I’m a Dem here in Texas. Our wind turbines froze.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. We still need oil to fuel our energy as my friends with all electric cars here are screwed. My husband just swapped out his older Rav 4 Hybrid for a new one. He can’t drive on the roads though as we do not have the machines to clear them.

Actually the people with electric cars are sitting in a house with a huge electric battery that they can use for power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

STOP POINTING FINGERS. ALL AMERICANS ARE TO BLAME FOR NOT ACKNOWLEDGING CLIMATE CHANGE SOONER, UNLIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD.

California, long Democrat-led, has suffered terribly from climate-change-related weather extremes. What's happening in Texas is another weather extreme that will become more frequent with our changing climate triggered by man.

It's not a Dem vs. Rep thing, even though Republicans are more likely to deny climate change than Democrats.

It's that we need a comprehensive, federal, effort to reduce pollution and strengthen our infrastructure so we can all withstand FLOODS, TORNADOES, HIGH WINDS, HIGH HEAT, and BITTER COLD.

Until January, who controlled the Senate and Executive branch?
Who let all of the climate bills die on their desk?
Who let all of the infrastructure bills die on their desk?

This isn't a "both sides" issue.

+1
And I WILL keep pointing fingers because this is just chickens coming home to roost! How many more weather related bailouts will Texas need? Everyone remembers California’s wildfires, but here’s what: California keeps trying to address global warming. It’s the knuckle dragging GOP in places like Texas who keep holding up addressing climate change as a country and who keep mocking places like California for trying! There is not both sides; there is the GOP shackling us to their stupidity and surprise, surprise here with their hands out again.

Why is one of the most libertarian states in the country even asking for aid? Haven’t they voted and preached for years about self sufficiency. And don’t get me started on Sandy and the CA wildfires.

TX created this mess. And I’d be glad to help fellow Americans under normal circumstances. But these folks have passed a Bill trying to secede and voted against aid to every other state for every other disaster. They need to reach into their own pockets to fix it. And maybe next time NY is underwater, vote to help.

Texans are the crappy neighbors who don’t mow their lawn, don’t do trick or treat, are mean to the neighborhood kids and set off firecrackers until 2 am for the entire month of July, and refuse to help their neighbor jump start their car. And then start a neighborhood Go Fund Me the second they have a family illness or job loss. Nope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, It’s bad. We have not lost power at my house. One toilet won’t work but the other two are. We have an ice storm tomorrow. I can take care of myself with my COVID extra 10 pounds but am worried about my greyhounds. One is almost 15, others are 10.5, 9 and our new wiggleworm at almost 4. They are so skinny. We do have dog coats and lots of food but...,

Move beds and all living things into one room. Set up a tent in there if you can, or a blanket fort under a table. The smaller the space, the more likely you are to be able to warm it with body heat. Drape the tent or fort with more blankets or rugs to hold in heat.

Heat loss to the floor underneath you is a big problem. Insulate underneath with layers of cardboard, crushed newspaper, or straw if you have it.

[/Manitoban who has had to get through -40 nights without electricity]

+1 Thank you so much for this incredibly helpful post! We live in Atlanta, but we lose power sometimes in winter. Even 36 hours can seem like a long time. We've always kept close to our dog (large lab) but will follow your suggestions next time!👍

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even ERCOT says frozen windmills is a small blip in terms of impact compared to frozen coal, gas, nuclear power outages

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/frozen-wind-farms-were-just-a-small-piece-of-texas-s-power-woes

Summer wind in Texas are more predictable and hence most wind power generation occurs during the summer. It’s just more Fox News spin. They are also attacking electrical cars like Tesla. Funny how quick Texas turns on businesses. The state is inherently unfriendly to businesses.

But hey, at least Elon Musk is now their problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

STOP POINTING FINGERS. ALL AMERICANS ARE TO BLAME FOR NOT ACKNOWLEDGING CLIMATE CHANGE SOONER, UNLIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD.

California, long Democrat-led, has suffered terribly from climate-change-related weather extremes. What's happening in Texas is another weather extreme that will become more frequent with our changing climate triggered by man.

It's not a Dem vs. Rep thing, even though Republicans are more likely to deny climate change than Democrats.

It's that we need a comprehensive, federal, effort to reduce pollution and strengthen our infrastructure so we can all withstand FLOODS, TORNADOES, HIGH WINDS, HIGH HEAT, and BITTER COLD.

