PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: nddons on February 15, 2021, 06:49:37 PM
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You’re an oil and gas state for God’s sake. How can you have rolling blackouts?
I heard on Tucker that 25% of your energy comes from wind and solar. Nice job.
You guys should be calling for someone’s head.
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We have outdoor boilers. We don’t normally have weather this cold so our power plants are not designed to run when ambient temps are below freezing for very long.
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Nukes love to run in the cold.
Just sayin.
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Nukes love to run in the cold.
Just sayin.
And everybody bitching on Facebook about the power company not having prepared for this ironically miss the fact that they didn’t prepare for it either - by having a generator.
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And everybody bitching on Facebook about the power company not having prepared for this ironically miss the fact that they didn’t prepare for it either - by having a generator.
except, isn't part of the power generation problem that there is insufficient fuel?
Which is more efficient - a power plant or a whole slew of house generators?
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except, isn't part of the power generation problem that there is insufficient fuel?
Which is more efficient - a power plant or a whole slew of house generators?
In this case, it's not a question of efficiency. It is a question of who was better prepared. If YOU have a generator and YOU a few cans of gas, or your car is full of gas, then you are better prepared to weather the storm.
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And everybody bitching on Facebook about the power company not having prepared for this ironically miss the fact that they didn’t prepare for it either - by having a generator.
Hard to justify a home generator for a once every 10yr event.
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except, isn't part of the power generation problem that there is insufficient fuel?
No, they have plenty of fuel, it’s got nothing to do with that.
Which is more efficient - a power plant or a whole slew of house generators?
Efficiency doesn’t matter. The high levels of instantaneous demand due to the cold temperatures and the effects of those same cold temps on the generation end are what is resulting in the inability to fully meet demand at all given moments. At such times you don’t worry about efficiency, people just need to stay warm enough not to die of hypothermia.
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Hard to justify a home generator for a once every 10yr event.
I barely remember spending that $500 for a generator 15 years ago. I have only had to use it about 3 or 4 times since then but I certainly was glad I had it when I needed it.
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Hard to justify a home generator for a once every 10yr event.
And by that same logic it’s hard to justify the additional expense to build a power plant as if it were in Minnesota, just for a few days every ten years of sub freezing temperatures in Texas.
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I barely remember spending that $500 for a generator 15 years ago. I have only had to use it about 3 or 4 times since then but I certainly was glad I had it when I needed it.
There is no predicting when any of us might find ourselves without power for a week or more. I look at it like insurance. The effects of no electricity for a week are so uncomfortable and possibly even lethal, that the expense is justifiable even if you never need it.
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A lot of the issues I have also seen is water pipes freezing. Not shocking when I saw how they do it in Texas. The main line is exposed outside. Of course it freezes when it get that cold.
Now in Minnesota all our lines are buried underground and enter in the basement. Basements are not something you see a lot of in Texas from what I hear.
Sent from my iPad . Squirrel!!
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A lot of the issues I have also seen is water pipes freezing. Not shocking when I saw how they do it in Texas. The main line is exposed outside. Of course it freezes when it get that cold.
Now in Minnesota all our lines are buried underground and enter in the basement. Basements are not something you see a lot of in Texas from what I hear.
Sent from my iPad . Squirrel!!
I’m not sure about Texas, but here in Florida we call basements indoor Swimmingpool g pools.
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A lot of the issues I have also seen is water pipes freezing. Not shocking when I saw how they do it in Texas. The main line is exposed outside. Of course it freezes when it get that cold.
Now in Minnesota all our lines are buried underground and enter in the basement. Basements are not something you see a lot of in Texas from what I hear.
Exactly. What makes this a disaster isn’t the weather per se, it’s that it’s so rare things aren’t designed for it, the way they are “up north”.
No, basements aren’t big here. Both our current house and the one we sold last year, are on concrete slabs, the old one had the water pipes in the slab but our current house has them run through the attic. So because of that we left our faucets running last night and we are fine. But our next door neighbor didn’t and now they have some frozen pipes.
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I’m not sure about Texas, but here in Florida we call basements indoor Swimmingpool g pools.
