Over the last two weeks, Texas has endured the coldest type of hell, where a once-in-a-decade winter storm reduced the entire state to frozen anarchy. The state was less than 5 minutes away from catastrophic destruction of the power grid, and rolling blackouts (that for the most part did not roll as advertised) left millions of households unprotected from the cold. Pipes froze, homes flooded, many elderly lost oxygen and other critical care, any grocery stores that weren’t closed were picked completely clean, and several people died of hypothermia. I was largely spared from suffering in my outpost across from the town square in quaint Hallettsville, but it pained me to watch what I consider a complete infrastructural failure from top to bottom. While extreme weather events inevitably cause some suffering, I can’t blame the weather for the chaos and tragedy that occurred. In the richest country in the world, with the advanced technology and knowledge of the 21st century, the disaster stemmed from our collective lack of preparedness.
As an engineer, I was trained to identify failure modes and design systems to mitigate these failures. The first failure was in warning communication: the forecasts of the arctic blast were accurate nearly two weeks in advance, but a combination of doubt and denial prevented most Texans from taking any preparatory actions until the day before. Atmospheric scientists and operational meteorologists have discussed this issue at length in publications and conferences, but even as short-range forecasts approach the asymptotic limit of “perfection” there is a significant obstacle to communicating warnings to the public. Responsibility for emergency preparedness falls to local governments, who receive the same warnings as the public (unless they’re large enough to employ someone with a meteorology background, like Oklahoma City). Disaster preparation is entirely up to them; here in Hallettsville, bridges and intersections were covered with copious amounts of pea gravel for traction, that’s about it. Dallas had a skeleton crew of snowplows clear one lane on major thoroughfares, but this did not extend into the jurisdictions of some distant suburbs. Houston appeared to have none of the sort, as all 26 lanes of Katy Freeway were blanketed by ice and snow. Even when the forecasts are spot-on, how do you communicate to people that they will likely be stuck in their homes for at least 3-5 days? Especially in a society that is resistant to shutting down businesses (or otherwise modifying behavior at the request of some authority), communicating warnings is a challenge that goes beyond engineering.
An even greater challenge was exposed when the power grid failed to meet the elevated demand as temperatures dropped statewide. After a similar deep-freeze crippled north and west Texas in 2011, federal regulators composed a 357-page report detailing what went wrong and providing winterization recommendations. These cold weather precautions are required by law in the rest of the continental U.S. electric grid, but Texas has managed to dodge regulations by maintaining their own interconnect and independent oversight (by the now-infamous ERCOT). Utilities have been increasingly privatized in Texas since the 90s, intended to drive prices down but has done the opposite, prioritizing profits over maintenance and system upgrades. The engineering solutions are well-known, but there needs to be a regulatory or market-driven impetus to implement any of these solutions. Moreover, the post-disaster talk has been reactionary, enraged entities threatening lawsuits against anyone on the generation side. As a forward-thinking engineer, I strongly believe that we would be better served by focusing on investing in updated infrastructure, from more robust primary generation to a smarter distribution system. A smart grid that could isolate nonessential commercial loads and customers with backup generators would have lessened the severity of rolling blackouts, maintaining a base level of service for all Texans to prevent any of the lasting damages to homes and municipal water systems.
As a freshman in college a decade ago, I wanted to become an engineer so I can help solve problems in the energy sector, addressing grid reliability as the industry shifts toward renewable alternatives. The technical expertise exists to transform the grid into a smart, futuristic network that optimizes the use of natural resources. However, economic and political factors suppress innovation in favor of cost savings, especially in a monopolistic utility market where there is no economic incentive to gain a technological advantage. This profit-obsessed cost-cutting extends beyond the energy sector, and I have encountered it throughout my career: in academic research, in the private sector of weather forecasting, and especially in manufacturing. It’s a frustrating situation for engineers, having to do R&D on a shoestring budget and often becoming expendable once our algorithms/processes are implemented. I believe this trend will only be reversed when more technical people occupy decision-making roles in business and government, when the value of innovation and societal benefit is considered instead of just dollars and cents. Natural disasters will continue to occur, but this was mainly a manmade disaster, and we can mitigate those with engineering – that is, if we want to.
Worldly Observations 