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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why you got downvoted. As a Texan, that's exactly what happened.

Our state government will learn its lesson only when a series of major incidents start making companies reconsider their plans to expand or relocate to the state. Republicans may love their "independence" but money is also a language they understand very well.

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Exactly, If or once the situation gets to a point that requires scheduled load shedding (eg South Africa) I would suspect a lot of things would change pretty quickly. I can not imagine any 'side' in TX putting up with having no power for 2-3 hours, 2-3 times day - forcing a greater divide between the have's (businesses/homes willing to pay for generators) & the have-nots.

> I can not imagine any 'side' in TX putting up with having no power for 2-3 hours, 2-3 times day

If it's the side that you've disenfranchised then you don't really need to worry about it.

The State Senate actually came up with a good plan (on paper) for improving the grid. The implementation was then handed off to the Railroad Commissioner who then totally watered things down. There’s a good article about how it went down in Texas Monthly magazine. Lesson is that the Railroad Commissioner is a very powerful (elected) position in terms of energy, so worth paying close attention to that election.

Isn't it also the Railroad Commissioner who deals with things like oil wells? I think that came up in an article about old oil wells that were flooding ranchland with salt water in East Texas thanks to the practice of pumping water into oil reserves to boost pressure for active wells.

I'd love to understand how the Railroad Commissioner ended up responsible for energy.

It started by taking over regulation of pipelines in the 1910s. That seems like a logical step to me, but over time their purview has expanded to O&G plants and energy production. They aren’t responsible for public utilities, but a lot of the winterization plans were around upgrading pipelines that froze in the storm.

According to Wikipedia they haven’t dealt with rail since 2005, but it’s been a lot longer since the RRs were politically relevant to the office.

They are the head of oil and gas in the state so very likely. The history is complicated to say the least. They don’t even run the railroad anymore. It’s all energy related. The name of the office should be changed but the oil and gas companies probably want the office to keep flying under the public’s radar.

Did that not happen after the last incident?

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