What Really Happened During the Texas Power Grid Outage?

When disaster strikes, the flurry of political positioning and fingerpointing can make it difficult to understand what really happened. This video provides a summary of the facts of the 2021 Texas winter storm.
⚡ My playlist about the electrical grid: • Electrical Grid
📄 Most of the energy statistics shown in the video came from ERCOT publications found here: www.ercot.com/news/february2021
This February of 2021, a major winter storm made its way through the U.S. central plains, setting all-time records for low temperatures across the country. One of the biggest impacts of the storm happened here in Texas where people across the state suffered extended outages of electricity and water. It was one of the worst winter weather events in history, creating loss-of-life and economic impacts that will take years to unfold. Many are still recovering from the storm and will be for years to come.
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DISCLAIMER
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This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips are used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.
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Tonic and Energy by Elexive is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Source: • Elexive - Tonic and En...

[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

Would you like to see more journalistic topics on the channel (in addition to the engineering fundamentals)? Let me know your ideas!

[@mf1ve]

Heck yeah!

[@ctran82088]

Yes, it helps with understanding engineering by relating it with current events.

[@dominicray6640]

I'd definitely appreciate your level and knowledgeable take on issues relating to civil engineering

[@Sengyizhe]

This was really interesting and informative, i knew that the grid was interconnected but had no idea it was to this extent. I think this is something that you should do if applicable from time to time but i do love seeing those water flume demonstrations :)

[@spyrosdevaris3472]

YES!!

[@amankharb2401]

Too many "once in a lifetime" disasters have happened in my lifetime

[@sonofsisyphus5742]

Yes, but how many happened more than once?

[@pepe6666]

@@sonofsisyphus5742 hmm

[@slartibartfast2977]

That's global climate change for ya.

[@norvillerodgersspeaks]

@@slartibartfast2977 I see you read Adams. Nice.

[@slartibartfast2977]

@@norvillerodgersspeaks Richard Adams of Oregon State, yes.

[@chanman4rings]

So many people are saying this guy needs to be on tv, let me just stop you right there He's completely sane and in touch with reality, he's using facts not opinions, basic science and not making it political. So we can't have him on tv

[@frother]

Like it or not, this is a political issue. I can tell that Grady is trying to skirt around talking about the policy choices that led to the disaster, in order to stick to his expertise and avoid offending anyone, but it paints an incomplete picture and tbh comes across as somewhat wishy-washy.

[@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat]

@@NotofManRecords you don't really need evidence, ercot said they cut the power to keep what power remained active.

[@ReggaeRedeemer]

😂 true.

[@americanpatriot7247]

@@NotofManRecords Friend, I went to the connection on your comment and a page came up too small to read and was only on the screen for about 5-6 seconds then shuts off. I smell the rat you are pointing out. Thanks.

[@johnnycreighton29]

@@frother Oh, but didn't someone promise to make America great again? Or maybe he didn't mean Texas. Who decided not to regulate electric ⚡ power? Oh! The same people who brought you Trump and Rick Perry? Rick Perry was the Secretary of Energy!!! What's up with that? kzbin.info/www/bejne/ipaVgnmkiraZetk

[@6NBERLS]

The power outage hit at the exact same moment that I went into the hospital in critical condition. My wife was left at home to care for our four parrots. The severe cold would have killed the parrots but for one thing. The previous October we had a whole house backup power system installed. It ran on natural gas and that source did not fail. My wife had power during the whole episode. I survived the hospital trip and went on to be proclaimed as a seer and mechanical genius because it was my idea to get the generator installed. We've had more than our share of luck.

[@bobshenix]

Was it a Generac natural gas generator??

[@pictsidhe6471]

I'm a cheapskate. I have a kerosene heater and flashlights.

[@runelea8920]

Heads up, another thing that can help in case your backup fails is heat packs. Can't place them directly near your birds but just having them nearby with enough insulation will help keep the area warm for them. Its an item usually kept by reptile keepers in case of power loss.

[@josephupton3601]

Hospital...or parrots....hospital...or parrots...sounds like your wife had her priorities.

[@arcadeinvader8086]

@@josephupton3601 Hey, I mean, hospitals have backup generators too

[@BepBepStev]

My dad worked at the WA parish generation station in Thompson for over 40 years. When he did Black Start training in event of a total blackout on the Texas grid, he was one of the few who passed it in 2015 and for years said that when he was gone, something was going to come test our infrastructure and the personnel related to it. The December before this happened, he passed away. Sure enough, two months after, what he said was going to happen happened. All in all, he'd be impressed with how accurate you are with this entire video. Wonderfully done!

[@adamlv1]

The storm was actually your dad returning to exact revenge on the unprepared during the 2015 testing. It was probably so important to him and it sounds like everyone else sorta blew off the importance of preparing for a Black Start. Have you watched the videos people took on the side of the highway that morning when the roads froze over instantly. I lived in South Dakota for a few years so we were totally aware the roads would have ice when it came. In Texas, they never saw temps drop the way they did and at 70mph a string of motorists hit a large patch of black ice and several motorists were able to hop out of their vehicle and scramble to the side of the road and record big 18 wheelers plowing through the pileup at full speed. Their brakes were completely useless on the ice. It was a horrific video to watch knowing that there were a bunch of cars that crashed into someone and May or may not have been injured but normally would have needed to be extracted from their vehicles with the jaws of life since any damage to the doors will almost always seal that door shut. Helplessly, cars that were crashed had to watch in their rear view as a big rig plowed into the back of them at full speed. If I remember correctly 6 people died in that pileup. The road froze over at around 5 or 6am so everybody was driving down the road at possibly the worst time since traffic picks up significantly and everyone is still waking up. Anyway, enough about me… My condolences for the loss of your dad. It sounds like he was pretty amazing.

[@Wulthrin]

the whole "four minutes from total system collapse" aspect of the situation is unreal to me

[@aspuzling]

Yeah this was super interesting to learn about. Apparently somebody did something right in order to avoid this disaster.

[@arty_gangster]

I can only imagine what was going on in the Central Grid Control room

[@chaz000006]

Imagine if all those essential hospitals and other buildings' electricity collapsed...

[@JazawaToad]

@@chaz000006 A majority of hospitals have generator backups, as far as I’m aware.

[@matzeh3498]

@@arty_gangster 4 Minutes, no great, not terrible

[@hightechredneck8587]

I work in Transmission, Write Emergency Operations Plans, and Blackstart Recovery Plans. I just wanted to say your information is absolutely correct and extremely accurate for someone who doesn't work in the industry. I will openly say there is no word that worries us more than Blackstart, followed closely by Firm Load Shed. The events in Texas pushed the grid operators to the absolute limit. It essentially came down to seconds for them to make decisions and a wrong or delayed call could have been even more catastrophic. I guess it was a good thing everyone had their coffee that day. Ps I just wanted to say you missed one part towards the middle. Not only does power meet demand precisely, but in North America it is regulated that Generators (not all but some) are paid to be "Dispatchable Contingency Reserve" or spinning reserve, usually this is 5% or so of typical region load. Essentially it is magnetically synchronized with the grid but has no power (steam, fuel or water) applied to it and it is used as a buffer to handle quick or small spikes in demand using Automatic Generation Frequency Control (AGFC) where the computers automatically monitor frequency and increase or decrease power to help stabilize frequency. An Energy Emergency is declared when the spinning reserve has been fully utilized. Additionally Hydro (or even pumped hydro) is often the power source of choice for spinning reserve because of all the power sources it has the fastest spin up time and can respond to changes almost instantaneously. Just figured I would share that for fun. Heck a whole video could be made on that.

[@Money4Nothing]

I'm an electrical engineer and can also concur.

[@BOBMAN1980]

Thanks for that information. I am seriously trying to learn more about energy and electricity management these days. . .at the practical level. Any resources you can recommend?

[@somethingelsehere8089]

I visited a pumped storage facility in Japan (Kurobe Dam). I'm not sure how much efficiency loss there is, but it really seems like an elegant idea.

[@dyadica7151]

I worked in this field as a computational meteorologist and statistician. we evaluated locations of wind turbines with an eye towards estimating the impacts their intermittency would have on spinning reserve requirements. That ercot has ~30% wind power deployment scares me.

[@fueymanchoo1291]

If this would have gone to blackstart I think everyone involved should have been grounded. I don't work in the electrical industry. I work in bad humor.

[@reedsawyer5704]

Thank you, my brother lives in Texas, and his explanation of the power outage seemed to be less "scientific" and more hyperbolic. Your presentation was impartial, balanced, and brought us behind the scenes to understand what really happened. Bravo.

[@sealyoness]

A tad dry, but succinct. I reverted back to my mech engineering education and remembered one of the first things I was taught: Build to 2:1; maintain the works, because if the ratio falls below 1:1, it will fail. And yes, it's nice to be reminded of what might happen if maintenance fails to have a plan B. B is for Backup, but in this case?

[@Parthornax]

My family got incredibly lucky because 1: We are new yorkers, so we were used to the cold. 2: We are Dominicans, so we are used to blackouts. The funny thing is, I was trying to convince my family to invest in a generator not even a month before the black out and i was ignored.

