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Megan Geuss: Okay sorry I thought i'm waiting for the thing here um I hi my name is megan gay so i'm a former energy editor at ars technica.

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Megan Geuss: I am here to discuss some on the ground reporting from the large and devastating Texas freeze that are two reporters Eric burger senior space editor and we had some sin senior technology editor recently lived through.

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Megan Geuss: We appreciate you all joining us today, and so I just want to start off and say thanks Lee and Eric for joining us here, and I was hoping, you could just jump in and give us a little bit about your experiences living living through this long freeze in Texas.

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Lee Hutchinson: Thanks megan it's it's awesome to see you again thanks for thanks for agreeing to come in and share this with us always awesome to have any excuse to work with to work with folks who are part of the RS family, and of course our.

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Lee Hutchinson: yeah it's been it was a week last week was a was a week.

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Lee Hutchinson: My my coworker Eric is much more like meteorologically inclined than I am and can and can talk a little more, I guess, about the the actual weather that happened, but for for us, I live in we both actually live in the southeast Houston area and.

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Lee Hutchinson: So this event when it rolled through for us when it hit Houston was sort of started last last Sunday night that was when everything really got going Valentine evening valentine's day basically and then.

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Lee Hutchinson: From then until basically Thursday or Friday we were we were under the effects of the weather, for us, things got a little dicey on Sunday night when we lost power and we weren't anticipating I wasn't anticipating losing losing power like that.

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Lee Hutchinson: We knew that obviously there was cold weather coming Eric had had been warning the city of Houston for quite some time, the Houston area with his weather site that he runs a city weather.

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Lee Hutchinson: But I don't think that we were really expecting this to go as as as poorly as it went Eric would you say that's that's accurate.

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Eric Berger: yeah I think that's true.

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Eric Berger: We had been accurate forecasting.

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Eric Berger: two distinct events that that unfolded last week, first of all, was a very widespread wintery precipitation event on Monday.

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Eric Berger: So this was snow sleet freezing rain on roadways and for a lot of parts of the country, you know, a half of an inch of snow and interests know or some ice and the road would be no big deal, but in the south and places like Houston Atlanta.

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Eric Berger: That kind of that kind of situation just brings the Community to a halt because we don't have widespread systems to get a soft relative things like that people aren't a customer driving those conditions.

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Eric Berger: And then the other event that we were expecting that unfolded were some really cold nights with temperatures getting down to about 10 to 15 degrees in the Houston metro area and again that really had not happened for about three decades.

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Eric Berger: And both of those things came to pass what we were not expecting in the area was widespread power outages so before the cold weather unfolded, the States regulate Tory agency.

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Eric Berger: or cod had said that they were going to have to implement rolling blackouts so that, if your power went out for 15 to 45 Minutes it would then come back on for several hours you could heat your home or do what needs to be done in terms of electricity and.

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Eric Berger: And I remember, was about 130 in the morning on Monday and my wife and I were you know sleep and we have a fan running at night, just for noise and it died and that woke us up, of course, and.

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Eric Berger: My wife sort of said, oh no it's it's begun, and I remember just turning over to say don't worry about it, you know in about 45 minutes to power is going to come back on and.

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Eric Berger: We sort of laid there for a couple hours waiting for it to come back on and I had to get up that morning about four o'clock anyway to do some writing on my websites basically whether.

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Eric Berger: i'm just kind of about updating the status on the when the roads in the winter precipitation and I remember getting up at 430 in the morning and go into my office and like sort of shivering underneath the blanket as I was trying to write.

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Eric Berger: right by my outdoor weather station recorded the temperature at 19.3 degrees when the power blinked off, and so it was already in the teens at that point, and you know the House was was trying to get cold and.

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Megan Geuss: For us.

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Eric Berger: The power never meaningfully came back on until.

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Eric Berger: Late Wednesday night at our House, so it was.

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Megan Geuss: Did the did the temperatures dropped from there from the 19 degrees.

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Eric Berger: So, on Monday across much if you some temperatures gotten to look.

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Eric Berger: Because it describes did clear out some in the afternoon and that actually did a little bit of solar installation did a little bit of melting of the other roads, but then that night was the coldest night.

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Eric Berger: When the temperature got down at my house, probably to about 13 or 14 degrees in some parts of Houston below 10 degrees and so that was.

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Eric Berger: That was obviously extremely cold for people in the region, and it was about 1 million customers just in the Houston region.

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Eric Berger: So it's homes and businesses that didn't have electricity and statewide has about four and a half million and the entire state was under a winter.

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Eric Berger: warning winter advisory this front and weather system had made it down all the way through the state from the panhandle down to the Rio Grande Valley.

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Eric Berger: And so pretty much everyone is experiencing this you know historic cold and much of the state, you know again was without electricity, and when you don't have power, you know you can't you can't your heater doesn't turn on.

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Eric Berger: And you may be able to get a gas fireplace on you may not.

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Eric Berger: And for a lot of people, the only source of heat they had in their homes was was lighting the burners on their stove or something like that, I mean it was a pretty pretty grim situation yeah.

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Lee Hutchinson: Which is potentially dangerous right it's not you don't necessarily want to be wants to be like using your gas stove to heat your House if it's you know if it's not like a.

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Lee Hutchinson: specifically designed to heat your House like a wood stove or whatever guest of doing that can be can be dangerous right.

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Eric Berger: it's extremely dangerous, and there were there were all kinds of reports of people getting pretty desperate, you know, bringing in their charcoal grill.

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Eric Berger: From you know from outside into their living room, turning it on to trying to heat things up lots of reports of carbon monoxide poisoning that the county judge.

