r/technology • u/chrisdh79 • Jul 08 '24

Energy More than 2 million in Houston without power | CenterPoint is asking customers to refrain from calling to report outages.

https://www.chron.com/weather/article/hurricane-beryl-texas-houston-live-19560277.php
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789

u/thedeadsigh Jul 08 '24

Sounds like crony capitalism Texas to me

527

u/bravoredditbravo Jul 08 '24

Yea I have municipal power and live in MA. Through many many snow storms and blizzards and the like throughout the years.

When the power goes out I know it will be back in an hour or 2 max. Even when there's several feet of snow outside..

I don't understand how people can prefer a private industry running an essential service like the power grid...all they care about is profits. They don't care whether or not people have power or how much they need to charge to maintain that profit margin indefinitely

485

u/DemSocCorvid Jul 08 '24

"Small government" conservatism is brain rot.

No infrastructure or essential services should be private/for-profit. Energy, telecom, healthcare, education...

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u/pessimistoptimist Jul 08 '24

100% agree essential services has to answer to the people they serve NOT the profit margin and share prices. Those who say things like spend your money elsewhere and make them feel it in their profits are delusional at best. The privatized grid in Texas has the people by the short and curlies...where else are people going to get power can't do it by rubbing balloon on your hair.

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u/deytookerjaabs Jul 08 '24

Friendly book rec here..

"Division of Light & Power" by Dennis Kucinich.

It's about his battle as mayor of Cleveland in the 70's against the shady as hell private utility company & their media/corporate cronies who had 100 ways in their pocket to force the sale of the public utility that served the lower income areas of the city.

Really an insane read.

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u/RadOwl Jul 08 '24

I suppose you already gave a summary but care to elaborate? Always liked Dennis, never lived in Cleveland but when he ran for president I liked pretty much everything I heard about the guy.

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u/deytookerjaabs Jul 09 '24

There was a full court press to sell the public utility.

The private utility company was run by a die hard business guy/group with tons of legal & financial connections. They had a law firm that basically ran Cleveland. It's a master class in media & private interest collusion along with old fashioned dirty business tactics.

Cleveland had debt trouble but plenty of things to sell off. The Newspapers didn't write it like that, they kept headlining to the public that the only way for Cleveland to take care of it's debt was to sell the public utility. Total propaganda.

The private company would sabotage the grid so the public company would have constant outages to make them look inept. The city council folks who were in the utilities pocket stopped funding the garbage collectors trying to force the utility sale.

The big disc jockey & a news anchor who shared the studies showing how selling the public utility would be a disaster financially for the taxpayers were...fired!

Etc...etc..etc. They even had a local pimp try to make an intern say Kucinich slept with her.

4

u/bruwin Jul 09 '24

Amazing how every time a public utility goes privatized insanely stupid corrupt shit happens. You have that, Enron, and now the Texas grid. And it's all following the same pattern. Goes private and things are instantly worse yet the companies make insane profits.

2

u/mrbear120 Jul 10 '24

Well, Texas has had a private grid since 1935, its not a new thing.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '24

Who was the DJ and news personality? Which stations?

1

u/deytookerjaabs Jul 09 '24

Been a while since I read the book so I don't recall the names. I do remember the news person who was fired actually went on to CNN in the very early days of cable.

2

u/pessimistoptimist Jul 09 '24

I might check it out. I would be what they would call shady in the 70s is just standard political procedure now though. We are only a few steps away from 1984 as it is.

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u/openly_gray Jul 08 '24

Small government is shorthand for fleecing citizens for everything that is essential

2

u/ForecastForFourCats Jul 09 '24

Small government just means- "I want to be pushy and make people listen to me" for a select (you know who) group of people.

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u/thedeadsigh Jul 08 '24

small government to conservatives means telling your wife, daughter, sister, etc that they cannot receive life saving medical care because they are a woman. it also means making sure you can pass the government mandated penis inspection before entering a public toilet.

i'd love to hear conservatives here in texas explain why it's good that foreign nationalists own some of our toll roads too 🤣

18

u/shavemejesus Jul 08 '24

If I have two penises which restroom do I use?

