Why Are There Power Outages?

Some homes in central Lubbock lost power over the weekend.  High demand is to blames says LP&L.  You're kidding, right?  More after the break.

First off, I'm not a LP&L "hater".  I haven't really had a problem with them that wasn't of my own making.  With that out of the way, I guess I don't understand power.  They said "high demand" was to blame for the outages; guess what, in summer there will always be "high demand".  My question is, why aren't they prepared for it? There's "high demand" this summer, and there was "high demand" last summer, and there will be "high demand" next summer and surprisingly, you know what's going to happen ten summers from now?  You got it, "high demand".

Their answer for this problem is that we all need to "cut back".  So let me get this straight, I order a hamburger in a restaurant, and the cook gets to come out when I'm nearly done, and snatch those last two bites out of my hand because he didn't make enough hamburgers?  WTF?  Automakers don't get to tell me how much I can drive and surgeons don't stop when they are mostly done.

I understand the basics of electricity..amps, volts, current....what I don't understand is how we can be unprepared for surges in use.  The same wires that feed my house feed UMC, it's not like we're burning up the power lines.  What I'm getting is "we're using more than we make".  My answer would be, 'make more".  Now that might be a little piggish, but what are they going to do if there's a thousand new households in town?  They will "make more".

I am really trying to give LP&L a break here because I don't think I fully understand the situation but something isn't right here.  It just seems like poor planning to me.  I am, however, fully prepared for someone to give me a logical explanation for this.