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Wisconsin | I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a report on what went wrong. Or expect to ever be told the whole truth. Do you think we'll get the truth of the Covid19? I think it would be too embarrassing for way too many officials to ever be told the truth, in both cases.
As far as I can tell, it was widespread (nuclear to solar), top to bottom (ercot to resident) unpreparedness. Coupled with reduced coal capacity, increased reliance on natural gas to supplement renewables. Tx is also geared more toward air conditioning load than heat, so units were down for maintenance to prepare for summer. Didn't help that the grid isn't well connected to sorrounding grids. But "mutual aid" can cut both ways if they reduce reliable capacity (coal) because in the short term they can buy in the power from a neighbor, that strategy fails when all the neighbors get hit with the same thing.
I don't believe the excuse that this was a 100 year event that couldn't be prepared for. In my COUNTY, we've seen 500 year events every other year it seems. If you count up the number of different events you could count as a 100 year event, then you see that the numbers aren't that far off. I would say our 500 year predictions were off, but certainly you'll expect to deal with a 100 year event fairly regularly if there are a dozens of different categories of events. Just look at what it would have taken to avoid blackouts and loss of water, not retire or shut down for maintenance a fraction of the coal plants that were down, winterize gas and wind infrastructure, insulate the exposed pipes and keep the heat on, or drain when the heat goes off. Nothing that the average midwestern farmer doesn't experience every year. Same has been said about flooding, it's not like you can't predict where it's going to flood, most flooding cases have flooded every couple decades for the whole of settled history, and the "new" areas that flood are new construction on existing flood plain, or changed topography that causes the flooding.
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California energy crisis vs Texas