Until January, who controlled the Senate and Executive branch?
Who let all of the climate bills die on their desk?
Who let all of the infrastructure bills die on their desk?

This isn't a "both sides" issue.

+1
And I WILL keep pointing fingers because this is just chickens coming home to roost! How many more weather related bailouts will Texas need? Everyone remembers California’s wildfires, but here’s what: California keeps trying to address global warming. It’s the knuckle dragging GOP in places like Texas who keep holding up addressing climate change as a country and who keep mocking places like California for trying! There is not both sides; there is the GOP shackling us to their stupidity and surprise, surprise here with their hands out again.

Why is one of the most libertarian states in the country even asking for aid? Haven’t they voted and preached for years about self sufficiency. And don’t get me started on Sandy and the CA wildfires.

TX created this mess. And I’d be glad to help fellow Americans under normal circumstances. But these folks have passed a Bill trying to secede and voted against aid to every other state for every other disaster. They need to reach into their own pockets to fix it. And maybe next time NY is underwater, vote to help.

Texans are the crappy neighbors who don’t mow their lawn, don’t do trick or treat, are mean to the neighborhood kids and set off firecrackers until 2 am for the entire month of July, and refuse to help their neighbor jump start their car. And then start a neighborhood Go Fund Me the second they have a family illness or job loss. Nope.

That's not how it works, dear. You're not in charge, thankfully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The wind turbines froze, but so did everything else. Thermal plants actually, at least as of yesterday morning, accounted for more of the missing demand than wind. It's not a renewable issue but an overall infrastructure issue.

+1 - the wind turbine thing is a right-wing talking point.

This is a very freak storm happening in an area that is simply not set up for it. Add in the fact that it's still ongoing and you have a very bad situation. Normally temperatures would rise back to normal levels the next day or so. And the low temps are unprecedented. Some dude was ice skating on the duck pond in my hometown. It has never been cold enough to do that in the last 50 years.

I know, right? If only someone had known for the last decade that climate change was real and it was vitally important to prepare critical infrastructure for extreme weather events. /s

PS— there will be another “freak storm” like this in TX in the next 5 years. There will be 3 in the next 10.

Climate change is real. I’m sorry no one in the state of Texas believes in science. Because those people who do have been yelling for a decade that these events will become increasingly common.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

STOP POINTING FINGERS. ALL AMERICANS ARE TO BLAME FOR NOT ACKNOWLEDGING CLIMATE CHANGE SOONER, UNLIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD.

California, long Democrat-led, has suffered terribly from climate-change-related weather extremes. What's happening in Texas is another weather extreme that will become more frequent with our changing climate triggered by man.

It's not a Dem vs. Rep thing, even though Republicans are more likely to deny climate change than Democrats.

It's that we need a comprehensive, federal, effort to reduce pollution and strengthen our infrastructure so we can all withstand FLOODS, TORNADOES, HIGH WINDS, HIGH HEAT, and BITTER COLD.

Until January, who controlled the Senate and Executive branch?
Who let all of the climate bills die on their desk?
Who let all of the infrastructure bills die on their desk?

This isn't a "both sides" issue.

+1
And I WILL keep pointing fingers because this is just chickens coming home to roost! How many more weather related bailouts will Texas need? Everyone remembers California’s wildfires, but here’s what: California keeps trying to address global warming. It’s the knuckle dragging GOP in places like Texas who keep holding up addressing climate change as a country and who keep mocking places like California for trying! There is not both sides; there is the GOP shackling us to their stupidity and surprise, surprise here with their hands out again.

Why is one of the most libertarian states in the country even asking for aid? Haven’t they voted and preached for years about self sufficiency. And don’t get me started on Sandy and the CA wildfires.

TX created this mess. And I’d be glad to help fellow Americans under normal circumstances. But these folks have passed a Bill trying to secede and voted against aid to every other state for every other disaster. They need to reach into their own pockets to fix it. And maybe next time NY is underwater, vote to help.

Texans are the crappy neighbors who don’t mow their lawn, don’t do trick or treat, are mean to the neighborhood kids and set off firecrackers until 2 am for the entire month of July, and refuse to help their neighbor jump start their car. And then start a neighborhood Go Fund Me the second they have a family illness or job loss. Nope.

That's not how it works, dear. You're not in charge, thankfully.

