World’s ‘solar and wind capital’ freezing due to snow ‘blanketing millions’ of solar panels

He cut off the Keystone Pipeline, but his top economic advisors bought 40% of a Saudi pipeline late last year which plans to pipe gas/oil through Myanmar to China. Then China can continue to open brand new, efficient coal and gas plants to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels for us. What a deal!!!

 

~ I do hope that those solar panels are "winterized" so they work on cloudy cold days ..

 

Not at all. Everything in your article is most likely true and therefore not refutable. The problem is not in telling the truth, but in not telling the whole truth. That's the bias exercised in story selection. Two points as examples:

1. The independence (or isolation) of the Texas grid was encouraged by the federal government as part of continuity of operations planning.
2. There is no doubt that the cascade of power failures began with the failure of wind power.

 

That can't be as simple as you think. Surely if Texas was on the grid, then its reduced prices would be available across the country?

 

Can I also say Texas is huge 3 times the size of the whole UK. So it ought to be able to look after itself power wise.

 

I can't speak for all cities, but my bill in Austin is not just for the electricity I use. The city-owned utility has all of us paying for all sorts of "green" projects unrelated to just supplying energy and water, which includes discounts and rebates on solar panels only the rich can afford, then they get cheap electricity after panel installation. Everyone in Austin gets to chip in to that city subsidy through our electric bills. "Green" hurts the working poor, as do most liberal government initiatives.

Not sure who backed the wind farms, if it was private, local, state, or a mix...maybe federal subsidies? No problem with "adding" some wind and solar, but we should not have taken down reliable plants which provided all our needs in the past with very few hiccups, like the one last week.

 

Yes, we should, and usually do. The entire grid is set up for peak summer months. I'm looking forward to the legislature's hearings this week to see what they plan to do, either "to us" or "for us".

A lot of Texans would probably prefer to call this a "one-off", once a century event, if the alternative is to increase utility costs across the board to have unneeded power online for 99 years and 51 weeks in order to have enough winter power for the 1 week surge out of 100 years.

People make really bad decisions when emotions are high, everyone is angry, and trying to blame someone else. The urge to "do something" often ends up a solution which is worse than the problem. That is particularly true when politicians are involved.

 

Yeah, and not only did the wind turbines freeze. As the cold temperatures oozed southward, the wind stopped blowing. We wouldn't have had wind energy production even if they turbines hadn't frozen. There was no wind.

If only we had some sort of wind turbines which could make the wind blow which would keep the wind turbines operating without natural wind. LOL

 

Good point. I would think the eastern grid would be happy to not have to share with Texas. The eastern grid has had some of the most catastrophic power failures in history all on their own.

 

Teacher! Teacher! I know this one!
These turbines were designed and installed knowing full well that the wind doesn't blow every day of the year.

In the immortal words of Billie Eilish ... Duh!

 

That's just bad policy. The UK abandoned subsidised solar panels a while back. The original idea was to create demand which would in turn reduce manufacturing costs, but most folks worked out you would need the government subsidies in place for 20 years to get your money back.
Now its a levy on everyone's power bill, but its used to build giant wind farms everyone benefits from.
Assuming you sign up to tackling global warming.

 

Ahh, the hidden cost of global warming. You can pay to stop it happening or you can pay for what happens if you don't stop it.

 

The independence of the Texas power grid was started by Texas in the 1930's. They have gone above and beyond in trying to keep it that way. I am certain that whoever was in charge of the feds when any encouragement took place had a last name of Bush.

The failures began when temperatures fell below freezing. Demand spiked and all sources of energy could not meet demand because virtually nothing was winterized.

Of course when Texas officials were warned about this 10+ years ago they took donations from rich energy guys and did nothing. That's when the problem truly began. The rest was inevitable.

 

Ya like all this sloppy preparedness just happened over the last FOUR YEARS.. I suppose relevant history is just like four rear blocks, right?

 

How is that when the operational turbines were operating better than normal. I heard the opposite reports.

 

The future of renewables will be much more dependable. Storage of excess capacity is key. Just wait a few years.

https://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/wind-to-hydrogen.html

I’ve been fascinated by electrolysis since I was a kid and read about it a science book for kids. Of course I tried it with scavenged miner light batteries. My goal was large quantities of explosive hydrogen. Turns out it takes a lot of electricity to make enough hydrogen for a small “flash” and I eventually gave up.

 

Continuity of operations planning began during the Truman administration.
Yes, all sources could not meet demand, but wind failed first, and began the cascade.

 

Um, no. Everything froze at approximately the same time. Freezing temperatures of liquids are funny like that.

 

In my state it was complete lack of wind that stopped wind generation. Of course at low air temperatures low wind velocities would produce more power than the same wind velocity at higher air temperatures. Just plain physics of air density changes with temperature changes. Same reason wind chill effects are greater per each temp degree and unit of wind velocity as temperatures decrease.

 

The wind is always blowing somewhere. You just have to think beyond Duh.

 

I live less than 60 miles from the Rocky/Tetons/Wind river.. Forty eight years I don't see any significant change in winter/summer extremes or abnormal/normal jet stream? Everything is pretty much same ol **** here..

 

As I say we managed to keep ours turning pretty much constantly. Though the turbines the UK is putting up are very technological and work at very low speeds.

 

If you're that near the Rockies I doubt the jet stream effects you, but you really should look at the bigger picture.

 

Nope. The chronology is shown in detail in this link.
The Texas Energy Disaster
By Andy May
I live in Texas and write about climate science and energy, so I get a lot of questions about the recent problems. My wife and I are…

 

Do you know what low end wind speed they cut out at?