That would definitely be the case in our current location. The ground is so soggy we have mud bugs in our yard (crawfish, a type of “seafood”).
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No, they have plenty of fuel, it’s got nothing to do with that.
ok, so demand far exceeded capacity. got it.
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People in TX with only Teslas seem to be fucked right now. 8)
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No, they have plenty of fuel, it’s got nothing to do with that.
Efficiency doesn’t matter. The high levels of instantaneous demand due to the cold temperatures and the effects of those same cold temps on the generation end are what is resulting in the inability to fully meet demand at all given moments. At such times you don’t worry about efficiency, people just need to stay warm enough not to die of hypothermia.
But that’s the thing. Air conditioning uses more energy than electric heating. How is this possible, except for the fact that 25% of your energy now comes from windmills?
The bigger issue is that Texas has just become the canary in the coal mine. If in 2021 our power grid is incapable of handling extraordinary weather, ANYWHERE in this country, then there are much bigger, and in my estimation premeditated, problems that we can even grasp.
For example, I thought most states have cross border agreements with other states and regions to buy and sell electricity. CA has used that in the past to prevent blackouts. Why is that not being done?
How do you control a population most efficiently? You flip a switch.
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There is no predicting when any of us might find ourselves without power for a week or more. I look at it like insurance. The effects of no electricity for a week are so uncomfortable and possibly even lethal, that the expense is justifiable even if you never need it.
I think there’s no excuse for a power grid failure in the 21st century, and that this is intentional.
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But that’s the thing. Air conditioning uses more energy than electric heating. How is this possible, except for the fact that 25% of your energy now comes from windmills?
The bigger issue is that Texas has just become the canary in the coal mine. If in 2021 our power grid is incapable of handling extraordinary weather, ANYWHERE in this country, then there are much bigger, and in my estimation premeditated, problems that we can even grasp.
For example, I thought most states have cross border agreements with other states and regions to buy and sell electricity. CA has used that in the past to prevent blackouts. Why is that not being done?
How do you control a population most efficiently? You flip a switch.
https://thenewamerican.com/biden-terminates-trump-order-that-kept-china-out-of-americas-power-grid/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bidens-order-could-let-china-control-u-s-electric-grid
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How do you control a population most efficiently? You flip a switch.
I dunno. That might be true for the tofu farters in Austin and Houston. But I lived in Texas when I was young, through 2nd grade. People in Texas are independent, they will figure it out. You won't find Texans huddling in the cold waiting for someone to save them. They will be saving themselves.
I don't know what the foreigners from California are going to do.
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I think there’s no excuse for a power grid failure in the 21st century, and that this is intentional.
I agree. The Left is taking us backwards for dubious reasons. They are damaging our standard of living and quality of life. It is purposeful.
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I dunno. That might be true for the tofu farters in Austin and Houston. But I lived in Texas when I was young, through 2nd grade. People in Texas are independent, they will figure it out. You won't find Texans huddling in the cold waiting for someone to save them. They will be saving themselves.
I don't know what the foreigners from California are going to do.
They're not your father's Texans. Different era, different breed.
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Exactly. What makes this a disaster isn’t the weather per se, it’s that it’s so rare things aren’t designed for it, the way they are “up north”.
No, basements aren’t big here. Both our current house and the one we sold last year, are on concrete slabs, the old one had the water pipes in the slab but our current house has them run through the attic. So because of that we left our faucets running last night and we are fine. But our next door neighbor didn’t and now they have some frozen pipes.
Next issues is going to be all the burst pipes. A burst pipe in attic does not sound good.
Sent from my iPad . Squirrel!!
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I dunno. That might be true for the tofu farters in Austin and Houston. But I lived in Texas when I was young, through 2nd grade. People in Texas are independent, they will figure it out. You won't find Texans huddling in the cold waiting for someone to save them. They will be saving themselves.
I don't know what the foreigners from California are going to do.
You’re missing my point. It’s not that oligarchs chose to control Texans right now. But this demonstrates that it could be done, quickly and conveniently.