Where is PP wrong, though? This was a 100% avoidable tragedy. They did vote against aid for everyone else, but they were sure quick to stick out their hands for rescue. Frankly, I wish it would be granted - I’m not a GOP monster - but tied to them upgrading their power grid and making more changes to prevent climate change. Hey, if Donald could blackmail place for his own benefit, maybe President Biden can blackmail them into working for the public good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Wholesale-power-prices-spiking-across-Texas-15951684.php

Because the frozen wind turbines caused the collapse.]

25% of TX is green energy. This weather event was a test and green energy failed catastrophically

Let’s assume you are right (you aren’t). What happened to the other 75%?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Wholesale-power-prices-spiking-across-Texas-15951684.php

Because the frozen wind turbines caused the collapse.]

25% of TX is green energy. This weather event was a test and green energy failed catastrophically

Ah yes, someone read their propaganda in the WSJ today: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deep-green-freeze-11613411002?mod=trending_now_opn_1

No mention in that article about El Paso handling it just fine; turbines in Iowa, Canada, Minnesota, or the Artic operating just fine in cold weather; or how traditional energy generation in coal, gas, or nuclear are also shut down.

It's all a big conspiracy cooked up by wind turbines!

Meanwhile, who controlled the state for the last decade while green tech was installed?

AOC, duh. who 15 years ago as a college student changed faces with th entire TX Energy Commission in order to sabotage TX and promote the NGD. She also time travelled back to before she was born and used mind control to force a moronic energy policy on TX.

I read on Paler that Q said so. So, I know it’s true.

[Anonymous]

Texas is just run by morons. They saw this coming and let it happen...

https://rbnenergy.com/the-night-the-lights-almost-went-out-in-texas-polar-vortex-power-markets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The wind turbines froze, but so did everything else. Thermal plants actually, at least as of yesterday morning, accounted for more of the missing demand than wind. It's not a renewable issue but an overall infrastructure issue.

This is misleading. Many of the green energy folks in Texas are making this argument. First, as a percentage of available capacity, more renewable energy is offline than thermal. Second, investment in thermal infrastructure has basically dried up in the past 5-6 years as wind and now solar have commanded dollars. Thermal has its real problems, but renewable advocates need to be honest about what is happening here. Intermittent actually means intermittent.

Let's be honest then. The VAST majority of down power plants are fossil fuel ones. Wind isn't a substantial part of winter energy production in Texas. Wind turbines are used in freaking Antartica. The wind turbines in Texas were not weatherized. Texas doesnt keep backup power plants running which means they can't handle demand surges. Had Texas been connected to the national grid then they could have handled the demand surge.

The elecrical grid does need a variety of sources. Redundancies are important. Green power cannot be one hundred percent until battery storage technology is improved. That's all true but has absolutely nothing to do with this manmade catastrophe.

Thermal infrastructure has been underinvested in in Texas for the better part of the past decade while renewable has soaked up dollars. Coal capacity (second best performing in this type of weather behind nuke) has been cut in half. Natural gas power gen has seen minimal investments. Meanwhile, the state’s population has exploded over the past twenty years. Hint, less thermal capacity expected to serve more people is not going to be a recipe for success.

There is no national grid. Please come back when you understand that. We have regional grids and interconnection isn’t as simple as running an extension cord across the Red River. And, not for nothing, the neighboring regional power coordinator is also going through rolling black outs.

I’m not arguing against renewables as part of a generation portfolio. I am arguing for honesty that this isn’t as simple as wishing a green transition occurs and you’re done. There is a reason why power authorities in Massachusetts are arguing that people will need to get used to living without home heating....

The future requires a mix of energy solutions. The “transition” will take decades.
But it’s ridiculous to blame the current catastrophe in Texas on green energy. Nuclear power plants were shut down due to freezing cooling pipes.
The fact of the matter is that (1) the energy infrastructure is not weatherized to handle more extreme weather events (which will become more frequent) and (2) the Texan energy network is not plugged in to nearby regional networks from where they could pull excess energy.

These conditions are the natural result of under-investment and a hesitancy to address climate change.

Texans should get ready for a tax hike. It’s going to be expensive to make your state more resilient to climate change. Alternatively, you can just die during weather events.

Death or taxes - they’re always waiting for you.

Germany tried to go full green. They decommissioned nuke plants. Their manufacturing sector suffered and they’re now burning more coal than ever.

We’ve seen problems in California and Texas and we’re seeing secondary problems in places like MA and NY. But sure, at least partially assigning blame to renewables is unreasonable.

