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

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January 12, 2021 Trump visited Alamo, Texas a small town on the Texas border and gave a brief speech at his new border wall. At the time, I thought Trump chose that specific town because of its symbolic name. Then it immediately occurred to me how vitally important and useful an independent Texas grid might be!

Fast-forward a month... and now there is discussion about destroying Texas' independent grid!

 

Good point. Sea winds are the most dependable. I heard a guy on a podcast the other day talking about plans for offshore wind generators as tall as the Empire State Building. I prefer offshore because of visual pollution issues. Some beautiful places have already been ruined by visual pollution in the US.

Im going down to the coast with my kestrel wind meter as soon as I finish feeding cows and start plotting possible sites.

 

Domino effect. Yes.

They failed to take account for a failure of that 10%. The alternative power plants were shut down for winter.

Looks like natural gas saved the day for many Texans. The problem with that is that most homes built after 1980'ish are all electric because of the demand to build fast and affordable housing. 60% of Texas homes are all-electric now, so gas wasn't going to help 60% of the people. We should never have done complete shut downs of coal power plants. We did that due to federal pollution caps, even though coal scrubbers have made burning coal for electricity a very clean process.

 

Spectrum cable now has its own Texas news channel. During the Texas winter storm crisis, their news channel had 24/7 coverage of the Texas winter storm and live coverage of several interviews with ERCOT officials and Gov Abbott's press conference. Like most mass media news, Spectrum's channel has a liberal bent, but at least it kept Texans informed of what was happening.

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Power generating businesses in Texas bid on what price they are willing to sell their product to the grid....every 5 minutes, since most energy is not storable and is used almost as fast as it is generated and added to the grid. Sounds like wind made a bid, made promises to supply 10%, then could not supply what they sold. I will wait for the hearings and testimonies to confirm.

 

Pretty sure the eastern and western grid can hold up to a few inches of snow.

The same ERCOT board that the governor appoints members to?

Legislators in Texas are bankrolled by energy companies. They also have a hand in appointing ERCOT board members. Don't hold your breath.

 

You can't run a gas heater without electricity. Are you not an adult?

 

The data are real and verifiable. You can face them or you can deny.

Your denial is unpersuasive. The article is a straightforward chronology.

 

JFC. You keep coming back to this nonsense. At least you admitted you made it up this time.

And there is capacity built into a power grid. Unfortunately the grid catches fire when you let that capacity go to zero. Thus they turned the power off as mostly gas couldn't keep up.

 

Then you haven't read enough.
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…

 

The data proves that your little blogger is an idiot and a liar. You should probably not follow him for your arguments.

 

Sorry, but the author has it exactly right. I won't try to reason you out of a position you did not reason yourself into.

John Andrew "Andy" May - Marquis Who's Who Top Scientists
marquistopscientists.com › Featured Scientists
Nov 16, 2020 — Mr. May went on to excel as a petrophysicist for Devon Energy from 2008 to 2014, Kinder-Morgan from 2014 to 2016 and Andy May ...

 

Tejas is not talking about a "few inches of snow". We are talking about a targeted attack on a U.S. grid. All of our grids are extremely vulnerable if some country wanted to carry out such an operation.

Last time I checked, yes.

 

Then how do you not know that a gas heater cannot run without electricity?

Yes, electric residential heat use in Texas does put an absurd DEMAND on the power grid.

 

Gas is the only product which saved half the state from complete failure.

I didn't "make up" anything. You simply seem to think that smears and insults are contributing something positive to an otherwise adult discussion. That's your right to show your character here.

 

If you didn't make it up, please link to your source. And don't use words like "it seems" which indicate that you made it up.

And sorry, but Texas has set up its energy supply such that it relies on gas to supply 80% of its max demand. Since gas failed, Texas had to turn off power to half the state.

 

Ah, the irony. When presented with a linked source, you then deny. The tactic is called "defense in depth" but it erodes your credibility and the assumption of your good faith.

 

Many people who have gas and electric service had only their gas oven and a gas heater in their bathrooms for heat during the cold snap. Those run without electricity.

At least we can agree on what is completely obvious.

In normal years, heating demands in Texas homes are nothing compared to summer cooling demands for air conditioning. They plan for summer heat here. Pretty obvious, yes?

 

Some folks are hardly worth the bother.

 

Oh yes its definitely that simple. The jet stream used to go down the west coast of the UK and drag wet weather in from the Atlantic. This year it moved over the UK and drag cold air down directly over the country causing minus 20c temperatures.
Anyway here's someone who knows better than you or I.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/...eme-weather-arctic-amplification-temperature/

 

Maybe she is blessed to have a nice strong intelligent knowledgeable Texas man who takes good care of her and manages the household mechanics.

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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...

More funny stuff ….no refutation, no rebuttal, no facts....laughable...

 

Or some of us know that a gas oven, gas wall heaters, and gas fireplaces will operate with no electricity, even though a newer gas furnace may require electricity to start in order to heat the whole house.

There was a huge demand for gas in homes which have gas, because people who had them were running these electricity-independent appliances and gas fireplaces.

 

Cold Snaps Expose Climate Science Fragility
Guest Blogger
". . . . Some climate scientists argue CO2 induced “Arctic Amplification” causing warmer polar temperatures which increased the jet stream’s waviness. However, there is no consensus for their hypothesis, and some argue there is little evidence at all for that effect. Nonetheless there is an excellent, albeit ignored explanation for the warming Arctic/cooling mid‑latitudes paradox. The natural quasi‑permanent Aleutian Low nearly explains it all. . . . "

 

What's that a 3 day trip for you? Seriously though it demonstrates how state based systems can't work for everything. Maybe a more federal policy might work better in this case. America has quite a bit of coastline available.