By Paul Homewood
Most people probably don’t realise just how close Texas came to disaster this week. According to ERCOT officials:
The grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic, uncontrolled failure that could have left residents without power for months.
“It needed to be addressed immediately,” Bill Magness, president of ERCOT, said of the rolling blackouts that have lasted days rather than hours. “It was seconds and minutes [from possible failure] given the amount of generation that was coming off the system.”
He added if ERCOT had waited to cut the power “then what happens in that next minute might be that three more [power generation] units come offline, and then you’re sunk..
If the grid had completely gone down it could have taken months to repair.
We are not tgalking about a few temporary blackouts, as James Burke warned us back in the 1960s:
And, of course, things would be far worse now with society’s reliance on computers.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson described wind turbines as “silly fashion accessories”, which sums them up perfectly.
Back in the 60s, James Burke realised the utmost importance of building a foolproof grid. Sadly our leaders and bureaucrats have now lost sight of that. And the public, comfortable in the midst of all the things technology now brings them, have no idea of the perils that await.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
February 20, 2021 at 05:45AM