[@deed5811]

Get a generator! This wasnt Texas' first black out fiasco. It kind of has a history of it.

[@underscoredfrisk]

Are they now convinced to buy that generator? Or do they think that they only need to use the generator in a once in a life time situation which will never happen again?

[@KaileyB616]

I was able to convince my family to purchase a whole house generator that can run on gas or propane... I was even able to convince them to get a big propane tank and have it full and ready just in case. However, my dad (who's an electrician), has still not hooked it up to the house and doesn't have the specific cord that you need in order to have it wired to your home… So it's kind of worthless if the power does go out, which is frustrating

[@cherryjuice9946]

Excellent post. I hope you are able to remind your family that it wasn't wise to ignore your wisdom. I'd mention it at least once per week.

[@mkruger211]

I've worked in the power industry for 37 years and have owned a generator ever since I could afford one. They have saved the day quite a few times.

[@EricBandholz]

He’s talking about a “current event”. Not sure if the pun was intended, but I chuckled.

[@daveh7720]

I didn't even notice that until you mentioned it!

[@Tinil0]

Technically I guess this will forever be a current event, eh?

[@RafaelSCalsaverini]

It's shocking.

[@toddkes5890]

At least you weren't re-volt-ed

[@laughterman805]

It’s not yet history...

[@Nighthawkinlight]

Excellent video. I'd love seeing more of its kind when appropriate.

[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

Thanks man!

[@miriotogata7487]

Agreed

[@bubaks2]

This kid of content is always appropriate, great vid!

[@codeeadifferentone8028]

Hi!

[@Juice1984]

+

[@5thGenNativeTexan]

I've shared your video with numerous family, friends and colleagues who aren't in the energy industry (like I am). You did a fantastic job of explaining things! Now that we're 10 months down the road, and ERCOT has set mandates for energy providers to "winterize" their systems, it would be an interesting follow-up to see what exactly they are doing to ensure things like keeping natural gas flowing, etc. Thanks!

[@rabbit251]

Shouldn't Texas have winterized their system long ago? It isn't like this was the first cold snap that they had ever experienced, and everyone has been warned of extreme weather due to climate change. Since you are in the energy market, he didn't make very clear something the media did (or were they wrong) that Texas basically set up an independent infrastructure making it impossible to draw power from other states. Was the media correct? And if they are, why did Texas do that?

[@5thGenNativeTexan]

@@rabbit251 Given the historical trends, and even the future outlooks, this weather event was still easily well outside even the most conservative forecasts. Dropping down to the teens, or even single digits, for an extended number of days has never happened before. That being said, should precautions should have been taken? Perhaps. But as was pointed out, in a market economy system like ERCOT, there's no upside to layering on costs above and beyond what is typically needed. To your second question.. yes, most of Texas is on an independent grid. This was done primarily for political reasons, not technical reasons. By having a grid wholly within the boundaries of the Texas borders, the Texas power grid is in most respects not subject to federal regulation under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But while the Texas grid isn't tied to other grids in a balanced/synchronous system, the Texas grid can pull some power from other grids using DC ties, which it has a few of to some of the adjacent grids. He did note this in his video (that Texas pulled some power from other grids), but to make an analogy, it's a bit like using an extension cord from your neighbor's home to run your home. Fine for sharing some small amounts of surplus power, but nowhere near the connection needed to completely prop up a grid.

[@OhNotThat]

I don't think they did anything, are you sure it's a mandate not mere guidelines and recommendations. The major point of failure for texas was those natural gas pipes being frozen (solar and wind overperformed despite shills saying otherwise), the reason why they froze is because winterization costs money. Like the old saying goes: if you think safety is expensive, try paying for the costs of a catastrophic accident xD

[@marinbobster8663]

@@rabbit251 ERCOT has always been an independent electric system and has never been connect to the electric systems in other adjacent states. By doing this, they avoid having to be regulated by FERC (Federal Electric Regulatory Commission).

[@rabbit251]

@@marinbobster8663 What is so terrible about FERC? As far as I know, Texas is the only state that does this. Other states are interconnected for the reason stated in the video, because power usage doesn't stop at state lines and the grid system is a way to direct power so that there aren't any outages.

[@bobnelly2716]

I remember this week from up in Iowa. I formally worked in a chemical manufacturing facility, and that week, we ended up slowing down production. We had to ration natural gas, mainly for price, but we also heard rumors of the pipes freezing, although no one believed it at the time. Also, it was shocking to see the issues it caused for oil refineries, winterizing and heat tracing is such a forgotten luxury in storms like that.

[@JasonB808]

Dear news media, This is what informative and non biased reporting looks like.

[@dalpz205]

Yes. This.

[@jellybr3ak]

They are either "Texas bad" or "Wind bad" lmao

[@digital-rain]

All they care about is creating sensational headlines, vs actually educating people to make their own decisions like this video does so well.

[@strengthbuild]

all for-profit news media operates under bias, read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent"

[@GeneralSeptem]

Shhhh, they're going to try and cancel him next. Fake news journalists don't like competition.

[@AppliedScience]

Wow, what a great summary! I'd much rather get my info from you than any news outlet. Thank you.

[@shafanator11]

Ben! I love when my favorite KZbinrs also watch each other!

[@SolomanRunde]

The legend has spoken

[@charlesguffy56]

I watch the same content as Ben! I'm cool by proxy! And yes, excellent video. I have yet to find any other video/site/or source that could explain the causal factors without including a political bias. I don't live in Texas, and just wanted to understand this event. Thank you, as always, for the excellent content

[@mrocp]

Great to see someone using a social media platform to share and support the facts.

[@LukeSykpeMan]

Naturally, it is always preferable to get your information on a technical subject directly from the experts. Through malice or otherwise, news outlets often misrepresent the data.

[@mkruger211]

Texas power plant engineer here. Video is absolutely spot-on as to how this happened. As explained, it is difficult to fully comprehend this event without a technical knowledge of the grid, as well as the market forces that brought us to this point. An excellent and important video.

[@MarkFisher_aka_Gatortrapper]

Grady: As always you've done a great job simplifying a highly complex system and succinctly done the autopsy of what happened. Well done. Your delivery style is amongst the best in the practical knowledge genre and on KZbin in my opinion.

[@jgb7215]

As a retired engineer who worked in the instrumentation industry for utilities and customers I can say that your presentation was excellent. I could probably show this to my wife and for the first time she’d understand what I did for 35 years 😎

[@captinbeyond]

I have worked in the same field for over 40 years although not an engineer, as a contractor installing instruments and related items in power plants/refineries/chem plants ect. All of these power source plants have engineers to over see their needs to keep running in all kinds of weather...that includes having electric and steam tracing to keep instrumentation thawed out and working. Also having secondary back up instruments and power as well. To hear a plant went down because of frozen valves/instruments is hard to imagine. The natural gas pipes in isolated areas could be an exception, but even there they should have minimum insulation and possible electric/steam tracing

[@sfurules]

I bet she'd really like that! You should show her!

[@nemod3338]

@@sfurules if she did not care for 35 years, what makes you think she will care now?

[@sfurules]

@@nemod3338 what the fuck are you talking about

[@KnittingPasta]

Hear hear!

[@formerpilot]

Grady, I'm a civil engineer (retired) and have found your channel. You are amazing in how you can so adeptly summarize complicated processes. My hat is off to you. I'm a big fan and I would have loved to have you as one of my professors back in the 70s.

[@atama01]

me too - cool guy

[@jamescollier3]

Roland, don't forget the creep of "alternate" energy into a larger and larger % of their grid. That's what failed

[@owensmith7530]

@@jamescollier3 Actually the biggest failure by far was Natural Gas power plants. In what way is that "alternate" energy?

[@jamescollier3]

@@owensmith7530 you got me Jussie

[@jamescollier3]

@@owensmith7530 so, you are convincing yourself the solar and wind were up and running? Lol

[@mr.cospirity6565]

My whole family is in Texas and they suffered greatly because of this. Thankfully, no one died. My grandmother was a vulnerable person, and I'm thankful that she is still alive after this event.

[@donk73]

This is a superb video on a highly technical subject where so few people - politicians, energy providers, climate activists - have any real understanding about what's involved in maintained our energy grid. And yet these people are making critical decisions in areas that will affect all of our lives for years to come. I particularly appreciate Grady's effort to remain neutral on what at times can be a highly divisive subject. Who would have thought that the electrical grid could be a divisive subject, but that's where we're at.

[@sealyoness]

Note: Politicians are very RARELY engineers of any stripe. (But some 'play one' on TV)

[@donk73]

@@sealyoness You're right, although Jimmy Carter was an engineer as is Chairman Xi of China, I believe.

[@BruceNitroxpro]

@@donk73 , Please... as though most politicians think beyond their bank accounts.

[@siobhangraham7280]

It's really a tragedy that we're still relying on the outdated power grid that operates on the knife's edge of disaster like this, when we have the technology and ability to have much more stable, robust and fault-tolerant grid

[@WJV9]

@@donk73 - Yes, Jimmy Carter is a Nuclear Engineer and served in the Navy Nuclear ship & submarine corp.

