Posted on 02/17/2021 8:00:32 AM PST by karpov
It is difficult to ask a water hauler to leave his family was his home has no electricity or water.
How do you spell dumbass?
I wonder if Gov Abbott has the special Lube in his wheel chair bearings.
“They didn’t. They went cheap and didn’t get winterized wind turbines. Idiots. This won’t happen in the northeast.”
No one VOTED for this. The decisions to create regulations and tax benefits to companies that complied with their silly “green” nonsense maximized the tax benefits and went with the units with the best price/benefit for that geographical location. Winterized turbines (which still don’t fully fix the problem) lengthens the time of when you can theoretically make all of your money back from these boondoggles.
Keep in mind that AUSTIN is the capitol of TX but is also the most liberal part of TX, as is usually the case.
If Texans want to find blame for this all they need to do is for some of them to look in the mirror and others to look to their neighbor.
Power to Choose in Texas led many to opt in for Green energy suppliers hungry to find outlets to use their heavily tax incentivized green power options. Enough Texans choose this folly to cause it to displace more traditional and reliable power supplies. 23% of the state’s power now comes from “renewable” energy sources that are not even available in these weather extremes.
In the next acts of this green new deal we will see massive failures of offshore wind farms. I’ve spent 40 years in the offshore oil business. It is a merciless environment in good places. I can’t imagine the disaster when a Noreaster or errant hurricane wipe out a New England offshore wind farm.
Already the cover-up by the greenies has begun. They blame the failure on greedy capitalists who are too cheap to “weatherize” the windmills and solar panels. In their propaganda this failure has nothing to do with the inherent unreliability of these energy sources. This is a reality that is being learned all around the world. You can’t build a modern society on hopium, pixie dust and belief in Unicorns.
Texans. Look in the mirror and across the street to find the cause of this disaster. The seeds of it are in your Power to Choose and some of you did not choose wisely. Now everybody is paying the price.
How much do you love subsidized green energy now?
Natural gas delivery is only a part of the problem. The gutting of a huge chunk of lignite production in favor of wind is probably bigger.
I just got my generator running yipee.
Once the folks realize that Gov Abbott is the reason they are freeing in the dark he will be run out of Texas.
The wind turbines here in Maine are all still turning, when the wind blows. They never produce the power that is claimed and you always need a backup plant.
Texas wanted cheap energy and got it by cutting every corner possible, such as reducing power reserves, not requiring cold-weather features on wind turbines and natural gas wells & pumps, etc.
Now they are shocked, SHOCKED! to discover that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
The tiny violins are sobbing.
N. Dakota gets 20% of its power from wind so I don’t think cold has to be a problem.
If you don’t have an inverter watch out for your electronics.
That’s they way to do it right. Texas went wrong somehow. Hopefully they will find out and fix it.
just running a pc and a space heater
I think blaming windmills is misplaced in all this.
THIS was a cold weather event redux, first performed in 1989, repeated in 2011 and again here in 2021. Temps this time matched those in 1989, before Texas went with a de-regulated electric market. Temps in 2011 only dipped into the teens instead of the single digits as in 1989 and 2021.
“Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011”
2-01-2011 Feb 2 2011 ERCOT blackouts
https://www.balch.com/files/upload/NERC_8_16_2011_SW_Cold_Weather_Event_Final_Report.pdf
Doc also contains:
“Impact of Cold Weather on Gas Production in the Texas
and New Mexico Gas Production Regions of the United
States During early February, 2011”
“Winterization Document”
Prepared for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Prepared by Gas Technology Institute
by Kent F. Perry
An excerpt from pg 188:
After a Senate Committee hearing, the bill was amended and unanimously adopted by the Texas Senate. The House unanimously passed the bill on May 23, and the bill was signed into law by Governor Richard Perry on June 17, 2011.
“February Power Blackouts Across Texas echoed 1989 Failures”
By Eric Dexheimer
Austin American-Statesman, Apr. 10, 2011
Posted Apr 11, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated Dec 12, 2018 at 10:13 AM
https://www.statesman.com/article/20110411/NEWS/304119704
If Texans want to find blame for this all they need to do is for some of them to look in the mirror and others to look to their neighbor for one thing.
Power to Choose in Texas led many to opt in for Green energy suppliers hungry to find outlets to use their heavily tax incentivized green power options. Enough Texans choose this folly to cause it to displace more traditional and reliable power supplies. 23% of the state’s power now comes from “renewable” energy sources that are not even available in these weather extremes.
