Thread by @AriSchulman

As hundreds of thousands of Austin residents are going on their 30th hour without power during the second or third coldest stretch of weather in recorded history, some questions for @austinenergy and @ERCOT_ISO.

Outages were originally said to be rolling, from 10-40 minutes. Many are on day 2. The last estimate, from yesterday, vaguely says outages "may last" through Tue afternoon.

What is this based on and why should residents have more confidence in it than the last estimate?

Specifically: The reason stated for the outages is record demand (seemingly from people heating their homes) coupled with cold weather taking generation sites offline. One or both of those things has to change for power to come back this afternoon. Which do you expect it to be?

There's no reason to think demand will slacken much in the next few hours. Temps in the 10s and 20s remain forecast in Austin through Saturday.

That suggests bringing more capacity online. This is the only info I can find on that:

https://twitter.com/ERCOT_ISO/status/1361668499068829700

It's hard to imagine many solar panels or wind turbines coming back online under these weather conditions. So a great deal, it seems, depends on getting those generators online. People need to hear more about that than one vague tweet over two days.

Next: Why do Austin's downtown and soccer stadium apparently remain fully lit up while Dallas has managed to turn their lights off?

There may be technical reasons — Presumably much of downtown is on the same grids as Dell Med School and other critical infrastructure and can't be centrally shuttered.

But has there been any effort beyond @GregCasar to ask for the buildings to be shut down voluntarily?

Finally: What determines how @ERCOT_ISO distributes cuts between Austin and other cities? Are there contingency plans if outages continue well beyond this afternoon? What is Plan B if Austin residents face day 3, 4, or 5 of no power in sub-freezing temps?

Residents (via social media and texting with friends and family) already have indoor temps in the 30s in their homes. Warm shelters are opening but roads are impassable. What is being done to find those who are old and sick and get them to these shelters?

.@austinenergy says they've "been working through the night on this critical situation," but keeps insisting the outages are out of their hands, all up to @ERCOT_ISO. So what work have you been doing?

If the answer is dealing with power usage downtown, what have you done beyond produce this doc explaining why you haven't been able to do anything? What work is there to do with building managers beyond asking them to turn off lights and heat in empty buildings and them doing it?

I broke my Twitter fast for this, so you cretins better turn the power back on at my mom's house.