[@randybeard6040]

I was a Power Plant Control Room Operator for almost 34 years, you did a Great Job explaining this crisis in Texas to your Listeners!!!

[@SuperGiggun]

Are natural gas lines not usually buried where they wouldn't freeze, or are they kept above ground so they can be easily inspected?

[@SuperGiggun]

@Angel A as a resident of iowa I was just thinking that myself..what do midwestern and northern states do different with their grid to avoid things like this from happening. I was under the Impression that most of Iowa's grid is powered by coal, with wind and natural gas filling the remainder. Wind mills up north must be built different to avoid freezing over?

[@thinkingoutloud9126]

Agreed.

[@elijahdage5523]

I now have a massive amount of respect for you.

[@dusklunistheumbreon]

@Angel A The super short version is that Texas didn't winterproof, while I assume Iowa did. It's not an impossible problem to fix, but it *is* more expensive for companies to do over just letting people die. Especially when they have a near-monopoly.

[@EverythingScience]

I love the videos going back and looking at things like this weeks after the fact rather than all the click baity news sources trying to jump in immediately before they even know what really what was going on

[@jasonbourne1961]

To be honest, I'm surprised you don't have way more subs

[@jenniferofholliston5426]

This very clear, and helpful.

[@marmac83]

@@jasonbourne1961 These things take time...

[@jamesallen1894]

YES!

[@The_Happy_Aviation_Enthusiast]

Here is a reminder about portable generator safety: This advice is just to make sure that everyone is aware of all the warnings and it’s just to remind people to be careful using portable generators. Everyone has to see this safety reminder for safety. Every year, hundreds of people die or get injured when using portable generators due to carbon monoxide poisoning and electrocution. Make sure you are using your generator carefully and keeping others safe as well. There is something very serious that everyone should always be aware of when using generators. Some people do run their generator indoors which is not safe and that increases the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning which can cause death of family and you. Some people run their generator in wet conditions which can electrocute them. Here’s an advice about generator safety: please remember that you should never run your generator indoors. Remember that carbon monoxide is an odorless and colorless gas that you cannot see or smell. Carbon monoxide is a silent killer. Keep that in mind. Make sure your generator is 15-20 feet away from your house and away from doors, windows, and vents. Never use your generator in your porch too. Having a carbon monoxide detector is very important against generator safety. Some people also allow children to go near the portable generator which could pose risks. We need to keep an eye on our children making sure that they are not near the portable generator so they won’t get electrocuted or burned by the generator which is dangerous. A locking enclosure also keeps kids safe. A generator shed might look like a tempting place to explore, or take cover during a game of hide and seek, but a generator is a dangerous piece of equipment that can cause injury. It says on the manual that we should also keep children away at all times from the portable generator to avoid injuries. Please do not allow a child or unqualified people to operate the portable generator. Just because some manuals missed what should be listed doesn’t mean it’s safe to do. Always follow the generator safety rules when using portable generators. Generators pose electrical risks. If you need to use your generator during wet weather, you need a generator tent to protect your generator from getting wet. Don’t let your generator get wet. Keep your generator dry and before using your generator, please make sure your hands and your generator is dry. Do not wear loose clothing when operating the generator. Everything that is said on the generator’s operating manual should not be ignored. Never smoke cigarettes near the generator. Please keep flammable things away from the generator. Never overload your generator too. Your generator can catch fire. Never ever try to plug a generator cord into a wall outlet to avoid back feeding. Back feeding your generator is dangerous. Always turn on your generator first before plugging in appliances and shut off the appliances before turning your generator off. Use a heavy duty cord for your generator and the cord should not be worn out. All the instructions should be followed carefully. Never refuel your generator while it’s running. It can cause fire if fuel spills while your generator is hot. You should turn off your generator and let it cool off before refueling it. Having a fire extinguisher next to the generator is also important. This is only a reminder for everyone’s safety of using generators. Make sure your generator is properly grounded. kzbin.info/www/bejne/f2LNhWZ3g6qBrKs and here is a video more about keeping others safe when using generators and also about our family’s safety. Hope this helps. Thank you.

[@MervynPartin]

There are already 13933 comments, so here is one more that will probably be lost or ignored. The UK electricity industry was privatised after years of reliable and economic electricity supply. It became market led, with all the complexities of separate managements, traders and legal teams. Most of it has ended up in foreign ownership. A recent, but not quite so severe storm led to huge numbers of consumers cut off for extended periods with the distribution companies being ill prepared to cope, and many going bankrupt. We had equally severe weather or worse when the industry was in public ownership, but we coped far better, as contingency generation was built into the system.

[@jedgrahek1426]

Thank you for sharing that here. I am so amazed at not only the premise of this video, but the vast quantities of people so thankful for an "unbiased, non-politicized explanation". As though including the fact that this happened after right-wing free-market ideologues deregulated their state power grid as much as possible, and that without that having been done, outcomes would have been way better for most people both in reliability and in price. The way the video is presented, as though it's all anyone needs to know about the situation, when that couldn't be less true.... says a lot to me about the creator.

[@ValMartinIreland]

Same in Ireland. They took a perfectly good grid system and gave it away to chancers.

[@PenneyThoughts]

I saw your post among the 14000+ now, lol. I'm in Waco, TX, so I was directly affected like Grady (video's author). Yeah, there's a reason why public utilities should be PUBLIC and not private. It's like medieval greed has taken over modern humanity.

[@TheTenthManOnYoutube]

Not saying any of you are wrong, but the big problem was gas supplying the utilities, not the utilities themselves.

[@james-p]

Something that is needed by the public, like water, power, and sewer, should be run by a public utility. A public utility that operates in the interest of... the public. Privatizing public utilities is an idiotic political trend. And here I thought it was just an American thing - sorry to hear the UK has climbed on that bandwagon as well.

[@rachelblack3816]

This guy is a pro in every sense of the word, a natural in front of the camera, perfect editing, and able to give clear & concise explanations while also utilizing poignant graphics to move technical points across to non-pros. Amazing! This man may be one of the very best talents on KZbin, and that's why I subscribed. I learn so many fascinating and useful things from his videos. Bravo, sir, bravo!

[@fprintf]

For someone from the Northeast US I only saw brief glimpses of what Texans were going through and of course the politicians bashing the situation. This was an excellent overview of what happened, it is so much more informative than anything else I've seen (or read).

[@gmhelwig]

This. I have friends in Texas, and after confirming they're okay, just went back to my normal life. Lived through brutal cold and also through power outages, but never both at the same time in a state that just isn't built for such cold.

[@agungpriambodo1674]

Yes an unbiased technical report is much needed

[@judythompson5253]

I agree, Im in northern New England and power outages are nothing new here, especially in ice storms. It's why most of us keep a supply of wood somewhere. I can only imagine (and deeply sympathize) with this kind of storm what people must have been going through.

[@steve-o6413]

While this was a generic version of what happened what really happened may not be so simplistic where Capitalism and self preservation may have enter into the picture...

[@FuckTheState]

Agung Priambodo a totally “unbiased” report made by someone who belives in climate change lol.

[@georgewashington938]

I am still amazed at how individual content creators do a better job at sharing info than the mainstream media.

[@vexedmirage4678]

Mainstream Media has to make everything political. That's why.

[@Top12Boardsport]

Main stream means that people working there are just mainstream people. They don’t have the knowledge needed to make a coverage of anything.

[@ZIGZAG12345]

@@vexedmirage4678 Bingo. Western mainstream news is every bit as "controlled" and "designed" as the state-media in places like Russia and China is. Western media absolutely DOES NOT CARE one bit about "truth". Their "agenda" is 100% top priority. And their agenda will change depending on who the controller-class billionaire media-magnates want to protect or smear next...

[@pbsocal1]

Individual content creators are the news!

[@TonyRueb]

Because youtubers can focus on topics and go in depth. They can take time to do thoughtful research, and MSM needs to cover current events, like two shootings that made national news. Most people do not care or have the knowledge to learn an in-depth topic like this, so the media has to tailor it's news for the general population. Besides, doing actual research will take time away from the TV Show Ancient Aliens

[@FantasticF113]

You've managed to pull off a highly technical topic in a way that is easy to understand. Also, I'm impressed that everyone here is adding to the discussion in a mature way. Bravo!

[@stephenstrang590]

This was unbelievable. Thank you for your research and the time you spent simplifying this.

[@airpeguiV2]

As an electrical engineer, I appreciate the technical detail included in this video.

[@beartastic-ftw]

..but still dumbed down so the rest of us get it; this guy is magical!

[@kolinako6872]

Would be interesting to see a video on how electricity production is ensured in colder climates, how they differ from what is built in texas!

[@polarbearchimney]

We produce, belive in climate change, belive in covid and last but not least, free health care for everyone. For that we have cheap stable power, happy citizens and low death numbers. Thats how we do it up north.

[@jeremyg9323]

The biggest visible difference, i think, is going to be the distribution of types of energy generation. At least in north america, theres a lot more water and more hydroelectric dams when you go north. This is significant because once a dam is built, it can act as a massive power store because of all the water that can be sequestered. It's relatively cheap then, in preperation for peak energy demands, to add a pipe, a generator, and keep it offline untill its needed

[@guyincognito.]

