Officials are trying to restart retired power plants. But "Green is better".

I do feel a little bad for Texas now. :(

Austin. Aus-tin.

lmao... CA..... lol

Goes to show windmills are a waste of time

I dunno, I hear they make great jousting practice.

Genius, pure liberal green energy genius. Rinos that went along with it are just as guilty.

lol, the irony.

And they kill birds.

Doc

Perhaps this is instead a tale of the importance of interconnectedness and redundancy in electrical grids, and the folly of the infamous spirit of Texan pride and self-reliance

Last count I had there were something like 1.5 million customers out of power and the turbines are offline. My power went out yesterday morning at 4 and we were lucky enough to find a hotel room nearby in Odessa. Lots of people are being turned away because there are no rooms left. I have a neighbor who has solar panels and they’re out too because we haven’t seen the sun in days. Tell me again, how is all this green energy going to save us all and replace fossil fuels?

Actual green energy like tidal and geothermal are year round.

There isn’t much tidal activity in West Texas and geothermal isn’t very popular. All we have an abundance of is wind and oil, and one of those let us down.

Yes, the wind

Actually, the wind is still blowing. The turbines let us down, as well as those who decreed that those same turbines were good enough to replace what works.

Oh right, it is just it's too fast and cold

Yeah that stuff doesn’t happen here so everyone was unprepared.

yes

Except those aren't the green energies being pushed. Also, I think supplementing with green energies is great, but AT THIS TIME they are not reliable enough to be the primary source of power. This really is a cart before the horse deal. With many local governments requiring x% to come from certain sources before the capability actually exists.

Well fracking basically got killed after the cancellation of key-stone pipeline

Fracking isn't even related to the key-stone pipeline. That pipeline is simply for future transportation of petroleum from Canada, oil that is already being shipped here by train and truck. Closing the pipeline construction (it hasn't even been built completely) changes nothing about fracking, especially in the states, where it is picking up now that oil prices are starting to climb. The higher oil prices rise, the more profitable fracking is, and much of it is on private land, free from government sponsored shut-downs.

What is your opinion on the downsides of fracking? From my understanding it can poison the ground and water

True

But it does come all year round, it can't break down and if it snows it won't get catastrophic like THIS ONE

Fracking uses the same chemicals that all other horizontal or directional boring rigs use, and these are in use all over the country in every city where there is any form of utility construction. All with no poisoning of ground water, creeks, ponds and lakes. Even that movie that came out a while ago showing flames shooting out of water faucets was debunked when it came out that these people in the movie were having these problems before the fracking in their area even started. Much of the drilling in this process occurs below the water line by several hundred feet usually; thus, eliminating the threat.

Are you sure? I recall a local farmer who brought the water to a town hall and dared the guys to drink it like they PROMISED they would. They did not due to the water being mucky black

No one is going to drink mucky black water, but that doesn't prove that fracking caused it. Besides, like I said, the fracking takes place well underneath the water tables. Ya gotta be careful with documentaries these days. Its seems they're more concerned with proving a political point than actually coming out with the truth. Fracking is one of the most regulated industries in the US. They go out of their way to avoid trouble, because it only takes a few examples proven in court to shut them down, which is far more expensive.

Remember Texas in Feb 2011 power outages ? ? This is not the first time girls ...Google it ...
Stop being brain washed by talk host opinion show , stop passively feeding your brains with rhetoric from the screen ..read , research ...

Good call !

Good One - 20f68v.jpg (click to show) Upvoted!

Sounds like Texas needs to use another source of energy.....hmm what could it be?

Wind turbine shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the total current power outages in Texas.

Your numbers are correct, but your context is off.

Wind accounts for 23% of all the power generated in Texas. They lost over half of that capacity, around 13% of total production. However, the loss of 13% of total capacity plus a greater demand due to the cold weather caused an overload of the entire grid. So while they only loss 13% of capacity, this contributed to the entire grid being affected.