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Eric Berger: said, like by Tuesday morning there were 300 hospitalizations or people would come to the hospital with with carbon monoxide poisoning just from doing these kinds of things to try stay warm and you're such extreme conditions yeah.

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Megan Geuss: I think people a lot of people in Northern hemisphere in northern the northern areas of the United States can sometimes sort of missed the point here, I think.

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Megan Geuss: I used to live in Los Angeles, I lived in Los Angeles most my life as a kid.

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Megan Geuss: And then move to a colder climate, and you know, in a cooler climate you buy all these like heavy coats heavy wool socks, you know you think I could stand outside for in 10 degree weather for.

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Megan Geuss: Three hours or so, or you know I used to go running for four hours, and like 15 degrees and you're like Oh well, that's fine but it's really not if you don't have the gear that you need.

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Megan Geuss: which can take like yours to amass and you figure out what you need you can it's not just like camping you know you got you got to make sure that you have.

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Megan Geuss: warmish blankets right if you already live in a in a warm climate you.

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Megan Geuss: don't you don't expect to need the like stuff that you need to get through a night of 20 degree weather, which is.

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Lee Hutchinson: No, you you prepare for the free prepare for the climate, you live in because that's the climate you live in right and.

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Lee Hutchinson: You know it's like Eric said it hasn't, this is a, this is the last time it was down temperature wise and this this sort of that like you know teens to single digits.

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Lee Hutchinson: was an in December of 1989 we hit, we had a dip into the 20s in February of 2011.

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Lee Hutchinson: And in fact that that particular dip is probably worth discussing because there were power issues, then too, but as far as like this level of cold.

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Lee Hutchinson: Sustained it, I mean it's been 30 it's been literally 30 years and you'll find folks down here will have you know people will have coats and jackets and stuff but, like the only reason I have a winter wardrobe is because.

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Lee Hutchinson: As because I sometimes go skiing so I have like ski clothes that are that are warm and designed to be used in snow and stuff but like.

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Lee Hutchinson: You know i've got like a pair of sweatpants and that's what I wear in the House when it's cold and that's.

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Lee Hutchinson: Like all i've got i've got jeans but I don't know other than the ski stuff I don't know long Johns I don't have layers you just don't you just don't need it it's it's just not something that's in your day to day experience living down here I mean.

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Lee Hutchinson: You know it gets down in the in the 30s overnight sometimes and that's that's about how cold it gets here like that's kind of yet.

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Megan Geuss: Right right like I never owned a pair of wool socks until I was 25 so that's.

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Megan Geuss: Because they didn't live in an area that I needed that so you know um so yeah I mean, so how long did each of us experience power outages I think Eric you said, this is like 24 hours you say that you guys were out of out of power or.

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Eric Berger: I was closer to 60 hours.

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Megan Geuss: 16 hours okay.

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Megan Geuss: yeah that's huge that's.

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Lee Hutchinson: A really long time that's across from like Sunday to Thursday.

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Eric Berger: Wednesday night yeah and and The thing is, you know, the thing is I grew up up north to and you're right, you have warmer clothes and typically you have.

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Eric Berger: Like a fireplace that burnt wood and you have like a stockpile of wood outside ready to go or you have you have other means of heating your homes.

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Eric Berger: In this case, you know it really was a situation where people were caught unawares because the power goes out in Houston during hurricanes.

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Eric Berger: And that's that's you know that's in the summer and that's that's that's pretty annoying because you know it's hot it's humid your refrigerator dies right or you know you see you can't you lose the food in the refrigerator but it's not like existential.

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Eric Berger: When you're you know when you're when the temperature in your House is in the 30s.

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Eric Berger: or colder than it then it does become existential and we're starting to see some death numbers so come up to you too cold i'm in the state, the recent number is most about 70.

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Eric Berger: And I wouldn't be surprised to see that rise is sort of the Italian continues yeah yeah.

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Megan Geuss: Is it warm or now you look you're in a T shirt so.

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Eric Berger: It looks like right right, so one of the other one of the other significant things about this event is that it really lasted a long time it got kind of cold on Saturday.

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Eric Berger: and by that I mean it was like in the 40s or 50s daytime and fruit for Texas Houston that's quite cold.

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Eric Berger: But then like from Sunday night through Wednesday morning, much of the area didn't come about freezing and that's that's different because usually what you'll see.

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Eric Berger: In this part of the country is OK, you get a strong front come through.

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Eric Berger: it'll it'll be clear and cold, maybe one night, where the temperature gets down, you know to freezing or maybe in the upper 20s but then by the next day.

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Eric Berger: Because the sun shines out, you know the high i'll get back up into the 40s or 50s even in this case the temperatures really didn't rebound because of the strength of the the Arctic cold air mass it was so deep.

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Lee Hutchinson: Right yeah.

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Megan Geuss: Having that rebound is so important, when we were living in Denver that's you know you get a ton of snow and then two days later melts now i'm in Pennsylvania, when will this it's been three months.

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Megan Geuss: If.

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Lee Hutchinson: It affects it affects infrastructure down here pretty heavily too, because I don't want to shortchange the city of Houston the city of Houston does have road salting trucks.

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Lee Hutchinson: We do have the city does have the ability to cope with with cold, but not really to this scale and not not prolong like there's.

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Lee Hutchinson: Houston is kind of like, if you look at it on a map it's like it's like a bull's eye there's the inner city and then there's the 610 inner loop and then there's the Sam Houston tollway.

