Posted on 07/31/2021 4:09:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
A rare, but not unique, severe cold spell hit the state. It had been so long since a similar cold spell struck in many parts of the state that people who had only been born or moved to the state since the 1980s had never experienced anything like it.
The second shock came when vast swaths of the power grid failed. This had never happened before on the scale it did in February. It is not that blackouts never occur in Texas, they do. But not on this scale, and almost never at this time of year.
Peak power season in Texas is summer when the heat takes over and air conditioner use becomes nearly mandatory throughout the state. In recent years, Texas’ grid operator, ERCOT, has issued warnings each summer that the state’s margin of excess electricity was falling dangerously low. In fact, ERCOT has been requesting homeowners and businesses turn up their thermostats and change their electricity use patterns to avoid blackouts.
The reason? Thousands of megawatts of power from traditional, reliable coal-fueled power plants have been shuttered due to environmental regulations imposed by the Obama administration—regulations that in one instance were specifically found unjustified and illegal— and unfair competition by the highly subsidized wind and solar power industries.
Wind and solar power now account for approximately 28 percent of Texas’ electric power supply. This increase was not driven by market demand, but by politics. Legislators required a minimum amount of power sold on the Texas power market come from wind or solar power, regardless of the reliability problems it introduces into the power system. In addition, federal and state subsidies, tax credits, and tax abatements allow wind and solar producers to sell power into the Texas market below what it costs to produce and deliver. As a result, multiple reliable coal-fueled power plants, accounting for thousands of megawatts of electric power capacity, closed.
In February, ERCOT data showed five days before the first snowflake fell, wind and solar were providing 58 percent of the electric power in Texas. But clouds formed, temperatures dropped, and winds stalled, resulting in more than half the wind and solar power going offline never to return during the storm, after turbines froze and snow and ice-covered solar panels.
Although natural gas, coal, and nuclear initially picked up the slack when wind and solar failed, after the storm hit, those sources of energy, not having been properly winterized, faced their own problems. Some gas lines froze, some equipment failed, and some powerlines snapped and transformers broke. However, had so many coal-fueled power plants not closed in the few years prior to the storm, there is no reason much of the electric load lost before the storm (from wind and solar’s failures) wouldn’t have been replaced by electricity from coal. After all, although some coal and natural gas failed, most did not. But almost all wind and solar were offline throughout the emergency.
One might have thought, that the legislature, having created the problem, would step in quickly to fix it. Yet, that did not occur. Unwilling to take the blame for the wind and solar fiasco they created, politicians blamed ERCOT and fiddled at the edges, changing who can serve on its board. Of course, who can be appointed to ERCOT and where they lived had nothing to do with the failure.
Anticipating such problems, in the previous legislative session, some foresighted legislators offered bills to siphon some of the subsidies granted to wind and solar facilities to pay to maintain a balanced flow of power on the electric grid and to provide replacement power when wind and solar power failed to deliver due to weather conditions. This legislation went nowhere.
It is routine for coal, nuclear, and natural gas power plants to provide backup power when they take their plants offline for maintenance. By contrast, with wind and solar, we simply hope and pray other sources of power fill in the gap when they go offline, which solar does every night, and wind does quite regularly. A similar bill was introduced this legislative session, but, despite February’s deadly power outage, it failed to get an up or down vote.
Recently, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott stepped up to the plate, acting where the Legislature has failed. He sent a letter to the state’s Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) directing them to take immediate action to improve electric reliability across the state.
Among other directives, Abbott demands the PUC:
[F]oster the development and maintenance of adequate and reliable sources of power, like natural gas, coal, and nuclear power … [by] [providing incentives to] maintain the reliable electric generating plants our state needs. Those incentives must be directed toward the types of electric generators we need for reliability purposes. …
Allocate reliability costs to generation resources that cannot guarantee their own availability, such as wind or solar power. Electric generators are expected to provide enough power to meet the needs of all Texans. When they fail to do so, those generators should shoulder the costs of that failure. Failing to do so creates an uneven playing field between non-renewable and renewable energy generators and creates uncertainty of available generation in ERCOT.
Gov. Abbott is on the right track and I applaud his directive, but executive action is not enough.
If Texas Democrats ever come back to the state to do the job they are being paid to do, the legislature should follow Abbott’s lead. It should bar climate change aroused liberal cities and school districts from using development tax credits to add any further intermittent power to the electric grid. The Texas Legislature should also require the subsidies received by wind and solar companies operating in the state be shared with reliable baseload power plants to ensure they stay open, to regulate the power flow during normal times, and to fill in when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn’t shining. To do otherwise, as this past winter showed, is to court catastrophic, deadly, power failures.
STOP ALL the SUBSIDIES which merely cause a massive MISALLOCATION OF RESOURCES.
Legislators required a minimum amount of power sold on the Texas power market come from wind or solar power, regardless of the reliability problems it introduces into the power system.
So eliminate those minimums.
Quit blaming the generators for the mess the legislature created. Blaming the generators because the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine when you have perfectly good alternatives is just dumb.
Generate as much as you can and sell the excess.
It was refiring up the 4th nuke plant that was offline for maintenance that effectively ended the crisis.
I'm surprised to hear that.
Texas Northers are not unusual. They happen from time to time,
Agreed, but that is only half the problem. The other one is that so few of the plants were winterized.
Nukes, gas, and coal plants all depend on water and many of those have pipes not protected from freezing. Adding more coal doesn’t do anything if it also shuts down in the cold.
Wait, I thought power was so plentiful in Texas they were paying people to use it. Now they’re saying that’s not true and electricity production is unreliable. I’m so conflicted and confused I don’t know what’s real anymore.
