Joe Biden Was Ready To Send FEMA Aid After Beryl Hit Texas, First Had To Play 'Where's Dan Patrick?'
Biden not buying 'Oh no, the dog just threw up' excuse either.
President Joe Biden said the federal disaster response to Hurricane Beryl was slightly delayed in Texas because the White House was briefly unable to “track down” state leaders to get a formal disaster aid request out of them. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle Tuesday (gift link), Biden explained that plenty of aid had been stockpiled in Texas prior to the storm, but it couldn’t be released until he spoke to either Gov. Greg Abbott, who was out of the country on a trade junket, or to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who was acting governor but who the hell knows where.
Finding Creepo
“I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden said.
The president said he “kept tracking the lieutenant governor,” but did not connect with Patrick until Tuesday afternoon, when Biden said he would “immediately” approve the declaration. The president did not provide more details on his attempts to connect with Abbott or Patrick.
Maybe they just pretended their phones were dead to own the libs.
As of Wednesday, about 1.3 million customers remained without power, which is at least 1.3 million more folks without electricity than is optimal, and Houston has been seeing temperatures in the 90s since the storm passed. Houston Mayor John Whitmire said the city’s electric utility, CenterPoint, “needs to do a better job” at getting the power back on.
The disaster aid Biden was trying to release Tuesday included generators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which will certainly come in handy for folks without rooftop solar and battery backup or a local solar microgrid, which is most people, at least for now. Oh, and I have a lovely related clean energy nice time for you at the end of this story.
Biden said that both Whitmire and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo had called him Monday and early Tuesday to ask for federal aid, and he was apparently polite enough not to point out that since neither is the governor (for now), his hands were tied.
Sounds to us like they were able to get their calls through somehow, so maybe Patrick could have called the White House on Monday too, although that would have required asking for help from a hated Democratic president.
Nonetheless, the disaster declaration was in place Tuesday afternoon, and Patrick claimed at a press conference that there was “no delay from the White House, no delay from us,” and that there’s been “total teamwork” among officials at every level.
Also, the Leftenant Goober made up a rule that has never existed before to explain why he hadn’t spoken with Biden earlier:
“The truth is, before you can ask for a declaration you have to go meet with people in the impacted areas to see what’s needed and the level of need,” Patrick said.
But then the reporters had to go and spoil things with a fact check in the very next paragraphs.
Rafael Lemaitre, FEMA’s former national director of public affairs, said major disaster declarations do not need to wait for thorough on-the-ground assessment. Governors are the lead requesters for the designation and support, but can amend their asks as they get more information.
The Stormtime Pissiness wasn’t over yet, because just as global warming is making hurricanes intensify more quickly, a similar link appears to exist with Republican dudgeon. Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary, huffed that
“This is a complete lie from President Biden, and frankly doesn’t make any sense. […] The president and his administration know exactly how to get in contact with the governor and have on numerous occasions in the past.”
As of blog-posting time, we have not seen any reports of Texas Republicans lying about wind and solar energy causing the power outages, but we’re sure they’ll come up with something.
Good luck to the people of Houston, and we would just like to point out that Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is funding up to $10.5 billion to help states and tribes make their electric grids more resilient and flexible, and hell, utilities and state agencies don’t even have to formally admit that climate change is real to apply for the grants.
Energy Storage To Keep The Lights On
And now that nice time thing I mentioned, and as with so many clean energy nice time stories, it comes from Dave Roberts’s nerdcast Volts. There’s this new Texas energy company, Base Power, whose founders came up with a terrific business model. They install high-capacity storage batteries at customers’ homes for just the cost of the installation, around $2,000 for most homes, compared to somewhere around $20,000 if you were buying your own home battery or generator. The batteries have much more storage capacity than most home battery systems, though they’re not exactly huge — their second generation unit will be about the size of a fairly big dorm-sized refrigerator.
Because of the weird way Texas’s grid works, Base becomes the homeowner’s electricity provider, selling them electricity to power their home at a flat monthly fee that avoids the frightening volatility in power prices most Texans face. In return, Base uses the batteries to store and sell energy to the Texas power grid, charging up the batteries when rates are low during the day and discharging ‘em when prices peak during high demand in the late afternoon/early evening. That makes the grid as a whole more reliable too, especially as more storage comes online.
And here’s the genius of the whole thing: The energy grid — especially in Texas, but everywhere else, too — needs more and more battery backup. The problem is that getting new power plants connected to the grid can take years. Base waltzes right past that barrier by placing a whole lot of big batteries in homes, using their existing grid connections instead, creating a network of distributed storage that’s effectively its own powerplant.
The company also makes sure the batteries always have enough juice in them to provide emergency power to the home for about a day or more if there’s a power outage — how long depends on the battery’s charge when the outage starts and the customers’ energy use. Base has an app that lets customers know when an outage has started and how much juice they have left.
The company’s FAQ notes that average customers are “fully protected from 97% of potential outages” which tend to be a matter of hours rather than dayslong grid disruptions from hurricanes. Base’s Twitter account often points out smaller outages around Texas, reminding readers that Base’s customers kept their lights on. No updates since Beryl, however; we imagine they’re kind of busy.
So there’s your clean energy dessert after that shit sandwich of Abbott and Patrick. And if you’re ever tempted to think Texas “has it coming” for electing people like them, remember that the state also has its Lina Hidalgos and cool new energy nerds like Base Power.
[Houston Chronicle (gift link) / Volts]
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Update from Houston - start of Day 4 without electricity. It’s still fucking hot. The cats are melting. I just came back from taking a nap in my car (parked in the driveway, not the garage, to avoid CO poisoning) to get a bit of AC. CenterPoint still has no update as to when we’ll get power back to the 1.3 MILLION of us without electricity.
And not to snark on Dok’s Nice Times, but the real solution would be for folks to have solar with battery backup that is guaranteed to cover them through these outages, like a generator would. But we can’t have that, because Texas. FUUUUUUCK.
Sorry y’all. It’s hot and humid and I’m fucking cranky.
>>The president and his administration know exactly how to get in contact with the governor and have on numerous occasions in the past.”<<
Maybe it's me, but in the US of Goddamn A, the governor is beholden to the President and not the other way around. Maybe Abbott's press sec needs a refresher in Civics 101.