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Texas winter storm disaster 2021
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- Texas winter storm: Many deaths were attributed in Texas, to the unprecedented winter storm ‘Uri’. Authorities warned that frigid conditions were likely to continue for another few days.
- Grid failure: As Texas found itself in the midst of a rare and brutal blast of winter weather, with temperatures plunging below freezing levels, over 4.3 million people across the US state have been left without power after high demand for electricity caused the power grid to repeatedly fail. The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the operator of the state’s power grid, faced sharp criticism from state leadership, including Governor Greg Abbott, who said that the body “has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours.” Meanwhile, the power grid operators have said that they have no way of predicting when the power outages will end.
- What caused the power outage: With Texas reporting some of its lowest temperatures in the last three decades, the state has recorded a sudden spike in electricity demand. Meanwhile, its primary sources of energy — natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind and solar — have been afflicted by the cold and ice. As a result, power grid operators have been forced to conduct rolling blackouts in different parts of the state. Operators urged customers to dial down their electricity use until the situation was brought under control.
- Separate grid: Texas is the only US state operating its own internal power grid. Its managed by the nonprofit ERCOT and provides at least 90 per cent of the state’s electricity. When temperatures dropped significantly on 14-02-2021 (even plunging to -18 degrees in some parts of the state) and residents increasingly turned to their thermostats for warmth, the power grid was inundated with a record demand, at over 69,000 megawatts. This is more than 3,200 MW higher than the previous winter peak set in January 2018. The state’s main sources of power were also knocked offline as gas lines were blocked with ice, wind turbines froze and coal piles and thermal energy generators too began falling off the grid. Unable to meet the heightened demand, ERCOT was forced to introduce rotating power outages, which were supposed to last about 10-45 minutes.
- Rich state: Texas has a wealth of energy resources, with the largest oil, natural gas, and wind energy being produced in the US. The crisis has arisen not because of a lack of power sources, but rather due to ill-equipped energy infrastructure. In the meantime, electricity prices spiked more than 10,000 per cent when the storm hit the state. Real-time wholesale market prices on the power grid were more than $9,000 per megawatt hour (compared to regular prie of $50 per megawatt hr).
- Outcome of the state-wide blackouts: Following the widespread blackouts in the state, several Covid-19 inoculation centres were forced to shut down, delaying the rollout of vaccines. With freezers losing power and generators failing, some health workers in places like Houston had to frantically administer remaining vaccine doses before they were spoiled. Before the arrival of the Uri winter storm, Texas was on track to vaccinate 1 million people per week and was on the verge of vaccinating over a million Texans by the end of the week, according to DSHS numbers.
- 7. Deaths: National Guard troops have been deployed across the state to check in on families during the ongoing winter storm. Several deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning have been reported in parts of the United States, as some people resorted to staying in their cars to keep warm. Nearly 120 crashes, including a 10-car pileup on I-45, were reported.
- Knowledge centre:
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming: The 2021 problem is due to rapid heating in the stratosphere, the second-lowest section of the atmosphere, 8-50 km above the Arctic. Known as “sudden stratospheric warming”, it causes the polar vortex, a ring of cold air that encircles the poles, to weaken, lessening the forces that keep cold air corralled at high latitudes. This increases the movement of cold air southward and warm air northward, allowing low temperatures to sweep into typically warm areas such as the southern US. Reverse will happen with Britain, whih may be blasted with unseasonably warm air from Morocco.
- Climate change impact: Scientits say that warming temperatures in the Arctic’s troposphere (the lower atmospheric level which begins at the surface) are weakening the polar vortex and allowing bitter air to escape from the north more often. Climate change, driven by emissions from fossil fuels, is undeniably causing temperatures in the Arctic to increase at unprecedented rates, and far faster than elsewhere on the planet. But no clear causal link has been proven between climate change and the behaviour of the polar vortex. In the winter of 2019-20, for example, the vortex was exceptionally strong (because of a cool stratosphere), despite continued signs of global warming at the Arctic’s surface.
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