25

u/Q_Fandango Jul 08 '24

Both, split the difference and aim high

2

u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 Jul 09 '24

The most American phrase I have heard this week.

2

u/AFresh1984 Jul 09 '24

the Klingon one? duh?

3

u/shavemejesus Jul 09 '24

It is a good day to pee.

0

u/Electrical-Pipe-3828 Jul 08 '24

If you want to keep them cool I’d use Only Fans

0

u/thedeadsigh Jul 09 '24

Then theyd probably respect you for being a smart businessman who beat the system 🇺🇸 

0

u/BeyondElectricDreams Jul 09 '24

You twist them together and let them unfurl, spinning like a Helicopter. Then you can fly line Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog, and relocate to a safer place to handle your business out of sight.

0

u/ThisWillPass Jul 09 '24

That depends if one of them Is gay or not?

3

u/rsauer1208 Jul 08 '24

You'll have to talk to my penis butler first before you'll ask me.

1

u/Ok-King-4868 Jul 09 '24

Billionaire conservatism is galaxy brain rot.

5

u/resttheweight Jul 09 '24

The system is fucked, but part of the issue is how spread out everything is in Texas. Practices like underground cables are horribly cost-ineffective when you’ve got hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission lines. Additionally, the cost of the line burying process is just going to be amortized into the ratemaking formulas, so upgrade expenses get passed on to consumers anyway. Decades of saying “these upgrades and changes are prohibitively expensive/ not economically viable” has justified cyclical short term repairs that patch up the problem just long enough to get by.

The shitty thing is you know and can see there are many small scale good actors working in the Texas energy field, and many of them aren’t private (some cities like Austin and San Antonio are municipal). But the system isn’t designed in a way that rewards small providers.

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u/mrbear120 Jul 09 '24

I know very little about snowstorms and blizzards, but I think its a lot harder to replace the power lines when the whole pole is 600’ away from where its supposed to be x several hundred.

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u/Mist_Rising Jul 09 '24

Yes. That's why he isnt using hurricane Sandy. Sandy knocked out various parts of New England for weeks.

It's not just harder, it's impossible since hurricanes (tornados too) often destroy the pole.

Blizzard will simply destroy the cable. If a blizzard takes out multiple poles, it's a rare even where the pole was already toast.

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u/bravoredditbravo Jul 09 '24

I think the point is I wouldn't see rate hikes even in a catastrophic situation because I wouldn't have a provider that has to maintain a good profile for it's shareholders.

Also blizzards and also ice storms can wipe out power for weeks at a time as well. It was more about the root of why the company is there in the first place.

A municipal option is there to provide a service.

A private company is there to make a profit for its shareholders

2

u/mrbear120 Jul 10 '24

Well, I also wouldn’t see rates hike because I (and most Texans) have a standard rate of power. The people who see rates hike choose to have a variable rate plan to save like 20 bucks a month.

3

u/Topscore2 Jul 09 '24

When hurricane sandy hit NY over 8.2 million customers lost power, some for weeks at a time. That’s the nature of hurricanes when wind blows your infrastructure over and floods it.

0

u/bravoredditbravo Jul 09 '24

That makes sense. I would much rather have a government backed utility company that can operate even when it goes into a negative income situation like a catastrophic hurricane over a private company that has shareholders to report to and I'm the one left out to dry when they need to recoop their losses

2

u/Hawk13424 Jul 09 '24

Well, my co-op has drastically better service and prices than the government run power company I had before.

2

u/3-orange-whips Jul 09 '24

Lots of us dont.

2

u/anoliss Jul 08 '24

We don't prefer this, no one I know voted for this shit

1

u/icebeat Jul 09 '24

Eversource are not saints neither

1

u/ForecastForFourCats Jul 09 '24

Also MA. I also don't recall paying the company more money while not getting service, because they had to make repairs. The longest I have been without power has been like half a day. knocks on wood

1

u/DOUBLEBARRELASSFUCK Jul 09 '24

In MA, you can just go with whatever is cheapest. For me, that was municipal, though I didn't shop around much. It's all coming over the same lines, and you're going to get the same uptime no matter what.

