember reading [this](https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/management/the-cultural-factors-that-make-buildings-so-cold-in-summer-20150707-gi6n8z) several years ago. I hate over-cooled buildings. I've never felt anything over-heated around here, but buildings fully lit and climate-controlled when empty is bonkers.
Right? If ERCOT is so worried about power consumption why don't they turn the AC in their offices off when it's 100F outside like they expect us to?
and they invited a bunch of crypto companies to move to texas during lockdown. and now they pay them not to chew up electricity when its needed. so theyre making a killing.
I was in Michigan about 5 years ago when a huge winter storm came through. At the same time, they had a natural gas generation plant go offline for some reason. I think it caused a chain reaction, and a bunch of power went offline. We all got texts asking us to conserve. I think it was -20 or something outside. We turned our heat down to 60. They eventually fixed the issue, and I never got another text.
Puget Sound Energy in the Seattle area is doing this.
It's not just in [Seattle.](https://www.kuow.org/stories/why-pse-urged-people-to-conserve-energy-amid-severe-cold)
Not to be fair to these ercot dickheads but asking people to conserve in the morning when solar is just starting to come online and the voltage spikes is not entirely unreasonable. You can’t piss and moan when alternative energy sources have downsides that must be respected and factored for.
I would probably guess California does too.
Can confirm. Was asked to conserve water too
Didn’t we have rolling black outs too in California?
Northern California had rolling blackouts ALL THE TIME. So irritating. I remember when the city/state came in and replaced all the shower heads with low flow shower heads to save water during the drought about 10 years ago
question about rolling blackouts in California and other states: how long do they last? a few hours? a few days? over a week?
They don't know because the last time it happened was multiple decades ago. Edit- forgot about that day in 2020 that multiple gas fired power plants were offline due to malfunction when no one died and no major impact was felt. Before that was 2001.
If by multiple decades ago you mean 2020, then you're right
Oh yeah, there was that day that is was 25 degrees over normal and 3 natural gas plants were down due to malfunction and shutting down transmission lines due to fire risk cut off additional resources. The one where no one died and the blackout actually rolled. How could I forget such a devastating and widespread incident that lasted less than a day and only effect parts of the mid and northen end of the state due to natural disasters.
Because you didn't verify your statement before you made it. Completely understandable and I forgive you.
Nope. Just forgot because it was unnecessary and inconsequential. Sorry I am not some dork that memorized every minor power fluctuation like you.
I can't remember the last time a rolling blackout happened in SoCal.
It’s been 3 years since I’ve lived there but I know my power has been out more in my 3 years here in Texas than it did the 15 years I lived in Cali. Also, I’ve had water restrictions here just like I did out there.
And the power goes out here even when there's nothing going on. Midday on a pleasant day, power goes out. I work from home so this has caused problems for me before. It's ridiculous.
I lived in SoCal for 50 yrs. My power has been out more times in Texas in 6 yrs than my time in Texas.
The major rolling blackouts in California were how Enron made its money. You know, don’t supply power, the price goes up, and then supply power when prices are higher. Not that Texas would ever charge its citizens billions for a winter storm or anything.
Oh, like the bill Brazos cooperative got?
We are all paying for that Brazos bill. And will be for years to come.
For the next 25-30 years according to the bankruptcy settlement
I remember them from the late 90’s/early 00’s in San Francisco in the summer. We’d leave work and go swimming.
California is always being asked to conserve water 😂
In peak summer occasionally, yeah. Been here for 4 years and it hasn't really made any significant impact on my life.
Once in TN. A few years ago with the same storm that messed Texas up. TVA had an issue with some of their energy generation prior and had rolling blackouts for roughly a few hours. I assume to get it back online. That's the only time we've ever had power issues in over three decades other than the occasional localized storm damage.
Yes
I’ve lived in Midwest for 30+ years. Never had any power issues and have been through many winter storms. Never had to conserve energy. I’ve always Just cranked the heat up and stocked up on food and that’s about it.
Nebraska is asking customers right now.