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Lee Hutchinson: Beltway eight outer loop it's basically the middle and then two big rings with freeways flowing in.

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Lee Hutchinson: All of the loop stuff big chunks of it are elevated and huge chunks of that just shut down when when were shut down last week.

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Lee Hutchinson: Big chunks of it shut down in 2011 just because the, even though the salting and road care infrastructure exists.

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Lee Hutchinson: It doesn't exist in such a way that it can treat and keep treated that much freeway for that long and that contributed to the lack of.

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Lee Hutchinson: Supply trucks being able to come in and grocery store shelves running bare and stores, not having stuff because you can't get trucks in right along with fuel and everything else right.

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Megan Geuss: um we have a couple of questions in here, so I want to ask those before I get to my question, so that and I just want to say if you're watching this.

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Megan Geuss: If you're part of the zoom part of this you're on the webinar you can type in the question, the Q amp a area.

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Megan Geuss: If you're on Twitter, you can tweet a question and we have somebody watching that so we'll get it eventually, but I want to ask Eric we have a question here from billy it says, was the bulk of chica site impacted with respect to instruction testing and launch preparation.

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Eric Berger: I love this.

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Lee Hutchinson: Question in here.

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Megan Geuss: um.

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Eric Berger: So yeah it was they they experienced freezing temperatures, all the way down there and that, I think.

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Lee Hutchinson: Often, do you freeze in boca chica man.

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Eric Berger: I think it's probably like a once every several years kind of event I haven't looked at the climatology you know it's slowed them down for a couple of days, but.

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Eric Berger: The bigger constraints really down there are stronger wins, and that the front kind of blew through and then that was that, so you know not too bad.

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Megan Geuss: A related note when will ours be sending Lee on another high G reporting experience, naturally with the selfie cam.

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Lee Hutchinson: I am, I am always down i'm always down for that actually i've been.

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Lee Hutchinson: In recent years, i've been kicked upstairs to ours management, so I don't get to write as much or do dumb stuff like that as much, but I, you know if there's if there is a plane ride or anything.

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Lee Hutchinson: For me to take that would be like a zero G thing I would be i'd be totally down for that, by the way, Eric actually got a chance to do that he wrote the the vomit Comet I never got a chance to we had a.

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Lee Hutchinson: We were trying to get a story set up with NASA to let me do it, a few years ago and it just kind of fell through but Eric has already stolen that thunder.

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Eric Berger: I also have a friend who.

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Eric Berger: Among the among the facilities that he manages is a large.

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Eric Berger: gravity generator arm that swings around i'm forgetting the name.

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Eric Berger: centrifuge centrifuge gosh Thank you very much Lee who has access to large centrifuge that trains astronauts and so.

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Eric Berger: i'm going to try to work at least that we can go.

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Eric Berger: To experience six or eight g's and and see how that goes.

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Lee Hutchinson: Down let's do it.

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Megan Geuss: A lot of geez.

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Megan Geuss: um we have another question here from Vincent it says the CEO of urquhart testify or pod is the regional grid manager.

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Megan Geuss: testified yesterday that he wouldn't have done anything differently last week or able to second guess, this was or cut in any kind of position to handle things differently um you know I mean I don't know if you guys know as just Houston residents, I think.

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Megan Geuss: What am I heard about.

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Lee Hutchinson: Everybody is sort of had to become an expert.

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Lee Hutchinson: On the.

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Lee Hutchinson: grid over the past couple of weeks we're all like newly minted experts.

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Megan Geuss: I mean, I think.

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Megan Geuss: The way I have heard it is, is a or cut his regular it's a nonprofit regulatory agency and the PC sort of sits on top of that, the PC the public utilities Commission is the Texas.

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Megan Geuss: is appointed by the Texas governor it's a three person Commission and they sort of consent on top of that, and set rates i'm not hundred percent sure that's how things are.

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Eric Berger: Say that's the way.

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Megan Geuss: that's my that's my like.

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Eric Berger: The way it works.

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Eric Berger: is to the electric reliability Council of Texas are caught he's in charge of managing the electrical grid for Texas so last week.

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Eric Berger: They had an expectation of a certain amount of power demand and a certain amount of power, availability and they figured that during the worst of the cold that demand what outstrip availability and that's why they sort of said they were going to implement these rolling blackouts.

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Lee Hutchinson: waiting on it now it's worth pointing out, though, that.

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Lee Hutchinson: That are caught, while they are the agency that oversees that they are not actually generating power.

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Lee Hutchinson: I oversee I was.

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Eric Berger: I was getting to that Lee Thank you.

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Eric Berger: So they they manage the grid and they had a certain amount of expectation of power availability.

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Eric Berger: What happened was that some of the plants, they were counting on to be online that said they were going to be online so whether it was when coal natural gas or nuclear started to go offline.

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Eric Berger: And so, then their reserves of electricity fell and eventually they implemented these radical black these radical outages to prevent the grid from collapsing.

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Eric Berger: Basically, from just going offline for weeks now, the thing with our car is they're responsible for managing the grid, but they do not have the control.

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Eric Berger: Over the power generators So these are the companies that build a nuclear plant or a coal plant and then sort of say we'll put this electricity on the grid.

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Eric Berger: That by understanding false morning the PC that are caught and so when the manager of our courses we wouldn't have done anything differently, what he was basically saying is that look.

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Eric Berger: We had minutes to take these drastic actions that prevented the grid from going offline for weeks and we don't really regret doing that as much hardship and pain is that cause for the residents of Texas.

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Eric Berger: The question then becomes, what are the incentives for the electricity providers the companies that build these plants to put them on the market because.

