Posted on 02/18/2021 8:47:37 AM PST by austinrepub
The story of how Texas was brought to its knees by crippling cold weather leaving millions without power is a complex one, yet entirely predictable and avoidable.
The details matter, so it is important to know the long story, but let’s start with the short version: For years, Texas’ grid operator (ERCOT) has overestimated the ability to maintain a reliable grid without a sufficient supply buffer, known as a “reserve margin.” That margin is the difference between demand for electricity and what the grid can produce. When demand exceeds production, you get blackouts. That buffer has been shrinking because reliable sources of energy have been retired, few reliable plants have been constructed, and the grid is depending more and more on weather-dependent renewable energy that repeatedly fails to perform when we need it most.
When wind and solar production predictably dropped as the winter storm hit, the buffer collapsed. ERCOT needed to execute a series of balancing measures that would have protected the grid. But it did not act soon enough, which caused many more gas and some coal power plants in the system to “trip.” (Think of it as a circuit breaker that triggers to prevent a fire or other emergency at your house when there is a system imbalance.) Other weather-related issues caused problems too but ERCOT’s failure to act sooner was a major factor.
(Excerpt) Read more at texaspolicy.com ...
TIME STATES WOKE UP TO THE IDIOT NOTION THAT THIS NATION CAN BE POWERED BY GREEN ENERGY!!!! Stupid stupid stupid.
Shhhhhh...don’t tell aoc. Let her remain clueless.
Democrats believe the only solution to bad policy is even more bad policy.
Each and every member of the ERCOT board who is NOT a Texan living in TEXAS needs to be FIRED, immediately. Having people on that entity who are from Maine, Michigan, Germany and Illinois is entirely unacceptable for any number of good reasons!
DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS!!
Sandy Cortez and Beto O’Rourke will cure climate change.
Just ante up a few quadrillion.
Hilarious to hear the “expert” reporters at the MSM trying to defend green energy during and in the wake of the storm. They’re trying so desperately to convince the dumb sheep that what they’re seeing with their own eyes isn’t really what’s happening. Chip Diller would be proud.
While Texans were sitting in the dark, Democrat politicians were burning Taxpayer provided $100 bills for light.
DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS!!
From what I've been reading that ERCOT board has been a hot mess for years.
Maybe try calling Ted Cruz back from his Cancun vacay to do something about it?
Texas could have had zero electricity from renewable sources and it still wouldn’t have prevented the gas plants from freezing up and the coal and nuke plants from shutting down and the lights from going out. None of the electricity infrastructure was prepared to cope with the weather that they got. Conversely, Texas could have gotten the majority of their electricity from renewable sources and had they installed generators that were able to deal with winter weather then the power would have stayed on. It was the fact that the utility chose not to equip for severe winter weather that is to blame.
Texas could have had zero electricity from renewable sources and it still wouldn’t have prevented the gas plants from freezing up and the coal and nuke plants from shutting down and the lights from going out. None of the electricity infrastructure was prepared to cope with the weather that they got. Conversely, Texas could have gotten the majority of their electricity from renewable sources and had they installed generators that were able to deal with winter weather then the power would have stayed on. It was the fact that the utility chose not to equip for severe winter weather that is to blame.
There were big issues with lack of winterization of conventional powerplants.
There were also gas pipeline issues, a key root cause of which was FedGov over-regulation. Natural gas engines driving the compressors at the pipeline compressor stations fell afoul of NOx regulations, so they were replaced with electric motors. Those don’t work so well when the grid goes down . . .
There were also issues at the natural gas wells supplying the pipelines.
This had many root causes. But too much Green virtue signaling for a long time was certainly one of them.
The problem is not where the board lives. The problem is that they are academics and beurocrats. If anyone knows where I can send Abbot a copy of “The smartest guys in the room”, please advise.
If my math is right about 20% of TX energy generation is renewables, wind and solar. You think had having that capacity in NG plants might have come in handy? That is what happens when you let freaks and geeks of the Austin type call the shots.
Millions in Texas suffering and some dying but we can say “At least it helped the green energy initiative to save the planet. Now those frightened polar bears in the Arctic won’t be sitting on globally warmed breakaway ice (and apparently forgot they routinely swim to catch fish to eat).
Remember when Obama bragged about putting coal out of business? Well there you go. Now we have the same idots that created this mess back in power.
Seems to me the two failures were not enough winterizing and eliminating the secondary fossil fuel reserve buffers and replacing them with unreliable green technology.
If Abbott is honest with the citizens of Texas and admitting to a failed experiment with green technology, then it would benefit the rest of America by placing a cautionary red flag on this whole green new deal farce.
Excerpt~
The lessons learned from this utterly predictable episode may lead to more winterization efforts. But we can’t forget that we got here through years of adding unreliable power to the grid, reducing the margin of error for mistakes, and undercutting access to reliable energy.
Reading various sources on this, it seems that in winter, ERCOT doesn’t plan on much capacity from wind anyway - approx. 10%. Other parts of the year, wind capacity can be as high as 40%
Texas still relies mainly on natural gas to power electricity generation. Gas pumping stations failed because of lack of “winterization” (?) in pumping and pipelines, and a general lack of natural gas storage for electricity, because Texas already sits atop massive gas fields
Even one large nuclear plant near Houston had to be shut down because of freezing in its water-cooling pumps
It seems there were failures across their energy mix
Wind fell almost to 0%
Expected gas capacity fell by 50%
Nuclear capacity was also cut by 50%
In sum - wind failed quite badly, but then again, wind wasn’t expected to be a large percentage of capacity during the month of February. Other sources of energy failed as well.
This problem has been developing over a few decades.
We’ve shut down 95,000 MWs of RELIABLE 24/7/365 baseload coal generation since 2011. We sacrificed it for UNRELAIBLE green energy that doesn’t work when the sun doesn’t shine, when the wind doesn’t blow, and when it’s too cold.
Anyone like me who’s spent 40 years in the industry isn’t surprised in the slightest. We knew this day would come.
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