[chuckles]

The truth was out in 10 minutes down here (I live in Texas). The windmills stopped. All the rest is made up bull sheite to cover for the windmills. They talk about the Nat gas pipes freezing up, but everybody knows nat gas acts like Freon in a container. As the volume of Nat Gas sped up, the pipes got colder. They shouldn't have had to speed up the flow if the Windmills were working even 20%. Open the valve of a propane tank and watch the frost appear on the top of the bottle. Lignite coal, as far I knew, was gone years ago, but apparently we still have some. It worked trouble free for over 100 years. Nukes have been going away for decades now.

If you think about it, It would be hard for a super heated steam boiler to freeze up, and coal, nuke, and nat gas, all work making super heated steam to turn a turbine.

The Windmills make about 25% of Texas power on a spring day. I believe they were down to about 2% on the 15th. We pay large subsidies to them and they produce almost nothing and need a lot of maintenance. Texas has loads of lignite coal, almost useless for any other purpose and we forbid it's use. Nat Gas would be my second choice after coal, but make no mistake, this failure is from Windmills and Windmills alone.

Your going to hear about Nat Gas failure, but that wouldn't happen if all the power didn't have to come from Nat Gas. Windmills make a fair amount of power out in West Texas in the spring through the fall, but even freeze up in the desert in winter. The problem this time is the whole state froze and needed more power than the gas plants could deliver on their own.

Another thing a little off topic,...Nat gas electricity cost about 10 cents a kw and windmills cost about 30-40 cents a kw and it's subsidized. A windmill needs about $300,000 of maintenance a year per windmill. That's why many places have blades not spinning while others do. Bearings, blades, and transmissions don't last in the dirt and sand. What the hell are we doing?

[ptsal]

Repeat often

[FreedomPoster]

I have a screencap from ERCOT’s real time status page from I think Wednesday AM showing them getting 0.65 GW from wind. This on an installed nominal capacity in the range 25-31 GW of windmills, depending on whose numbers you’re looking at. The were getting about 4 GW the first bad day. It’s still atrocious for the amount of installed capacity.

[takebackaustin]

You said think about it

OK, I did. While I agree about most of your points, I think you are handwaving about superheated steam plants not possibly freezing up. It would be the secondary cooling loops and pumps. You dont run cooling pond water through the superheated loop, that has to be ultra clean I think. Any contamination in that loop is like shooting bullets through the turbine.

I think there is blame enough for all kinds of power in this.

Oddly, this crisis has made it more acceptable on the left to talk about nuclear. Noticed that on CNBC.

Good post, otherwise.