Posted on 02/18/2021 12:17:44 PM PST by JeepersFreepers
There are misleading reports asserting the blackouts were caused by large numbers of natural gas and coal plants failing or freezing. Here’s what really happened: the vast majority of our fossil fuel power plants continued running smoothly, just as they do in far colder climates across the world. Power plant infrastructure is designed for cold weather and rarely freezes, unlike wind turbines that must be specially outfitted to handle extreme cold.
The blackouts, which have left as many as 4 million Texans trapped in the cold, show the numerous chilling consequences of putting too many eggs in the renewable basket.
Thanks to market-distorting policies that favor and subsidize wind and solar energy, Texas has added more than 20,000 megawatts (MW) of those intermittent resources since 2015 while barely adding any natural gas and retiring significant coal generation.
On the whole, Texas is losing reliable generation and counting solely on wind and solar to keep up with its growing electricity demand. I wrote last summer about how ERCOT was failing to account for the increasing likelihood that an event combining record demand with low wind and solar generation would lead to blackouts.
The primary policy blunder that made this crisis possible is the lavish suite of government incentives for wind and solar. They guarantee profits to big, often foreign corporations and lead to market distortions that prevent reliable generators from building the capacity we need to keep the lights on when wind and solar don’t show up.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Cary Cheshire, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, believes these taxpayer-backed handouts should never have been issued to begin with. “So-called green energy and the corporate welfare incentives it receives are a bad deal for taxpayers on two fronts,” he told Texas Scorecard. “In the best times, they hurt taxpayers’ wallets, and in the worst times, they leave consumers out in the cold.” (source)
Come on mannnnn! Juan williams and jen (raggedy jen) sackee said it was the fossil fuel folks..............
“Green energy lobbyists are already spinning narratives to protect these handouts”
Correct. And, the politicians who went along with the boondoggle of “Green Energy” are joining them to cover their _sses. A country that has so much oil,NatGas, coal, etc...as our country does has absolutely no need for such nonsense. The “Green Energy” companies are very well aware of this thus, their abject panic and typical circling the wagons spewing outrageous lies. Aided and abetted by idiot politicians and their allies in the MSM.
I couldn’t have said it better myself though I already have several times.
Save this. It will get covered up
But this is bad.
"There are misleading reports asserting the blackouts were caused by large numbers of natural gas and coal plants failing or freezing. Here’s what really happened: the vast majority of our fossil fuel power plants continued running smoothly, just as they do in far colder climates across the world. ...
It appears that ERCOT, Texas’s grid operator, was caught off guard by how soon demand began to exceed supply. Failure to institute a managed rolling blackout before the grid frequency fell to dangerously low levels meant some plants had to shut off to protect their equipment. This is likely why so many power plants went offline, not because they had failed to maintain operations in the cold weather. ...
So fossil fuel power plants going offline was not the trigger. Later he says that green energy going offline was also not a trigger. Then he spends a lot of time talking about how subsidies are bad, which they are.
Which leaves he wanting to know "what really happened" to cause demand to exceed supply and how that was the fault of green energy.
Texans should be emailing ERCOT demanding a serious reduction in windmill count and to start adding a few more nukes. ERCOT has probably pi$$ed off enough money on wind/solar to build several nukes.
For sure the subsidies should cease ... if wind/solar cannot pay their own way, sayonara baby.
So why is almost 2/3 of the lost electrical output fossil fuel generated?
The natural gas from Texas seems to kept flowing to Florida since my lights haven’t even flickered.
The natural gas from Texas seems to kept flowing to Florida since my lights haven’t even flickered.
The Internet is unreliable in my part of Florida.
ha ha ha.
Nuclear and Natural Gas have been just as unreliable.
Texas grid has not been weatherized to the same extent as up North.
SpaceX manufacturing facilities in Texas have run uninterrupted. Relying on solar panels and battery energy storage instead of the grid.
Many gas wells had to be shut-in because once the tanks at the wellsite fill up with salt water, trucks have to take them to disposal wells. The roads were impassible and the truck drivers would have had to have left their families at home without power or water. For the company that I work for, we lost over 50% of our volumes. They are slowly coming back.
The point of the article is that if the money used to build unreliable green energy had been used to build generators that guarantee that a certain amount of power will be available at all times, there would have been enough power available to avoid, or at least minimize, the blackouts. (Anyway, that is my interpretation)
The root cause was the lack of sufficient reliable capacity. There is no question that blunders by ERCOT made the situation much worse. (It is ironic that ERCOT is an acronym for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas)
Not only do we have power...
We have open schools, open restaurants, no income taxes, if your car is surrounded by antifa thugs DeSantis says to keep driving... and one of our black sheriffs said if antifa breaks into your home to shoot them.
Did I mention no state income tax?
Not only do we have power...
We have open schools, open restaurants, no income taxes, if your car is surrounded by antifa thugs DeSantis says to keep driving... and one of our black sheriffs said if antifa breaks into your home to shoot them.
Did I mention no state income tax? Don’t you just love Florida - I do.
But isn’t he saying that the Texas grid has not been weatherized BECAUSE the money went to “green” projects?
From what ‘ve read there is a cold weather option that is used in Alaska’s windmills that allows them to operate in sub-zero weather. That option was apparently not put in the Texas windmills because it’s temps rarely go sub-freezing for any length of time.
Did they imagine they’d never face a widespread ice storm when putting so many eggs into the windmill basket? Or perhaps they were convinced “global warming/climate change” would make ice storms a thing of the past in Texas. Whoops.
I agree with your interpretation, and it would have been a much better article if the author actually said that.
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