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Eric Berger: If you're going to build a natural gas plant in Texas, and then someone builds a wind turbine is able to sell electricity for for half the price that you can then.

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Eric Berger: The that all of that guy's electricity is going to be bought but yours is not so you built this multibillion dollar facility.

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Eric Berger: That isn't getting using you're not getting a return on investments so should there be some kind of state subsidy for these always on capabilities.

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Eric Berger: Like natural gas and so that's part of the debate going forward it's it was really frustrating to me as a resident of Houston and Texas.

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Eric Berger: In the last week, and now is this quick, you know this quick looking for scapegoats right So if you were a conservative.

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Eric Berger: Your response was well the wind turbines iced over green energy sucks and we need to build more coal power plants like literally That was the response from some people.

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Eric Berger: To this crisis, and then the response from some Liberals was well it's it's all these you know the gop Texas is run by the gop Republicans don't care about the little people they're pro business.

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Eric Berger: You know the fact of the matter is the electricity deregulation built the reason Texas has its own grid, and the reason we do electricity this way was a law.

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Eric Berger: That was written more than 20 years ago and Oh, by the way it was written by Republicans and democrats at the time in the state legislature, it was a bipartisan bill, so you know.

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Eric Berger: I would like to see more power, I guess, unless politics and and hopefully we'll see some cooler heads prevail, but, but just just just such polarized political environment we're in may make it difficult to have a level head exclusion to all of these issues.

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Megan Geuss: yeah I think i've read you know.

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Megan Geuss: or cut similarly with the North American electricity rather liability organization, though they can can can regulate some of the.

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Megan Geuss: Reliability that goes into generation but in Texas that's obviously sort of reliability issue was a problem but not it's not, I guess, because people are trying to say we don't we don't ever need reliability, but more because.

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Megan Geuss: You know, you need you, you have a wardrobe for the for the for the climate, that you live in, you have a power grid for the climate, that you live in and.

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Megan Geuss: You know, adding resilience to certain you know generation plants is going to drive is going to drive.

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Megan Geuss: prices up and and having high priced energy is also not an equitable solution, because there are lots of people who can't pay $300 a month for the electricity, they need, especially in like hot times summer times.

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Megan Geuss: And yeah I think that I agree with you Eric in that a lot of this sort of was a supply side failure but also mechanical failure in a lot of ways that.

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Megan Geuss: I mean there needs to be more resilience clearly going forward, but you know, there are also grids out there that do price with for wind and for for fossil fuels or nuclear power plants non-carbon.

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Megan Geuss: Long term generation, you know it in in the northeast here we have capacity markets, which has been an argument you know in.

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Megan Geuss: Currently, after the Texas freeze right you like should Texas, have a capacity market which is like paying.

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Megan Geuss: Other generators, to make sure that they always have a certain amount of capacity, even if that, even if that electricity isn't using what happens is that dress prices up, but it also subsidizes fossil fuel plants because they can.

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Megan Geuss: Unlike when they can just have that generation there all the time just keep it running and make that capacity market money.

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Megan Geuss: i'm California has also has a lot of wind and not as much as Texas, but you know, they also do a lot of solar and they have that same like duck curve situation, whereas the supply isn't even throughout the day throughout the week throughout the year.

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Megan Geuss: And they also manage that, in different ways, so there's I think the probably the answers pretty nuanced right when it comes to like does what kind of responsibility that's our top blaine bear here.

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Megan Geuss: And really.

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Megan Geuss: blessed but there.

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Eric Berger: it's not are caught it's going to have to make these calls it's really going to be the state leadership, both in the legislature.

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Eric Berger: The governor's office and lieutenant governor sort of are going to have to come together.

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Eric Berger: On a solutions because you raise a great point with the capacity markets, you know that's one issue we're going to have to look at how do you ensure there's a baseline of electricity.

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Eric Berger: At all times, because in the summers we run into the same kind of issues where demand sometimes outstrips capacity.

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Lee Hutchinson: right but.

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Lee Hutchinson: The other.

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Lee Hutchinson: The other for for summer.

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Eric Berger: One other one other issue that that sort of goes along with that.

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Eric Berger: Is the state is going to have to make a decision on do we want to protect against these kind of extreme events, because the grid handled the cold snap in 2011 pretty okay.

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Eric Berger: But you know, do we want to charge everyone 20 or 30% more electricity all the time to prevent for this cold snap 30 years from now, and that's going to be a difficult policy decision and I don't know what the answer is and i'm not sure there's a right answer sorry right.

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Lee Hutchinson: No, no, no that's fine that you actually amplified on something that I was going to that I was going to bring up the one of the issues with the the 2011 cold snap the biggest issue to my recollection is that.

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Lee Hutchinson: It texas's grid which, which is you know sort of isolated from the rest of the nation is optimized more or less for peak delivery during the summer.

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Lee Hutchinson: Because that's when everybody's running their air conditioners that's when traditionally Texas generates its highest its highest electricity peak load.

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Lee Hutchinson: And with the 2011 cold snap and with with this year's, even though the 2011 one was was much less crazy there was considerably lower peak demand and plus also it was 10 years ago, so there was the lower population for to generate demand in the first place, but one of the issues was that.

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Lee Hutchinson: are caught allows power generators to take some percentage of their power generating capacity offline and winter.

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Lee Hutchinson: For maintenance, which is sort of the opposite of what you might expect, in other climates where your peak load comes in winter, but down here the peak load is often not in winter and that's the time when, especially because a lot of texas's infrastructure is.