@@polarbearchimney Interesting theory since the death rate 'up north' is higher than the USA.

[@beartastic-ftw]

I would think the biggest differences isn't in the electricity production, but rather insulation of both buildings and water supply and general preparedness. Did an experiment this winter no electricity with outside temps in the -20C for three days. Inside temp never went below 5C and I think the majority of healthy people in colder climates have enough wool to stay comfortable at this temp outside.

[@akamesama]

@@jeremyg9323 My state does not generate hydro and we get by in very cold weather. One major difference is the insulation of infrastructure; Texas had outages due to hardware failure and gas lines freezing, but we don't, even when temps go sub-zero.

[@gt7088c]

This was the first video of yours that I discovered last year. I live in TX and suffered through this event. Your explanations of things and the quality of the videos are excellent. I’m looking forward to your book.

[@toodlican]

I started watching the channel based on what I was learning. I can't believe how much I appreciate this channel now. I can watch this all day every day

[@FalconXE302]

Has there ever been a more sensible, calm and controlled person to explain things.

[@GodinSpace]

Yes

[@oneshottlinder1243]

Exactly. Think of all the crap that was flying around trying to explain this in the early days afterwards.

[@BowTie8Bit]

Fred Rogers comes to mind.

[@_DixonCider]

The media was trying to convince us that capitalism caused the outages and not a freak winter storm. What a bunch of shmucks.

[@yourfinestlocalidiot]

*entire state goes through a record-breaking and deadly power outage* Most of Texas is under one power grid.

[@emorysmith197]

You have done an incredible job of accurately explaining what happened with out putting slant or bias into the information! I find your videos to be the most reliable source of information on these topics! Which is so rare these days. Thank you for all you do!

[@pantoffelslippers]

Great video. Load shedding is almost a daily occurrence over here in south africa. Has been for the last 10... maybe 15 years. Power grids are so hugely complex that once a country (like us), or state or whatever starts to lose control or falls behind on maintenance, it becomes exponentially more and more difficult to catch up and recover again.

[@williammerkel1410]

Considering how much of a brain drain SA has suffered, that is not surprising.

[@OkenWS]

Is it South Africa that has the cool ripple generators on the substations to tell electric heating element equipment to power down? I always thought that was a really clever implementation which in the UK would probably have been done using hugely complicated and fragile mobile telephony infrastructure or radio. It also predated powerline ethernet by some years, which is a similar technology. Shame it has to be used at all though and I can only imagine your frustration living in a country which can't seem to stay in the first world by keeping the lights on - and so avoidably, too.

[@Wilhelm4131]

Should have let the men in charge that built it to begin with

[@nurmr]

@@OkenWS I grew up in Johannesburg in the 80's and 90's and there was an extra relay (of some sort) installed next to the main electrical distribution board in our house that the energy provider could signal remotely (I have no idea how) to disable the water heater and reduce load on the grid.

[@ltsradio]

Thank you for a 'No Spin' description of what happened. The internet needs more of this.

[@chefgiovanni]

Great stuff here . We love Texas, everyone is cooking ! Check out our Chefs recipes and tools ....

[@ReddoFreddo]

Well, it didn't explain why this happened in Texas and why this doesn't happen in other states, which is extremely important information. I mean, you don't have to finger point to explain something like that, just explain why it happens in Texas, and what measures other states have in place to prevent that from happening, that Texas didn't have. Obscuring what happens is not "no spin," it's covering up what happened.

[@bens.5127]

@@ReddoFreddo Other states have a totally different electricity usage model. The difference comes in how electricity is purchased. Under the Texas wholesale model, you USUALLY have very cheap electricity. Under the direct revenue model of other states, we pay a high premium for electricity ALL the time because we don't have but one company to buy power from.

[@ReddoFreddo]

​@@bens.5127 So what is it about that wholesale model that caused this disaster?

[@jhonn3908]

@@ReddoFreddo i'm no expert, but i think it might have been that just one company was supplying power to everyone, meaning if they went down it was over for everyone. Also, i've heard that texas has an isolated power grid from the rest of the nation, meaning they couldn't receive supplementary power from other states that weren't hit.

[@stephencullum8255]

Retired from a power company. Lab analyst and water treatment guy. I studied grid management and dispatching in a 2 year course my company sponsored out of curiosity. Even in Orlando Florida the grid has been challenge like this at times. It was in the freeze of 1989 and we were one of the few service areas that did not have rolling black outs. In cold weather I used propane heaters to keep chemical tanks from freezing up. And we used a lot of heat tracing tape to keep instrument lines from freezing. One trick is to slowly run water over tanks like Chlorine tanks to keep them from freezing. There is a lot of heat in liquid water. We had one of the few power plants in the state, in our fleet that could do a black start up. That plant would then get the flagship power complex , the one I worked at up. Then we would work on the rest of the state plants. In a bad large hurricane that situation could of happen. If Murphy is on good behavior it takes 2 to 3 days to start up a coal fire plant. Gas and oil power ones it takes hours. Few people realize how complex power generation and dispatching are.

[@SonicWasTaken]

Interesting

[@bizzaresamurai7233]

Yes

[@marcosmota1094]

Thank you!

[@autohmae]

"Few people realize how complex power generation and dispatching are." and it's only going to get a lot more complex and I think that means we'll see more energy storage.

[@fhajji]

"There is a lot of heat in liquid water." Taking cold showers feels less freezing now. :) But seriously... this is very good advice in freezing temperatures. I'll have to remember this.

[@MattMills91]

I just found your channel last night. I moved to Texas recently and my first winter here (corpus christi at the time) was that horrible storm. I remember how hard it was for us, but heard horror stories from basically the whole state north of us. I remember being quite angry at ERCOT for what happened. While I do still believe there were many things that could have happened differently, this helps me understand what exactly happened in technical detail. I really appreciate you putting this video out in as factual of a manner as possible, I learned a lot!

[@paxerit]

What a great video. Thanks for the easily digestible and hype free explanation. Quote: "I have my own opinions... But this is not the place." I really appreciate that you stuck to the facts and pointed out many things that were done correctly by the various actors. It's that kind of reserved objectivity that would make me particularly optimistic that your "opinions" would be well thought out, constructive and interesting to hear in another context. Thanks for the quality content that you put out in your videos.

[@christashik9524]

I am a Power Plant Technician at a gas fired plant in the Northeast (NJ). We start preparing for the “winter run” in September. A lot of time and $ go into being ready for our winter.I don’t see how a southern state could prepare for the -what if- scenario the way we do up here and still be competitive unless ERCOT demands they ALL do so on a level playing field. Capacity payments would incentivize this preparation.

[@Sovek86]

Yeah, when we get severe weather its usually a major problem as if we were to prepare for these what ifs the costs would not be worth it. That said, I still hold Duke Energy in contempt for their complete lack of preparation, like trimming trees near lines on a 6 month basis to help alleviate the issues that wind and ice bring and thus spending even more money to fix the issue after people are without power for days.

[@christashik9524]

@@Sovek86 The utility I work for got hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Generation wasn’t a big problem but distribution got slammed from the high water and wind. Since then they have invested $2.5b to raise switchyards and modernize gas lines. This is after the fact of a 500year type storm. The cost is passed to residential bills but with minimal impact. I think it may be hard for a utility to convince the Board of Public utilities or rate payers that they want to invest billions -just Incase-. Now in Texas they have a reason, hopefully they all do the right thing.

[@DubioserKerl]

So... how DO you properly prepare a power plant for such a winter?

[@christashik9524]

@@DubioserKerl Once the “winterization” systems are installed the maintenance is mostly routine checks to verify heat trace (pipe warming) systems are still operational as they are not used during weather greater than 50°. Making sure summer repairs have been reinsulated. Making sure large openings in buildings can be closed off during harsh weather. The video showed natural gas lines freezing up which would happen off our property so I can’t speak to that effort. I have seen frost on our natural gas lines in August after a pressure reducing regulator so I could see real trouble when temps drop if there is moisture within the flow of gas.

[@gingerman5123]

@@christashik9524 Thanks for your comments, Chris. What are the downsides of having your plant "winterized" if you're not experiencing cold weather? The average winter day in most of Texas probably sees highs in the 50's lows in 30's or 40's. Could it do more harm than good to prepare every winter for this 100 year storm? Are you aware of any core engineering differences between plants built in cold and hot climates? 30% of Texas's power comes from wind. Those farms are in far west Texas where summers are very hot.

[@ChurchOfTheHolyMho]

I appreciate you separating out your opinion on what should be done from simply giving an overview and explanation of the events that occurred. I often find myself wanting to hear the news without hearing what some opinion panel thinks about the news. Thanks!

[@user-xe9pu4rb4m]

Yes I agree. This is really professional !

[@sapinva]

Every journalist should be required to watch this to see how professionals do it.

[@Realkeepa-et9vo]

"I don't want politics involved in this disaster, that obvilously is the result of political decisions and developments."