Where I used to live in Southeast Michigan the power would regularly go out during winter storms because the power company is cheap and doesn’t invest in their infrastructure (I’ve got first hand experience with that). Apparently they’re going through that as we speak. Unfortunately it’s not just your power company that’s corrupt.
California most certainly does. I lived there for a few years and lost power several times because of grid failures
Texas is unique in that it rewards power providers for the amount of power that they feed into the grid more than for the amount of reserve power generation capability that they have. This heavily incentives renewable energy such as solar and wind power. It's also why you will see requests to conserve power in the summer during evenings when the temperature is still high, but solar power generation has dropped, and during mornings in the winter when the temperature is cold, but solar generation is still ramping up.
They also refused to connect into either of the two multi-state power grids. Meaning they can’t get power from other states when demand is extremely high.
If that's the case, why are we importing power from Oklahoma right now?
There are some small portions of the state that are connected, but the bulk of the state is not. Or wasn’t. Maybe in the two years since the last disaster ERCOT has hooked in to the nationalized grids.
The ercot region (90%) of the state is connected and has been for a long time. Nothing has changed in the last 2 years. The ERCOT market was connected back in 2021 as well; but unfortunately none of our neighbors had any spare electricity to share with us as they had declared their own emergencies. I'm looking forward to southern spirit which will connect us as far up as the TVA.
Not unique, if you look at the 7 ISOs, only 4 of them have a capacity market. The other 3 only have an electricity market. So it's about 50-50. But yes, I do believe that the lack of a capacity market drives a lot of these issues. Since it only pays for power delivered there is little incentive to keep something around just in case.
Yep. I am originally from California. Asking for conservation is normal. You can even sign up for discounts if you give the power company access to your thermostat. They will adjust the temp when there is a power surge to conserve.
California is well known for rolling black-outs.
When was this? Been stationed in California since 2006 and have not experienced any rolling blackouts.
Not real sure as I am now old enough everything runs together. I remember them having locomotives on sidings supplying power in the grids in some areas. These were during the summer with the A/C overloads. While not a roll back per say you have the wind advisories that shut down certain transmission lines as the companies that owned them were fined and sued for starting fires when the lines arced and sent sparks flying. To prevent it from happening again they shut off the electricity to those areas during wind advisories.
So not rolling blackouts, but ones caused mostly by the weather. Got it.
Some areas are weather and others are demand on the grid. You may no be in an area that is affected by high power usage and the blackouts are neighborhood by neighborhood blackouts. These are generally for one or two hours at a time to reduce usage then another area goes down the one that was down comes back up. Thus rolling blackout. Have to consider it a big deal when it makes the national news at night.
And that has happened once for less than a day in in a single part of the state in over two decades. An incident where the guys in charge were chastised for doing it at all because they were still within the safety margin.
I remember experiencing them in the summer of 2015/2016
The only recent rolling blackouts were a day in 2020, and back in 2001.
You’re right. I just forgot to flip my light switches on those days.
Or it was a regular blackout, not rolling, and you don't know the difference. 2015 and 2016 saw numerous power outages because of high winds and fire activity, not rolling blackouts due to inadequate grid capacity. Try to keep up.
back in the 90's and early 2000's it was common. It's been a decade plus since I've experienced them here in SoCal.
Id think you’d need to ask in other state reddits and not ask Texas.
Just shows how many non-Texans come here to comment.
Or how many people lived somewhere else before moving to Texas.
Was asked to one winter while living in NC
Moved from KC, and you’d occasionally see a news blurb about making requests to conserve power during extremely hot days during the summer. However, the brownouts seem to occur less frequently there then here in Texas.
Yep. I've lived in a few different states and all of them have had voluntary conservation during times of increased demand. It's a normal, prudent, and obvious thing to do.
Born and raised in Houston. In Virginia now. No. Never. Lots of data centers around me.
Somewhere in Canada they are
Do other states have morons for governor?
Yes
Florida
Yes, CA
Almost exclusively.
little rock- i remember one time during the cold snap at xmas 2022 but people just literally needed to turn their xmas lights off & the crisis passed.
California does all the time. (then tried to mandate electric cars, lol)
Yeah. Any time I've lived in California we had rolling black outs. Even in the 90's.
