Texas Power Outages

There is something wrong with the Texas electrical grid. The system there is either very unlucky or very fragile when disasters strike that state.  If you recall the winter storm and freezing temperatures of a few years back and now today—there are still over 300K customers without power in the Houston area from Beryl. While the outage in Houston has been from damages, it is also important to note that Texas stands alone when you look at the nation’s North American Transmission Grid.

I certainly understand that any system or utility can be overwhelmed by a disaster, but with two significant events that kind of “book end” the spectrum of cold and hot, it does point to a lack of disaster resilience, planning, and perhaps maintenance of the electrical grid. Compounding the problem in Houston has been a heat wave the has had emergency rooms stacked up with people reporting there for heat related health issues.

Utility customers in Texas have a right to expect better service.

Image from Wikipedia.