Posted on 07/25/2022 12:03:56 PM PDT by rktman
It’s been stupidly hot here in Texas lately and as you’ve likely heard, the state’s power grid is straining to meet record-high electricity demand.
Twice in mid-July, ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, was forced to ask the state’s consumers to reduce their power use. On the afternoon of July 13, the system had less than 3,000 megawatts of spare capacity as demand hit nearly 80,000 megawatts. That’s not nearly enough reserve capacity.
Since February 2021, when the Texas grid nearly collapsed during Winter Storm Uri, scads of reports and opinion pieces have been written to explain why the electric grid in America’s biggest energy-producing state is so shaky. But there’s no need for complex reports or in-depth analysis to understand why Texans don’t have enough juice.
Instead, Texas’ power woes can be understood by looking at a single chart published last week by ERCOT.
The chart shows that when power demand in Texas surges (the black line), wind generation (green line) often goes to Cancun with Ted Cruz. Indeed, when power demand zigs, wind production usually zags. That’s what happened during the middle of the day on July 13. As demand in the state was soaring, the output from the 35,391 megawatts of installed wind capacity on the ERCOT grid fell to less than 1,000 megawatts. That’s a capacity factor of less than 3%.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearenergy.org ...
Red state. I would blame the RINO’s. Go along to get along’s are killing’ us.
Is it that simple? the higher the temps in Texas the less wind there is?
Before ERCOT there were no energy shortages in Texas… ever, now the energy reliability council is here, it even includes Germans and people from out of state. It includes greens also.
Now Texas has energy shortages.
Well, T Boone Pickens became an eleventy billionaire so its all good
If only wwe could tap the hot air coming out of DC we wouldn’t need any other source of power generation.
I recently drove through the northern part of Texas on my way to Phoenix. I’ve seen wind farms all over the nation, but NOTHING like the sheer quantity I saw in Texas. Looks like they’ve invested a lot of money - and real estate - in this, and it’s not paying off.
Perhaps a couple of nuclear plants are in order...
High pressure means NO wind
Is it that simple? the higher the temps in Texas the less wind there is?
You can blame T. Boone Pickens for that.
They aren’t go along to get alongs. They are whores… they got rich with subsidies for green. They are bribed whores who knew exactly what they were doing. T Boone Pickens was the leader.
It’s my understanding that at its best it provides roughly 60% of the power needed?
Then add to that hot windless days,like you said, and it’s even less.
Thanks. For some reason I have a problem doing that. I know, Add “—” and html or something. NOT a coder. 🤣👍
Seems like they should take the profits and buy vastly more capacity (more towers) and then sell the excess to california since Cali can’t use hydro for much longer.
Yup. That's problem #1 for wind energy in the south. It'd be like depending on only solar power for heating up north: when it's colder (winter) there's less sun.
I live in Alabama (similar temps to the northern half of Texas) and have solar panels that work well for me (by "working well" I of course don't mean I'm off-grid, I still have to buy power from the grid when solar fails). Because I live on top of a hill (read lots of wind) I thought about a small wind turbine to provide power on days I get little sun (like during a storm when I get lots of wind but little sun). While researching it I realized that during storms I don't need much power anyway (because the storm cools the temps, making me not have to run the A/C as much). But during hot times (when I need power the most) I tend to have less wind (which is okay because my solar almost always produces well at those times).
The department of no energy has been sabotaging nuclear power for forty years and shows no sign of letting up.
As a civilization, western society has painted itself into a corner.
Plus the extra demand charging electric vehicles. Brown outs and black outs will be very common as long as the “Green” idiots are running the power grid. Wake up you stupid people! We need traditional power plants as the solar and wind generated power is transient and cannot be adequately stored.
Build more nukes....until gov’t gets serious about doing that, I will not believe the climate change hokum.
I don’t understand why the enviro extremists are so against nuclear. Nuclear plants produce zero greenhouse gases.
Yes, we know about Three Mile Island and Fukishima and Chernobyl. Why are we letting fears from such events dictate our official energy policies?
And, refresh my memory, didn’t the safety protocols at Three Mile Island function as designed, which prevented a worse accident?
We need to balance risk and benefit with all of this, in my opinion. I would love to have nuclear plants everywhere, if the alternative is sitting in the dark, or sweltering in the heat of summer. But we seem incapable of balancing risk and benefit. Instead, we take a zero tolerance approach, we say there were nuclear accidents which happened, and because of that, we just shouldn’t have nuclear any longer.
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