ERCOT’s Fair Weather Operations Center

For those of us needing to keep large infrastructures up, but not in the Homeland Security fold, utility web pages of agencies (e.g., water, power, dams, and transportation) are great ways to know what’s happening.

Today ERCOT lost balance of its grid. Odd how just a few hundred thousand kilowatts of demand can do that. Grids started losing power as the grid controllers flailed around, trying to stabilize things (I have a connection on the inside confirming this). Blackouts during rush hour — a great thing to see.

The ERCOT web page, which, during easy times shows a real-time ‘whats what’ of power demand and operations, promptly keeled over. At this writing I’ve been requesting current status pages for about half an hour, with intermidable ‘loading…’ as the only result.

One would think that with all the blather about how great the Texan power grid is, they could at least keep a web page up when things start getting hot. Two thumbs down, ERCOT.

• Category: Essay