“Texas relies on wind turbines for one-fourth of its electric power. “
Oh, Texas, how could you allow morons to govern you?
It’s far more complicated than wind turbines. Max capacity on the Texas stand-alone power grid is geared towards summertime and the high A/C demand that comes with it. Many generation facilities are shut down during the winter with little or no winterization done. So those facilities were unable to come up when needed, despite several days of warning that this cold snap was coming.
Pathetic planning on the part of ERCOT and the utility companies in question. The frozen turbines further compounded the issue and turned it into a crisis. ERCOT has to demand far more redundancy in the way of gas generators to match at least half the wind capacity if needed. Redundancy costs money but saves lives.
New Jersey has the 2nd largest Nuclear Complex in the country, the Salem/Hope Creek facility produces about 3,572 Megawatts over 3 reactors
The facility produces about half the state’s power needs
Any reports about the electric vehicle situation in Texas and the mid-west. So far I have seen nothing but I can assume that there were a lot of dead vehicles trapped on the highways do to dead batteries.
Should be a stark lesson for all green energy is the way to go advocates
They won’t have this problem in the northeast because Massachusetts sucks and New York blows.
Texas did not buy the more expensive winterized units with special lubricants. They fuarked up thinking it would never get cold.
Do not blame this on wind turbines. I just drove through the mountains of W.Va and it is cold tha their turbines are still moving.
Same as with frozen gas pumps. The pumps in my marcellus shale region are are working just fine because they were winterized.
Sick and tired of blow hard texans telling how great they are.
“And yet, the northeast intends to become heavily reliant on offshore wind.”
Curious. I wonder how they’re going to get this past the uber-wealthy NIMBY Celebutards who live off the East Coast?
As stated ... Texas is a cautionary tale for the northeast. You can bet a Kerosene heater is in the pipeline!
Its worse than that. When the wind blows too hard, they have to shut these POS’s off. What the hell is the point! After this cold snap, people are tired of freezing to death in to embrace GloBULL Warming.
I moved from Texas over to the state of Tennessee
When I saw how things were F’d up thanks to Rick Perry.
He listened to T Boone Pickens with wind farms for the left
Then they all seized up one winter, and Texans froze to death
Old John Kerry, you can stop your false alarms
Cuz Texas is an ice cube, thanks to frozen wind farms!
Texas never had a need to winterize infrastructure until now. The climate change is real, due to a disappearance of the jet stream. Lesson learned.
China owns a bunch of our wind turbines. They just bought more recently. Blame it on China and Biden.
I surmised on a different forum yesterday that cooling water lines at Texas coal plants were frozen. Every fossil plant probably has a couple of miles of them. Turns out I was right.
My guess is that Texas, due to the fact it rarely gets this cold, were haphazard in their preparations. At the coal-fired plant where I worked, we knew to check the insulation and heat tracing before cold weather set in.
Texas fossil plant operators really dropped the ball.
The Sun’s energy doesn’t reach us at night or during a storm, when we need the energy the most. Windmills shut down when the wind blows too hard.
And there isn’t yet a good way to store energy for those times. Batteries can’t do it. Maybe some other way, but it’s not here yet.
There are idiots who want us to freeze in the dark to save the planet.
How do you spell dumbass?
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.
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.
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.