Letter: Lights out in Texas

To the Editor:

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has tried to blame solar and wind power generation for the power outages. Perhaps the solar farms were snow covered for a while before it slid off or the solar unit melted it off. Abbott said the windmills froze and wouldn’t rotate. Could it be because they don’t use the same oils and designs used in northern climes?

He was angry at the company managing the state-owned electric grid for its failures. The grid can’t produce power. It just moves it around Texas. Most of Texas generation is from fossil fuels. Northern states’ fossil plants insulate their piping so they don’t freeze. Texas doesn’t.

Their gas-fired plants apparently draw from gas and oil production wells and not from man-made underground storage and above ground tanks as we have. When the oil and salt water in the lines at the wells froze, they lost their supplies.

The coal-fired plants shut down because their feeding equipment couldn’t handle coal that had froze solid.

Their one nuke plant had one unit down for some undisclosed reason. Probably for refueling as winter usually has a less need for power.

A decade ago, a smaller cold snap had created a small disruption. Outside consultants were brought in for advice. Their report advised insulating the plants as well as updating and expanding the grid. It also suggested connecting it to surrounding grids as a back-up.

All of this would have caused the state to spend its own money, increase customer bills, and cause the power and production companies to spend money on those improvements. The report was mostly ignored.

Texas is controlled by Big Oil and other powerful companies that don’t want state interference causing them to spend more and deal with new regulations in a state that is abhorrent to regulations.

Chuck Johnson

Morris