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Lee Hutchinson: I don't want to say aging and crappy, but it is not like brand new and there is maintenance, that you have to do on these multi billion dollar generation facilities and a lot of that in Texas occurs.

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Lee Hutchinson: in winter and off peak in the 2011 cold snap when demand exceeded supply.

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Lee Hutchinson: A big contributing factor to the rolling blackouts we have been was the fact that there were plans offline for maintenance and there was somewhat of the same issue here, I don't have the percentages I didn't look them up, but.

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Lee Hutchinson: There was a nonzero chunk of generating capacity that was offline these past few weeks in a scheduled fashion for maintenance and again I don't know what the I don't know if there's a way to address that or not I don't know if you can.

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Lee Hutchinson: Spread your maintenance out so fewer plants are down at once, or what, but it seems that.

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Lee Hutchinson: We now have, since we have now had two events occurring approximately 30 years apart, it seems like we could now potentially establish some baseline frequency and work out like some guidelines based on like how often these things are going to happen.

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Lee Hutchinson: Is I don't know that sounds like.

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Megan Geuss: Taking taking plants down for maintenance is a really I know i've read about it with respect to nuclear power plants switches like it, they take into account when when they're going to be meeting to provide energy and.

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Megan Geuss: As.

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Eric Berger: You know the problem with with what happened here in Texas, is that.

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Eric Berger: They they were not taking the plants down and winter, because there is sort of a secondary peak in demand, during the course once the year, but they were starting to take them down.

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Eric Berger: So, because you don't do it in a matter of weeks, or even a month to take it's a multi month process, and so I think they were taking them down starting to take them offline in anticipation of sort of late February, March, April.

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Eric Berger: When you get the most temperate conditions in Texas at that time of year.

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Megan Geuss: Yes, spring tends to be the.

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Lee Hutchinson: And I read a thing, and I didn't realize this, but a lot of the homes in Texas, because we don't run our everybody down here will have central air just about every home has central air.

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Lee Hutchinson: But a lot of the central heating, that a lot of homes down here have especially older homes is not gas based heating it's it's electric resistive heating.

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Lee Hutchinson: And I didn't realize this, I probably should have, but when you have when you're running electric electric resistive heating.

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Lee Hutchinson: It actually uses more it's a less efficient process than air conditioning it uses a greater amount of power.

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Lee Hutchinson: To change the temperature in the air than it would, if you were cooling it it costs more to raise it because you're just running electricity through.

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Lee Hutchinson: The wire and heating it up and that's what's getting the arrow and that contributed significantly to the to the like beyond forecasted actual peak demand that we hit.

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Lee Hutchinson: Last week it was folks who were freezing trying to run their heaters, and if there were all these old resistance heaters, instead of.

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Lee Hutchinson: Gas getting obviously has its own environmental issues, but at least in this case, we would have been better off if more folks that had gas heating, it would have cost less of a load on the grid.

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Megan Geuss: Well, there are also there are other ways to heat your heat pump water heaters, which are also electrical place so you know it depends I don't want to say, but yeah electrical water heaters electric resistance water teenagers are like a toaster in a bucket.

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Eric Berger: sounds safe.

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Megan Geuss: yeah, so I do want to ask actually to have either have you gotten.

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Megan Geuss: electricity bills have they been high.

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Megan Geuss: And then also do you have electricity choices if electricity retail choices, where you live, would you think about switching after this.

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Lee Hutchinson: Oh man you go first on that one Eric I have.

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Eric Berger: um I am.

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Eric Berger: Complicated i'm not kind of electricity bill yet it better be zero for last week.

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Eric Berger: In answer your question, yes, we have many retail choices.

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Eric Berger: When your electricity contract comes up in Texas, you could choose from literally dozens of different companies that are marketing power to you know to where you live.

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Eric Berger: The fact of the matter is it really doesn't matter which of those you choose in terms of liability, because by law.

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Eric Berger: The marketing companies have to be separated from the transmission company so you've got three different players you've got.

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Eric Berger: electricity generators, who are over here the nuclear plants, the coal plants, the wind turbines and then you've got the company that in your region your city your county.

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Eric Berger: That build the infrastructure, the blinds in polls to carry that electricity from the generating facilities.

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Eric Berger: to your home and then the third piece is you've got the company that sells the power to you, and so, whoever sells the part of you is not responsible for getting the power to you, so if I changed it when you, you really want to just buy that based on price.

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Lee Hutchinson: And it's it's a really stupid game to frankly as a resident who has to go through it.

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Lee Hutchinson: Because it's it kind of turns into a thing that you have to shop for every year because a lot of these companies will put you on a fixed low rate or fixed a low cost per kilowatt hour plan and then bump it in a year.

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Lee Hutchinson: So every year you go hit up you know power to choose COM or another one of those sites where you can actually see the list of providers in your area and you pick the one basically that has.

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Lee Hutchinson: The price that fits with what you want, and you have to look at all the pdfs, but when you dig into it the last three of these companies that i've switched with gonna do it once a year they've been like the same company under a different db a name it's like it's all just a stupid game.

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Eric Berger: Leave why, why do you hate capitalism.

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Lee Hutchinson: I.

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Lee Hutchinson: I do not hate capitalism.

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Eric Berger: Why, why are you at home yesterday.

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Megan Geuss: Long for you not to hate capitalism.

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Lee Hutchinson: I know right.

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Eric Berger: This is yeah.

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Lee Hutchinson: This is definitely not the look of a of a yeah anyway, no it's it's.

