Posted on 01/09/2023 6:33:12 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The brutal, unrelenting cold that lasted for several days over the Christmas holiday froze off a sizable portion of Appalachia’s ample gas production, cutting off supply to power plants when they needed it most.
Gas transmission pipelines said the gas they were promised simply didn’t show up.
On the electric grid that connects Pennsylvania to 12 other states, at one point almost 25% of the capacity on the system either didn’t start up or broke while operating, leaving coal and petroleum-fired units to pick up the slack.
PJM, a Valley Forge-based grid operator, is still analyzing what happened during the storm. After an appeal to customers to conserve energy on Christmas Eve, the organization was able to avoid the rolling blackouts that utilities were forced to employ elsewhere in the country.
In Pittsburgh, Jay Apt, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and Department of Engineering & Public Policy, watched as the temperature on his home weather station plunged 40 degrees in an hour and a half.
While the weather was extreme, Mr. Apt said, it was “not a black swan event.”
Two years ago, as a winter storm was devastating Texas with blackouts that lasted for days in some areas, Mr. Apt wrote a provocatively titled op-ed in the Washington Post warning, “What is happening in Texas will keep happening until we take action.”
His research into electric grids — the U.S. has seven regional transmission organizations, with PJM being the largest — shows that very hot and very cold weather tends to make things break, and that when they fail they tend to fail together, compounding the strain on the grid.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Nice thing about coal is you get the railroads to ship you a nice big hill’s worth of it when the weather is nice, and then you use it.
Yeah, it is certainly just a great coincidence that there are grid failures after relentless government policies virtually eliminated coal and now penalize oil and gas production. The government clearly had nothing to do with this. /sarc
I keep thinking GOD is getting really pissed off.
He decided to say:
“Hold Muh Beer”-—”WATCH THIS”
And he sent a strong winter to wake us all up.
The Sierra Club needs punishment
SOLAR in snow does NOTHING.
High winds in COLD are also a problem with lubricating oils.
A Three Dog Night! Make sure they are big dogs.
My friend retired. He used to keep the natural gas lines flowing.
Love your tagline. And once one understands that the Enemedia is part of the deep state, we understand why they act the way they do.
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