Tuesday, February 16, 2021

As 'Green' as I Wanna Be...

23 comments:

  1. No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas' power outages. Lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power-generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans across the state during a major winter storm. ... "Texas is a gas state", said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. ... "Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now", Webber said. Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, echoed that sentiment Tuesday. "It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system", he said during a Tuesday call with reporters.

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  2. Berkshire Hathaway invested heavily in wind capacity for Texas, over 20% of its' power comes from their. Their problem is that the backup capacity nuclear reactor is also offline.

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  3. ps - "gas turbines" are also a "back-up" system, not part of the "prime" grid.

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  4. ...and Texas has now gone beyond "peak shaving" to "load shifting".

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  5. In other words, there aren't enough "peak shaving" assets to carry the entire load created by the inoperability of the wind turbines and missing nuclear reactor.

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  6. Per Wikipedia, Texas' total wind power generating capacity was 30k MW's

    Per the Houston Chronical:

    16k MW's of wind power were off line. That's over half.

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  7. ps - And if gas is "failing", it's because ERCOT made a one-time only decision to prioritize gas delivery to residential consumers over industrial/generation consumers. No gas to the generating plants, no electricity to the homes.

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  8. Texas leaders failed to heed warnings that left the state's power grid vulnerable to winter extremes... Texas officials knew winter storms could leave the state’s power grid vulnerable, but they left the choice to prepare for harsh weather up to the power companies — many of which opted against the costly upgrades. That, plus a deregulated energy market largely isolated from the rest of the country’s power grid, left the state alone to deal with the crisis. [The Texas Tribune, 2/17/2021].

    What's happening in Texas is the result of putting "the free market will handle everything" republicans in charge. NOT green energy.

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  9. No, Texas is paying the price for self-reliance instead of sucking at the federal teat AND taking the global warmists at their word that future winters in Texas would be warmer and drier.

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  10. Black Swans are events that even the feds (and engineering safety factors) often don't account for.

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  11. Texas was warned. They issued recommendations. The industry ignored them because it would impact their bottom lie. If Texas politicians has issued mandates instead the winterization would have been done and Texas citizens wouldn't be suffering and dying now. republicans were and are in charge. republicans are responsible. Not a green new deal that isn't in place.

    Your -- Texas was told not to worry because "warmists" said it would never get cold again -- is bullshit.

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  12. Ignoring "other' peer experts with NO SKIN IN THE GAME is what smart people do. Unfortunately, they forgot that the climate experts who predicted warmer drier winters for Texas ALSO had NO SKIN ION THE GAME.

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  13. Now the people of Texas are reaping the rewards for their leader's "smartness". Maybe they'll finally learn that republicans don't give a shit about you unless you're a wealthy donor.

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  14. They aren't going to stupidly connect to the federal grid, that's for sure.

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  15. What's stupid is that they aren't connected to the national grid. Lives would have been saved and misery averted. If Texas wants incompetent leadership they'll keep electing republicans. If they want leadership that is competent and actually cares about the lives of Texas citizens, they'll elect Democrats.

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  16. Texans aren't welfare queens like ALL Democrats.

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  17. LOL! btw, the ability to sell power to the rest of the nation (via a connected grid) and draw power from a connected grid (when you need it) isn't "welfare".

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  18. Cooperation for the benefit of all is human nature, not parasitism. The parasites re the situation in Texas are Texas politicians and Big Energy.

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  19. Texas supplies more energy to the USA then the rest of the USA supplies Texas. THAT is parasitism.

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  20. For free? Who knew? I thought they engaged in capitalism and sold it.

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  21. You must be completely self sustaining (make your own clothes, grow your own food, etc). Anything less would be parasitism (according to your definition).

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