[@austingonzalez1148]

I feel like I'd like his opinion. After 15 mins, what do we do now? A trusted opinion can be valuable

[@OurayTheOwl]

@@sapinva It's not journalists jobs to educate, but inform. All news is supposed to do is tell you what happened (i.e. what's new.) They're heralds, not teachers. Journalists are the filter and lens so the public feels engaged, understanding the topic isn't part of that equation.

[@aly6374]

A great video... and very triggering. Living through that was terrible. There was no "rolling" power for our apartments. It was 3-4 days of ZERO electricity. There were several customers that received huge bills for not having power. Thankfully I have joined a co-op that kept us safe in that regard, and also had family on a hospital grid, so thankfully some heat, but many, many, many more were in very cold conditions for days. It was just a major malfunction all around. Thanks for informing us all with this!

[@burttschell]

It was below freezing in my house. We were without power for about 5 days. It went off and never came back. Lots of people were getting it sporadically. Mine went down and didn’t come back until it was over. I live in a house on blocks. Built in the. 40’s. No insulation. Except a little bit in the attic. It was rough.

[@SandhillCrane42]

The only help for it is to bail the energy companies out and give them a huge tax break. Anything less would be like an admission of being short sighted!

[@depotdan4654]

Anyone else in Texas watching (rewatching) ahead of the 22 Christmas cold blast?

[@arthurfoyt6727]

I flew my plane across TX on Christmas day. Below freezing and I saw all the windfarms doing nothing (it was dead calm). That's why wind/solar means that you still need the 100% oil/gas infrastructure. You don't get rid of anything because of cold and calm nights....

[@drewsbrewcrew]

As a Texan, knowing we were less than five minutes away from a total grid shutdown is sobering. I'm one of the very fortunate few who never lost electricity through the event. I know people who didn't have power for days in zero degree weather.

[@louisvaught2495]

As someone who just moved down from Illinois, it's fascinating how much of an issue this was of people being unfamiliar with how to handle this. My power cut out for an entire day, and I just pulled out my cold weather clothing and low-temp sleeping bag. Not every northerner has cold-weather-emergency supplies, but enough people do that when the power goes out it's a lot less worrying.

[@pettersaethre]

a well insulated house and a good wood stove eliminates the problem

[@dennisgraham9444]

Try 5 days...I'm still livid!!

[@GideonMesser]

@@pettersaethre The issue is that wood heating doesn't work in cities. There aren't enough trees, nor is there infrastructure to dispose of the waste ash for hundreds of thousands of homes.

[@pettersaethre]

@@GideonMesser well there is pellets for example, and some ovens can take kerosene ..but my suggestion in any case were for stand-alone homes in the suburbs and countryside

[@johnm5969]

I live in North Texas and was without power for 67 hours. Fortunately, I had a small generator and a gas fire place for heat. While I had a basic understanding of what happened, your video cleared the rest of the clouds! ThankYou!

[@dannistjana901]

Hi, I'm from Iceland and we deal with crazy winter storms all the time. Plus my father operates a hydro-electric plant. 99% of the time all is good with the electric grid in those storms, oc helps that heating is something like 80%(forgot exact percentage) geothermal and there are generators at every volcano juice pump station as I like to call them. What I'm wondering is if every other Texan and their grandma turns on a space heater for every room in those cold storms?

[@PenneyThoughts]

I'm in Waco. Lost power from Monday night till Friday morning. So did most of my family and friends. It was four days of frozen hell, living in tents inside the living rooms of the houses with most firewood left. The kiddos got shipped to the houses still powered (next to hospitals and police depts), or shipped out of the county.

[@JS-ls8st]

@@dannistjana901 I am in north Texas I didn’t lose power but I did end up having to boil water for 4 days. I don’t think people had time to turn on their space heaters before things went down. Our leaders here in Texas just didn’t think it was important enough to deal with winterization of the power plants due to the he fact we just don’t see weather that bad often. Our leaders are busy pushing bullshit bills to leave the US that will go nowhere.

[@darkdragonsoul99]

@@JS-ls8st Here's just how fucked that is most of the power plants that went down went down 10 years ago due to a cold snap that wasn't as bad as this one and they did nothing to fix it. And in another decade when it happens again it will probably not be fixed and in another decade and in another. This is like the people who build their houses on a volcano and rebuild it when it erupts.

[@Ragedaonenlonely]

@@PenneyThoughts Had a winter a while back where a pipe burst in Sweden. We had to turn the water off for about 2 weeks in the middle of winter, which meant no heating. Was a smidge cold but not bad enough it couldn't still be reasonably comfortable with just body heat and warm clothing. I can't imagine it getting cold after just 4 days without heating. Your houses really must have no insulation at all to not retain any heat during that time.

[@robert-zr1kx]

I love your channel and I still clicked this with such hesitance. Living in ATX, I too experienced it first-hand, and was worried you might not have gone into detail about the /rolling/ outages. Shouldn't have worried, you're the man.

[@TheRedMenaceR]

I love these videos. This one especially, because its recent and recognizable and certainly sheds a lot of light.

[@0opssorry]

As a power engineer myself, you did a wonderful job making this palatable for the average person. Every time I'm asked about this event I go too far into the weeds of the protection and control schemes - usually end up losing my audience.

[@mattywho8485]

I love an engineer willing to admit that they over-explain something !!

[@EmeryJude]

Engineer thanks another engineer for non-engineer speak. Ok.

[@oneshottlinder1243]

You just made a lot of friends with that admission.

[@nobodyknows3180]

@@EmeryJude I think his point is that if it had been an engineer speaking to another engineer, the average person would have been lost after, oh, say, the first two minutes.

[@ralphlindberg1299]

Retired EE here, I agree enough detail for people that want to know, without the Geek Speak we get into too often

[@melissaharris3389]

As a Canadian this helped me understand how unprecedented the storm was and how unprepared Texas was for it. The cold will kill you and we plan and built our infrastructure for it; for a place not used to it though it can cause such a huge issue.

[@meme-xn6wr]

I’m an American, but on the Canadian border, and like you, I couldn’t understand how Texas couldn’t hold out for it like we do.

[@mikemcguffey6458]

@@meme-xn6wr it largely came from not having insulation in houses I think

[@FlatlandsSurvivor]

@@meme-xn6wr lack of insulation. No snow plows, no salt trucks. Systems at every level with cold weather preparedness as an afterthought.

[@SuperPhunThyme9]

Look up heat waves in New York and Paris. Lots of people dead in the Paris one.

[@SuperPhunThyme9]

@@meme-xn6wr winterization is insanely expensive. Same reason you don't pay for options on your car you won't expect to need....like buying a 4x4 package if you only stay in the city. Same reason a house in Alaska may not have central AC. I mean, to pay for that level of winterization and the aided maintenance costs of it every day of the year for the next 30, 50, or maybe hundred years and only MAYBE needing it..... I could name so many things that could benefit more from literally 50 years of funding

[@goomgoom5504]

An excellent explanation of the events and causes! As you mentioned the power system is complex and explaining its function is difficult and time consuming.

[@anselrod5699]

An excellent most informative and educational video. Thank you for taking the time to produce it, more than grateful for sharing your knowledge and time. BTW it's a polished presentation that's easily understood. Yes, I subscribed with a thumbs up and most certainly would like to see more videos like it. Again, thank you.

[@macallangiunta9825]

It's so hard to watch traditional tv when you can get info like this online. Thanks Grady!!

[@stochasticsignal1951]

Grady, I've been watching you for years, but I think this is my favorite video you've produced. I really appreciate hearing about this topic from a non-political viewpoint.

[@deyesed]

His viewpoint is purely political in the human sense. He cares about and respects his fellow human enough to give them facts without intent to spin.

[@marmac83]

LOL... It was political. One just has to read between the lines to figure out the politics on display. Subtle, yes. Non-political? Nope.

[@gus473]

@@marmac83 That seems a stretch, so care to elaborate on your opinion....? 🤔

[@5hirtandtieler]

@@marmac83 consider that you weren’t “reading between the lines” but rather watching this video from [what I can only imagine] your highly charged politicized viewpoint. Our brains will see things a certain way if primed and expecting it - call it a “filter”, if you will. It’s like seeing faces on the moon: there’s not actually a face, it just looks like that because our brains are wired to look for anything face-like.

[@brad5938]

The failure was political but also went far beyond it in exposing another more sinister level of corruption that's been ripping us Texans off for decades. Grady only very briefly touched on the true cause of the issue: The Capacity Model vs The Energy Model. We used to have the Capacity model, where generators who were not running at full capacity still got a small reimbursement to help pay the bills between times where that capacity was needed because maintaining power plants ain't cheap. The wrong people got their hands into the Public Utilities Commission and their child ERCOT, got rid of the Capacity Model and instituted the Energy Model. This effectively subsidized wind generation and penalized thermal generation for two decades. ERCOT is non-profit but the people who make it up are very much for-profit. Foreign investment, especially from China, built wind farms all over the high plains to cash in while thermal stations got hit from every side by the EPA, ERCOT making them throttle down so wind farms could sell all their power first, and increasing fuel costs. In reality, every megawatt of wind power should be backed by a megawatt of thermal, and in the Capacity Model it was. That's no longer the case. We went from 6% to 28% wind and lost thermal capacity in the same time frame. It's a recipe for a disaster that finally hit and it again looks like the culprits are going to get away with it.