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Lee Hutchinson: So I haven't gotten electricity bill yet either, but I have logged on to my to my provider and look and i'm on a fixed rate plan so I don't I don't know if they're going to credit us for time out last week or not, I get the feeling that probably they're not but.

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Lee Hutchinson: But know the folks on fixed rate plans shouldn't see anything now.

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Lee Hutchinson: There obviously is, I think you were going to ask about it there's obviously some a small percentage of folks who are not on fixed rate electricity plans, one of the one of the side effects of Texas is market is, you have the ability.

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Lee Hutchinson: If you if you want to, if you are informed of the risks, you have the ability to basically purchase power at.

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Lee Hutchinson: Wholesale pricing, I think I think wholesale pricing is the right word or not pricing, or whatever I don't want to say it wrong, but there are providers that will allow you to do that, and a lot of times that can lead to.

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Lee Hutchinson: That can that can be fine a lot of times that works out great that gets you really good savings on potentially savings on your electricity when demand is low, you pay less and.

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Lee Hutchinson: I think that's one of the methods that folks who have solar in Texas can can sell back is because that's all regulated to but i'm in in really unusual once every few decades situations like we have last week those folks get absolutely screwed because the spot pricing.

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Lee Hutchinson: becomes becomes ridiculous like I think the CAP was like $9 per kilowatt hour, which you know nine cents per kilowatt hour point yeah nine cents per kilowatt hour, it would be like it would be like a normal price.

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Lee Hutchinson: yeah so yeah and it's it's difficult to make a fully informed decision on something like that, if you are, you know, in a financial pinch, and you know that.

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Lee Hutchinson: You know it's electricity in Texas may cost a little bit you know you're going to have a couple of $200 a month summers so maybe you tried to you know make your household income stretch, and you do this but it it and usually works out, but this year, it did not work out yeah.

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Megan Geuss: he's got to the well you fill up your bucket with electrons you bring it back.

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Lee Hutchinson: Right yeah.

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Megan Geuss: um.

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Megan Geuss: I want to ask one question here do either of you have plans to harden your homes to probably problems like this in the future.

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Eric Berger: Yes, do you.

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Megan Geuss: have electricity, you need.

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Eric Berger: to know your House is your House is brand new burger so what, what do you think that you would do.

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Lee Hutchinson: differently than what you have now within, then what you do i'm really curious because my house is a lot older than yours, but you've got potentially like you know better newer installation standards or whatever, so what what What would you do different i'm curious.

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Eric Berger: If you close your mouth Lee i'd be happy to answer.

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Lee Hutchinson: That question no I i'm so excited.

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Lee Hutchinson: To hear myself on this own thing.

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Eric Berger: One of the saddest saddest moments of the whole last week period for me was looking outside my office window, so I look out there there's a little plot of grass and there's four white flags.

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Eric Berger: Okay, and those four white flags or where a stand is going to be built, and on top of that Stan is a whole house natural gas generator and that that will be installed literally within about three weeks.

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Eric Berger: So if i'd had that would have you know as soon as the power went out that would have kicked on and and run the House and that's that's i'm getting that through a partnership, I have with.

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Eric Berger: With one of the local energy companies for for some of the work I do, and it will, it will be provided power and heat throughout the.

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Eric Berger: rocky experience so those flags are still out there, and my wife was reminding me that maybe I should have pushed a little harder.

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Eric Berger: Again, that generator installed and I said well if you had agreed to have a metal standard set of a would stand we probably would have had it and then you know we sort of.

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Eric Berger: You know how things go.

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Eric Berger: So yeah anyway that that's that's how i'm playing too hard, my home is with the whole House generator and the purpose that really was not.

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Eric Berger: run by cold fell but, but because of during a hurricane on the power can go out like in 2008 we had a hurricane called ike that knocked out power across much of the region for about two weeks.

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Eric Berger: Again, not existential because the the climate is is more moderate during the summertime in terms of temperatures, but but that's a long time to go without electricity, and it could be even worse with the stronger wind storm yeah yeah.

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Megan Geuss: We do you have any plans.

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Lee Hutchinson: No, I don't think so um we probably at this point, need to windows my house was built in 2004 so it's not like ancient but you know we've got I think we've got our 14 insulation in the walls, I think that's right i've got pictures somewhere of what it is and there's a number on it.

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Lee Hutchinson: And I know that it houses insulated correctly, for if you pull up like the there's a there's like a an infographic that you can see, about like recommended our levels in walls and floors and ceilings for different climate bands in the US and.

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Lee Hutchinson: i'm in the right band for the installation, we have um but in the House, I gotta say could have been a little warmer last week without power we we got we got power back in a few little.

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Lee Hutchinson: Like 15 to 30 minute chunks which was enough to run the heater, for you know for 15 or 30 Minutes it was enough to like keep the House up.

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Lee Hutchinson: Out of the out of the 40s the coldest we got was in the 50s it was, I think I think we hit 50 degrees on.

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Lee Hutchinson: Monday night Tuesday morning, which was the coldest time the outside temperature was like 14 or 15 degrees and the House retained the heat.

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Lee Hutchinson: Fine, but it could have been like if the House had been constructed, more to the standards, like you might have up in Pennsylvania.

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Lee Hutchinson: It would have been a lot warmer in here but houses just aren't built that way down here they're just they're just not I mean I could probably the thing that I would do would be to like change the windows out and get like big double glazed fancy windows.

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Lee Hutchinson: That would probably be the The thing that I could do that would be the most effective, because I know ripping out all the sheet rock and re insulating would be a just a massive pain.

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Eric Berger: you're there.

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Eric Berger: There are other things you can do and I have done is is like my brother in law has spray foam insulation in this House, both in the walls and in the attic.

