Yes, Texas’s Blackouts Are The Result Of Unreliable ‘Green’ Energy

CASPER said:
WRONG, the Natural Gas power generation generators froze up in many cases, it is because very little of it was actually winterized. Neithe r you or the OP have the slightest clue what happened here in Texas.
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dig deeper why wern't rolling blackouts enough to save the power outages?
 
Primavera said:
Read post 16!
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Read already, it is wrong, very little of the power Texas gets is through wind, or solar, power. Look having been right in the middle of the emergency many of has little else to do but to read up on the who's and what's caused the emergency, renewable energy is just being used as a partial scapegoat and for some they have always been against the technology since they are n the back pocket of the Oil and Gas Industry. I like how the Governor and Legislatures are try to blame it all on ERCOT yet it is tehy themselves that never made the recommendations that had been suggested, the main one being Winterizing the power generation equipment, which only the State Government can make a it a requirement and provide the funding to get it done. So as usual the Government will blame everyone other than themselves, but they have had 10 YEARS since our last big freeze and they did little other than have a study done.
 
CASPER said:
Read already, it is wrong, very little of the power Texas gets is through wind, or solar, power. Look having been right in the middle of the emergency many of has little else to do but to read up on the who's and what's caused the emergency, renewable energy is just being used as a partial scapegoat and for some they have always been against the technology since they are n the back pocket of the Oil and Gas Industry. I like how the Governor and Legislatures are try to blame it all on ERCOT yet it is tehy themselves that never made the recommendations that had been suggested, the main one being Winterizing the power generation equipment, which only the State Government can make a it a requirement and provide the funding to get it done. So as usual the Government will blame everyone other than themselves, but they have had 10 YEARS since our last big freeze and they did little other than have a study done.
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I don't think you actually read the article in depth, otherwise you'd realise that the renewables are better called unreliables.
The answer is that Texas has gone crazy for wind. About 30 GW of the 83 GW of capacity are wind. That means that even if all the fossil fuel and nuclear facilities are running at full tilt, you still need at least some wind at all times. And the fossil-fuel and nuclear facilities are not going to run all the time at full tilt. You are going to have scheduled outages, and also breakdowns from time to time. That’s why you would like to have a margin of up to 30%. It turns out that the cold weather and icy conditions brought some serious breakdowns on the fossil fuel side.

So how how did the wind do at covering the gaps? The answer is, it’s completely useless. From the WSJ:

Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants.

Yes, sometimes the wind turbines only generate at a rate of 600 MW — which is about 2% of their capacity. And you never know when that’s going to be.

Texas has its own electrical grid, run by something called the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). ERCOT of course is probably the single most responsible entity for Texas getting into a situation of great over-reliance on intermittent wind energy. Thus it is not surprising that ERCOT is spinning like a top to try to make it look like its own bad bet on wind energy has not been the main cause of the current disaster. The official line is that the “great majority” of power facility “outages” in Texas over the past week have been other than wind facilities. For example, here we have an article from Renewable Energy Magazine today with the headline “ERCOT finds that frozen wind turbines were the least significant factor in Texas blackouts.” Excerpt:

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has released data showing that the vast majority of power plant outages in Texas were gas-fired generators. As multiple experts have documented, the vast majority of power plant capacity outages in Texas are at gas generators.

Got it? The wind facilities are not having an “outage” (except some that are frozen solid, but that’s a small percent); it’s just that the wind doesn’t blow when you need it. Somehow, that doesn’t count against wind turbines.

There’s no avoiding the basic defect here, which is that they have peak usage of 57 GW, and only 53 GW of dispatchable capacity. The right way to look at this is that for 57 GW of peak usage you need 70 or so GW of dispatchable capacity to cover outages, planned and unplanned. The wind turbines? They are just for decoration. If you are going to go with only 53 GW of dispatchable capacity, then you are counting on 15 or even 20 GW of wind capacity to come online when things go wrong. Otherwise, the investment in wind power is just wasted money. In the case of Texas, that’s many tens of billions of dollars.
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Primavera said:
Why don't you read the excellent article I posted, you might just learn something.
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(shaking head) 'Climate Change'. Fossil Fuels caused this. God, through his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, has put some Hard Karma on Texas.
'You Reap what you Sow'.

READ YOUR BIBLE!
 
Jack said:
(shaking head) 'Climate Change'. Fossil Fuels caused this. God, through his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, has put some Hard Karma on Texas.
'You Reap what you Sow'.

READ YOUR BIBLE!
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You're a lost cause! California will be mega fucked soon enough.
 