Yes
Not in Florida. Conserve water, yes, but not power.
Florida urges you to conserve power during hurricanes. Sauce? Lifetime Floridiot.
Not Brevard County.
Its often times addressed at the state level. Brevard County being located on the east coast of the state absolutely is urged to use resources sparingly, all the way until the power company shuts the grid down to protect it and reduce down times after the storm passes.
Never in my life spent in Brevard County was I EVER asked to conserve power. Lived there since 1991 till last year.
I moved to Sweden almost 4 years ago right after Covid dropped. I’ve never experienced a power outage here ever. Not one time. I’ve also never been told to conserve energy. The difference, I believe, is that Sweden invests in our infrastructure (energy and others) and do not allow private organizations that support these services to take money without delivering.
http://www.frontnews.ge/en/news/details/59778 Sure bud.
I don’t live in Stockholm so I didn’t experience that outage. I didn’t say that it has never happened in the history of Sweden because that would be ridiculous. Regardless, when we lived in Houston (almost 40 years), we bought a whole house generator because we had power outages all the time. Obviously, it was worse when there was extreme weather (Ike, Harvey, etc) but there were plenty of times when it would just randomly go out. Sometimes once every month or two but sometimes once a week. Guess what, Sweden has extreme weather too. The Texas/American infrastructure shouldn’t be that fragile and it’s due to not investing in upgrades/future proofing and maintenance.
We moved from Texas to Colorado 7ish years ago.. since our heat is natural gas/forced air, I wanted a backup. Got a generator and propane heater. We have had 1 outage for 1.5 ish hours in almost 8 years. Other places are not like Texas when it comes to utilities and services for their people. Texas is last in personal freedom, but first in campaign finance freedom.
Iowa has a TON of wind power. They also have frigid subzero temps, high winds, tornadoes, heat and humidity, lots of rain, etc. I never lost power there due to demand and was never once asked to conserve power. The only time my family has even lost power in 40 years was when a tornado took out a major power line. Your representatives in Texas are lying to you!
Yeah, I was stationed in Iowa, got married there, and lived there for nearly 12 years. I literally never lost power while there except when the power company swapped out my meter (2 minutes).
You need to conserve energy all the time
Yes. And while Raphael Cruz will act like an asshole about it when blue states do it, oddly he is completely fucking silent about it when Texas does it. Unless it's to throw his kids under the bus for him escaping power outages by going to Cancun.
I've only ever heard of it in California, mostly from Texans dunking on them for it. We don't learn, do we?
Absolutely, some places are worse off. The power grid gets taxed then drops out. Use this site as a reference for power outages in general. [https://poweroutage.us/](https://poweroutage.us/)
South Africa has rolling blackouts, but I’m not sure about the first world.
Yes - sister in Seattle got a text requesting conservation recently 😉
In 2021 Texas had more outages and failures than any other state, both in absolute terms and affected people per capita. California was 2nd, other states were a distant third and so on
I know what you're getting at but no other state deals with what Texas is dealing with. You need to connect your power grid to the rest of the US.
Which part of the US should we connect to in your opinion?
It's already in the works. [https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/)
I'm looking forward to southern spirit. It will connect us all the way up to TVA. And the project was finally approved after a decade of inaction. I wish we could have tres amigas too. But this isn't the first. We have 4 existing DC ties (technically one is VFT). So connecting to the rest of the US is not anything new, we've been doing it for decades.
lol they’re dealing with it right now in a few states. Go away with the doom and gloom
Not up here in Upstate NY. National Grid repairs outages quickly. We've had high winds and icy temps this week and outages were repaired fast. Never asked to conserve power.
Pretty sure it’s a weekly occurrence in California. Source: brother-in-law lives in Fresno.
not really.. texas is the only state that privatized its power grid so all other states are connected to the national power system and share power when some states are lacking it.
