Posted on 02/06/2011 10:18:30 AM PST by dragnet2
Forget all the concern about al Qaeda terrorists using explosions to take out our power grid or foreign hackers disabling it from afar - in Texas a cold front can apparently do the job.
As the lights flickered and went dark across Texas on Wednesday in response to a state-mandated rolling blackout plan, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst was clearly irritated.
He wasn't the only one.
"This should not happen," Dewhurst told reporters on Wednesday.
Dewhurst said that cold weather knocked 50 of the 550 power plants in Texas offline. That, coupled with increased demand, turned out the lights.
"Lack of adequate winterization and preparation appear to be a major cause of the outages," Dewhurst said.
The plant managers and the parent companies might want to make a note in their day planners for next year - "WINTER CAN BE COLD!"
The fact that we weren't properly prepared for it - and because of that computers and equipment all over the state came to a screeching halt - is simply inexcusable.
(Excerpt) Read more at seguingazette.com ...
Should be 1 nuclear power plant per 1 million in population.....that never gonna happen aside, woodstove and oil lamps are yer friend in times like these. My new home , 2 years old now , is a passive home. Double stud walls, expanding foam insulation, house wrap, triple pane windows and storm windows etc and smaller in size. We only have to run the central heat and air on days when temperatures are extreme. Our Kohler whole house generator is plumbed to commercial natural gas line and is good for such rolling brownouts, blackouts aka whatever they call em tomorrow.
Average homeowner can off set such events with insulation, woodstove, and a whole house emergency generator. My neighbor recently built a battery backup system with 24 deep cell batteries that runs a trace power inverter that provides power for all his homes needs for allegedly 96 hours and or longer if he just uses lights, fridge and freezer. The system is plugged into a trickle charger 24/7 so when power fails they just flip over to the battery system.
Can’t rely on goobermint to be there folks.....take responsibility for your own well being, comfort and security.
Let’s face it. With the decline in powerplant construction and the unreliability of many of the “renewable” energy projects..you had best get your own generator if you live where the weather could threaten your life. Natural gas has also proven to be potentially unreliable also.
If a lot of the projections are right..this is the first of many long cold winters..so be prepared.
Look, the state was in the deep freeze, even as far south as the Rio Grande. The Valley was iced over. It was an extraordinary event, and the demand for power was exceptional.
So reasonable and necessary rationing measures were taken for one day. Big deal. Except for causing some additional inconvenience in a week of major distress, the plan worked.
My only gripes were that they didn’t cut power to JerryWorld and that some smart mouths thought it was funny that we were in short-term crisis.
I guess it’s possible to be prepared always for every crisis, but it’s not reasonable. How much money would we waste being ready for the unlikely or for the once-in-a-blue-moon storm? Just live through it, give you something to talk about.
There are idiots saying we should have had an army of snow plows on hand to keep roads clear during Super Bowl week. In Texas??! I’m not willing to pay for such contingencies, even if they would have been used this week (then parked).
Rolling blackouts were an appropriate and effective means of dealing with unexpected demand. They worked. Good for ERCOT.
And, no, I don’t work for any power company nor own stock therein.
Yes, winter can be cold..
Part of the problem was meeting growing population demands with wind - and the turbines froze. The other problem was shutting down power to all industrial plants to heat homes - including the natural gas plants, shutting several of them down.
Part of the problem was meeting growing population demands with wind - and the turbines froze. The other problem was shutting down power to all industrial plants to heat homes - including the natural gas plants, shutting several of them down.
No, it’s not true, just an oft-repeated tale.
The main problem is that gas lines that powered several generating plants FROZE, thus lessening significantly the amount of power being produced.
It was extraordinarily cold weather, period.
And it will happen again.
Our forefathers lived through worse.
Read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter” and count your blessings.
I'm not sure if it's true, but I understand lots of people with Plasma TVs had them fried, due to power coming on and off...
I don’t think you want to be prepared for truly out of the ordinary weather. A couple of years ago Tucson had a strong rain couple with a big dip in the temps, left all of our bridges iced up. We only have one de-icing truck to deal with that, some folks complained that we were “unprepared” but it was the first time in Tucson history anything like that had happened. Should the tax payers have been footing the bill for a whole bunch of unused de-icing trucks for all those decades “just in case”? Of course not. Similar with this storm. Their electrical demand nearly doubled, and 10% of their plants were rendered in-operable, I don’t see how anybody is supposed to prepare for that. Should they double the number of plants they have keeping them barely running decade after decade “just in case”? That’s silly.
I had not seen this article when I wrote the previous post, but it’s in today’s paper and explains well what happened:
See#25
"Therefore, this is not a 1 in a 100 years storm but 1 in about 15 years - thus they should plan for it."
My point exactly. ;-)
obsession — n
1. psychiatry a persistent idea or impulse that continually forces its way into consciousness, often associated with anxiety and mental illness
2. a persistent preoccupation, idea, or feeling
3. the act of obsessing or the state of being obsessed
***We didn’t have electricity for over 6 hours until we finally got someone and gave them some bs story to get them out before nightfall.***
Wah! Living in the country, we were out for three days back in the 2009 ice storm, and some were out even longer.
We were prepared and lived nice in the glow of kerosene lamps and a battery powered radio. Caught up on lots of reading.
“I heard that Texas has not allowed electric stations to be built for about 15 years. They don’t have the capacity for an extra load like this.”
Yep, we’re doing our part to SAVE THE WORLD!!!
What’s a few blackouts between friends?
This article was actually sent to me by another member, who was afraid to post it, due to comments like yours.
Ya know, I have actually been told not to post any news about Texas that isn't good, and was told it was not conservative to do so, and one person, even suggested this was against rules here...
What that you?
***The blackouts were due to winds dying down and the generation not meeting the forecast of wind generation during the Arctic blast.***
Each windmill should have a squirrel cage rotor on it so when the wind dies you can grab a lib greenie, put them in the cage, and make them run to turn the generator.
I heard that Texas has not allowed electric stations to be built for about 15 years. They don’t have the capacity for an extra load like this.
http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/2371.html
December 23, 2009
Texas has added some 3,140 MW of new generation capacity since May, mostly from coal and natural gas–fired power plants, the grid operator for most of the state said in a capacity, demand, and reserve update released last week.
About 1,690 MW of that new capacity was from new coal plants while 1,093 MW was from natural gas plants, the report (PDF) from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) revealed. The region’s total resources were projected at 76,363 MW in 2010 and 78,017 MW in 2015.
ERCOT said that the state’s reserve margin’s are forecast to remain above the 12.5% target minimum through 2013—but drop below the desired reserves beginning in 2014 to 12.3% and 10.2% in 2015.
end snip
This peak wasn’t near the summer peaks. The problem[s] seemed to be with plant design that didn’t provide for adequate protection of vital equipment needed when these freezing conditions occurred. Apparently a lot of stuff froze [pipes, instruments, control devices, etc] thus shutting down the generators.
Rolling blackouts might be a mild embarassment, but the alternative of having the entire ERCOT region blacked out would have been more than an embarassment. ERCOT did what it needed to do to alleviate a much worse alternative.
Now, under media pressure, Texas utilities will spend a billion ratepayer dollars annually on a winterization program that will come in handy once every 50 years.
No doubt, and no doubt they’ll use it as an excuse to dramatically jack up the rates there.
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