In case you forgot, ERCOT (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas), runs the electricity system here and they suck. Back in February of last year, this became evident when they broke Texas. It was super cold, but the grid should be able to handle that for a few days. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power, some for several days. At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly, with some estimates as high as 702. That’s a lot of deaths.
On Friday, ERCOT issued a statement saying “With unseasonably hot weather driving record demand across Texas, ERCOT continues to work closely with the power industry to make sure Texans have the power they need.”
Friday afternoon, the power plants that went offline resulted in the loss of 2,900 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 580,000 homes. That’s a lot of freaking people. And it’s freaking hot.
“We’re asking Texans to conserve power when they can by setting their thermostats to 78-degrees or above and avoiding the usage of large appliances (such as dishwashers, washers and dryers) during peak hours between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. through the weekend,” the release said.
Bitch please. 78°? I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon at 5:30 pm. It is 92° outside and my thermostat is set to 72° because we pay the bill and a council that doesn’t care about its citizens and obviously hasn’t done the job of strengthening the grid (like they said they would) doesn’t get to tell me what to do. We had record temperatures last week and it’s only May. W
hat’s going to happen in August. People are going to die from not being able to cool their homes in the heat. The elderly are especially vulnerable in the heat. Every year there are fan drives for the elderly. Fan drives! But the EPA estimate that more than 1,300 deaths per year in the United States are due to extreme heat. People shouldn’t be dying in hot homes. Btw, Texas leads the nation in deaths of children left in hot cars.
But this is a pro-life state.
kerryfaler.blog 