And not everyone in Texas is as self sufficient as we think. There are a lot of poor urban areas, just like any other state, with people who can’t go out and buy a generator to power their heaters. When I lived in Charlotte there were plenty of stories each and every year with people leaving their ovens on with the oven door open, or my favorite, burning their Weber grill in the house so they could stay warm, and killing everyone with carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Next issues is going to be all the burst pipes. A burst pipe in attic does not sound good.
Sent from my iPad . Squirrel!!
I was going to say that. A frozen pipe is an inconvenience. A burst pipe is a disaster.
We have frost free sillcocks where the actual valve is maybe 6”-12” in from the wall, presumably inside a basement, so the pipes don’t burst. And I still turn the water off to each sillcock near the source of where it enters the house from our well.
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I was going to say that. A frozen pipe is an inconvenience. A burst pipe is a disaster.
How well I know first hand. In May 2017 we left the house for a weekend to see the grandkid. When we returned we found a fitting had failed resulting in essentially the same thing as a burst pipe. Water under pressure spraying into the house for two days. We had to move out and move everything in the house into storage for 3 months while they repaired the damage.
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I think there’s no excuse for a power grid failure in the 21st century, and that this is intentional.
Intentional in the sense that the regulators are forcing fossil plant shutdowns and limiting nuclear unit starts and trying to do away with all fossil fuels and turn control of the whole grid over to China, yes. In the long run we face a dystopian hell of unnecessary hardship due to evilness and idiocy on the part of politicians and activists sold on the climate change hoax.
But intentional in that today’s blackouts were deliberately orchestrated? Not at all. I’ve worked for the power company and my husband works for one in Texas right now. I know exactly what’s going on and I assure you there is no nefarious plot to turn the switch off. The utilities themselves do everything they can to keep the grid up and meet demand despite insane policies from the government.
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Intentional in the sense that the regulators are forcing fossil plant shutdowns and limiting nuclear unit starts and trying to do away with all fossil fuels and turn control of the whole grid over to China, yes. In the long run we face a dystopian hell of unnecessary hardship due to evilness and idiocy on the part of politicians and activists sold on the climate change hoax.
But intentional in that today’s blackouts were deliberately orchestrated? Not at all. I’ve worked for the power company and my husband works for one in Texas right now. I know exactly what’s going on and I assure you there is no nefarious plot to turn the switch off. The utilities themselves do everything they can to keep the grid up and meet demand despite insane policies from the government.
Every airplane crash is the result of a series of bad choices or sequential failures. That means accidents are predictable.
So maybe predictable is a better word. When wind turbines are being forced on the state to compose 25% of your energy sources, or forcing fossil fuel plant shutdowns, or any other array of problems you did and didn’t list, these blackouts were predictable. There’s another article that I saw that said wind turbines actually draw energy from the grid in cold weather to keep the turbines from freezing.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/coal-rescuing-americans-polar-vortex-wind-turbines-actually-drain-energy-grid
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Use helicopters to spray deice fluid on the blades?
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/the-cold-hard-truth-about-ice-on-turbine-blades/
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Every airplane crash is the result of a series of bad choices or sequential failures. That means accidents are predictable.
So maybe predictable is a better word. When wind turbines are being forced on the state to compose 25% of your energy sources, or forcing fossil fuel plant shutdowns, or any other array of problems you did and didn’t list, these blackouts were predictable. There’s another article that I saw that said wind turbines actually draw energy from the grid in cold weather to keep the turbines from freezing.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/coal-rescuing-americans-polar-vortex-wind-turbines-actually-drain-energy-grid
Blackouts from high A/C use in the summer or storm damage or just high usage yes but not these blackouts. If you had 100% of your power come from coal fired plants and no windmills you would still have this problem unless you wanted to spend billions more dollars outfitting all your plants as if they were sitting in Alaska.
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Use helicopters to spray deice fluid on the blades?
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/the-cold-hard-truth-about-ice-on-turbine-blades/
Burning a fossil fuel to deice with a fossil fuel to provide "green energy". ;D
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Blackouts from high A/C use in the summer or storm damage or just high usage yes but not these blackouts. If you had 100% of your power come from coal fired plants and no windmills you would still have this problem unless you wanted to spend billions more dollars outfitting all your plants as if they were sitting in Alaska.
