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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Texas GOP should figure out how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Alas, we will give in, help them, and not be the jerks they are. Which they depend on, to keep themselves in power.

Biden could say this to the state of Texas like this mayor said to his town of Colorado City, Texas:

Wow. And yet my NoVA self will bail this guy out because even Texans shouldn’t be allowed to freeze to death.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When Cali goes ablaze? No worries. When they have constant rolling blackouts? Not a problem.

Literally everyone thinks it’s a huge problem. The big difference? CA isn’t blaming the GOP and is aggressively working to solve it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

100% renewable is not a good idea until battery tech is much better. Redundancies and diversity is important and builds resiliency.

The problem is that Texas gained for years from their lack of investment and foresight. They enjoyed low prices because of that lack of spending and knowingly took on the risk of what happened this week. We cannot bail them out for that decision because doing so will only reinforce their original bad short term thinking decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Texas GOP should figure out how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Alas, we will give in, help them, and not be the jerks they are. Which they depend on, to keep themselves in power.

Biden could say this to the state of Texas like this mayor said to his town of Colorado City, Texas:

Besides being evil. And a moron. This guy seems to miss the point that utilities may be quasi public, but they aren’t freebies for the freeloaders. People pay a significant amount of money each month for them. So yes, they are owed the services they pay for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bigger issue than the wind turbines freezing is that Texas has underinvested in its energy infrastructure and doesn't have cross-border connections to draw energy from neighboring states and alternative sources. This was done purposefully, and experts have been warning about this kind of event in Texas for years.

This is fully a political issue that is manifesting because of law taxes and non-action relation to climate change.

I am sorry it is happening, but it was a fully avoidable event.

This has nothing to do with climate change. It has everything to do with prioritizing worthless green energy over coal, oil, and the cleanest most powerful of all, nuclear.

WRONG. It’s good old overconfident, incompetent capitalism.
The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn’t see the need to prepare for cold weather
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/16/ercot-texas-electric-grid-failure/

Yep. I mean I wasn’t aware nuclear reactors were ‘green’

Ironically, they are much greener to operate than most traditional energy sources. OTOH, the do have the problems of occasionally melting down and producing fuel rods...

[Anonymous]

Texas produces 24% of the country's national gas, and yet their natural gas pipelines are frozen because they weren't prepared for cold. Doh!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bigger issue than the wind turbines freezing is that Texas has underinvested in its energy infrastructure and doesn't have cross-border connections to draw energy from neighboring states and alternative sources. This was done purposefully, and experts have been warning about this kind of event in Texas for years.

This is fully a political issue that is manifesting because of law taxes and non-action relation to climate change.

I am sorry it is happening, but it was a fully avoidable event.

Texas hasn’t underinvested in energy infrastructure. The dollars have simply been invested in intermittent renewable power. If 100% of Texas wind and solar capacity had been online yesterday then there would have been no blackouts.

Not during the winter it wouldn't. There's not enough wind in texas at this time and that was already known. The more you all lie to yourselves to pwn the libs the more harm you are doing to yourselves.

There isn’t enough wind in -1 degree temperatures? Do you even hear yourself?

According to the data, wind generation has exceeded expectations. Also, according to the data, even if wind generation was at 110% of summer capacity it still wouldn't have been enough to meet the demand surge.

The more you all lie to yourselves to pwn the libs the more you are hurting yourselves.

Well, they may be owning the libs. But this lib has power, heat and water.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bigger issue than the wind turbines freezing is that Texas has underinvested in its energy infrastructure and doesn't have cross-border connections to draw energy from neighboring states and alternative sources. This was done purposefully, and experts have been warning about this kind of event in Texas for years.

This is fully a political issue that is manifesting because of law taxes and non-action relation to climate change.

I am sorry it is happening, but it was a fully avoidable event.

Texas hasn’t underinvested in energy infrastructure. The dollars have simply been invested in intermittent renewable power. If 100% of Texas wind and solar capacity had been online yesterday then there would have been no blackouts.

Not during the winter it wouldn't. There's not enough wind in texas at this time and that was already known. The more you all lie to yourselves to pwn the libs the more harm you are doing to yourselves.

There isn’t enough wind in -1 degree temperatures? Do you even hear yourself?

According to the data, wind generation has exceeded expectations. Also, according to the data, even if wind generation was at 110% of summer capacity it still wouldn't have been enough to meet the demand surge.

The more you all lie to yourselves to pwn the libs the more you are hurting yourselves.

Well, they may be owning the libs. But this lib has power, heat and water.

This lib is nice and toasty in Maryland. You couldn't pay me to live in Texas at this point.

The Texas GOP has done this to themselves and are now crying to the federal libs for a handout.
Of course they will get a handout, but I sometimes wish we could be hard hearted, just like they were with California and Hurricane Sandy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do countries in Scandinavia deal with it? They get pretty cold weather in the winter. Do they lose power every winter when it's freezing?

