Dave Moss Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Moss Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Moss Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Moss Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EaglesRocker97 Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 How predictable... Quote US conservatives falsely blame renewables for Texas storm outages Lawmakers and the Murdoch media target wind and solar but grid operator says fossil fuel generators suffered biggest problems The electricity outages suffered by millions of Texans amid frigid temperatures sweeping across the United States have been seized upon by conservative commentators presenting a false narrative that renewable power was to blame. "We should never build another wind turbine in Texas,” read a Facebook post on Tuesday by the state’s agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller. "The experiment failed big time.” Fox News also joined in with one of its presenters, Tucker Carlson, claiming that renewables were to blame and that Texas was "totally reliant on windfarms”. The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that "the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week”. While some wind turbines did freeze, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as renewables, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference on Tuesday. Frozen instruments at gas, coal and even nuclear power stations were among the main problems, Ercot director Dan Woodfin said, according to Bloomberg. Despite evidence to the contrary, a variety of misleading claims spread on social media about renewable energy, with wind turbines and the Green New Deal on the receiving end of much of the attention. A viral photo of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine was shared with claims it showed a "chemical” solution being applied to one of the massive wind generators in Texas. But the photo was taken in Sweden years ago, not in the US. Other social media users, including Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado, labelled the Green New Deal as the culprit. Boebert tweeted on Monday that the proposal was "proven unsustainable as renewables are clearly unreliable”. But no version of the Green New Deal exists in Texas or nationwide, said Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. "It’s really natural gas and coal and nuclear that are providing the bulk of the electricity and that’s the bulk of the cause of the blackouts,” Jacobson told the Associated Press. Ercot said on Tuesday that of the 45,000 total megawatts of power that were offline statewide, about 30,000 consisted of thermal sources – gas, coal and nuclear plants – and 16,000 came from renewable sources. While Texas has ramped up wind energy in recent years, the state still relies on wind power for only about 25% of its total electricity, according to Ercot data. The agency confirmed that wellhead freeze-offs and other issues curtailing supply in natural gas systems were primarily to blame for new outages on Tuesday, after severe winter weather caused failures across multiple fuel types in recent days. As Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered an investigation into the failures of the grid, Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said the problem was caused by lack of investment in the state’s deregulated power system. Texas is alone in having its own grid. The other lower 48 states are connected to either the eastern or western interconnection grids, and can draw on power supplies across state lines when necessary. American infrastructure, especially our power grids, are not prepared for a world in climate crisis. We need to wake up. Today it’s Texas, but these problems aren’t only local and they’re going to get worse. https://t.co/vfi2vy8xAJ — Dan Rather (@DanRather) February 17, 2021 "The Ercot grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. "It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.” Renewable energy is a popular scapegoat for new problems as more frequent extreme weather events strain infrastructure, according to Emily Grubert, an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. "It’s easy to focus on the thing that you can see changing as the source of why an outcome is changing,” Grubert told the AP. "The reality is that managing our systems is becoming more difficult. And that’s something that is easy to blame on the reaction to it, but it’s not actually the root cause.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/17/conservatives-falsely-blame-renewables-for-texas-storm-outages?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=fb_us&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3ZwdXyYV1tn_HeW4LJjOxGKJW0C_Um4RFBbOQeqCDbKUCHKibkVHdM_X4#Echobox=1613560187 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pallidrone Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 I dont understand why politicians feel the need to talk sh!t about other states when they are going through a crisis instead of offering sympathy and support. It has been that type of vitriol and venom spewed by these so called leaders that have led to this country being so divisive. 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToastJenkins Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 AOC actually seems to be getting dumber... didnt seem possible but here we are 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toastrel Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 3 minutes ago, pallidrone said: I dont understand why politicians feel the need to talk sh!t about other states when they are going through a crisis instead of offering sympathy and support. It has been that type of vitriol and venom spewed by these so called leaders that have led to this country being so divisive. Ted Cruz won't defend his own wife. 1 minute ago, ToastJenkins said: AOC actually seems to be getting dumber... didnt seem possible but here we are She's not as useful an idiot as Trump? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToastJenkins Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Having been through Sandy i dont recall much partisan sniping or opportunism to push an agenda from the pols then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paco Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Any energy generation and distribution issue in Texas is going to be magnified. They are basically on their own grid. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Moss Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
