Posted on 02/17/2021 6:53:27 PM PST by karpov
While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin.
Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.
Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday ("The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage") that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.
Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.
Texas has about 30,000 MW of wind capacity, but winds aren’t constant or predictable. Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
With wind or solar, a fast responding system such as gas fueled turbines is required to compensate for the recognized possibility of a sudden generation shortfall.
Somebody who probably doesn’t believe in God sending prayers.
Well crap, how much did that cost you, Kamala?
CC
There were a great many failures at all types of power plants. All sorts of equipment, instrumentation, and controls at all sorts of power plants except nuclear failed in a TX cold snap in 2011, and this appears to be a repeat, but colder.
https://www.balch.com/files/upload/NERC_8_16_2011_SW_Cold_Weather_Event_Final_Report.pdf
Not fair to blame Biden.
He clearly promised to be a failure but no one was listening and many did not mind a failure in the WH. America slit its wrist and is now slowly bleeding to death. What started as a success in 1776 ended in failure in 2020.
But the heavy use of quick-responding natural gas plants is REQUIRED by using the wind turbines.
Coal and nuke plants can’t respond quickly enough to the vagaries of ‘renewable’ power output.
So without the dependence on ‘renewables’ there wouldn’t have been the dependence on natural gas.
So the use of ‘renewables’ is the root cause.
It has been known for some gas turbine installations to have a liquid or condensed petroleum backup fuel source, with the appropriate secondary fuel meter/ injection system. It could be more polluting than burning the leading clean fuel of NG.
Got snow, sleet, or ice? Water from creek—boil it. Water for people, or livestock involved also?
But those other power plants can’t throw ice over a hundred meters;
Power just come on at my house after 48 hours of no electricity, water, no ATT cell, no internet, very icy-wet and cold freezing weather, plus 2 daughters and families taking refuge here so 10 souls, including a 4 week old baby, plus 3 dogs and a cat. Fortunately we had plenty of nat gas to burn on stove and bbq and lots of food to cook.
This FAIL is 100% due to ERCOT not hedging natural gas prices - zero failure of the hat-gas and coal generating plants, and massive failure of “green” infrastructure.
We need ERCOT execs and Board heads on pikes. Clean sweep. Plenty of unemployed energy execs here in Houston will be happy to have their jobs and run a tight ship.
Trav — Man that was scary. Please PM me what radio is best for no power no cell phone service situation? Family needs them. This was a perfect dry run for what is likely coming to all of us. Taught me get off grid and be better prepared.
Wait until Europe’s next deep freeze.
Germany has been on a rampage to get rid of coal and nuclear plants.
Sounds good.
One thing that is a danger at times like this, is folks that don’t know any
better, use makeshift heaters that deplete oxygen and blow up carbon dioxide. That costs lives...
You hear of it once in a while.
California and other states are trying to do away with natural gas use.
That’s why I mentioned the permission.
Your water heater is a good source of fresh water. Usually in the range of 30-50 gallons.
That could help you get through a few days.
The back of each of your toilets are good for 2-5 gallons I believe it is.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
If you have snow, you can collect it, melt it, boil it, and expose it to Sunlight for a few minutes to kill bacteria and viruses.
You could take a pass on showers for a few days or simply use a washcloth and very little water to clean up.
You can use a clean new bug spray canister to make a hand pump shower. I take showers on 1.25 gallons of water.
Drinking water and showers, some coffee and looking, I could easily last ten days on 30 gallons.
When I was young adult, we had to take a couple of classes, where total fear mongering and materials were all about how we were going to die from the new ice age, starvation, and freezing to death.
No laughy... but we had a couple of professors who theorized we needed the federal and world government to take control of land to build massive fans, in which they could control the jetstream, and which could force warm air from hot arid regions into polar regions, in order to keep some people alive for the future.
No joke.
Whatever they were smoking had to be pretty high quality.
“...harris sending thoughts but no prayers or aid.”
You know, it’s that “thing” !
“Buyden” needs is to get with the programming dude.
And beside, Harris can’t just come out and tell is who she prays to quite yet. Maybe in a couple more years, after we have become more accepting of the “thing”...
Agree 100% about ERCOT needing the boot, especially after 1989 and 2011 and now 2021 with many DEAD because of the FAIL. This is a preview of what is wanted for us with the Green Deal along with Chyna hardware incorporated into the Texas grid IF it is not stopped. We’re on co-op power in south Texas 30 miles from Bay City’s nuclear plant and a lot of industrial grid feeders when things go bad(LAARS agreements...load acting as a resource). ERCOT finally decided it was our turn yesterday to do 4 hours ON 4 hours OFF. The small town north of us has been OFF since the first sleet hit a couple of days ago.
We have a survival generator and fuel out in the country side to feed critical appliances, some LED-bulbed lamps, DSL modem/router, charge Eneloop AA’s and AAA’s and cell phones if towers are up, and run either a small window unit(summer) or a small radiator heater(winter) in our smallest bedroom. Hurricanes taught us a lot of this.
Dry run for grid down?
Yep, thought of that today while running cables from the generator.
PolitiFact knows a lot about “blowing winds”, as in what they do all the time with their lies. They “blow it out of their ass”. The result, stinky gas, a lot of noise, but no heat or truth. But then, again, that is their job, “disinformation”, “lies”, corrupted facts, and protect the Marxist, anti-American Left.
The entire world has had the the ultimate clean energy answer for every watt of energy ever needed for thousands of years since the 1950’s.
Nuclear power.
Anarchist got laws and regulations passed by weak and now richer politicians to inhibit the answer to the worlds energy challenge. Can’t have anarchy if governments and the people are doing well.
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