Different answer for each country but basically boils down to hydro and to a lesser extent nuclear.

My college kid is a geosciences major who does research in hydro (and volcanos and earthquakes). Loves Iceland, which is an amazing country. And Iceland to a large extent and Scandinavia to a lesser one are well situated for hydro. (So is part of the US). But, it’s like oil. You can’t just drill any old place and boom! You need a geographically unstable area, which often (usually) means earthquakes and volcanos). Hawaii makes great use of geothermal for that reason. It can also make geothermal in AP stable. Because extraction uses chemicals that react badly to volcanic eruptions (to out it mildly). My kids research is actually is more stable/ safer methods of employing geothermal. But, you still need the pressurized buildup of water.

See— I listen when we talks.

For big, commercial level, yes. Homes can get geothermal power anywhere; one of my mother’s friends retrofitted her home in the stable Midwest with geothermal.

Yep. It’s very cool technology (in a I am a humanities major with a STEM kid, but parenting young adults means meeting them where they are and talking about their interests sort of way). We visited Iceland a few years ago and bang, something clicked with my kid and he found his passion. It’s very untapped tech because of what happened in Hawaii when the volcano erupted a couple years ago. They were very close to a massive explosion as they tried to drain explosive chemicals before lava can get there. And geothermal by definition exists mainly in gEologically unstable areas. My kid thinks it can be done without the explosive chemical piece. And it’s kind of cool he’s might be one of the people to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

100% renewable is not a good idea until battery tech is much better. Redundancies and diversity is important and builds resiliency.

The problem is that Texas gained for years from their lack of investment and foresight. They enjoyed low prices because of that lack of spending and knowingly took on the risk of what happened this week. We cannot bail them out for that decision because doing so will only reinforce their original bad short term thinking decision.

I wasn’t really advocating for 100% renewable, just making the point that this isn’t a battery or green energy failure; it was a series of poor GOP decisions, the kind of thing they claim to be against. Where was the common sense?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

https://www.iea.org/news/a-rapid-rise-in-battery-innovation-is-playing-a-key-role-in-clean-energy-transitions

I didn’t say it existed on shelf ready to ship to TX. I said the research is strong, the tech is improving like and that over a 10-20 year horizon, it will be there so we can phase legacy systems offline and not maintain them indefinitely. I stand by that. We need to invest in R&D. But the results so far are impressive. And it has a ton of potential.

[Anonymous]

Texarkana, Arkansas prepared for snow; Texarkana, Texas did not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Texarkana, Arkansas prepared for snow; Texarkana, Texas did not.

One side - freedom! No taxes!

Other side- taxes, infrastructure and clear roads, power and water!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bigger issue than the wind turbines freezing is that Texas has underinvested in its energy infrastructure and doesn't have cross-border connections to draw energy from neighboring states and alternative sources. This was done purposefully, and experts have been warning about this kind of event in Texas for years.

This is fully a political issue that is manifesting because of law taxes and non-action relation to climate change.

I am sorry it is happening, but it was a fully avoidable event.

This has nothing to do with climate change. It has everything to do with prioritizing worthless green energy over coal, oil, and the cleanest most powerful of all, nuclear.

WRONG. It’s good old overconfident, incompetent capitalism.
The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn’t see the need to prepare for cold weather
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/16/ercot-texas-electric-grid-failure/

Yep. I mean I wasn’t aware nuclear reactors were ‘green’

Ironically, they are much greener to operate than most traditional energy sources. OTOH, the do have the problems of occasionally melting down and producing fuel rods...

please don't call nuclear power "green." it causes me to have a nuclear meltdown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bigger issue than the wind turbines freezing is that Texas has underinvested in its energy infrastructure and doesn't have cross-border connections to draw energy from neighboring states and alternative sources. This was done purposefully, and experts have been warning about this kind of event in Texas for years.

This is fully a political issue that is manifesting because of law taxes and non-action relation to climate change.

I am sorry it is happening, but it was a fully avoidable event.

This has nothing to do with climate change. It has everything to do with prioritizing worthless green energy over coal, oil, and the cleanest most powerful of all, nuclear.

WRONG. It’s good old overconfident, incompetent capitalism.
The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn’t see the need to prepare for cold weather
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/16/ercot-texas-electric-grid-failure/

Yep. I mean I wasn’t aware nuclear reactors were ‘green’

Ironically, they are much greener to operate than most traditional energy sources. OTOH, the do have the problems of occasionally melting down and producing fuel rods...

please don't call nuclear power "green." it causes me to have a nuclear meltdown.

I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, but I post every time nuclear power comes up: I grew up next to a nuclear reactor and it was safe and all, but the spent fuel rods get waved away like they’re no big deal and they are a HUGE deal because they are forever.