[@JamesHalfHorse]

I really wish I had found this video sooner as there were many debates on the topic. I also appreciate the comments from experts. My hat is off to everyone that keeps something so complex online.

[@peterlafrance2307]

Very difficult topic, as good a job explaining the problem as possible

[@dyadica7151]

Dispassionate, objective analysis of the factual nature of current events is sorely lacking in today's discourse. Thank you.

[@jaakkopontinen]

Hear hear

[@Darren51283]

Exactly. If CNN were to do an in depth study, there is no doubt in my mind that they would lay 100% of the blame at Trump's feet. It truly is a sickness - T.D.S.

[@laurencefraser]

@@Darren51283 meanwhile Fox doing the same would probably try to blame it on Obama somehow (well, they might have got around to blaming Biden instead by now). Dyadica's point is well made, and you're only serving to provide an example of the partisan bias that drives the problem.

[@Darren51283]

@@laurencefraser Whatever, but the difference between Fox and CNN is that Fox tries to get the truth out whereas CNN is nothing but absolute 100% B.S., 100% of the time.

[@jwdernehl]

And both of you are the problem for politicizing this.

[@saucefather7252]

i’m absolutely blown away by how concise, orderly, and expertly this video was put together. The quality of presentation of information is something not found often on youtube and I commend your contribution

[@purelogic3595]

But the more important thing is this: Did it get the point across? After spending nearly 17 minutes listening to this guy, can you summarize what specifically makes power grids in colder climates more resilient than the ones in Texas?

[@efulmer8675]

@@purelogic3595 That was not a topic covered in the video, so that's a straw man argument to ask for exactly that.

[@purelogic3595]

@@efulmer8675 Okay, so tell me what you did learn from this video. Nothing?

[@efulmer8675]

@@purelogic3595 No, it wasn't nothing. I learned about the makeup of the Texas power grid, the geographical distribution of the grid, the frequency tolerances of the grid, the timeline of events during the power outage, and that going into the comment section was a really bad idea.

[@notoriouskelly]

Wow - just excellent! Thank you so much for your detailed yet simple explanation of this complex concept. Best I've seen!

[@demguiz944]

Thank you. I really appreciate the thorough explanation of this very complex event.

[@MrLanceDBrown]

This is why KZbin is better than TV. Insightful and concise. No fluff or dumping down. Great work. Thanks

[@itstysonpham]

At least TV don’t have nickocado

[@jaredreid2661]

well this was kinda the result of youtube. People turned off the cable networks so they had to create more clickbait news casts that reacted faster then youtuber could get their content out. Cause of that less experts were consulted unless they favored a extreme view. Even youtube has extreme right or left publications but its definitely easier to find someone to simply inform you on a subject with caveats in their knowledge gaps in the topic/situation.

[@Openyoureyestothelies]

The news should just shut down completely and have this guy do all of the nightly news! Great job! Can you explain the plandemic in detail? Just kidding. Lol 😂

[@Wolfspaule]

It is dumped down, not much, but it is.

[@purelogic3595]

Was it insightful? So after spending nearly 17 minutes listening to this guy, can you summarize what specifically makes power grids in colder climates more resilient than the ones in Texas? Can you even name a single factor?

[@scottnyc6572]

Let’s not forget the untold amount of water damage when most residents plumbing froze while still in the on position.

[@arnoldromppai5395]

that is the fault of the people not knowing what and when to do some thing.. even if the in ground valves were froze heat them up turn them off put insulation in the box

[@GrizleTheStick]

yeah ive been out of my apartment for over a month now because of water damage lol

[@stevepittman3770]

We had a pipe burst in the garage after the second day of outages and the plumber we called said they had about 500 calls ahead of us. It took almost a week to get water again, and we had kept the faucets on and cabinet doors open as was suggested.

[@arnoldromppai5395]

@@stevepittman3770 that is why every home wner need to know how to fix a small problem,, have pex pipe, on hand a torch some 1/2" copper to pex fitting solider and past an a $30 crimp tool water line repairs are so simple, with just a hand full of tools and parts. any one can do it, if you set your mind to it, there no excuse with all the videos on here.. lean the basic things in life, the next one you may not live to tell. there will be worse a head. a back up wood or pellet stove and a stock of pellets or wood on hand, sure you may never need it but again on a cool night nothing bats sitting in front of a fire and when shit happens again and it will you will stand a better chance servicing.. all you water lines are in a dumb place up in the attic, there the 1st to freeze if they are copper or pvc they will brake, pex can freeze and never brake, you dont see us here in the north with any water lines up there or in any out side walls

[@arnoldromppai5395]

main135s i dont know were your comment went ,, got your notice but it not here, but you are right, people need to learn the basics to live though, know mater what they are use to. the world been in its normal change for some time, and this will happen again next year again,,

[@joki9121]

I would love an update to your thoughts and how things went down on this. How things changed or didn't for this past winter and what was done about the crisis.

[@DadgeCity]

This is great. My dad was a power engineer, which has made me at least a little aware of a subject that is so important but which we aren't told much about.

[@tehbest]

I've never seen anyone mention the impacts of changing frequency on grids, only ever the voltage change. Thanks for including this, it's such an interesting thought.

[@elhartzer1639]

Talking about grid stability, my profs always explained that voltage stability really isnt a problem, but frequency on the other hand could become dangerous

[@marshallc6215]

@@elhartzer1639 both can become critical. Look up the NERC term Interconnection Reliability Operating Limits (IROLs) and keep in mind the context that voltage stability limits and other System Operating Limits (SOLs) can be elevated to IROL status. All frequency issues are inherently system-wide due to the synchronism of the system, but only some voltage stability issues are system-wide, depending on their severity and impact on surrounding transmission facilities.

[@whuzzzup]

In Germany we had large-ish (meaning like 0,x Hz) deviations in frequency some years ago that were visible for lots of people. It's because a lot of clocks in the public (bus stations for example) run on the grid frequency. So when the frequency changes slightly and stays for example below 50 Hz for a longer time, all those clocks will deviate several minutes(!) from the real time.

[@marshallc6215]

@@whuzzzup that's a concept called Time Error. Most clocks don't use the mains frequency to drive their clocks (edit: anymore), instead using crystals to generate known frequencies, but yeah time error is still tracked for that reason, and if it's too bad then a Time Error Correction (at least that's the NERC term) will be instituted.

[@elhartzer1639]

@@marshallc6215 yeah, you're totally right. I thought about it and voltage and frequency depend on each other of course. Still, huge frequency changes can damage or destroy all sorts of turbines connected to generators as they are build very precisely.

[@Mr152008]

11:30 - "Four minutes & thirty seven seconds is all that separated Texas from a complete grid collapse."

[@richardvargas9886]

159 likes and no comments...

[@samthegreatestpickle1632]

Would you even consider it... a chilling thought?

[@JoelJames2]

@@samthegreatestpickle1632 Take my upvote and get out

[@gabrielle287]

thank you for explaining what happened, you did a better job of it than anyone else I've heard talking about it. I remember getting outages once every few hours, then one night it turned off and stayed off for days. my family got lucky, because my dad lived 10 minutes away, right behind a hospital. we got lucky and got to stay warm the whole time. thanks again for making it make sense:)

[@mrackerm5879]

Great content. More videos along these lines (power grid topics) would be eagerly watched.

[@CalvinoBear]

As a fellow resident up in Dallas who lost power, it can't be overstated just how poorly our homes are equipped for such an event. We live in a pier and beam house with almost no insulation from the cold. It was 34F in our house within 8 hours of the outage. We escaped to a friend's house with power but I am certain it was freezing inside soon after. Our house, along with many others, doesn't have a fireplace either so there is no way to warm up other than stay in bed under reams of blankets. Many people's pipes burst because they are not required to be insulated from the cold and are run in quite a shallow way, which caused billions of dollars of damage to the state. It was truly a catastrophe.

[@RyanTosh]

Lots of schools around where I live (near Austin) got damaged too, not fun :/

[@tysleight]

Think of how much energy you dump during a cooling season. Cold just bites the bones so it catches our attention. Ps I live in a 110 year old house and I was shocked at what air sealing and insulation did for my power bill.

[@danieljensen2626]

@@tysleight Lots of people rent and insulating the place isn't their choice though.

[@porcorosso4330]

There are heating oil based heaters. Of course, being texas, you don't see the cold as much. Thus the lack of insulation and lack of backup/secondary/alternative heating solutions

[@katwebster1986]

@@porcorosso4330 I'm curious as to why southern homes aren't insulated? Insulation can regulate both cold and heat

[@Kenwei02]

Houston here, and I just finished telling my gf how awesome it was that this topic was covered by practical engineering, the first current event at that, because of how well such complex information is delivered to a perhaps non-technical audience. -Grateful

[@gus473]

Yes, a really understandable explanation on the power grid side! Now we need one for the financial (and political?) effects, once they are played out! That's going to be a while!

