Posted on 02/03/2023 3:25:49 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Widespread power outages in the Texas capital stretched into a third day Friday for thousands of residents following a winter storm that was spiraling into a management crisis as city leaders remained unable to say when all the lights would come back on.
Impatience among frazzled, freezing and fed-up families in Austin escalated even as milder weather returned. On Friday, the newly elected mayor stood before cameras and apologized after a week of slow repairs, failed technology and lacking communication with the public.
“The city let its citizens down. The situation is unacceptable to the community, and it’s unacceptable to me,” said Mayor Kirk Watson, a Democrat who took office in January. “And I’m sorry.”
While New England began shivering and closed schools under an Arctic blast expected to bring the coldest weather in a generation, temperatures finally started to moderate Friday and bring some relief to Austin, where at any given time about 30% of customers in the nation’s 11th-largest city have been without electricity since the ice storm swept into Texas late Monday.
But frustration was not melting away for residents who still had no assurances or sense of when their power would return.
“I just honestly think they were not prepared for any of this,” said Edward Kim, 43, whose home had been without power or heat since Wednesday. He was using a generator to keep his house “on life support,” while his wife took her 7-year-old daughter to her office to get a shower.
Steve Spencer, 63, had also been without power since Wednesday — despite the city’s utility calling him twice to tell him his power was on, he said. “I don’t know what’s going on down there,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
What is the power generation mix there?
Which failed?
FANTASTIC!!
I’ll bet 75% of the Austin population are totally dug into climate change and green energy.
Enjoy!!
I’m surprised they haven’t blamed Trump
“Widespread power outages in the Texas capital stretched into a third day Friday for thousands of residents following a winter storm that was spiraling into a management crisis as city leaders remained unable to say when all the lights would come back on. Impatience among frazzled, freezing and fed-up families in Austin escalated”
good thing austin isn’t all-electric ... yet ...
otherwise, there’d be no transportation, no emergency services, no food transportation, no potable water, no heat, no hospital services, no lighting, no traffic signals, no nothing basically ...
more like 90. They get what they wanted.
Austin has a council–manager form of government which means day-to-day operations of the city are run by the city manager. The mayor is the head of city government ceremonially.
They could build another solar farm and erect more windmills. No need to build more power plants
I generally like and respect Texans,
but screw Austin and the mayor.
Plenty of generation the problem is the local distribution system, which appears to be primarily overhead. Short of putting every last inch of the distribution system underground this kind of problem is inevitable during an ice storm or widespread high wind event. Normally if this was a situation where the outages were relatively isolated the local utility would be able to call in mutual aid crews from surrounding systems. However in this case everyone else in the area was probably experiencing the same problem and probably couldn’t spare any crews or materials. Crew fatigue also becomes an issue. By law crews are only allowed to work a maximum of 16 straight hours before they have to lay off for 8. I’d say given the apparent widespread damamage those folks should consider themselves lucky if they’ve only been out for 3 days.
Austin is the San fran freakshow of Texas. Keep voting demonrat morons, and get some more blankets.
Let me guess.
Austin is run by democrats.
Right?
Gee
it was a severe ice storm BUT the austin electric company had put off trimming tree limbs that were close to power lines. Oncor in Dallas was sometimes brutal in cutting tree limbs.
But power outages herein Dallas were kept to a minimum.
NO power outage is exceptable but Oncor’s brutal limb cutting over past year paid off.
Back in Silicon Valley, this would have taken half a day or more to get fixed. Here, power was restored in 75 minutes. In the middle of this week's ice storm. I have no complaints.
“BUT the austin electric company had put off trimming tree limbs”
It is worse than that, City Council made them stop trimming trees because libs love trees.
One of the lines coming to our house from the road broke and fell onto our roof only from the weight of the ice buildup. No limbs fell on it.
The worker from the electric company told us this morning that the damage from this storm is much worse than the storm two years ago.
Thanks I did not know that.
Not surprised.
Yep!
Almost like this never, historically, happened before. 🌡
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