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Eric Berger: And that makes a huge difference like even in the summer, when it's hot as hades outside you know it could be 100 degrees and his attic will still be like 80 degrees.

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Lee Hutchinson: that's wild.

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Eric Berger: Because my so like 146 it's.

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Lee Hutchinson: All blown installation.

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Eric Berger: Right, so if you if you if you wanted us for you Mike is spray foam insulation that would make a big difference.

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Eric Berger: In terms of keeping your House cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter The other thing that I have had which, which was kind of a lifesaver was one of these small portable generators was about the size of two or three toasters.

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Eric Berger: And it it's enough to power like laptops and cell phones and you know, in a pinch, you can plug a coffee maker into it.

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Eric Berger: So fan or some lamps and it'll run for about 12 hours, and then it has a big solar panel and so like.

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Eric Berger: On on Tuesday, it was sunny outside and I was pulling down like 66 Watts to recharge this portable generator.

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Eric Berger: And so you could reuse it so you never without like you know, as they say, like electronics things like that you can't you can't plug a refrigerator into it.

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Eric Berger: But you can plug other things that sort of keep you connected to the Community and that's and then rechargeable it's rechargeable as well, so.

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Lee Hutchinson: yeah That was the That was the priority to whenever power would come back on it was like oh my God plug everything in we were plugging in like.

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Lee Hutchinson: My my wife's work laptop on my laptops because every laptop it was plugged in we weren't plugging it into use, it is a laptop it was an extra battery.

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Lee Hutchinson: That was, like the thing we could plug our phones into when our battery packs went low.

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Lee Hutchinson: Because it's I mean it's obviously not the most efficient usage of that battery but it becomes like a basically another just portable little well of power that you can carry with you.

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Lee Hutchinson: Having a little solar power do dad would have been awesome because yeah it was it was sunny for huge chunks of this, I mean it was like cold, but it was like no clouds in the sky sunny for for big chunks of this thing.

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Megan Geuss: Did either of you lose water.

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Lee Hutchinson: No, no, I I didn't it was very fortunate to because I was worried about we're all worried about you know your pipes that's another aspect that like.

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Lee Hutchinson: A northern home you don't worry about your pipes your pipes are built to withstand the climates that you're in down here it's just Absolutely not.

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Lee Hutchinson: it's kind of it's kind of you kind of roll the dice like what's your was was your home builder like in a good mood that day, did the contractors do an okay job or the pipes, you know, are they pecs are you stuck with.

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Lee Hutchinson: You know the like old old old.

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Lee Hutchinson: i'm blanking the plastic old plastic pipe stuff.

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Lee Hutchinson: or they metal or what, and so we you know and the advice is to run your faucets a little bit.

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Lee Hutchinson: And then, after the advice of like drip your faucets to make sure your pipes don't freeze notices began to come out a couple of days into the event, especially in the larger Houston area that.

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Lee Hutchinson: You have to stop dropping your faucets because the plants can't or the the water facilities can't provide enough pressure.

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Lee Hutchinson: To keep the system pressurized above safe levels everybody's dripping their faucets which turned to its whole other thing and everybody was having to that's.

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Lee Hutchinson: that's when we all got under boil water notices but anyway, no long answer sorry.

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Lee Hutchinson: We were fortunate it here we didn't lose water we had water throughout the event we had hot water throughout the event because the water heater stayed on.

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Lee Hutchinson: I guess you know that there was enough residual heat in the gigantic tank of water that was Okay, but we never had to deal with it and being able to.

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Lee Hutchinson: Take a hot shower after two days of going without power, even with like little battery lights in the in the bathroom just so you can see what's going on, was a it was a huge mental health boost it was nice to have that.

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Eric Berger: way that sounds greatly I didn't I didn't.

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Eric Berger: have invited over for that bad shower event um.

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Eric Berger: So this morning welcome we're in time.

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Eric Berger: Before before before this discussion I boil some water on the stove and dumped it into my bathroom sink, so I could let my hair down, otherwise it would have been a.

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Eric Berger: mess so we're hoping to get hot water back today some I had to our House, we had to tankless water heaters, and they froze in the attic and we had been planning to.

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Eric Berger: You know periodically run hot water, and you know by hitting the home, keeping the pipes form and stuff like that I don't think the pipes froze it was simply a matter of the water and the water heaters froze and then, when they melted.

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Eric Berger: On Wednesday sort of water started gushing out the bottom now they were fortunately.

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Eric Berger: Some large drip pans that caught the water and carried away so we didn't get like structural damage or she rocked damage in the House.

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Eric Berger: It was just the water heaters, need to be replaced and finding a plumber getting those water heaters delivered has has taken some time so hopefully today's the day.

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Megan Geuss: You had to get a whole new tankless water heaters.

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Megan Geuss: Yes.

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Eric Berger: There were, I mean the water was literally coming out the circuit board of the heater so I figured they're probably busted.

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Eric Berger: So instead of waiting for someone to come out and look at it and see if it could be fixed which you probably couldn't.

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Eric Berger: My wife was just like order some water here is like it yeah I was like yeah let's just order some water heaters, so if the plumber doesn't show up my brother in law, and I will be trying to install those which is probably a huge mistake but that's for timeframe desperate measures.

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Lee Hutchinson: Right is this is that is that something under your that gets covered under your Homeowners insurance policy How does that work.

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Eric Berger: My understanding is that damage two things like that.

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Eric Berger: or pipe damage is not covered, but what is covered is damaged your House, as a result of those kinds of things and the water heaters, although they're not cheap they're probably are below the deductible of the Homeowners insurance anyway.