we_gotta_believe Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Don't know exactly what happened here, but I'll just say that if it's cold enough for a turbine blade to ice over and cease up, it's also cold enough for transmission lines to ice over and start to sag. Solar panel occlusion from snow build up could be an issue though if TX was overly reliant on solar as a generation source. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Moss Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 3 minutes ago, we_gotta_believe said: Don't know exactly what happened here, but I'll just say that if it's cold enough for a turbine blade to ice over and cease up, it's also cold enough for transmission lines to ice over and start to sag. Solar panel occlusion from snow build up could be an issue though if TX was overly reliant on solar as a generation source. I think parts used in turbines and at power plants weren’t designed for cold weather. When they all failed at the same time the grid collapsed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EaglesRocker97 Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BirdsFanBill Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Hilarious that they are somehow blaming renewable energy. Complete weirdos. I'm not sure the deregulation is really to blame either. The largest chemical companies in the country have plants in Texas that are all shut down because of this. They just simply aren't prepared to operate in sustained temperatures this cold as a region. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnSnowsHair Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 There are some shortages in wind power production, but Texas only relies on wind for like 20% of its power output. And most wind turbines are operational - wind power is actually more operational as a percentage of his maximum output than the rest. The big issue is both supply of natural gas and freezing coal piles. More of the former. Because Texas has a lot of natural sources, it doesn't actually store much natural gas. This is fine when the temps are warm, but when it gets this cold it means they literally cannot get natural gas out of the ground in a lot of places. So that's one challenge: natural gas supply is significantly reduced by the temps. Then there's the transmission of the natural gas in pipes not built for these temps. Complicated by the fact that natural gas suppliers are separate (private) from the energy companies, so the energy companies are competing for a dwindling supply of natural gas to power their plants. And, of course, the plants themselves are often not equipped to operate in these temperatures. All of this makes for a crap salad sandwich for Texas. They would be in a better spot if they were more readily connected to neighboring grids, but even that is difficult because neighboring areas are dealing with their own shortages (though none so acute as Texas), and I understand that Texas transmits power on a different frequency so any connections with neighboring grids would require conversion. El Paso and much of Eastern Texas are NOT on the Texas power grid. My guess is that this is in part to help keep it out of federal hands; by having neighboring power grids slightly overlap the state, they surrender those geographic areas but since the connection to the Texas power grid (of which there are some; ERCOT is not completely disconnected) is within Texas borders it remains outside the authority of the federal agencies that oversee the rest of the grid. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EaglesRocker97 Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 1 minute ago, BirdsFanBill said: They just simply aren't prepared to operate in sustained temperatures this cold as a region. Well, they better start preparing, because these kinds of weather events are only going to become more frequent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toastrel Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Quote A deep freeze this week in the Lone Star state, which relies on electricity to heat many homes, is causing power demand to skyrocket. At the same time, natural gas, coal, wind and nuclear facilities in Texas have been knocked offline by the unthinkably low temperatures. Definitely causes by wind farms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BirdsFanBill Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Just now, EaglesRocker97 said: Well, they better start preparing, because these kinds of weather events are only going to become more frequent. Well, they will now lol. These companies and plants don't like not running. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Moss Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 11 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seventy_Yard_FG Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 39 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said: How predictable... It’s kind of nuts how so many in the media don’t seem to know what "false” means Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pallidrone Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 11 minutes ago, Dave Moss said: I think parts used in turbines and at power plants weren’t designed for cold weather. When they all failed at the same time the grid collapsed. It's not really the parts that failed. It is that they did not have a heating package installed on the turbines. Wind turbines work well in much colder places if you have them properly installed. The wind turbines are not the problem, it is just that Texas failed to prepare for a problem. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikemack8 Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Dallas sucks - that's all I have to add 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toastrel Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 15 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said: Deregulation means the free market is hard at work and there is no problem. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seventy_Yard_FG Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 35 minutes ago, Dave Moss said: If regulating it works so well then how do you explain California Storm comes, blame capitalism, not the storm...makes sense Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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