The SPP is currently experiencing rolling blackouts. What excess power would an interconnected Texas be pulling right now?

Can you explain why green energy sources are bad? Those sources are extremely reliable and predictable in terms of energy out put. You seem to be an expert. Can you also explain the spot market for electricity in Texas? Who is making money when prices jump from $25 a megawatt to $9,000 a megawatt? Also explain how deregulation of the Texas grid results in what is happening now.

This is a complex system. Basic gist is that in advanced economies voters expect to have generating capacity available when they flip the power switch. Renewables are intermittent. We know from historical data that there are days when the wind won’t blow and the sun won’t shine enough to meet extreme power demands. 99% reliability isn’t good enough when you need 100% availability. Those situations are rare, but they happen enough that they are foreseeable. Maintaining legacy generating capacity for those days when renewables can’t meet demand is super expensive and voters from California to Texas to NY have no desire to pay for legacy assets or infrastructure. So, in Texas, extreme cold drives outages and in Northern/western states very very hot (as opposed to extreme heat) days cause outages.

First step is to make a choice between always having availability and accepting intermittent power.

That’s what this is about:

https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/02/05/baker-climate-official-blasted-for-comments-to-break-your-will-over-emissionsvideo/" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/02/05/baker-climate-official-blasted-for-comments-to-break-your-will-over-emissionsvideo/

If you want 100% availability, embrace backup legacy assets (including continued investment in those assets).

As far as who is making money right now in Texas. The price spikes are a feature, not a bug. These price spikes are designed to keep marginal fossil power producers in business. Think about it this way: about 80% of renewable capacity in Texas is offline right now (about 20 MW). If you assume that offline renewable capacity runs 80% of the year, in order to keep back up generators in business for the whole year, they have to make all their money on the 10 or 20 days out of the year they actually run.

I’m not sure this is a deregulation issue vs regulation issue. It’s an economic efficiency issue.

Get real. The first step is to invest heavily in the battery technologies that allow us to to store renewable energy efficiently and long periods of time so we can cover the 1%. Then we don’t need to maintain legacy systems. And the tech is being developed. This isn’t an overnight solve. But on the 10-20 year hosts on, batteries will store excess renewable energy when we have a sunny day and we won’t need legacy nuclear plants. Less expensive, more sizable. Safer.

Link?

Battery tech for efficiently storing the energy necessary for a region like Texas to survive this situation on a 100% renewable grid doesn’t exist yet and it isn’t clear it ever will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Link?

Battery tech for efficiently storing the energy necessary for a region like Texas to survive this situation on a 100% renewable grid doesn’t exist yet and it isn’t clear it ever will.

If they had appropriately winterized their infrastructure instead of gambling with people’s lives, they could be warm and snuggly with 100% renewable energy.

This isn’t a renewable energy fckup, this is a typical GOP fckup.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for politicizing this.

You know what. Lowering taxes to the point that you don’t do basic things to protect critical infrastructure and then tell people to go it alone is political. And God knows Texas made disaster relief political with Sandy. Then Trump doubled down for 4 years every time a blue state had a disaster.

It’s political because the Texas GOP made a bad political calculation that Texas wanted low taxes for than heat or water. It’s political because TX is now blaming renewable energy when that is not the real problem. It’s political because there are tweets all over the place with Texas politicians mocking blue states with power loss issues, like CA. And, it’s political because the Texas delegation held up Sandy relief for weeks.

If you don’t want it to be political, talk to Tx. They made it political 20 years ago. And today, they a till making it political by blaming AOC and not their own crappy decision making.

You don’t get to make bad decisions. Blame them on Dems when the the whole dang state is under R control. And then say: don’t make this political.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for politicizing this.

Did you say the same to Cruz when he did not support help for NY after the hurricane?

Don't you also think it's rather ironic that many Rs in TX want to secede?

Yep. This same issue was politicized many years ago by republicans, Cruz comes to mind. But of course Democrats will.guve aid to Texas, because we're not heartless jerks.

I'd be just as happy if Texas left the union and dealt with their own issues, since they seem to dislike the rest of us anyhow.

As long as they take Florida with them. We get DC and PR as states instead. Win-win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now some areas here in North Texas are told they have to boil their water as it is unsafe. But with no power? Many are putting out pots to gather snow. This may go on until Sunday.

Nope they remember this next time they vote. But, they probably won’t.