I’m not arguing with you. I don’t live there, and you do. However, I have friends in Dallas, Ft. Worth, Palestine, Bandara, and a couple other places and they aren’t buying Greg Abbott’s line, and they are pissed off.
On Saturday he was warning people and said Texas had no additional power generation they can add to the system.
Now I see this afternoon he’s looking for an investigation of ERCOT. He must have felt the only heat left in Texas.
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I’m not arguing with you. I don’t live there, and you do. However, I have friends in Dallas, Ft. Worth, Palestine, Bandara, and a couple other places and they aren’t buying Greg Abbott’s line, and they are pissed off.
On Saturday he was warning people and said Texas had no additional power generation they can add to the system.
Now I see this afternoon he’s looking for an investigation of ERCOT. He must have felt the only heat left in Texas.
Abbott is a disaster as a governor.
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Idiots.
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The core issue in Texas: The systems aren't engineered for that level of cold.
Example: Today I learned that there will be tons of people that are going to burn out the heating elements in their heat pumps. The heat pumps commonly sold to the southern states are not designed to run this long, this hard. As a result, the heating elements burn out and then the heat pump becomes pretty much ineffective.
The same thing is going on with their power plants. Exhaust and cooling units are freezing over and as a result, blocking the cooling air that should be cooling the internal systems.
Result - not enough power. I'm not sure why Texas cannot buy energy from other states. That makes zero sense why that cannot happen.
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The core issue in Texas: The systems aren't engineered for that level of cold.
Example: Today I learned that there will be tons of people that are going to burn out the heating elements in their heat pumps. The heat pumps commonly sold to the southern states are not designed to run this long, this hard. As a result, the heating elements burn out and then the heat pump becomes pretty much ineffective.
The same thing is going on with their power plants. Exhaust and cooling units are freezing over and as a result, blocking the cooling air that should be cooling the internal systems.
Among other things I won’t detail, yes. Also, in hot climes like Texas we schedule regular maintenance outages for winter because that’s usually time of lowest loads, so many of our units are down just for maintenance but this cold spell had demand up nearly as high as peak in summer. It is truly an unusual event.
Result - not enough power. I'm not sure why Texas cannot buy energy from other states. That makes zero sense why that cannot happen.
There are minimal physical interconnects to do that, and of course you can’t build that infrastructure overnight but the reason they don’t put that in place is because if Texas buys power outside it’s own grid she opens herself up to Federal control! And we don’t want that.
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The core issue in Texas: The systems aren't engineered for that level of cold.
Example: Today I learned that there will be tons of people that are going to burn out the heating elements in their heat pumps. The heat pumps commonly sold to the southern states are not designed to run this long, this hard. As a result, the heating elements burn out and then the heat pump becomes pretty much ineffective.
Sorry, but I believe you are misinformed.
There are no heating elements in heat pumps (except possibly an emergency heating element, which is easy to bypass).
The heat pump is basically an air conditioner in reverse; which in the south is designed to run almost continuously.
Also, it wasn't the design of the power plants. It was the failure of the plant operators to take prescribed precautions because they were not familiar with cold weather operations.
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Also, it wasn't the design of the power plants. It was the failure of the plant operators to take prescribed precautions because they were not familiar with cold weather operations.
What are you talking about?
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Sorry, but I believe you are misinformed.
There are no heating elements in heat pumps (except possibly an emergency heating element, which is easy to bypass).
The heat pump is basically an air conditioner in reverse; which in the south is designed to run almost continuously.
Also, it wasn't the design of the power plants. It was the failure of the plant operators to take prescribed precautions because they were not familiar with cold weather operations.
Well, my information comes from people who build them. Heat pumps won't keep you warm in this cold, so yes, they have emergency heater elements. But those are emergency elements, which aren't intended to work this hard.
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Well, my information comes from people who build them. Heat pumps won't keep you warm in this cold, so yes, they have emergency heater elements. But those are emergency elements, which aren't intended to work this hard.
A heat pumps performance begins to degrade below about 40* F and the strip heat can come on to supplement the heat pump.
