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

Gee, think how bad it would've been if the corporations were completely free of regulation.....

So more death and disasters can happen...………...

 

Our winters are generally a lot warmer and our summers are generally a lot dryer than I remember when I was growing up

 

Actually, the thought occurred to me Trump states were being targeted.

.

 

Laughable, when arctic air plunges south I promise you we feel it sooner then Texas does Have you even watched or paid attention to the Jetstream, I doubt you have 40+ years of watching it let alone living in it..

On top of that you completely missed the effect the Uinta Mountain Range that also serves to channel the Jetstream east.. So you really don't have all the information.. Another point of interest, the coldest time of the year is and has always been February across this region for as long as weather has been tracked.. Polar plunges are common event and when they happed Texas and many other southern states as far east and south as Alabama..

You might want to bone up a bit more on U.S. weather and Jetstream and while you're at it, check out the continental divide that too is only 40ish miles from here and I'm sure that may effect the Jetstream too

 

FoxHastings said: ↑
From Houston (AP) :
The disaster can be traced to mistakes by Texas’ leadership and faults created by decades of opposition to more regulations and preparation.

Basically, the state is an island in the U.S. electrical system.

There is one large grid covering the Eastern half of the country, another for the West, with Texas wedged between them. There is a long and colorful history to how this came to be, but the simplest explanation is that Texas utilities wanted to be free of federal regulation.""" And they are! )

""" They accomplished that, going back to the middle of the last century, by avoiding sending power across state lines.""""


Over and over the stories coming out about how deregulation and privatization caused this disaster....and it wasn't solar panels...

LOL, something you cannot refute is "media bias"...…

Pure baloney.....everything, everything I've seen and read says "green" power is so minimal it had NOTHING to do with the power outages...

 

And where is here?

 

Did you really just link to a climate change denial blog to make a point?

 

I did. I'll have a look see again.
Can't find the article at the moment. But I'm sure it was 8mph. Something to do with flutes cut down the leading edge of the turbine.
I'll keep looking.

 

.

Although the Texas grid [ERCOT] has connectivity with the Eastern US grid and Mexico, it is independent. Because ERCOT does not cross state lines, it is not subject to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's regulations.

 

So your argument is that Texas should be an omen for not joining a national grid, because national grids use “unreliable wind and solar”, after Texas, who gets 80% of their power from Natural Gas (FOSSIL FUEL) just had one of the largest power outages in history ?

Stop, your embarrassing yourself.

WTF are you talking about? Texas supplies its OWN electricity. This idea that it is the “green” sources that caused it is beyond ridiculous. At their best they only supply 10% of the source because thats all they produce. You blame the 10% for the 90% failure ? Math eludes you doesn’t it ?

 

It depends on the agreements they make. Grids allow for selling and buying of power.

 

Southern England

 

No hurry. We did not see winds above 5 mph for 95% of the cold snap. We usually have sustained winds of at least 10 mph and often 20+.

 

Because of the Texas grid's [ERCOT] important historical independence, along with other revelations [during the winter storm crisis when Texas power generation facilities needed gas, Texas Gov Abbott had to issue an order to prevent Texas gas supplies from being sold out of state!]... my first thought was the Texas grid was being intentionally targeted for destruction!

.

 

Rudeness aside. I am always happy to learn. I certainly never claim to have "All the information" only an idiot would claim to have "all the information"
What's your explanation for the extreme weather in Texas?

 

I think a lot of the success of the UK wind farming is due to location on sand banks out at sea. So perhaps you ought to look at building some along the coastline of Nebraska

 

By greedy/corrupt/incompetent Republicans...

 

Ya I wouldn't know about England other then what you say..

 

You missed the point.

The ERCOT bidding system worked fine when all sources of energy were from stable and reliable sources of energy. Adding any sources of wavering or unreliable energy sources should have triggered ERCOT to change their policy of how they manage energy purchases. Wind generators promised to supply 10%, then only supplied 2%. That started a very rapid and cascading domino effect, as the state did not think they needed to have many natural gas plants operating until they got caught flat-footed and it was too late to get those unoccupied plants out of mothballs, where they weren't planning to be manned or operated until spring.

When the Texas grid started to adopt unreliable wind and solar, they should have changed their bidding/purchasing policies and placed a lot less weight on sources which cannot be counted on.

And to answer your obviously rhetorical question. No, math does not elude me, but thanks for the insults.

 

I just read your little climate denial blog, and it actually proves the opposite! Here is the graph of energy supply he uses:

Note that he starts the graph a week before everything froze. He does that because on the night of the 7th all of Texas was experiencing 20 mph winds that are optimal for wind power. Because of that wind was producing more energy than all other sources combined for a short while at over 20 gigs watts per hour.

Yourittle blogger uses that peak to claim that wind power fell off and therefore (without evidence) must have been frozen. In reality the wind came back to normal for Texas winters. You can see that wind power was normal to even slightly above normal through the 14th.

But yes, the forecast was for freezing temperatures on that Friday the 12th, so Texas started ramping up capacity in its gas plants. But they started seeing issues on Friday and Saturday, so they planned for rolling blackouts. Then on Sunday everything falls off a cliff at the same time. Wind was steady at 5GWh, then gas and coal drop a few hours before wind.

 

If wind farms were only supposed to supply 10%, presumably you got 90% of the electricity you needed.

 

Wind generators don't promise delivery of a percentage of demand on any given day or week. Where did you come up with that nonsense? Did gas promise 80%???

 

FFS. Your claim is that the “green” sources were, at MAX, designed to provide 10% of the power, yet Texas lost 90% of its power, so it must have been the 10% that caused it ? You claim they “mothballed” some natural gas plants, and that the 10% wind energy caused some cascading effecte that limited the other 90% ?

How would the bidding process changed if the green sources were only 10% at max ?

 

All three of America's grids are very fragile. It's been know for years how easy it would be to knock one or all of them offline.

I don't think we were "targeted", but a few days before the deep freeze ERCOT assured the governor that we were in good shape. Later they said that the entire grid was possibly minutes away from total disaster, versus the partial outages we experienced.

Looking forward to hearing the ERCOT and other agency players get questioned by legislators this coming week. I don't know if C-SPAN or other media will be carrying the hearings live.

 

Ya I'm sure that's at the top of your reasoning.. As far as the point goes,

As far as the JetStream goes, you also missed

You do realize the sun is at it's "Relatively" furthest point SOUTH.. That's one reason polar plunges and the coldest weather in this region and south occur in February.. The influence of the sun pulls the Jetstream south and when the right amount of cold and absence of tropical warm air/pressure to hold it back you get what Texas and the there rest of the south experienced..

So you can look at two ways, not enough tropical HEAT or to much COLD to the north.. Either way global warming comes in to question for me

Or the sun is just TO DAMN HOT!!