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

[Anonymous]

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

Wow! A picture says a thousand words.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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!

Wow. Things are bad when You are making Arkansas look good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can’t you boil water on your barbecue grill? Granted, I’m in Montana, but my son grilled bbq ribs this past Saturday and the wind chill was -40.

Was is it also that cold inside his home?

[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 see what you did there m

I’m not saying it’s green. Clearly, it’s not. I’m saying that if you put power production methods on a spectrum, nuclear would be greener than many traditional fuel sources— if it weren’t for those pesky spent fuel rods and periodic meltdowns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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!

I guess we’ll be prying that freedom from their cold, dead hands?

[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.

Wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

So the "do nothing" crowd in TX is vindicated b/c they might - might - invest in this technology which may be available in one to two decades at the earliest?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, just saw where areas here in North Texas need to boil their water. Um, if you have no power, how do you do that🤷‍♀️

Also they said not to run taps to keep pipes open to conserve water. (Actually, you could turn off the main then open faucets everywhere.)

There is snark about the windmills. Um, I'm in ND where a state park had an unofficial reading of -56 (56 degrees below zero, just about cold enough to store the Pfizer vaccine). They build the turbines to handle the cold, an investment not used (perhaps reasonably) in Texas.

Also, natural gas supplies ran low, resulting in low pressure resulting in condensation and frozen gas lines in places. Little Rock has been around 0 degrees.

Part of ND's grid is on the same grid as a large part of Texas, and those areas have had mandatory blackouts (I'm on the MSIS grid--I've been working in tech support for energy utilities in Texas and other regions so I've learned some things about this stuff!).

But this is NOT a smackdown of green energy no matter what the WSJ wants to say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Wow.

Best to stay off the roads if nobody can clear them. ND again--when we have had the worst possible weather, it is ILLEGAL to drive on public roads except authorized people such as essential medical personnel.

[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.

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?

Offtop.
This is such a weird statement. How does low temperature relate to wind?? I am asking as someone who grew up in a climate with winters lasting from mid- October to end of March with temperatures averaging F -4/ -22 (C= -20/-30). Do you even hear yourself (c)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can’t you boil water on your barbecue grill? Granted, I’m in Montana, but my son grilled bbq ribs this past Saturday and the wind chill was -40.

Was is it also that cold inside his home?

What does that have to do with boiling water?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Freak storm. The state was not prepared but doubt Florida or AZ or southern CA are either. No state government is risk free prepared. Bringing energy in from other states may have helped unless transmission lines were down. There is always an issue to counteract the prepared. Tough situation that neither party would have addressed successfully.

That's popoycock. Being connected to the national.grid and following federal.regulatory standards would 100% have prevented this.

There is no "national grid". There is a collection of separate grids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.It looks like everybody else is an expert in Texas weather except for the Texan here. And sorry, Austin used to be a Texas bastion( third generation UT- Pappy was class of 1915), now it’s an absurd group of Silicon Valley idiots. We have an ice storm coming. I’m scared.

Maybe start by not blaming the Silicon Valley “idiots” who do not run the state and we’re not the brain trust who decided Texas could go it alone without the national Grid. I want to be sympathetic. But you are sitting in a state where Rs have controlled everything in government for 40 years blaming Austin based tech startups. So, you’re making the sympathy piece hard. Blame your elected officials. Blame the morons who decided against the national grid, blame to folks who thought lower taxes were more important that infrastructure upkeep. Blame the only people in the world whose plan is to operate wind turbines in freezing weather without weatherizing them. Blaming Austin tech companies is silly.

You, and a lot of Texas, will leave this mess with a deep and abiding belief that AOC and the liberal elite are to blame. You won’t upgrade your infrastructure. You won’t join the national Grid. You will vote for the same morons whose crappy decision making lead to this. You will hate on the NGD, which doesn’t even exist yet and find a 27 step conspiracy proving HRC and AOC caused this. And this will happen again next year. And that’s on you.

Personal responsibility. Get some.

+ a million

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Freak storm. The state was not prepared but doubt Florida or AZ or southern CA are either. No state government is risk free prepared. Bringing energy in from other states may have helped unless transmission lines were down. There is always an issue to counteract the prepared. Tough situation that neither party would have addressed successfully.

That's popoycock. Being connected to the national.grid and following federal.regulatory standards would 100% have prevented this.

There is no "national grid". There is a collection of separate grids.

There is a collection of three grids, the Eastern interconnect, the Western interconnect, and Texas' system. Excellent job pointing out a distinction without a difference, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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!

I guess we’ll be prying that freedom from their cold, dead hands?

Don't worry - the Texas governor is still on his bullshit.