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We hated our heat pump when we lived in Illinois. It always failed to deliver when too hot or too cold. When it was hot outside it couldn't move heat from inside to out. When it was cold outside it couldn't move heat from outside to in. Efficient, but not effective.
We finally put in geothermal. What a difference! A constant, unlimited source of 50 degrees. Three loops straight down. Silent and never failed. Power consumption dropped to about half of the heat pump. Totally bummed that we can't do that here. Nothing but hard rock that's WAY expensive to drill through to put in the loops. Too many trees for solar, wind is too noisy. Guess we'll just have to keep with the cheap propane and cheap electricity. And a whole house generator for the inevitable ice storms.
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When it was time to replace our system, we jettisoned the heat pump (was never really satisfactory for all the reasons others have given) and went with gas furnace and separate AC. Way better performance. Geeks used to like heat pumps for the “savings,” but even they gradually succumbed to heat pumps’ downsides.
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I hate heat pumps. They go against nature, like trying to push a boulder uphill. The steeper the hill the harder it is and when the hill is steepest (the coldest days) the temp gradient is steepest between outside and what you want inside and you’re trying to make the boulder go in the wrong direction to where it wants to flow. Of course all A/C works like that but even on the hottest days you might have 100-75=25 deg differential but on cold days you can have 75-20=55 deg differential so twice the gradient. Heat pumps as reverse A/C is a sucky idea to start with.
Burning fuel directly goes with nature. You ignite that stuff and it wants to throw out the heat. Nothing better than standing over a floor vent in your nightgown on a cold winter morning with nice oil furnace hot air blowing up your body.
Wimpy luke-cool heat pump air just doesn’t give the same satisfaction.
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We hated our heat pump when we lived in Illinois. It always failed to deliver when too hot or too cold. When it was hot outside it couldn't move heat from inside to out. When it was cold outside it couldn't move heat from outside to in. Efficient, but not effective.
We finally put in geothermal. What a difference! A constant, unlimited source of 50 degrees. Three loops straight down. Silent and never failed. Power consumption dropped to about half of the heat pump. Totally bummed that we can't do that here. Nothing but hard rock that's WAY expensive to drill through to put in the loops. Too many trees for solar, wind is too noisy. Guess we'll just have to keep with the cheap propane and cheap electricity. And a whole house generator for the inevitable ice storms.
Tell me about your Geothermal setup please. We are about to build our new airpark house here in Tennessee and I really like the idea, but don't know a ton about it.
-Dan
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I hate heat pumps. They go against nature, like trying to push a boulder uphill. The steeper the hill the harder it is and when the hill is steepest (the coldest days) the temp gradient is steepest between outside and what you want inside and you’re trying to make the boulder go in the wrong direction to where it wants to flow. Of course all A/C works like that but even on the hottest days you might have 100-75=25 deg differential but on cold days you can have 75-20=55 deg differential so twice the gradient. Heat pumps as reverse A/C is a sucky idea to start with.
Burning fuel directly goes with nature. You ignite that stuff and it wants to throw out the heat. Nothing better than standing over a floor vent in your nightgown on a cold winter morning with nice oil furnace hot air blowing up your body.
Wimpy luke-cool heat pump air just doesn’t give the same satisfaction.
to the contrary, it is quite natural for hot air to mix with cold and heat pumps take advantage of that. And why do you think the hot air blows up from the heat vents?
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Tell me about your Geothermal setup please. We are about to build our new airpark house here in Tennessee and I really like the idea, but don't know a ton about it.
-Dan
There are two kinds, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal means they tear up your yard and put long loops maybe a couple of feet down to transfer the heat / cold. Works if you have milder temperatures and a lot of land. We went vertical. A guy came out and drilled three six-inch holes 300 feet down. We had mostly sand and loose rock down below. It was cool to see what he dug up. Some very thin coal seams and other stuff from way down. Three loops of hose are dropped into the holes and filled up with some kind of clay stuff that easily transfers heat from the ground to the loops. When the system is on, (I think) water is pumped down into the ground loops where they either warm up or cool off depending on what's needed. The pump and heat exchanger were in the garage. A separate loop went from the heater / air conditioner to the heat exchanger.
