Slowing The Roll

UT Austin asking electric scooter companies to slow their roll around campus

Companies like Bird and Lime have installed geofencing to reduce the bikes' speeds by about half.

Courtesy photo

KVUE — Wary of speeding scooters on campus? Your prayers have been answered.

The University of Texas at Austin sent a notice to their students Monday morning to say beginning March 26, prominent scooter companies will use geofencing to implement a maximum acceleration of 8 mph on their scooters in defined areas of campus.

"I mean, you can kind of forget you are on a road with cars, people zip through, and it's dangerous," said Joseph Ovalle, a graduate student and teacher at the University of Texas.

He said the scooters are almost everywhere. "You hop on one of them, and you can get to class on time, and it's much easier," he said. "There's good and bad things."

Ovalle said seeing the scooters is already stressful. "I'm driving at 30 mph, and I don't see them in time, I might hit them," he said. "That, to me, is scary."

Ovalle likes the idea of lowering the scooter speed limit on campus.

The new virtual perimeters will be implemented around campus where scooters will max out at 8 mph instead of about 15 mph. This will be possible through geofencing, a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographical area.

The scooters already use a GPS system. The moment they cross a designated area on the map, they will slow down. Scooter companies include Bird, Jump, Lime, and Lyft.

This is not the first time UT has implemented new rules to govern new influx of scooters on campus.

Earlier this year, the university said it will start impounding scooters improperly parked along campus malls and those "blocking sidewalks, impeding pedestrian accessibility or strewn in courtyards, doorways, and stairwells," the email said.

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To read the full story, head to KVUE.

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Keeping The Lights On?

ERCOT meteorologist predicts higher chance of extreme cold this winter

Photo courtesy of KVUE

ERCOT says it has improved its reliability, but other Texans aren't sure it's enough.

The lead meteorologist for the state’s power grid operator, ERCOT, is predicting both a warmer winter and a higher chance of extreme cold.

During a Tuesday board meeting, Chris Coleman said current climate patterns are very similar to those in 2021 when a winter storm knocked out power for millions of Texans for several days.

“Now, that doesn’t mean we’re going to have [Winter Storm] Uri, but it does again say that we’re in a pattern that supports something like a Uri this winter,” said Coleman, ERCOT's supervisor of operational forecasting.

Coleman compared his winter forecast to a tornado watch: The conditions are there, but the storm may or may not happen.

ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas told KVUE on November 25 that he doesn’t expect calls for conservation or rolling blackouts.

“We're ready for those kinds of conditions at ERCOT,” said Vegas.

During Tuesday’s board meeting, Vegas touted nearly 3,000 weatherization inspections since 2021 and more than 10,000 megawatts of new generation added to the grid since March, mostly solar and battery storage. ERCOT estimates 1 megawatt can power 250 homes on average during peak winter demand.

However, Texas energy consultant Doug Lewin questions that math.

“[We are] better off than we were in February 2021 but not out of the woods,” said Lewin, who authors the Texas Energy and Power Hour newsletter and hosts the Energy Capital podcast. “We don’t have a system that’s resilient enough to deal with a Winter Storm Uri.”

Lewin points to two main reasons: a natural gas supply system he says is not adequately winterized, along with inefficient homes and buildings that push demand beyond supply.

“We have to bring that demand down and do that by increasing the programs we have for energy efficiency to replace inefficient heat with much more efficient forms of heat, like heat pumps.”

Read the full story and watch the video at KVUE.com.

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