Common Uses: Whole-home systems, home heating, generators, pool heat.
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 ...
government needs problems...see COVID
Our politicians in Austin are feeling the heat....enough of this renewable energy farce!!!
it is.
Where can I buy a ‘barrel’ of natural gas?
So do I!
Surely no more than MPG in hybrid cars specs.
That's great, when you have enough electrical power to burn up in the de-icing heaters. When you're low on power, does it always make sense to burn up even more of it for heating idle wind turbines? The driver for all of this is not scientific facts, it's "saving the world from CO2". That would preclude burning coal to heat wind turbines.
South Texas has never had this many days in a group with single digit temperatures. Remember, the wind turbines were placed in order to combat Catastrophic Global Warming, not global cooling.
Sorry, China syndrome.
it’s more like stating maximum MPH with a governor limiting your gas pedal use.
they can produce more, there are green standards limits on pollution from traditional sources of electricity. This week those restrictions were lifted because of the emergency.
There are 41 cities in CA and Brookline MA, that have banned new homes from having a natural gas hook up. These town managers are idiots and they are irresponsibly putting thousands of lives in danger. Let them learn from this Texas debacle. Natural Gas is a clean and abundant fuel and in times like this it will keep people alive. The electric grid is more vulnerable to weather, terrorism and war, and even trees falling down, than our natural gas infrastructure. This abundant clean fuel is the perfect complement to a power grid, which on its best day is no where near the reliability of our gas system.
These towns are also prohibiting propane!
Now, putting all your energy eggs in one basket, and making it electricity is howling insanity. When the grid goes down (which is a lot), you cannot heat your house, you cannot cook food, you cannot pump water, you cannot communicate, and you cannot drive your EV. You are to sit in the cold dark and die, because that is what the Green Left wants you to do. The silly batteries will last 5 hours - it is a complete joke. There is no mention of the cost but it will be sky high for an all electric world. Utility bills will skyrocket.
In 1998 Montreal was out of power for 30 days due to a 4 inch ice storm. They were bringing generators from as far as Arkansas. Four inches of ice crushed the massive power line pylons and brought them to the ground. Utilities do not have spares for those items so repairs can take a long time, and they have to scour the world to find replacements. Crews from all over America were going there to help ease the problem. All for a simple ice storm that could easily hit the eastern part of the US. We could be out of power for months if our bulk power system goes down. What could save us from a shitty 90 days of cold, death, cannibalization and starvation is a robust natural gas delivery system, with back-up generation. Propane and liquid fuels are also necessary. Why is this so hard to understand? The safety and security of millions of people demand we have two systems to provide energy and power!
But the new news is that the green leftists are deliberately trying to destroy our gasoline/diesel markets and attendant infrastructure. That means there will be no gasoline nor diesel generators because they have outlawed them. There will be no gasoline engines in cars. There will be no liquid fuels. No coal either - that’s long gone. One has to shudder at the stupidity, it is frightening.
The Green Left is also blocking new natural gas infrastructure, both pipelines and drilling, that is causing shortages in the market place and wild price swings in the commodity. We need more investment, in drilling, pipelines and natural gas storage!
For 30 years the gas company has never once failed to supply me with gas, but the power company has dropped the ball over 100 times, and sometimes for days.
What is needed is that every new home gets a natural gas hook-up, and a minimum 4000 watt natural gas generator, so that in the event of a power outage people can be kept alive.
We need to increase investment in the natural gas grid, from wellhead to your front door. We have been blessed with oceans of natural gas to supply us for a long time, and renewables will be used, but reliability, safety and security demand we backup the power grid. This is a no-brainer!
My intentions are to get a propane carburetor for the generator, so I can avoid relying on gasoline.
Common Uses: Whole-home systems, home heating, generators, pool heat.
Whatever happened to “Learning FRom other’s mistakes?”
These eco-FReaks are going to ruin life as we know it!
I have a three fuel generator!
I’ll bet you’ve tried it with two.
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.