Primavera said:
I don't think you actually read the article in depth, otherwise you'd realise that the renewables are better called unreliables.
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A good way to put it too. Wind generators cannot operate in conditions that are icy, conditions that are too hot, conditions that are too windy, or conditions where it is not windy enough.
Solar cannot operate in conditions of snow cover, leaf cover, at nighttime (when power demand is higher).
Ballasting (such as batteries) is expensive and does not last long, and effectively leave LESS power when it IS being produced because some of has to go charge the ballast.

Wind is the 2nd most expensive power produced, watt for watt, with solar being the most expensive.
Coal, oil, natural gas, hydroelectric and even nuclear power is far cheaper, watt for watt.

If you look at a wind farm, there are NO large power lines coming out of it. They tend to look like a normal distribution line, such as you might see on a typical street. Large high tension lines DO come right out of a SINGLE nuclear plant or coal plant.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
I need to have it explained to me, and I mean in some detail, how coal power plants freeze.
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The natural gas pipelines froze and the South Texas nuclear plant shut down one reactor due to problems. Texas wind energy only supplies about 7-10% of the energy in the winter. Even Governor Abbott backed off his claim the problem was caused by frozen wind turbines.

[h=1]‘Frozen windmills’ aren’t to blame for Texas’s power failure[/h]https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/18/frozen-windmills-arent-blame-texass-power-failure-neither-is-green-new-deal/
 
Flash said:
The natural gas pipelines froze and the South Texas nuclear plant shut down one reactor due to problems. Texas wind energy only supplies about 7-10% of the energy in the winter. Even Governor Abbott backed off his claim the problem was caused by frozen wind turbines.

[h=1]‘Frozen windmills’ aren’t to blame for Texas’s power failure[/h]https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/18/frozen-windmills-arent-blame-texass-power-failure-neither-is-green-new-deal/
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Watch it Flash. One of your fellow lefties who supposedly worked on gas pipelines in Texas said that is impossible. Cannot happen. He knows all about everything.
 
The Anonymous said:
Even mighty Texas, the energy powerhouse of America, is feeling the wrath of Mother Nature.

A deep freeze this week in the Lone Star state, which relies on electricity to heat many homes, is causing power demand to skyrocket. At the same time, natural gas, coal, wind and nuclear facilities in Texas have been knocked offline by the unthinkably low temperatures.

This situation could have wide-reaching implications as the US power industry attempts to slash carbon emissions in response to the climate crisis.

That nightmarish supply-demand situation has sent electricity prices in energy-rich Texas to skyrocket more than 10,000% compared with before the unprecedented temperatures hit. Texas has been hit with life-threatening blackouts. More than 4 million people in the state were without power early Tuesday.

Although some are attempting to pin the blame on one fuel source or another, the reality is that the Arctic temperatures are hobbling fossil fuels and renewable energy alike.

"The extreme cold is causing the entire system to freeze up," said Jason Bordoff, a former energy official in the Obama administration and director of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. "All sources of energy are underperforming in the extreme cold because they're not designed to handle these unusual conditions."

The ripple effects are being felt around the nation as Texas' prolific oil-and-gas industry stumbles.

https://www.cbs58.com/news/texas-produces-more-power-than-any-other-state-heres-why-it-went-dark-anyway
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Nope. We don't use fossils for fuel. Fossils don't burn. Coal, oil, and natural are good examples of excellent fuel sources where hydroelectric is not available.
Freezing temperature do not disable coal, oil, or natural gas plants.
 
Why does Texas have a closed grid of unreliable green energy when they are sitting atop all that oil.

Are you admitting they are fucking stupid? Nice thread, calling Texans all stupid.
 
Micawber said:
Why does Texas have a closed grid of unreliable green energy when they are sitting atop all that oil.

Are you admitting they are fucking stupid? Nice thread, calling Texans all stupid.
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There is no one from California that should be calling any other state stupid. Just a fact.
 
Winterizing Texas for an unprecedented winter storm is like installing flood defenses on the peak of Mount Everest.

Could it be done? Yes.

Might a flood someday strike the peak of Mount Everest? Yes.

In either case, is it prudent and economically feasible to purchase, install and maintain equipment that had never been needed in recorded history?
 
Legion said:
Winterizing Texas for an unprecedented winter storm is like installing flood defenses on the peak of Mount Everest.

Could it be done? Yes.

Might a flood someday strike the peak of Mount Everest? Yes.

In either case, is it prudent and economically feasible to purchase, install and maintain equipment that had never been needed in recorded history?
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Exactly.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
I need to have it explained to me, and I mean in some detail, how coal power plants freeze.
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OK, please allow me to educate you on the matter!

Coal-Fired Power plants use Coal to Boil WATER to create steam to turn the generators that create the electricity.

Temperatures that hovered around "0" degrees F. for days froze because the tanks that hold the water and pipes that delivered the water were not winterized and FROZE UP AND WERE RENDERED USELESS!

wss-wuse-thermoelectric-diagram.gif
 
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