In the next acts of this green new deal we will see massive failures of offshore wind farms. I’ve spent 40 years in the offshore oil business. It is a merciless environment in good places. I can’t imagine the disaster when a Noreaster or errant hurricane wipe out a New England offshore wind farm.
Already the cover-up by the greenies has begun. They blame the failure on greedy capitalists who are too cheap to “weatherize” the windmills and solar panels. In their propaganda this failure has nothing to do with the inherent unreliability of these energy sources. This is a reality that is being learned all around the world. You can’t build a modern society on hopium, pixie dust and belief in Unicorns.
Texans. Look in the mirror and across the street to find the cause of this disaster. The seeds of it are in your Power to Choose and some of you did not choose wisely. Now everybody is paying the price.
How much do you love subsidized green energy now?
Natural gas delivery is only a part of the problem. The gutting of a huge chunk of lignite production in favor of wind is probably bigger but related. We have been through gas delivery problems long before now and it happens all over the nation. Hydrate formation is just part of gas production and transmission.
Confusion balloons are going up all over Texas today and much of the rest of the country over the power failure. The truth of the matter may never be known and that is as some intend it to be.
There is probably no single cause, a lot of things contributed, but there is probably one biggest thing and I believe that is green energy, windmills.
Sob stories of how the power failure resulted in terrible loss and personal tragedy will abound when in reality they would have occurred even if the power had stayed on.
There is no amount of money or effort that could have protected Texas from a once-in-a-lifetime-or-two event such as this has been. An event that will last only a few more days and probably not be seen again for a long time if time past is any indicator of the future.
Was it the windmills, the gas delivery rate from old wells, the hydrates that always happen but more-so to people who have not seen them and who are now running the wells, frozen coal piles, massive reductions in planned lignite power plants that were cancelled in favor of windmills? How about ERCOT populated by several people who don’t even live in Texas or the US and who are greenies or clearly unqualified to be on a power board? The greatest energy producing state in the nation can’t find and appoint all Texans who are qualified and will serve? Really? I’d like to see the bottom of the incestuous pit that got these out of staters on the board.
What about fellow Texans who with Power to Choose, chose green energy and shifted the investment to subsidized and consequently very profitable wind and solar power? Will they ever look in the mirror or at their neighbors and understand their role in the disaster?
What about just plain burgeoning demand? The shortages happened last summer but nobody froze and no water lines burst so, oh well.
The truth will probably never be known but all will be blamed, heads will roll and there will be a cacophony of sound and fury signifying nothing withing a very short while.
Life truly is a fool’s paradise.
It’s not just the temps, it’s also the ice from the freezing rain on Thursday and today AM. Plus, North Dakota spends the money to adequately winterize their equipment, and apparently Texas does not, as temps like this happen maybe once a decade, and ratepayers IMO would balk at higher monthly costs to provide redundancy and reliability for such rare events.
The graph in post 32 shows just about every form of power generation played a role, with the biggest drop from natural gas and after that, wind.
I wouldn’t vote for Abbott for Dog Catcher now.
Get out your dividers. You will see that gas went down from the peak but when the nuclear went down and wind went to essentially zero the gas system was peaked out. It could not make up the difference. It looks to me like it tried hard to though.
In case you didn’t know, the harder you flow a gas well the greater the pressure drop and the greater the tendency for it to freeze up. They tried but the task was too great.
The roots of this failure are in green energy hopium and an abnormal event.
There is a tremendous of abject ignorance going on about gas production that is wrong. I know better, I produced oil and gas for more than 40 years as an engineer on the front lines of the problems in the business all the way to the city gate in places like Minneapolis. Gas caverns are used there to meet the massive instant demand of cold snaps. Can’t have houses blowing up when the gas comes back on when it goes off.
It’s not just the gas. Saltwater lines are freezing up and trucks cannot get to the water storage tanks to empty them, so affected wells have to be shut down until conditions improve. There was a significant drop in natural gas production with this cold snap, and Texas has little storage, unlike cities back east.
yes, gas has been neglected because investment shifted somewhere else. That somewhere else said they would carry a certain amount of load. In the case of wind, 23%. When they bowed out the neglected part of the system could not carry their load nor should they have expected to.
You see, when you decide to have a system from many sources they all have to work or the system falls apart.
As for salt water at wells, it is so saturated in many cases it probably would not freeze in Antarctica. Some water, like from the Pennsylvanian is nearly fresh so it is a problem. Old wells produce lots of water. Yes, if you can’t haul water you can’t produce.
Cities back east and in the north have storage because of transportation bottle necks that can’t manage the surge problems.
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