Basically it's replacing the outside heat pump that uses air with a quieter, more efficient heat pump that uses water that conducts to the ground. The ground deep down is a constant 50 degrees.
This is kind of dated, but it describes the process in more detail:
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/heating-cooling/21014980/geothermal-heat-pump-how-it-works
When we put it in it was about 1/2 price due to Uncle Sugar's tax incentives. Those are gone now.
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I have two heat pumps. The one for the basement is original installed in 1997. The one for the main floor is only three, maybe four years old now and is very efficient. Our all electric house averages $125 per month. I only run the basement unit when it is old, like the last few days. I use a little space heater under my computer desk most of the time instead.
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My young niece asked me what those big things (wind turbines) were over there. I said that they were big electric fans that keep the wind blowing over the crops so they grow faster. Notice how there's always a breeze when they are on and no breeze when they are off? That shows they're working.
My wife just gave me "the look".
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to the contrary, it is quite natural for hot air to mix with cold and heat pumps take advantage of that. And why do you think the hot air blows up from the heat vents?
Not sure what you’re talking about. The air blew up from the exact same vents when the oil furnace was replaced with a heat pump. Very different temperature air.
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Well, my information comes from people who build them. Heat pumps won't keep you warm in this cold, so yes, they have emergency heater elements. But those are emergency elements, which aren't intended to work this hard.
Ok, I buy that. My point is that a Heat Pump can run just as long as A/C. But it is true that below a certain temp it can't keep up and has to use heating elements that can burn out. I have no idea what their durability is. I don't think it has gotten below freezing here for several years, and that was only for a few hours.
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My young niece asked me what those big things (wind turbines) were over there. I said that they were big electric fans that keep the wind blowing over the crops so they grow faster. Notice how there's always a breeze when they are on and no breeze when they are off? That shows they're working.
My wife just gave me "the look".
Sounds plausible to me! ;)
Seriously though, windmills were used to open up the west - around 6 million or so were installed between 1850 and 1900 to pump water for farms and ranches. The iconic style can still be bought: http://www.ironmanwindmill.com/index.htm (http://www.ironmanwindmill.com/index.htm)
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People in TX with only Teslas seem to be fucked right now. 8)
Yes, let's outlaw ICE cars and go 100% electric, while allowing the CCP to control the grid.
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/02/18/texas-ercot-removes-board-members-from-website-as-their-residencies-are-questioned-n1426475
Well, except in certain well-lit urban downtowns. If you live outside of those, as most Texans do, you were forced to play a grim version of Russian Roulette with your power and water supply — if you could get either. Your water pipes may have frozen and burst, rendering your frigid home uninhabitable. I have friends who are dealing with this and will be dealing with it for a long time after the storm.
Power went out for millions of Texans several days ago and is only now being restored piecemeal. Freezing temperatures won’t even leave central Texas until Friday. Much of the state north of that may stay cold for days yet.
Texans are getting to know the 50-year-old council and are not liking what they’re learning. For one thing, about a third of its members don’t even live in Texas.
A third of the board of directors that operate the state’s electrical grid do not appear to live in Texas, and their performance in wake of widespread outages has led to a Dallas-area lawmaker’s call for change.
Records show the two top office holders of the 15-member board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), live out-of-state. Three other ERCOT board members also appear to live thousands of miles from Texas.
The thought of some Californian voting on our energy market doesn’t sit well.
For another, it turns out that the board members nominate each other to it.
How that hasn’t come up as a glaring conflict of interest before now is a head-scratcher. Pals nominating pals who nominate other pals to this board in Texas? And you don’t even have to live there?
Well, now that the glare has turned on ERCOT, it has removed the board members’ names from its website. They’re gone. They were all there earlier in the week.
ERCOT has had a difficult job dealing with this terrible storm, but its public communications have not helped. As the storm started in earnest Sunday, its social media released this.
(https://pjmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ercot-tweet.jpg)
And now its board has disappeared itself precisely when Gov. Abbott and everyone else in the state is demanding transparency. We’re beyond “this is not a good look” territory, well beyond. The legislature is angry. Hearings will commence next week.
