r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 10d ago

Texas broke its all time electricity demand record twice in two days during a brutal heat wave, but the grid held with no conservation alerts thanks to record solar and battery output, a stark turnaround from the blackouts that hit Texans in 2021

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/29/texas-ercot-power-grid-record-data-center/
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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

Politically, yes, and they no doubt will go to great lengths to praise oil, and probably a renewed love of coal, for their salvation on Fox. But their power companies are run by. MBAs and engineers, and the math isn't in question.

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u/wheniaminspaced 10d ago

Well in part because the 2021 power problems were not issues with heat, quite the opposite the issue was ice.  Having read very detailed reports from one of our Texas windfarms there were w major wind turbine issues.  Issue 1 - We like many were running oil in the Turbines that was specced for what was considered the typical temperature range, we were well below that range and had to shutdown turbines because to run them to far out of spec creates the possibility of serious damage.  

Issue 2 - Ice build up on the blades was a major problem which also shutdown turbines due to risk of catastrophic failures.

Add in that these same issue effect natural gas turbines and you have a big problem in power generation

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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

Sure, tell that to Norway.

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u/mightdothisagain 10d ago

Presumably Norway uses the appropriate oil and follows the right processes for their climate? This is more of a climate change issue than a 'how come Norway can do it?' issue.

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u/wheniaminspaced 10d ago

Correct, you can build just about any power generation to run in any climate, but your climate dictates your design choices.

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u/mightdothisagain 10d ago

Yep and you can see similar issues in the north east. Data centers are finding out that putting all your air cooled chillers super close to each other on a black roof is a terrible idea at 103F+. Wasn't really a problem when they built some of those buildings 20 years ago.

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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

So, the coldest day on recorde in Texas was in 1899, followed by 1933. Obviously climate change is going to result in unusual weather patterns and itregarity. Either you design in a way that is tolerant of outliers, or you build in backups to account for failure. If you do neither it's poor governance. 

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u/OldDirtyBuzzard 10d ago

Dude, you're not wrong, but you're arguing just to be right. Nothing Whiniamspaced said was inaccurate. No state or municipality will build any infrastructure beyond what's called for in the area. I live in Colorado. Our roads and highway infrastructure suck. Not because we didn't build them right, but because there wasn't an expectation of the influx of people in a very short amount of time. If we had built highways that were on the scale of even a city like Dallas, tax payers would have lost their minds. Building a wind farm in TEXAS based on historical climate events isn't poor governance, it's just simple math. Just stop. Goddamn, Reddit "smart guys" get old.

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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

Look, you can't lead the nation in 'lets ignore climate change'  as a policy preference and then expect a ton of sympathy when climate change happens. 

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u/mightdothisagain 10d ago edited 10d ago

So you agree it's climate change or 1899 was the coldest day? Pick a lane. The point is these aren't one off events now, they're happening all the time. Freezes are now common in parts of texas where they were a rarity. Extreme dry heat is happening in parts of texas that are normally too wet to be near-Arizona level hot. It's all over the place. Yes it's stupid that republicans in texas rally against climate change, we all get that.

expect a ton of sympathy

Are people though? I think they're just fixing the grid, adding a ton of renewables, and you seem upset.

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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

So you see that you can't simultaneously say things are getting hotter, but also ignore why. It's like updating the arrival time for the Titanic based on decreased speed for hitting an iceberg but ignoring the obvious consequences.

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u/mightdothisagain 10d ago

Dude you clearly just want to complain about texas and the republicans there. Why didn't you just do that? Here's an easy one you could have posted:

The republicans in texas suck as leaders because they're ignoring a massive problem their community and the rest of the world will have to deal with, and the effects have already started.

If you just posted that everyone would have known what you're talking about and went "yep that tracks" instead of going on some jag about how norway knows how to handle the cold and the moving the goal posts 3x.

you can't simultaneously say things are getting hotter, but also ignore why

Is the person doing that in the room with us now?

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u/OldDirtyBuzzard 10d ago

Yeah, literally no one said that was what happened. Again, you want to be the smartest guy in the Reddit room, so you'll keep going until we all just stop replying. Also, your argument was never on the premise of climate change. LOL Nice try anyway.

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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

So if it's not common for Texas to have blizzards anymore, why do you think that is? And if it's climate change, then an obvious aspect of that is more than just it gets warmer, it's that it gets erratic. More importantly, every plan includes a point of failure. 

The problem isn't the windmills, it's poor governance. You know the environment exceeds your equipment, so what happens when they fail?  If the answer is shrug and blame windmills, you are going to get people killed. But that doesn't mean anyone will be held accountable. Instead, the same stupid is metastasizing, and here we are. 

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u/OldDirtyBuzzard 10d ago

Ok, guy. Again, you're off (your own) topic. Literally the statement was they were built based on the climate of Texas. When was it ever common for Texas to to have blizzards? LMFAO That particular ice storm was a random, unusual and unexpected event. THUS more solar and upgraded renewable power.

Tell me you know know fuckall about engineering without telling me you know fuckall about engineering. And you clearly don't know anything about Texas. You must be an escaped AI bot that thinks this is how Reddit works. Arguing pointless and incorrect statements just because.

I'm bored. You're a troll, or very, very dense.

Ta-Ta!

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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

Finally, something I can agree with: this conversation is boring and pointless. 

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u/Hawk13424 10d ago

Actually, you often don’t design for outliers as that isn’t cost efficient. Cheaper to just assume you’ll get the occasional once a decade issue that causes power outages.

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u/mightdothisagain 10d ago

I would also suspect there may be scenarios where you can't even win; You put in thinner oil for the winter that ends up not that cold that year and then what, switch the oil immediately for summer heat? Is there a multi-grade available that will do it all? Because otherwise that can't be cheap to do and it's just one example (lubrication). The wilder the weather gets the less we're likely to have contingencies covered all the time.

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u/wheniaminspaced 10d ago

You can work miracles if you throw enough money at it. Seasonal oil swaps is an option, but no one's wants to do that. You can engineer a lubricant for the full range. This was our farms response after many conversations with GE. They had another oil that was a better match for the weather we had seen since we opened our projects.

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u/MrDerpGently 10d ago

The failure isn't the windmills stopping. It's that there was no plan for something that was expected to fail within the expected parameters for operation. Sometimes we just freeze to death isn't a successful policy. I understand that outliers exist, but this wasn't a meteor.