Posted on 02/18/2021 8:00:09 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Wednesday morning more than 1.3 million electric power customers across Texas remain without power during the coldest winter storm in decades. Gov. Greg Abbott put all of Texas’ 254 counties under a disaster declaration as the state has been hammered with a series of major and historic winter storms. The reasons for the collapse of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid are still being debated, and it’s certain that there is more than one cause and more information will come out.
But one of the most contested issues is the role wind generation has played. Prior to the onset of the storm last week, Texas led the nation in wind power generation and depended on the wind turbines in West-Central and Western Texas, along with a smaller number of turbines along the Gulf Coast, for about 25% of its electricity. As wind power has increased, coal-powered generation plants have been taken offline around the state. Texas has abundant coal, oil, and natural gas, and also has nuclear plants near Dallas and near Houston.
Real-time data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that wind power collapsed as the winter storm swept across the state.
EIA data showing the collapse of wind power generation in Texas’ winter storm.
To understand the graph, the very top line, beige, is natural gas power generation. Hydroelectric is the barely perceptible blue line at the bottom. Wind is the green line; coal is brown. Nuclear power is purple.
The graph clearly shows all forms of power generation dipped, with wind power collapsing from Monday to Tuesday before recovering somewhat. Meanwhile, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power generation also dipped but continued generating power.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
“Is the solution to make the baseload producers more cold-resistant?”
The 95,000 MWs of baseload coal that was shut down was cold-resistant.
I agree with your last paragraph. Green shuts down when there’s no wind, when the sun isn’t shining, and when it’s too cold. Baseload runs in all weather conditions.
You corrupt Big Wind bullied poor defenseless Big Fossil Fuels? In Texas, no less?
Governor Rick Perry — who most would agree is a “champion” of the fossil fuel industry
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Rick Perry is a clown of epic proportions. He is the catalyst for every bad thing happening in Texas right now, not just the power issues. He comes across as some good ol’ boy that people like, but is a snake in the grass. Perhaps one day someone will do a deep dive into his policies and how much damage they’ve done and will continue to do to Texas.
And in turn, the rest of the country.
Wind works all over the world, but only in Texas does it signify crazy Democratic corruption.
If by, bullied, you mean briefcases full of cash? then, YES
Tell teh greenies that instead of building more windmills they need to invest in giant electric blankets for the mills plus giant building to house the windmills inside so they won’t get snowed on. Some will believe that will work.
Just use the noodle, friend. Every household nearly doubling their energy use over what is normal for days on end will have an impact on the electrical grid.
You must not be from Texas if you think the oil industry doesn’t write the biggest checks in Austin.
Not really. What does happen is Germany’s and the Belgium - Dutch - North French wind turbines trip off regularly under both low winds and high wind conditions (true. Rarely under icing, but I’ve also seen hundreds of hours of helicopter flights deicing the wind turbine blades by chemical sprays). But Sweden rescues the north european grid routinely (weekly) with its immediately available gigawattts of hydropower always sitting in reserve. No other place but New Zealand has equal hydro reserves not already in use.
And we pay three times per Kw/hr that the average American does.
Germany also can surge its available power by ‘buying’ from it neighbors. Ha, Ha. France is so proud of it’s nuclear generation system and happy to sell to Fritz.
The latest is that Poland is looking to go with nuclear which will drive the Greens crazy here!!
That should work ....:)
Great article.
Supply vs demand.
When it gets cold, demand skyrockets because people want to heat their homes.
That does not answer the question of why there are power outages.
They did take a nuclear plant offline generating 1.2 GW of power due to the cold weather affecting the plant. Apparently it was not winterized because it’s in South Texas near the Gulf and no ever dreamed temperatures would get that low.
Bookmarked. Please keep in your thoughts, in your contact list.
LOL. Everyone of those areas had problems with power generation this week.
Yes. The corrupt enviros inside Big Wind DO shutdown and throttle ALL energy production - except their own wind and solar subsidies and tax breaks for construction. In China. But maintenance? Big Solar doesn’t want to pay for that. So the windmills keep breaking down.
But Big Solar demands their unreliable Golden Watts get paid first, get paid more every hour.
And the democrat politicians feed off of that power, economic control, and thought control.
Texas Democrats have zero say in Texas energy policy.
>>their mostly uninsulated homes.<<
fixed.
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