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 ...
How much electricity are all the illegal aliens using? Ship them out, decrease demand.
One factor that may play a role is that hot air is less dense, so assuming equal wind speed the hotter it gets the less force the wind exerts against the turbine blades. I live in Denver, and being at high altitude we have lots of experience with how lower air density affects the efficiency of things like computer cooling fans. Though the reverse process of a wind turbine, the principle is the same. A computer that has adequate cooling at sea level can easily overheat in Denver unless you manually increase the RPM of the fans because for each revolution of the fan blades it is moving fewer air molecules.
To further illustrate the wind turbine issue, just imagine one in a vacuum. How much electricity would that one generate?
Excellent insight on electricity problems down in Texas, but effectively, the country.
Given electrical generation problems, it seems we really should NOT be pushing electric cars, at least not now. Maybe years from now, when we have greater generation capacity, but not right now.
I've started calling it ECOT. Reliability does not seem to be the primary goal much of the time.
Actually, solar panels work well in the cold temps up north.
It is the cloudiness or angle of the sun that reduces the solar gain.
It is the shortness of the day they reduces the solar output in Nov/December/Jan/Feb up north.
Cold is good. Just like it is for electrical servers, computers and equipment.
Actually most of the carpetbaggers were sacked with one(?) exception. They still need to put a couple of engineers on that board ...
The main problem is that Federal subsidies and policies push unreliable renewables without forcing renewable providers to pay for the needed backup capacity of fossil fuel generators or electrical storage.
The Texas state GOP, of course, is a wholly paid subsidiary of the investor class and so also fails to provide any rational regulation.
“Why? Despite ongoing population growth and increasing demand for electricity, power producers in the state aren’t building more gas, coal, or nuclear plants. And why is that? The short answer is that investors can’t make enough money on those plants.”
Author should do his homework before publishing fake news.
OP should do their homework before posting.
“ How much electricity are all the illegal aliens using?”
Good point. They throw off the curve of predicted/assumed usage.
Like many “deregulation” schemes in GOP controlled states, it’s a scam.
True that. And in my solar panels I've seen power come in above the stated throughput during the really cold days (really cold for Alabama LOL) that are also sunny. For whatever reason, at least in Alabama, the colder the temp in the winter the more liable I am to have a sunny day (good for solar). Once I realized that I made the decision to replace both my A/C and natural gas furnace with a variable speed heat pump (with heat strips on the nights the heat pump can't keep up). So on that we're in agreement.
But that still doesn't change the fact that there are less peak solar hours per day in the winter (on top of being further north means less peak solar hours anyway). So if you live up north, which means your many energy consumption is to heat the house during the winter, it'd require a lot of solar capture and battery storage to get enough solar power to use solar to win the battle of heating the house with fewer peak solar hours. Thus using solar up north to win the major battle (staying warm in the winter) isn't nearly as cost effective as using solar in the south to win the major battle (staying cool in the summer). Or at least, that's how I see it. Does that sound right?
Why the snarky editorializing?
-PJ
“Before ERCOT there were no energy shortages in Texas”
My opinion on electric energy supply is that the the production and distribution schemes should be overbuilt and dumb.
They make them smart by interconnecting grids and having a lot of computer control, supposedly to eliminate the need for more local generating capacity. Smart but complicated and less reliable.
Smart is not always smart.
Because they can?
“And, refresh my memory, didn’t the safety protocols at Three Mile Island function as designed, which prevented a worse accident?”
The safety-related emergency feedwater valves were closed and not noticed. Regs require plant to be shutdown before disabling both feed lines.
The safety-related PORV stuck open and not noticed by operators till new shift came on.
And yet there have been NO rolling black outs.
There have and always will be power outages due to equipment failure. Even those have been rare and got fixed.
We are over 30 days in a row of over100
Relying on these fools errand tools will not end nicely. The wind generators are remote from the areas that need the power. Transmission lines and power stations are easy remote targets for terrorists.
Have you see what the majority of the demoRAT invited illegals are? Young men in their teens to 30’s. Prime candidates for terrorist activities. Just a few lines knocked out and the big cities would turn into “Escape from New York” in real time!
Thanks commie democRATS!
I just tried to search what percentage of time wind farms produce energy. I can’t get a straight answer, even though there were plenty of links offered. All the links tell me how wonderful wind power is, but not what I requested.
This makes me think Wind Farms don’t produce energy most of the time. I did learn that if the wind is below 8mph wind turbines don’t produce anything. At windspeeds over 50-55mph wind turbines shut down. Under high pressure systems temperatures are generally the highest and wind speeds are generally low.
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