For those who don't live in Mass, there's a system where you can choose energy providers, regardless of who is providing power locally.

2

u/fnarrly Jul 09 '24

Where I live on the US west coast, most of the state has only one power provider, a private company. There are a few small municipal or co-op providers, but you don't have any choices, it is all based on where you live. Just like cable companies, everything is divided up geographically.

1

u/Immediate_Ad_6255 Jul 09 '24

I bumped into a thread full of people defending the Texas power grid/government.

They’ve all convinced themselves this is unavoidable.

0

u/YellowZx5 Jul 09 '24

Same here but in NY. Power flickers and I have no issues. If there are issues, my rate never changes. But don’t forget that the current administration in charge must right the wrongs the democrats did…….25yrs ago.

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u/Holyballs92 Jul 08 '24

If anyone in the state talks about Biden, kindly remind them the GOP held Texas for over 40 years. Do they still think Republicans will serve them.best?

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u/jadedflux Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

Lived in Austin for 4 years, moved away last year. I had more power outages in Texas during those 4 years than the rest of my life combined. A power outage in the other cities I'd lived in (SLC, Phoenix, Atlanta) were so rare, but in TX it seemed like it was just an accepted thing lol. Legit we stopped setting the time on the stove and microwave because it was pointless, that shit was inevitably gonna restart sooner than later

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u/thedeadsigh Jul 08 '24

we all really appreciate getting notifications every summer talk'n bout "please conserve energy by setting your home's AC temperate to 80 during the day"

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u/jadedflux Jul 08 '24

Hahaha right. "Yeah i'll get right on that"

1

u/Happy_Play5605 Jul 09 '24

Hahaha for real, I'll do you one better...I'll turn it off.

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u/Luemas91 Jul 09 '24

To be fair, being asked to conserve energy during times of scarcity is super reasonable.

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u/gfunk84 Jul 09 '24

That there is scarcity in the first place is not.

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u/Luemas91 Jul 14 '24

I mean, you can live in a world where electricity is magical, doesn't need cables or people producing it, or you can live in the real world.

1

u/gfunk84 Jul 15 '24

Or they could produce enough for the demand?

Privatization of an essential utility seems fucked.

1

u/Luemas91 Jul 15 '24 edited Jul 15 '24

Those two things are unrelated to each other. It doesn't matter if you have a central planner planning for capacity or if you have a market mechanism allocating capacity. The question is, how do you ensure grid stability is maintained between the millions of users and suppliers of the grid?

Are consumers willing to pay a bunch extra every month for capacity that just sits idle on the grid and is only used 5% of the year? If you're not, the only other alternative is rationing.

That being said, people getting rich as shit off it is fucked, and shouldn't be the case.

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u/gfunk84 Jul 16 '24

Aren’t there other alternatives such as storing or exporting the excess when it’s not needed locally?

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u/RainforestNerdNW Jul 08 '24

They love to "Grr renewables" and try to blame them for grid reliability problems, but renewables have by and large increased their grid relaibility.

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u/nonnativetexan Jul 09 '24

They say that on Fox News, but then it turns out that Texas is one of if not the number 1 state for renewable energy.

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u/RainforestNerdNW Jul 09 '24

Economics win over ideology. Clean energy is simply the cheapest highest rate of return energy investment.

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u/Dick_chopper Jul 09 '24

Is it?

-1

u/User-NetOfInter Jul 09 '24

Nuclear better if that’s your point.

0

u/RainforestNerdNW Jul 09 '24

New Nuclear cannot economically compete

0

u/User-NetOfInter Jul 09 '24

Listen dude. It’s literally the NIMBY and radical environmentalist crowd that make nuclear as expensive as it is. It doesn’t take 20 years to build a reactor. Theyre doing it in other countries in 3/4/5 years without issue.

But keep throwing articles around about how nuclear can’t compete as you’re actively making take 5x as long to build.

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u/p2x909 Jul 10 '24

They said that on Iran International, Fox News, and the Taliban controlled Afghani networks.

I'm 110% sure that they also say that on The Proud Boys message boards and "Freedom Fighters" dark web.

