Posted on 02/20/2021 5:17:46 PM PST by DFG
The best explanation of Texas’s prolonged blackout was published by Mitch Rolling yesterday at AmericanExperiment.org. Texas gets electricity from six sources: coal, nuclear, natural gas, solar, hydro and wind. How did those sources perform, and what contributed to the blackout?
[W]e created a reliability grading scale designed to judge which energy sources came to the rescue, and which ones were largely no-shows, during the statewide power outages that rocked Texas. *** For our grades, we used average capacity factors over the course of the Texas power outages to showcase which energy sources were performing the best, and which ones were non-factors. The graph below displays these capacity factors.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
And the fatal flaw of this article is pretending that everyone hasn't known that for decades and planned for it.
Comparing performance to "capacity" is silly. What matters is performance vs. plan/expectation.
It’s going to be in the 70s across most of Texas within a few more days. People are going to forget about this.
I have moved on as far as the Blizzard off ‘21. I’m still following the Ted Cruz story, though.
Two failures: wind stopped blowing and gas plants froze, causing shutdowns. Easily remedied by next year.
Unfortunately this is everybody’s future as the fossil fuel hatred is promulgated into actions without consequence evaluation in earnest.
Buy up some oil lamps and kerosine aka lamp oil which may or may not be an option but I guess we can kill a whale. Saddle up.
Nineteen century here we come. Without fossil fuels none of the tingly leg energy things are even possible and yet they so talk of the magic green end all do all.
DOE Order 202-21-1
Interesting article. Thanks for posting. Seems to me, there’s inherent problems:
No Sun no Solar generated electricity.
No Wind means no electricity from wind generation.
Myron Ebell from the Center for Energy and the Environment explained that the both factors were present during this emergency. He said that the wind died near the start of this and went down from 25% to about 4-8%.
He also explained that due to subsidies, the wind farms provided electricity cheaper than coal. So a lot of coal plants have been closed, and replaced with wind mills.
Texas Public Policy Foundation Vice President Chuck DeVore told “The Larry O’Connor Show” on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C. for the future, it’s time to consider the “resiliency” of power sources, in addition to reliability.
One of the most resilient types of power is a coal-fired power plant, because they store an enormous amount of fuel on site. And so, you know, typically, 60 to 90 days of coal is sitting there...next to the power plant.
In terms of natural gas, they don’t do that. They generate power directly off the pipeline. So if the pipeline gets interrupted, your power’s going to go down pretty quickly with that natural gas power plant.
And so you would say that coal power has more resiliency than natural gas. DeVore on Thursday said the challenge with renewable energy, wind and solar, is, “the more you get, the more costly it gets to keep the grid reliable.”
And I don’t mean just a little bit more costly. I mean, it starts to become exponential.
You have to build out far more solar and wind than you need, and then you have to figure out how to store the energy — not just by the hour, or the day or the week, but by the season – because, of course, we have winter and we have summer; we have different peak times for wind, depending on where you are in the country, and you have to be able to store up enough excess electricity to use it when it’s not so sunny and not so windy.
And then you have a further complication. We do have some battery storage in Texas — not as much as California — it’s very costly. But when the cold snap hit, the capacity of the batteries was reduced by 60 percent, because they don’t do well in the cold, right? So it’s a challenge.
And everything is, you know, fun and games and unicorns and rainbows until you start to pass about 20 percent of the energy being provided by unreliable renewables. ..SNIP..
In addition, a 2011 report advised more weather proofing was needed, and some upgrades were made - clearly not enough.
Joe Bastardi noted in a report that for such a severe storm in Texas, you have to go back to the late 1800s. So it’s likely that they decided to make a trade off between adding capacity and weather proofing. In a normal winter for that area, it would not have been a disaster.
LOL. Like there was only one.
2) What is the reason(s) coal generation dropped so much?
Was it the source or the infrastructure to deliver the power?
I’m think more the latter.
But I don’t know and am curious for real engineering based reasons (not political crap).
I live completely within the trouble zone. I live 5 miles from a hydro plant with a full reservoir, and had uninterrupted power for the duration of the storms. I’m not sure if that was a factor. I’m surprised, though, that hydro power gets such a low rating, unless its a long term rating based on reservoir status.
Nuclear, coal, gas - the winners. Screw the eco-weenies - build more plants.
It’s going to be in the 70s across most of Texas within a few more days. People are going to forget about this
Doubt it.....our neighbors are still suffering with no water, bursted pipes, collapsed ceilings....it’s a mess. We’re blessed......generator and have water delivered and had plenty of drinking and cooking water.....run the bath tub full and using the hot tub for flushing. Pray for all those who aren’t as lucky......sad
Too bad they can’t use asbestos to insulate the gas pipes. Other fibers don’t perform as well.
I think it is to much of a coincidence that China did not have something to do with this mess!! Granted there was unusually bad weather BUT the fact that SENILE Joe gave access to our power grids just a few days before makes you wanna go UMMMMM!!!! I don’t trust ONE of these bastards ANY MORE!! THEN the poor people of Texas getting power from other private sources and getting bills in the thousands disgusting!!
Seen 2011 estimates of winterization costs for gas at 1.75 billion. After a decade it’s probably 3 now.
Frozen cooling water lines as I heard.
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