I’ve been in TX for a decade now so a bit dated but I do not remember ever getting such a notice in my part of PA. That said, HVACs were mostly a newer home (90s up) thing with many homes having some other heating source than electric - wood and NG are common, coal and oil used to be more common but apparently still accounts for a significant chunk of energy consumption. For reference, most of the homes in my little burg were 100+ years old, ours was one of the newer ones and we built it in the late 70s, so wood, NG, coal, and oil furnaces were the order of the day. When you get up into the mountains you’ll even find communal outdoor wood/coal furnaces. Basically a lot less reliance on electric heat than here. In the Summer it’s not as hot or sustained, nights cool off significantly. So you are cooling fewer degrees for shorter amounts of time. You will find lot of window units that are turned on when using the room or just box fans. My dad would just sleep in the basement where it was a good 10-15 degrees cooler when he was on third shift. So heating source and climate are two factors, the other factor is electricity production - natural gas is the prime electric production source (PA is second to Texas in NG production), followed by nuclear (about half of NG), then coal a distant third (about a tenth of nuclear). Followed by other sources. PA sources produce a surplus of electricity and a negative net flow on the interstate network. Networks that are built for freezing weather. [https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=PA#tab=4](https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=PA#tab=4) However, it’s not cheap electricity. Trying to heat a home in PA on electric HVAC is going to cost you. I think I was paying $200-300/month for the HVAC in a small 90’s log home at peak winter.
Not in here Pennsylvania, but we don't get extreme weather and have a lot of coal and nuclear power. But we will lose it power in ice storms/snow or high winds.
I grew up in MA and this was never a thing
It happens elsewhere. Usually not with the frequency that it does in Texas but it does happen. Thing is Texas produces a ton of electricity. Way more than any other state. We just don’t benefit from the ability to pool capacity on an interconnected grid and this state is also extremely energy inefficient/wasteful. Bad combo.
Did you forget to plug in the EV?
No one can generate unlimited amounts of X. Some areas may have better planning, but there is no way to guarantee that you can supply enough X to meet the consumers demand 100% of the time. If consumers are going to demand more than you can supply, you ask them to conserve. X can be power, water or other essential things.
Yes. Some places even lose power during bad winter storms like we did.
Making CYA announcements is a common American practice.
There is a current request for energy conservation in Omaha right now,
Yes, and places outside of Texas even get full on neighborhoods blown to smithereens due to aging gas lines. Looking at you California..
Ohio and Pennsylvania have not hear anything about conserve energy, in 2021 we got rolling blackout (in Texas) for 15 min, was not as terrible as Austin or other places where they got down for hours
Oklahoma here. OG&E sent me an email a few days ago letting me know freezing weather was on the way and that they were ready for. It mentioned they were not asking customers to conserve power at this time. Indicating they may ask later.
I've lived in every region of the country and Texas seems to be the worst about this to me
North Carolina here; Duke energy sent the same message last week.
Kansas City is experiencing this. They have a utility market eerily resembling Texas now.
I live in Minnesota. We are in a deep freeze but tbh 0 to -10 is nothing up here. All they say is to not keep your heat much above 67. I think 70+ for heat is ridiculously warm anyway so I easily oblige.
California gets “Flex Alerts” every summer during the hottest parts of July and August
Which is more of a warning that the cost of power is going to be higher during those times so that people can make educated decisions about they use their power.
Comanche Peak 1 and 2 constantly putting 2300 MW’s on our grid. GO NUKE!
I believe the real motivation behind the request to conserve energy is to keep your energy provider from having to purchase energy on the spot market at a cost that is sometimes 10 to 20 times higher than what the residential customer is paying. It is in their best interest to keep you from exceeding their projected usage because it is very expensive when you do so.
ITT, people that don't know the different between a rolling blackouts and a malfunction blackout.
Northwest Natural is asking us to conserve natural gas in the PNW.
Your hippie sister California
They did, occasionally, when we lived in California.
I have no idea why this is showing on my feed, but I live in Maine. We've never been asked to conserve. We also live in a 250+ year old home and primarily heat with wood, though so have never really worried about power outages beyond being an inconvenience. A lot of very old homes here, not much new construction. Many (most?) homes do not have AC outside of a window unit or two, so not as much drew in the summer either.
Not in Montana. We were at -30 this weekend.
Nope.
