Texas Power Outage: Lucky?
People are screaming to get power restored and the Governor of Texas is now threatening the utilities and demanding a plan for improved resiliency. We’ll discuss the inconsistency of the Governor’s position in a later post.
What I want to focus on is why Texas was lucky. Unfortunately with climate change that luck is likely to run out for all of us.
While the damage from the hurricane was extensive it was not very widespread. This allows electrical crews from surrounding states to assist in the repairs, dramatically multiplying the repair workforce. Image that as storms get bigger and more frequent these outside crews simply won’t be available. They will be busy dealing with their own local repairs.
Power restoration time could increase significantly. This is more than an inconvenience, this is a matter of life and death. There is no way that the Federal Government, States or Utilities are going to be able to make substantial improvements to the resiliency of the grid in time. The focus on and transition to zero carbon generation is not going to help and will likely delay these improvements.
The lesson from Beryl is clear. If you rely on resilient electricity, you need to rely on yourself and take action now. Get backup power and develop a plan for dealing with these events because you are going to see a lot more of them. If you need help and would like to acquire backup as a service with no CAPEX, please contact us at https://exergyenergy.com