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Megan Geuss: So you shouldn't have just let the water drink.

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Megan Geuss: Water heater well.

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Eric Berger: I mean if we left we did we did let things Strip, which was, which was fortunate, because you know I mean our pipes did not freeze in the House, but the water heaters in the attic.

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Eric Berger: Did freeze so and then, and since there was no power they just you couldn't run water through them right yeah yeah.

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Megan Geuss: yeah that's one thing that sort of got me thinking reading about all this Texas stuff it's like well I should probably have some like some some water water it.

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Megan Geuss: stored away, for you know, in the garage or somewhere, just in case you because you want to make sure you have enough drinking water to that's.

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Megan Geuss: yeah besides Estonians.

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Eric Berger: houstonians are generally accustomed to this because of hurricanes it's like I know when there's a disaster there's a running bottle water and storing it was certainly run on bottled water before and during this event.

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Eric Berger: But the thing the thing about the boil water notice, which was kind of ironic like if you didn't have a gas stove you had no way to boil the water.

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Megan Geuss: thing so yeah exactly So how do you drink it at the store, you can.

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Megan Geuss: drink it on your top anymore.

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Lee Hutchinson: Well yeah and we were lucky in that I so i've never like I live in the town that I grew up in Lake city is where I was, I was born, we still live here and be i've always i've always hated our our water here, and I know that, like.

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Lee Hutchinson: People say that you can't taste the difference in different tap waters or whatever I think lake city's tap water tastes absolutely awful so we've always had.

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Lee Hutchinson: we've always had drinking water in the House like I bring home we go get gallons of water from kroger every couple of weeks, and we have some here in the House and that's what we keep in the fridge to drink, so we were.

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Lee Hutchinson: Just through the fact that I hate the taste of our local water, we had a giant supply of water, so we were good.

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Lee Hutchinson: Even if we hit, even if we had lost water we wouldn't have had to like I know Eric had to the camp and and go to as go to a family member's house, we unfortunately wouldn't wouldn't have had to do that.

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Lee Hutchinson: But then it would have been like you know complicated because then you have to go figure out how to flush your toilets and all.

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Lee Hutchinson: Right.

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Megan Geuss: So the moral of story is be a water snob likely.

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Megan Geuss: be very.

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Megan Geuss: very particular about the taste of your water.

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Megan Geuss: So we have no minutes left do you guys, well, we have a few minutes left do you guys want to offer any final thoughts it's the Internet, you can do this for free all day um do you have any final thoughts you guys want to share, about about.

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Megan Geuss: This this event.

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Eric Berger: yeah I guess.

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Eric Berger: I would say yeah go ahead Lee.

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Lee Hutchinson: I was just gonna i'll be i'll be quick this time it was it was sucky to live through it, but we were very lucky.

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Lee Hutchinson: And you know it's it's sad and incredibly disappointing that.

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Lee Hutchinson: It feels like the response that we're going to see to this event is going to be overtly politicized by by everyone again not not casting aspersions.

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Lee Hutchinson: But it really feels like that the there are some necessary steps that need to happen, I think, after this event.

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Lee Hutchinson: To prevent it from happening again, and some of the steps are the same recommendations that were recommended after the 2011 event that we're not implemented but it feels like this time around what we're going to end up seeing is.

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Lee Hutchinson: At least my opinion will be not a lot of reaction and it'll be because both sides are heavily politicizing this and I know that making both sides argument is is terrible and I shouldn't do it.

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Lee Hutchinson: But man it just really feels like that it feels like nobody is really willing to address root causes and everybody is either going to be like well renewable suck or.

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Lee Hutchinson: Keep the federal government out of my power or you know, whatever I get it feels like we're probably not going to get the resolution we're all hoping for out of this.

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Megan Geuss: that's not a both sides argument I think you can say there the other two sides are one people who want to like fix this and move forward and then everybody else's political so that's.

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Megan Geuss: Fixed your argument okay.

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Lee Hutchinson: Thank you.

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Megan Geuss: Eric lesson.

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Eric Berger: I would, I would echo what Lee said it was it was just awful to try to live through and survive, I mean you know it was it really was terrible but.

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Eric Berger: You know, we had we had mean so we we had places to go, we had options for people who are just stuck in their homes.

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Eric Berger: And particularly older homes that that aren't really well insulated because homes newer homes are insulated.

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Eric Berger: quite well because it gets hot here in the summer, you don't want to run your AC continuously but older homes that weren't well insulated people who could not get out of that, I mean it was just an absolute nightmare.

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Eric Berger: For days and days and it's it's really deserves to be addressed the bigger picture issue is for me a profound disappointment that we're at a point today in America, where our government is not at all proactive it's entirely reactive.

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Eric Berger: And speaking specifically for the Houston Community there are there are steps we could take now in the next five years to protect our communities.

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Eric Berger: From you know power outages to protect our communities from hurricane storm surge to protect our communities from these terrible flooding events we get.

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Eric Berger: You know by by whining by us and building up and all sorts of steps we could take and we rarely we rarely take them, and those are my dogs barking because they're mad at the government to.

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Lee Hutchinson: Live Nice.

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Megan Geuss: rallying cry from the canine breathe out there.

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Megan Geuss: Okay Thank you so much guys, I really appreciate you talking with all of us and it's been nice to say hi again.

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Eric Berger: awesome.

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Eric Berger: Thank you megan megan.

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Megan Geuss: me thanks Eric see you soon.

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Lee Hutchinson: All right.