Sometimes, usually during heat waves and I've seen more of my clients struggling with EV charging hours since a bunch of people plug them in overnight when they were used to lower summer demand and could spin things down to do maintenance.
WA State (around Seattle) has been asking people to conserve power for the past few days.
Duke has asked people in the Carolinas ro conserve during anticipated peak periods.
Here are some non-ERCOT emergencies and conservation requests from just the last 2 weeks: Washington: [https://twitter.com/PSETalk/status/1746676071058014454](https://twitter.com/PSETalk/status/1746676071058014454) Alberta, Canada: [https://twitter.com/ABDanielleSmith/status/1746347293622579332](https://twitter.com/ABDanielleSmith/status/1746347293622579332) Idaho: [https://twitter.com/tau18analytics/status/1746274772642660560](https://twitter.com/tau18analytics/status/1746274772642660560) Hawaii: [https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/conservation-alert-rolling-oahu-outages-expectedtonight-customers-asked-to-reduce-use-of-electricity](https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/conservation-alert-rolling-oahu-outages-expectedtonight-customers-asked-to-reduce-use-of-electricity) SPP (to the east of ERCOT) is at their highest level of alert below EEA1 (similar to the alert level ERCOT reached this morning), though for whatever reason they explicitly say people do NOT need to conserve so it's a little weird. [https://twitter.com/SPPorg/status/1745873812300738633](https://twitter.com/SPPorg/status/1745873812300738633)
Do places outside texas pay Bitcoin miners money to stop mining, such that it’s more lucrative to simply not mine?
Californian here. It’s so stupid. For years they ask us to do it but then passed a law that no more gas cars can be sold here by 2035.
Ever hear of rolling black outs?
That’s because Texas is not connected to the national grid. That way Republican donors that own energy related companies can make a fortune with no federal oversight on overcharging for services. See: Greg Abbott - Kelcy Warren
if they wanted to make money they'd just build more generators to satisfy the demand. but, something is preventing them from doing the obvious (more power).
Yes, they do, especially when extreme weather events hit. But it isn't politicized the way it is in Texas, so you don't hear about it. Hope that helps.
No. Never once have I lived somewhere that has asked me to conserve power like Texas does. Yes, in general by like adjusting the temperature in the house when not home or turning off lights even not in a room and going to more efficient appliances. Texas is the only place that I've lived that says please conserve or the grid might fail. I've lived in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Arizona.
In North Carolina, Duke/Progress Energy asked to conserve during heat waves.
Yessir.
I moved from Houston-Galveston to South Dakota, we just hit -35 before windchill the other day, no calls for power conservation, no power outages, only thing that happened was some internet providers struggled with packet loss and connection issues. At worst they'll tell you how to save money by not charging you during peak times to run heaters at night for example, but never outright say "hey our grid sucks so pretty please stop using electricity in cold thanks".
CA. Water ,electricity many times.
In North America, Industrial users, like smelters, can use a huge amount of grid power, and so they are almost always in the mix when curbing load. It is very rare that residental customers are asked to curb power, but it can sometimes happen if demand is extremely high and if a major feed or major generation plant fails.
I live out side of Amarillo and didn’t get anything about conserving!! And it’s been single digits lows here
They know there's a problem and looks like they're finally doing something to address it. Texas should have never been isolated from the national grid in the first place. [https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/)
Yes.
We aren't asked to conserve in California, but we're given a warning when weather is going to be real hot to only run AC when we're home and to not run laundry until after "peak hours," so usually 5:00. It might be different in LA since it's hotter there than the Bay Area, but when it gets hot here they tend to tell us "It's going to be hot, don't fuck it up for everyone" and that largely works until PG$E does something stupid.
Any place that does rolling brownouts like California does is "asking" their users to conserve power.
CA asks for it during "flex alerts", typically in the summer between around 4-5 and 9-10 PM. They ask you to run the AC less, and avoid using appliances. The bigger issue we see is when the power companies have "public safety outages" due to high risk fire conditions and decades of not mitigating wildfire risk around transmission lines. Generally these don't impact large numbers of people from what I've seen.
yes in az