this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Comical that people think when storms or physical damage happens that a power co can magically still provide power. When your infrastructure is damaged, power goes byebye, period the end, being regulated or grid connected makes zero difference once that happens. Just a talking point for people that don't understand power distribution and want more government control over everything. My state deregulated power a very long time ago, and it's saved us a ton of money and gives us choices we wouldnt have before. It in no way changes reliability during storm damage.
Wow. You can’t be as dumb as you sound. I hope not at least
Oh no? Feel free to actually dispute what I said then, how long have you worked in the power industry other than not a day in your life.
Please elaborate on how a powerco can provide power during a storm when the infrastructure is destroyed. You've clearly figured out the missing key nobody else has in the history of power delivery has.
Do you even understand the difference between regulated and deregulated power? Clearly you don't, but I'd love to hear your ridiculous version of what you think that means.
Why don’t we just call you the fucking energizer bunny. You’re talking in circles.
The company chose not to prepare their infrastructure for cold weather. And they still haven’t done so even after the 2021 disaster.
You don’t have to be an electrical engineer to see that the reason this happened is corporate greed, literally putting profits over people’s lives.
That's a preventive maintenance issue, and has absolutely nothing to do with it being a de-regulated energy market, which is what the article specifically states is the reason.
Actually genius, profits and corporate greed would keep the system running to keep racking up those kilowatt hours, not letting it fail and losing out on the profits. Do you think before you speak? That's ignoring that even in a regulated system, profit is still very much part of the equation, so fail again.
The goal is to prevent destruction and focus on replacements. Just accepting that shit is broken is dumb as fuck and shows literally no initiative or idea how things work.
Snow breaking the lines? Reinforce them with sturdier gauges. Poles getting downed? Guy wires, better poles, move the wires underground.
There are literally dozens of solutions that you have no fucken idea could be implemented. How long have you worked in power? Are you a lineman? Cause you must be the worst, dumbest mother fucker to work with power and not kill yourself.
Yes, I was a lineman, and feel free to quote where I said that PM shouldn't be done... I'll save you the time, I never said that. The article blames it being a derogated market as the issue, and that has nothing to do with, and if you ever worked in power you'd know that. Buying power on paper from somebody that's not the local utility has 0 to do with the local utility doing their job or not.
Fwiw (I live in Illinois) over the years our system was updated with materials and redundancies to counter loss of service during storms. There's been a number of times over the last few years that a bad storm hits and does damage that previously would have created a loss of power, but you can watch the power flicker for a few seconds while the system tests alternate routes that are able to continue to provide service to the most residents. There was a time that power outages were expected a few times a year during bad storms, but I can't recall the last time we had a weather related outage of more than a few minutes.
Obviously local to the damage there nothing to do but wait for the infrastructure to be repaired, but that happens far faster when there's redundancies supplying the majority and fewer repairs that need to be addressed.