[@williamthomas3620]

Well done. Thanks for the effort it took to research and produce this video.

[@safesanesuccessful]

An excellent presentation on an extremely complicated topic. You successfully presented it in a understandable manner that all can comprehend. Thanks for sharing your expertise.

[@charliebrownbrown4444]

I think you touched on what could be an amazing feat of engineering to go into detail about, a Black Start of the power grid.

[@TenTries]

I watched a real-time simulation of one done by real operators. The simulation is a large, coordinated event for operators in the whole power pool. It's certainly an event we never want to happen, but could definitely make for a cool video!

[@skyhappy]

@@TenTries Where and when was this

[@TenTries]

@@skyhappy At the utility I worked for and it was a few years ago. It's an annual exercise that I got to sit in on one day (out of the two). I was designing some systems to protect from a system-wide blackout around that time. So, seeing the restoration process was eye-opening.

[@MrNeptunebob]

Has a black start ever happened? Maybe only in a local area.

[@waggtech8793]

The power company in my area had the equipment for a black start. Since merging with another entity they removed it and four powerhouse facilities in support of the green energy initiative. The core of the single plant black start capability was a single locomotive engine type genset that would have spun up gas turbines and starting energy for the steam turbines. (Edit: most of our state operates as a monopoly and had the capability to isolate from the grid originally but that is no longer possible...)

[@MasterArkannor]

0:49 "...I'm talking about a current event" I see what you did there

[@paddington1670]

oh damn im dumb.

[@curiouslamp2841]

Oh no

[@NeoMorphUK]

As long as he reduces the frequency that he does though... but hold on... reducing the frequency is bad too. Damn it!

[@BigBoy4005]

@@paddington1670 Yeah, my brain STILL hertz...

[@xZeroGrxvity]

fml didn't caught it either my brain has too high latency...

[@mrhadley8197]

Excellent straight-forward summary. You acknowledge that you are not an economist but that explanation of the market and the insane cost spikes was nicely done and filled in a gap in my understanding of the event. Keep up the good work.

[@camf7493]

Thanks for the very informative video on the operation of the electrical grid. I can appreciate that it is complex beyond the understanding of the average consumer, so this is a very welcome summary.

[@SeraphimKnight]

It's always astounding to me how a few hundred kilometers of latitude can change the exact same weather from "fairly mild seasonal weather" to "historic catastrophe".

[@CptJistuce]

Absolutely. As a texan, I make an effort not to laugh when I hear one of the more northerly states is in the grip of a devastating heat wave that would constitute an unusually cool summer here. I am disappointed that it seems to be a one-way street.

[@Rafael_Fuchs]

@@CptJistuce The interesting thing about those devastating heat waves from a residential perspective up here in the north is that our homes are properly weatherized. We just lack a cooling method that is cost efficient in most cases. Homes have gas heating, not heat pumps. So, there's no central cooling in the summer.

[@SeraphimKnight]

I'm not sure how you think I'm making fun of this? Just pointing out how strange it is that a single country can have vastly different weather conditions.

[@alpheusmadsen8485]

@@CptJistuce As someone who lives in Utah, I used to think it funny that a half-inch of snow was enough to close down the South -- but it wasn't until I spend several years in New York State, and saw the kinds of effort that *they* had to put into snow removal (that dwarfs anything Utah can do), that it sunk in that different environs/regions have different norms they have to deal with, and going out of those norms is going to be hard, because leaving those norms is so rare.

[@hailexiao2770]

@@Rafael_Fuchs I live in New England, and the biggest issue is unshaded west- and south-facing windows with no low-e coatings, partially due to cost cutting by builders and partially due to old-fashioned carelessness about unwanted solar heat. Plus brain-dead mid-20th century owners painting window frames shut. Even without AC, old houses that have properly shaded and operable windows are okay to live in during the summer.

[@azuriteknight2484]

Glad to have someone who was able to take a non-biased look at the facts of what happened and explain them thoroughly. I'm a Texan engineer myself and had understood some of the issues beforehand but this video really cleared things up. Really appreciate the post.

[@DSiren]

The scary thing about this is that this is what an essentially random event can do to our grid. A coordinated attack on any key piece of infrastructure at this time would have been devastating. Tens of thousands would have surely died. It reminds me of something I saw ex special forces comment on: it would only take 12 special forces members to leave more than 90% of the US without power indefinitely. Modern society is extremely fragile.

[@Quantum-Bullet]

DSiren Sirenite well good that Texas has an independent grid!!

[@bobbyt9431]

Too bad it was a half truth lie. www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46836 There's the actual data.

[@efulmer8675]

@@Quantum-Bullet Texas' grid being independent is part of what led to this issue in the first place. If it were connected to the Eastern or Western grids, power could have been pulled from them to make up shortfall. 'Unfortunately' for Texas, that would mean the Texas section would be subject to Federal regulations as well.

[@clarkmiller9511]

Really appreciate you, Grady. Keep 'em coming.

[@henrythompson7595]

As usual, your presentation was spot on. I enjoy every one of your presentations, well done sir.

[@timderks5960]

The headers containing "Generation capacity out" really threw me for a loop. I thought it meant how much outgoing capacity was available (which is weird, since ingoing capacity isn't really a thing, but I didn't think much of it). It took me way too long to understand that those graphs show how much production capacity is unavailable at that moment, or at least I think that is what it means. As a non-native English speaker, something as simple as those headers really confused me for a moment.

[@whuzzzup]

Yeah, the graphs were bad.

[@michaelwarren2391]

Maybe it should have said unavailable instead of out.

[@MikeV8652]

As a native English speaker in Texas, I though the same thing when I read "generation capacity out," but I quickly realized that it meant outage, not outgoing.

[@SuperSMT]

@@whuzzzup Not bad, just not fully explained. That was really the one downfall of this video

[@waffle_bars]

I agree. I think having “less electricity=higher line” is just hard to interpret. A properly framed graph of the drop in total grid capacity would have achieved the same effect while being easier to read, in my opinion.

[@hans3331000]

Nuclear engineering student here: This ended up being a big midterm question on nuclear plant safety design

[@Redmanticore]

was there a question of why or was it just what happened?

[@fasddfadfgasdgs]

was there a way to protect the water from freezing?

[@davidwright7193]

@@Redmanticore presumably how do you protect the reactor (particularly the coolant pumps) if this kind of loss of power and/or water happens. i.e what back up systems are needed, how do you shed heat without water to the heat exchangers etc, etc, etc...

[@hans3331000]

@@Redmanticore Small part of it, but it heavily focused on licensing and regulations. And what differs form the canadian system and how this would literally never happen anywhere else because the texas grid is ran by agencies that don't see the value in investing in infrastructure as much as immediate costs. They knew about this and we were asked about safety margins and how cold is too cold basically, and what is the baseline.

[@hans3331000]

@@morscovium8881 and no one asked you for your comment either buddy, don't need you to tell me what I can and can't do lol

[@rbmcculloch]

Outstanding dissertation Grady. Thank you.

[@Titan500J]

As always your videos are wonderfully informative. I have been preparing as best I can for a failure of this magnitude for a while. In 1994 I experienced the 6.7 earthquake in southern California. I was surprised to find out that because of that quake they lost electrical power as far north as Canada and east to Wyoming. We could be more vulnerable than we think. Again thank you for this video. Best to you

[@justjon_6844]

I agree. My family survived that earthquake and then we lived through the winter storm. Crazy how vulnerable we are to natural disasters

[@clemensdautermann6880]

I find it incredible how objectively you describe these topics. Only facts, no opinions or unproven nonsense. That's really cool, keep it up!

[@ihdieselman]

Given his job I think that it is the prudent thing for him to do. If he goes around spouting off opinions it wouldn't take long before somebody would take notice and he would have a difficult time getting a job on an engineering project if he was stepping on people's toes. This is a calculation of risk.

[@ADAMJWAITE]

The sad thing is, this is what news reporting USED to be. In journalism ethics they once taught that if a journalist did their job correctly, at the end of the story the viewer would not know where the journalist's position lied. Doesn't appear to be the case any longer.

[@clemensdautermann6880]

@@ADAMJWAITE I am not from the states, so I don't really know anything about the US news, but at least over here it's pretty well distributed. There are really good and really bad journalists.

[@clemensdautermann6880]

@@ihdieselman Yes you are of course correct. But what I find especially amazing is how he manages to be so nice and personal and not distanced and cold at all, at the same time.

[@boozecruiser]

@@ADAMJWAITE When was this the case? Can you point to a date when this changed? Any examples of people you can provide?

[@joshuacorreia5600]

Sitting here in South Africa: “Ah load shedding, first time.”

[@moimeself1088]

Right? 😅😅😅🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦 Welcome to our world. They are worried about 1 week, try 13 years!!

[@jacketylon]

My bru 🤣

[@santiagogranados2243]

People from Texas like myself weren't built for this. Texas wasn't built for this literally. We aren't accustomed to cold weather like this. So therefore we weren't prepared for it. Otherwise if we were built like south Africa or any other area used to this weather. We would be ready a week or 13years like you are.