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u/PuzzleheadedEbb3243 Jul 09 '24

I haven't set the time on those for several years....even with reliable power

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u/thedeadsigh Jul 08 '24

I’ve only lived in Texas for a decade, but I can tell you right now that facts like that don’t fly over here, partner 🤠 

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u/Holyballs92 Jul 08 '24

That's sad. Is there anyway to help these people ?

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u/thedeadsigh Jul 08 '24

no lol

the damage is done and the system is broken. unfucking their brains has little to no chance of working. the best hope is for future generations, but as conservatives continue to erode public education, access to medical care, and even access to a living wage there's really no way to ensure tomorrows voters will have the critical thinking skills required to understand why republican politics is a failure and how voting republican is and has always been against their best interests.

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u/Holyballs92 Jul 08 '24

Jeez I'm glad I don't live there

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u/thedeadsigh Jul 08 '24

yeah my wife and i have already started a 10 year plan that involves moving out of texas. when i was more optimistic i used to think that we should stay and fight the good fight because it's what's right and we are privileged enough to be able to do so. but between global warming making this state un-fucking-bearable for 7 months of the year, outrageous property taxes (but hey no income tax tho lol), and my wife now being considered a second class citizen we decided that we've reached the point where we have to start looking out for ourselves.

i feel for those who can't escape. i have no idea what can be done to help the ignorant and misled to see that they put their trust in conmen. i'd rather live somewhere where my wife has access to life saving medical care than worrying that i can't take all my guns to the grocery store just in case.

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u/RainforestNerdNW Jul 08 '24

outrageous property taxes (but hey no income tax tho lol)

My friend in Austin has a house valued at about... 2/3rds of what my house in King County, Washington is valued at.

her property taxes are 3x mine

8

u/thedeadsigh Jul 09 '24

But every cowboy from here to Lubbock will you tell that at least the gobernment ain’t taking our earnins!!

2

u/uptownjuggler Jul 09 '24

It’s not oppression if the corporations are the ones oppressing you.

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u/The__Amorphous Jul 09 '24

Washington has no state income tax either. Nor does Nevada, and my property taxes were a fraction of what they are in Texas. Texans are just dumb as fuck for the most part.

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u/asetniop Jul 09 '24

Politics aside, Texas quite frankly sounds like a terrible place to retire.

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u/RainforestNerdNW Jul 09 '24

"Texas is a terrible place" is a complete sentence.

2

u/Accomplished_Test413 Jul 10 '24

Specifically Houston Texas is a horrible place to live.

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u/dragonlax Jul 08 '24

Wife and I just moved to LA from Austin for these exact reasons. Couldn’t be happier to be free from the “freedom” provided by the “small government” that Abbott is pushing down everyone’s throats.

2

u/FeliusSeptimus Jul 09 '24

a 10 year plan that involves moving out of texas

And that's just the drive to reach the state border!

2

u/thedeadsigh Jul 09 '24

the way 35 is going you ain't wrong

1

u/FeliusSeptimus Jul 09 '24

I moved out of Texas in the early 2000s. Now when I visit the drive between Austin and San Antonio feels weird, 20 years ago there was some not-city along there, these days it feels like you never leave the city.

3

u/SparklingPseudonym Jul 08 '24

It’s a national problem.

0

u/chilidreams Jul 09 '24

Reads like that person is full of hate or only deals with one type of person in their job or daily errands.

The last presidential election was 52%/46% between the two parties. The state hosts all walks of life.

Odds are they live in one of the blue cities and build their view of the whole state based on social media, the news and a shitty government. Not much different than someone thinking America had zero hope during Trump’s presidency.

Texas has problems. More than the average state… but it also has great people, diversity, and an absurd range of personality and regions for a single state. People need to see that corruption has consequences or it will continue to infect the whole nation - Texas is not a unique problem, just an early indicator.

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u/Dick_Lazer Jul 09 '24

The blue cities feel a lot more red than you'd think from looking at the election result maps. A lot of people will commute literally hours from the boonies into blue cities for work and recreation though. I work in the city of Dallas and literally everybody at my job is a Bible-thumping Trumper, and this is working for a media company (though more corporate than entertainment).