Among the conversations to be had are how much the state should depend on wind power, which did collapse as demand surged but has bounced back, and if we’re going to depend on wind then why don’t we winterize the windmills in West Texas? It gets cold out there, not usually this cold, but cold enough to consider winterizing. That will cost money, but should be discussed. Another will be, is it possible to keep a few coal plants in working order just in case another winter like this strikes? There will be loads of economic questions attached to that one. Coal plants were the casualties of the billion-dollar subsidies that developed wind and solar power in Texas. But coal is more reliable than just about anything else when you need it most. It’s also cheap and it’s available in parts of Texas. Another will be, should Texas fully embrace nuclear? Both it and coal have provided a steady power baseline throughout the storms, though one reactor did have to get taken offline when its water cooling system froze up. That was the one outside Houston, by the way, which is normally in the 60s to 70s this time of year. That part of the state gets hurricanes but it doesn’t usually get ice and snowstorms.
A quick and incomplete mental sketch of how all this happened might go something like this (investigations will find out a whole lot more). The wind turbines out west froze Friday. Demand statewide surged as every county got blasted, starting Friday to Saturday. As demand surged, wind — which usually provides between 25% to 42% of Texas power but can drop to roughly 10% in the winter — dropped all the way to about 2% of its normal output Monday night and Tuesday morning. Natural gas compensated, but then its pipelines froze, and even the oil wells froze up. Production in the Permian went off a cliff, causing havoc in the market energy prices. Ice was also snapping powerlines in untold numbers of places. Crews have been hampered even getting to them due to the widespread ice. The state had no respite, no region where demand for power was not surging so it could balance the grid, which it usually does have. For instance, in most circumstances, it could get very cold in the Panhandle but still be 70 from Waco south. That’s a huge area, larger than many whole states, over which most people won’t be using a lot of power, so power could be surged to the cold area, which is also larger than many whole states, and which is not as heavily populated. But this week, the entire state — which is the size of Germany — froze. And millions have already been hitting power harder than usual by working from home thanks to the pandemic. Then we all, 29 million of us thanks to population growth that none of our infrastructure has been able to keep up with (thanks, California!), needed a lot of heat just to make our homes liveable and keep pipes from bursting and destroying everything. Did I mention that most Texas homes are engineered for extreme summer heat, not arctic winters? And, that we have millions who’ve never dealt with cold and ice like this before, either because they’re new to the state or because this is a historic storm?
I’m not a fan of using the phrase “perfect storm,” but this was one and still is.
ERCOT will change. Count on that.
Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, told WFAA that he was “totally shocked” to learn a third of the ERCOT Board of Directors lived outside Texas.
“People who are making literally life and death decisions on behalf of our families and our communities don’t even live in the state of Texas,” Leach said. ”… I’m frustrated and cannot believe that the board chair of our leading energy decision maker doesn’t even live in Texas, but lives in Michigan. It just cannot be that way here in the Lone Star State.”
Leach said he has begun drafting legislation to prohibit non-Texans from serving on the ERCOT Board. Now, board members are appointed by a nominating committee made up of current members.
That screams “conflict of interest” and “sweetheart deals.”
ERCOT will have to change, a lot. Its methods will change, its board will change, its transparency and communications will change. Anything less will not leave us ready for the next storm and for communicating what’s happening to Texans affected by it. Several agencies may have to consider some new measures and mandates.
Between the pandemic, the economy, a brewing border crisis, and now this massive winter disaster, the governor and the legislators have their work cut out for them. They’ll have to be proactive and smart. Millions of Texans are still freezing and are justifiably angry about it.
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/02/18/texas-ercot-removes-board-members-from-website-as-their-residencies-are-questioned-n1426475
Sounds like the biggest problem is not enough coal and nuke plants remain and let’s scapegoat the ERCOT board. The article fails to explain to me how, exactly, living outside of Texas caused them to fail to do something that resulted in this perfect storm disaster, unless they, personally, are the ones forcing decommissioning of coal plants, canceling proposed new coal and nuke plants.