[@kurttruk2]

@@santiagogranados2243 The thing is that Texas has a highly unregulated power grid. So while the industry standards are that critical infrastruture should be winterised, and the industry had been forewarned that it was at risk, Suppliers in Texas were able to cost the cost of preparation as 'optional'. Ask yourself: Why is it that wind turbines in New England can continue opperating in colder weather while Texas wind got shut down? Because suppliers were ALLOWED to buy the cheaper solutions. Why were so many power sources vulnerable to being shut down when water froze? Because they were ALLOWED to avoid investing in insulation and heaters, something every other location in the country has as standard. So yes. Texas wasn't built for this. But that's because Texas CHOSE not to built for it, even though they had been warned that they needed to.

[@stevelacker358]

@@kurttruk2 it’s partly choice, but it’s also largely practical. Truly preparing every aspect of the energy system in Texas (gas, wind, coal, cooling pumps at a gulf coast nuclear installation, etc.) to survive 500-year extreme class temperature event with 100% reliability simply doesn’t make economic sense. Millions of dollars would be spent on features that might never get used over the lifespan of the installed equipment. It would be like sizing every air conditioning chiller in North Dakota so that it could handle a week of Houston heat and humidity. Or sizing the street drainage plumbing in San Diego so that it could handle a New Orleans tropical storm rainfall rate. Or sizing the cooling system on a 4-cylinder bone stock Toyota so that it could actually run 500 miles wide open at Talledega in July without blowing a head gasket. YES, corners were cut and shouldn’t have been, but a perfect state of readiness is not realistic either. There’s a middle ground with sufficient (but not perfect) reliability, at a reasonable expense to consumers and taxpayers.

[@joshuabreeding4991]

I'm a fairly new subscriber to your channel, and really appreciate you going over this. I knew the basics of the story, but never anymore. My family was fortunate to be living in El Paso, Texas at the time which is not on ERCOT's system. EPE had already winterized their system and was able to maintain demand during the event. So many news outlets blamed ERCOT outright, and maybe they are to blame, idk...but the EPE grid suffered from the same thing a few years before. In Texas it just didn't make sense for the power industry to winterize. Anyways, thank you again for this. I learned a lot, which is why I appreciate your videos so much.

[@dwdavis5977]

Thank you for doing this. It was very helpful.

[@bob2161]

Grady, what an orderly job of explaining the chaos of the situation. It is an ability that far too few professional "Talking Heads" possess, or even understand. Thank you for spending the time and effort to demystify this unprecedented crisis. Even though this event placed a hardship, directly on you and your family, the objective manner in which you made this presentation, is a demonstration of absolute professionalism. I admire and salute your ability and resolve. I hope that you and your family are able to quickly recover from this, and that any continuing consequences can be minimized.

[@bob2161]

@The Puppymaster Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons, Packed up and ready to go Heard of some grave sites, out by the highway, A place where nobody knows . . . .

[@4n2earth22]

Grady, you hit a home run, all bases loaded with this video. KZbin should give you an award for it, for many reasons. You presented a video rich in information, your style gave the audience a chance to see "behind the curtain" at a very complex system in a way that was very considerate of the hardships endured by many. Thank you very much for all your hard work, style, research, editing, and presentation. God Bless you and yours and all the people impacted by this event.

[@autohmae]

", all bases loaded" that almost sounds like a "base load" pun. :-)

[@_RiseAgainst]

Nope it was the democrats!

[@Keimizimop]

Hello can you please provide a link of the sources that you cited to know how many gas plants went out during the freeze. My teacher was blaming the renewable energies for the power outage and I would love to prove him wrong. Thank you

[@jdillon8360]

Thanks for a clear and calm analysis. Hopefully steps can be taken to prevent something similar happening again in the future.

[@randomations11]

I think I speak for almost everyone watching this, but I really appreciate your work. You know what you're talking about, and you're just presenting the facts. I didn't even realize you live in Texas until the end of the video, that must have been scary to go through. I'm up North, so I'm used to weather like this, but the power grid is prepared for it. My heart goes out to anyone who lost someone, or frankly anyone involved in this tragic event.

[@miniena7774]

Stop cheerleading.

[@user-hd4wf5gq8r]

If I’m honest I live in Texas and I had fun during that whole thing. But while I was having fun people died, and our lowlife ugly bastard politicians could give less of a fuck.

[@michlgilbertclements6178]

The same thing happens when there is a heatwave up north.

[@Sinyao]

@@michlgilbertclements6178 Not in Canada. Our outages only come from intense windstorms due to climate change, but we're already adapting to those. It used to be a week long blackout but now it's 12 hours at worst.

[@bryansmith1920]

Maybe the American way of just do it cheap IS BROKE

[@mattbowdenuh]

After the first night without power, I drove from San Antonio to Oklahoma, which is out of the grid. Spent 4 days in a hotel with power, heat, and internet.

[@beitie]

Were you able to avoid water damage? I live in MN, and the construction methodology of homes in TX is interesting to me.

[@adambahe9309]

The first night of the storm, I sat in my home with power, heat, and internet. Because we here in the north know how to manage a few inches of snow and cold.

[@adamsfusion]

Hope you enjoyed it here, and I hope we were hospitable hosts. We had our own outage issues, but we came out relatively unscathed fortunately. We were in Phase 3 "we're about to go offline any second" territory for several days, but it never seemed to hit a point where we needed long-term shed-offs.

[@miniena7774]

Boohoo. I went a month without either after Sandy.

[@mojitojones2592]

Watching this video for the third time. As someone just entering the power systems industry, this incident is so interesting to learn about. Do you have any plans to make an update video as more details have come out?

[@EveGantian]

Very informative, as ever. Concise, factual, unbiased and a very interesting summary. Thank you and keep doin' it :)

[@idontneedthis66]

THANK YOU! Finally, a non-politicized breakdown of what actually happened. Doing the work that journalists SHOULD have done.

[@Yipyo1986]

amazing huh

[@maddeusdoggeus1]

It’s the Journalist JOB to report what the Governor and other Government leaders DO and SAY about the situation. In fact It would Be dereliction of their duty if they didn’t it. You’re placing the blame on the wrong people. Reaching for that Low Hanging Fruit of “it’s all the Media’s fault” says more about you than the subject at hand😉👍

[@idontneedthis66]

@@maddeusdoggeus1 Uh no Devil Dog (Thank you for your service) they're not just supposedly to BLINDLY report whatever politicians say and leave it at that. Yes ofc they need to report what all has been said, but they are also supposed to DIG IN and find out the truth of what ACTUALLY happened so they can call out said public officials appropriately. Not spin a narrative that it was all O&G's fault (Left mainstream news) or renewables (Right leaning, mainly fox news).

[@maddeusdoggeus1]

@@idontneedthis66 First thing Said..... Was the Texas Governor coming out blaming renewables... The “Leftist” Media of course fact checked what he said and what FOX “News” was tryin to run with. So if Fact checking the BS they where pushing from literally Day One isn’t doing their jobs I Don’t know what is. This “Shoot the Messenger/Blame the Messenger” game that FOX has played for So Long to Gain Market Share and that the Pathological Lying Narcissistic Draft Dodging shitbag Trump took to a whole New level is A Poison that rots our Democracy.

[@MrTigerpirro]

I think these last two years really have shown us the importance of cooperation and how much we really depend on each other. Life is chaos, be kinds to each other.

[@tomstdenis]

and stop voting for GOP.

[@MrTigerpirro]

@@tomstdenis I'm not an American but from what I can see is that the major difference between Democrats and Republicans in US is mostly symbolic. They both seem utterly beholden to their corporate sponsors. The GOP a bit more so but to me the problems run much deeper than one party. I do hope for the future of the US, though. I'm really hoping future generations will clean up the mess. Have a nice day, and thank you for your comment.

[@user-sj1tx5uy8f]

@@MrTigerpirro Thanks for that balanced reply. I think too many people in America feel they have the answer to these political questions without really understanding what we're actually signing up for. We get too stuck up our own asses to understand we need to focus on working together as citizens to speak with our government (no matter the side in charge) about what we might need and find compromises and real solutions therein.

[@marmac83]

@@user-sj1tx5uy8f "Balanced"... such an American response. No, the problem runs much deeper than one party, but this isn't a case of "they're both just as bad as each other. You totally missed the mark.

[@mikiaization]

@@MrTigerpirro both "parties" are actually businesses and the corruption runs deep in both. i implore everyone to be more engaged in local elections and realize that the best way to fix your party of choice is to be active in primaries.

[@amberkat8147]

My state's north of Texas. During this there was some announcement asking residents to turn the heat down a few degrees if possible, so I turned mine down to 60 degrees F. I'm not sure if it helped or not, but I figured we'd have a better chance of coming out okay if everyone who could turned their temp down 5 degrees. (Yes, my winter normal is 65 degrees. I'm not supposed to turn the heat below 60 to prevent pipe freezing.)

[@richardlocke3375]

Phase balance was also erratic, wrecking havoc on three phase motors. Our area blew out all pumping stations for domestic water. Our hospital had protection in place and we were able to protect our pumps but full city water wasn’t restored for 10 days.