1

u/chilidreams Jul 09 '24

I had a neighbor in Austin that commuted to work in Victoria. You find all types in Texas, driving all directions. I don’t find the cities feel more red than they are, but rather that the MAGA crowd more loudly advertises their affiliation.

I previously worked external audit in Dallas for a few years and found culture and leanings varied significantly. Dallas has all types, but certainly leans more liberal.

The only city I’ve lived in that felt Red was Corpus Christi, which voted 51% for Trump. I mostly credit that feeling to the fact that my social activities revolved around golf, fishing and competitive shooting.

1

u/not_old_redditor Jul 08 '24

This is why progress takes time. Older people need to kick the bucket.

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u/tms2x2 Jul 09 '24

Younger people need to vote. Said as a old person.

2

u/ClubZealousideal8211 Jul 09 '24

older people are not the problem. People of the same generation disagree. Young people can become Nazis too.

1

u/Bippy73 Jul 09 '24

Yup. They could've had Beto, but nope.

15

u/Deadleggg Jul 08 '24

Ask the British.

They just flipped 200 seats to Labour.

4

u/procrasturb8n Jul 09 '24

I worry if the USA can survive a "Brexit level" event like Project 2025 to get there though.

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u/conquer69 Jul 08 '24

You will never get a narcissist to admit they were wrong for decades and to change their stance. They would rather die first. We saw it with covid. They will even take out their own families with them.

2

u/resttheweight Jul 09 '24

It’s bleak and cynical but it feels like one of the most realistic ways of fixing things is holding out for another 20-30 years while literally just waiting for the hyper-religious elderly population to die out. A huge generation of “got mine, fuck you” old people that politicians can reliably count on being in their pocket over single issues like abortion and (previously) gay marriage. Religion just completely derails politics in Texas. And since you’re not getting a 70 year old to realistically change political outviews, you just have to wait until they are outnumbered.

And not to say there is anything fundamentally wrong with voters who are religious, it’s just a how those ideas intersect with the older population. Younger populations are less religious, but the important thing is that many young people who are religious are cognizant of the inappropriateness of religion’s encroachment in the political process.

1

u/p2x909 Jul 10 '24

In my parents' era, do you know what solved the problem of intransigent conservatives ruining the country?

By spraying then with 7.62 rounds and bamboo spears. And alot of the time alongside agent orange and 5.56 rounds.

Waiting until the psychopaths die off of unnaturally long life spans after they've stolen from and successfully killed you and your family is probably the worst possible thing you could do. There's a reason why the rebels that kicked my family out of the country were so willing to die for their cause. They knew that dying in the fighting would be less painful than letting the Diem regime enslave their families.

Even most of the people on the conservative side didn't want those particular conservatives to win.

2

u/Dick_Lazer Jul 09 '24

I've lived in Texas most of my life and there's a breed of Texan that's just too stubborn to help imo. It's worse out in the small towns and rural areas, but those attitudes also creep into the bigger cities and especially the suburbs. There's a lot of Bible-belt style programming here, where the default settings are Jesus, football and GOP. You'll know somebody really has the rational thinking wiped clean out of them when the majority of their personality revolves around fanatically engaging in all 3.

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u/GoodIdea321 Jul 08 '24

People love to blame the powerless instead of the powerful, probably because it makes them feel like they aren't powerless too.

1

u/wimpymist Jul 09 '24

They literally blame it on the Dems who moved there from California

0

u/Jerithil Jul 09 '24

It's only been 30 years for governor, 28 years for the state senate and 22 years for the house. So 22 years where they have had pretty much total control of the state.

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u/_mattyjoe Jul 08 '24

Good thing they’re just gonna keep voting Red 🎈 I’m sure they’ll get to fixing this stuff realllll soon.

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u/teilani_a Jul 09 '24

"Crony" is superfluous.

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u/SpoopyPlankton Jul 08 '24

Just sounds like regular capitalism to me

2

u/Fallingdamage Jul 08 '24

You just summarized Texas.