Don’t get smug, Michigan. It can happen to you as well.
Nobody expects once in 100 year storms.
I bet the energy costs in Michigan are double that of Texas.
The variability of wind still makes the grid more unstable, it’s the nature of the beast.
Texas-Style Blackouts are the Future
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3936278/posts
With all the Democrats convinced of man made global warming why would they even expect Texas to need winterizable wind turbines?
T Boone Pickens screwed us.
DTE sucks.
The grid goes down with hugh impact every time with wind kicks up.
Everybody in my old neighborhood owned back up generators and you could look up and down the street and see every house with the garage door open and the gas generators running.
If you looked closer you could see power cords stretch across the street to those that didn’t have them to run their sump pumps.
DTE sucks
It all froze in Texas. The wind plants, the gas plants, the coal plants and even nuclear.
It regularly gets very cold there, not so much in Texas.
Living in Michigan, I’d have to say that Texas either really didn’t factor in near zero temperatures in its infrastructure or the whole power grid failure is staged and planned.
I’m more inclined to claim that the Power grid failure is some kind of sabotage, but if you guys truly didn’t plan for the 100 a year cold and snow, please fire almost everyone working the grid.
A Hurricane would have taken you out.
This state by state comparison is silly.
Not only is the weather different in Texas vice Michigan, it is even a different climate.
Suppose New York or Florida get a Massive earthquake?
Suppose California or Washington State get a major hurricane?
In invasion of Central Americans from Canada into Minnesota?
No rain for a year in Mobile, Alabama?
Enormous wildfires in Maryland and Delaware?
Governments cannot prevent a natural or, in some cases, even a man made disaster.
It all come down to mitigation and then prioritization based on likelihood of a particular threat.
Hurricane damage will always be prioritized higher in Florida than earthquakes, and California vice versa.
Texas could have spent more money on protecting their infrastructure from cold weather, but let’s not ignore this money would be paid by the consumer/taxpayer in the end.
Most of us rightfully would reject government or utility spending a lot on scenarios that are the least likely to occur.
Obviously this is a sliding scale, as the lower-prioritization to winterize has bit Texas in the hiney, but Michigan would be down-right insane NOT to winterize.
From what I hear, everything is bigger in Texas, even the failures.
Solar panels around here are 99% covered in snow, and have been for 2 weeks
And heated windmill blades require pulling power off the grid when the wind isn’t blowing
“We’ve been very happy with our wind investments,” Harwood said. “They’ve operated very well for us.
When the birds were polled, their answer was not so much.
I've watched the windmills sprout up over the past decade in mid-Michigan, first near Ithaca, then spreading North to my own summer home back yard in Rosebush.
But windmills in Michigan are designed so that they will work in snow, icing conditions, and extreme cold. I doubt that 10 degree F weather was taken into account when designing windmills in Texas.
We also don't put our water softeners outside of our house in Michigan, but it is often done in Texas.
Probably more resilient than the ones in Hawaii and Arizona too.
Wind constitutes 6% of Michigan’s electricity grid as opposed to 28% in Texas. Making up for the loss of wind power would not be as difficult in Michigan as it has become for Texas.
It seems obvious to me that the grid should be able to handle many times more than the available energy....
Why should we only supply enough power for the population instead of having more power available than needed as a backup?
Wind and solar should only be used to augment the grid and not be a viable part of it.
My TDS suffering brother is constantly telling me how much better Michigan is than Alabama.
So what provides the heat? And at what cost.
Whole article sounds like a salesman's pitch.
Drove up US-127 in October... The ugliness of the windmills is overwhelming ....