I don't think my context is off.

Last week, several natural gas facilities and pipelines in the state shut down as temperatures dipped and wellheads froze up.

“We don’t have the supply of gas that we normally do, and we’re consuming gas in record numbers, which is also depressurizing the gas lines,” Rhodes explained. “Natural gas power plants also require a certain pressure to operate, so if they can’t get that pressure, they also have to shut down. Everything that could go wrong is going wrong with the system...It’s not like we were relying on wind, but we were relying on natural gas, and it failed terribly in that respect,” Rhodes said. “Yes, we have wind turbines that are iced up, yes, we have wind turbines that are not performing. We don’t typically rely on wind during [the winter], so we built the grid to rely on those other resources, and they didn’t show up, either. We didn’t plan for this.”

"a number of natural gas, coal and nuclear thermal generators began tripping offline starting around 1:30 a.m. Monday, he said. While ERCOT hasn’t yet collected the data to determine the precise causes of those generator outages, a previous report from a 2014 cold snap suggests a range of causes, from natural-gas pipelines freezing up to the failure of equipment that's needed to keep power plants operating safely. "

"Failures across Texas’ natural gas operations and supply chains due to extreme temperatures are the most significant cause of the power crisis that has left millions of Texans without heat and electricity during the winter storm sweeping the U.S."

“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Woodfin said during a Tuesday call with reporters."

"Production of natural gas in the state has plunged, making it difficult for power plants to get the fuel necessary to run the plants. Natural gas power plants usually don’t have very much fuel storage on site, experts said. Instead, the plants rely on the constant flow of natural gas from pipelines that run across the state from areas like the Permian Basin in West Texas to major demand centers like Houston and Dallas."

"In early February, Texas operators were producing about 24 billion cubic feet per day, according to an estimate by S&P Global Platts. But Monday, Texas production plummeted to a fraction of that: Operators in the state produced somewhere between 12 and 17 billion cubic feet per day."

I guess it depends on who you ask. Here the head of the power grid said it was the windmills.

I'm not seeing where in that article the head of the power grid said that majority of the problem is windmills(?)

Seems at best that article vaguely says windmills merely contributed to the problem... Interesting that nowhere does it actually compare the impact of problems with windmills vs problems with natural gas and other sources.

I also notice the article mentions "West Texas turbines don't typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year".. but they fail to mention specifics...... Which makes the reader unable to even compare windmills to windmills (what's typical or expected during this time of year for windmills compared to the current situation)

It also mentions the "storm's gusty winds are spinning the state's unfrozen coastal turbines at a higher rate than expected, helping to offset some of the power generation losses"...... again without giving any specifics......

I hear they're going to investigate this though so I guess we shall see if I'm correct in claiming the majority of the problem was not windmills.

You are correct, there seems to be a lot of confusion on exactly why the Texas power grid took such a hit. I doubt we will ever see a definitive report on the causes. It will get memory-holed for sure.

Interestingly, there seems to be a bruha developing in Germany over their solar panels being covered in snow and the need to fire up coal-powerplants. You just don't know what to believe anymore.

OP, I mean keep lying but w/e

Texas energy profile

https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX

USA...USA...USA...

That's what happens when you don't get the cold-weather apparatus for your wind farm, you yee-haw jackasses.

Just what is this cold weather apparatus you boast about for wind farms. Sounds like a big fat moronic story but do tell.

I believe he is referring to winterized windmills.

For instance, they use windmills in Antarctica. However, these are hardened to withstand the cold. They actually use some of the power generated to warm their internals and their blades. They also use special oils that do not thicken when they get cold.

The windmills in Texas do not have the enhancements to withstand the cold.

It's similar to the electric de-icing "boots" on the leading edges of aircraft propellers.

Hi Thanks, I had gathered there would be something to maintain cold weather operation but thought they were just repeating something of which they knew nothing.

yee-haw. lmao