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Sounds like the biggest problem is not enough coal and nuke plants remain and let’s scapegoat the ERCOT board. The article fails to explain to me how, exactly, living outside of Texas caused them to fail to do something that resulted in this perfect storm disaster, unless they, personally, are the ones forcing decommissioning of coal plants, canceling proposed new coal and nuke plants.
Too many unanswered questions. But have a political board overseeing the grid, and having people placed on there through cronyism is not the way to handle it. Political types can't manage anything.
I can see ERCOT using their position to see that certain players ($$$$) get contracts and permits when their benefactors ($$$) are pushing them "to do the right thing".
This is where capitalism shines through, let the market decide.
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Too many unanswered questions. But have a political board overseeing the grid, and having people placed on there through cronyism is not the way to handle it. Political types can't manage anything.
I can see ERCOT using their position to see that certain players ($$$$) get contracts and permits when their benefactors ($$$) are pushing them "to do the right thing".
This is where capitalism shines through, let the market decide.
The real culprit is federal subsides for wind and solar. The subsidies made them artificially cheaper than fossil fuels so the coal plants had a lot more trouble staying in business. You are exactly correct, let the market decide. Government didn’t do that, it meddled in the market. ERCOT of course cannot just decide to buy more expensive coal power because they are regulated by the utilities commission (you can’t force consumers to pay for coal power when wind power is so cheap! (Artificially)).
The article mentions it but still seems to be focusing more blame on the ERCOT board. Suppose we fire them all, change the rules so you must live in Texas to serve, and feel good that we “did something”. That will accomplish nothing unless you get rid of renewable subsidies, stop the War on Coal and let them build coal plants again. Blame, as usual, lies squarely with the radical left.
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and also build nuke plants.
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and also build nuke plants.
Yep, I almost included that but didn’t because of the huge lead time and capital investment needed for nuke plants but in the long run, nuclear is the way to go.
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Yep, I almost included that but didn’t because of the huge lead time and capital investment needed for nuke plants but in the long run, nuclear is the way to go.
The way to shorten that lead time is to start now. Then every year, it will be 6 months closer.
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Sounds like the biggest problem is not enough coal and nuke plants remain and let’s scapegoat the ERCOT board. The article fails to explain to me how, exactly, living outside of Texas caused them to fail to do something that resulted in this perfect storm disaster, unless they, personally, are the ones forcing decommissioning of coal plants, canceling proposed new coal and nuke plants.
They are decommissioning coal plants and nuke plants and did not get as many Natural Gas plants on line to have reliability. The coal an nuke must be replaced with NG, not wind and solar because wind and solar require a one to one redundant back up with a reliable generation source like fossil fuel, nuke or hydro.
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They are decommissioning coal plants and nuke plants and did not get as many Natural Gas plants on line to have reliability. The coal an nuke must be replaced with NG, not wind and solar because wind and solar require a one to one redundant back up with a reliable generation source like fossil fuel, nuke or hydro.
THIS is what the climate change wackos fail to understand. Although coal and nuke need to be supplemented with NG not replaced. I understand they want to replace them because NG burns clean but relying on NG for base power is problematic.
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THIS is what the climate change wackos fail to understand. Although coal and nuke need to be supplemented with NG not replaced. I understand they want to replace them because NG burns clean but relying on NG for base power is problematic.
Just about all peaker plants are NG. They get turned on or run at higher capacity at times of peak demand. When its really cold or really hot. Like now. I don't see a problem with more NG generation capacity but its just not being built fast enough because God forbid we use our own abundant, cheap energy sources.
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In one picture:
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“Once it was clear that the polar vortex would engulf the entire state of [Texas Gov. Greg Abbott] declared an emergency and asked President* Biden for an EPA waiver to allow power generation facilities to operate at full capacity until the emergency passed.”
“Biden’s EPA refused Governor Abbott’s request and instead offered to allow certain power generation facilities a waiver if they raised the prices they charged to Texans to more than $1,500/MWh resulting in massive statewide power outages and a failure of the grid.”
https://www.independentsentinel.com/epa-doe-controls-power-generation-in-tx-and-canceled-tx-during-the-crisis/
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At some point states have to begin to ignore the xiden regime.
You know, like bathhouse barryignored the Supreme Court.