As long as the water is flowing through the pipes at the proper minimum rate it won’t freeze.
Ha! This is the same as “true communism has never been tried.” No matter how many real-world failures you point to, liberal kooks think they know how to do it right the next time and demand to be put in charge. These people firmly believe in things that can never be, whether it is political systems or power systems.
After the last big freeze, El Paso Electric invested millions of dollars in freeze protection. They got through the 2021 deep freeze just fine.
I worked in many outdoor power plants forty years ago that were freeze-protected in harsh locations. It isn’t nard to do. The big issue is determining how much to spend to protect against a rare event. El Paso Electric made the right bet and won. Others didn’t.
“I worked in many outdoor power plants forty years ago that were freeze-protected in harsh locations. It isn’t nard to do. The big issue is determining how much to spend to protect against a rare event. El Paso Electric made the right bet and won. Others didn’t.”
Correct, and this is a great example of where ‘market forces’ will fail if left alone as demanded by the pointy-headed libertarian types. From a powerplant operator who’s trying to sell his power here in Texas, the additional 0.5 cents per kwh (or whatever it costs to winterize and maintain that capability) puts them way back in competition with those who don’t winterize. And what does winterizing buy these plants - and extra 3 days of operation once every 10 years (i.e., during a bad cold snap)? Not worth it, not even close.
So government has to FORCE these plants to winterize, or they won’t.
“The big issue is determining how much to spend to protect against a rare event. El Paso Electric made the right bet and won. Others didn’t.”
I imagine such decision-making sessions where guys say, “ah, it won’t freeze like that here. That’s too much money and work. Where are we getting lunch.” They would wave off a New Yorker like me “actually it can happen, and if it does you wanna...” ‘Get outta here ya damned yankee‘ who went through an ice storm dependent on a fireplace and wood to hold out for 2 weeks at sub freezing. Long Island Lighting still won’t bury the power lines like the Germans do.
I’ve read through many such articles since feb when my family and I kept the temps to 62 for a week with the fireplace cranking, closing all doors.
This article is one of the more confusing. It makes no real point and it rambles incoherently. “58% power dependent on ...” what? No explanation. Where does that number come from out of nowhere?
None of these articles are in any way informative to me. A lot of finger pointing. Of course there are politicians in the way of practicality. That’s what they do. Now more than ever with leftists having taken over the establishment.
Seeing the weather a week out, single digits WITH precipitation. That’s brutal for any northeast state let alone Texas with our non insulated homes. We secured the half cord, did some apocalyptic shopping, filled the bathtubs dripped the faucets charged up the cellphones and hoped the gas to the stove would hold out. Even have a hand powered coffee grinder
This was an ice storm. No driving. No stores open. No hotels. No dependable power. The government is no good in a situation like that. The good ole boys at the power companies can’t be trusted to think of such a contingency. Wind, solar, coal, nukes. Whatever.
I received a refund of $7.24 from the electric company for that. They are so dull minded they don’t know that’s an insult they should have kept it.
They’re already back to ‘ah that won’t happen again.’
Stop giving away money for silliness when it should go into beefing the power plants up. This Spring, ours gave money to a rural park for a new gazebo and flowers.
Our TX area uses hydropower which should have run just fine. After the initial blackout, our power was cycled on and off every few hours. Thing is, it should never have been off. It was built to supply power for the huge influx of summer tourists who don’t know to shut the door while the a/c running in 110 degree temperatures. During the big freeze, there were only about half a dozen houses in this subdivision that were occupied. Same with the next subdivision and likely the same percent of houses needing power in hundreds of miles around this tourist area.
But Biden and Ercot ordered our perfectly fine working hydro plants to cut power off and generate even less in the lowest season need. Mr. b suffered a lifetime injury trying to keep us warm. Others died for no reason. People had to waste money to buy new appliances due to power surge damage. None of that should ever have happened.
All that piled on to many who’d lost their homes in the biggest flood ever a couple years before. The flood was also greatly mismanaged and should never have caused as much damage.
And then they buy flowers...
It’s no different than buying automobile or house insurance. The uninsured motorist problem is so big (people not insuring against the rare accident) that states had to require people to buy insurance. Mortgage lenders had to require people to buy fire insurance to protect their loan.
Of course, that doesn’t stop illegals from driving without insurance.
I worked in the power industry when it was highly regulated and had an “obligation to serve.” We built very robust, highly reliable systems delivering power at a low price.
Then the politicians got involved and effed EVERYTHING up. The companies used to be run by engineers which is why things worked so well. Then the lawyers and environmentalists moved into the executive suites and things turned to SH!T. It got so bad that I couldn’t drag myself to work anymore and I left the industry. I was thoroughly disgusted with the nonstop politicization of everything in a highly technical industry.
It was just a harbinger of what was to come. The same forces are now at work in the medical profession as well as many others (airline pilots come to mind). I just can’t believe how the marxists beavered their way into so many critical industries and how the old guard just rolled over and capitulated without an opposing word.
Yep. You said it better than the writer who was politicizing it. It’s not the renewable energy it’s the handing over of technology to non experts. The medical field is ridiculous. There has been about zero peer review on the covid fiasco.
If you use wind or solar, you are choosing unreliable. They are virtue signaling unless they are accompanied by STORAGE! Without storage they are, at best, peaking units. Out here in CaCaLand they mandated wind crappola on all utilities, including the one I worked for for 10 years. They were demo units, intended to demonstrate the technology. They did that. Subsidies were not needed after that.
But, the politicos driving this virtue signaling crappola saw that if they promoted products made almost exclusively in China, they could get their relatives to invest there — just before the mandate was announced. Follow the money, any tech like this enriches politicos since they can legally do insider trading.
Yup
Yup
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.