Welcome to the 3rd World - Rolling Blackouts Continue

The problem with green energy is that it still requires a traditional power grid that is capable of taking on peak high demands without and green energy supply.

Why? There is virtually no way to store the green energy produced. It is fed into the grid when it is capable of being produced by sunlight, wind, etc. and a “credit” is given to the producer.

At night when it is very cold, dark, and possibly windless 100% of power needed comes from traditional generation. It matters not how much green energy was produced during the day because it can’t be stored.

In fact daytime production of green energy can mean that there aren’t enough power plants fully on line at night if unexpected conditions arise that demand higher usage. It takes a while to bring a plant up to full capacity.

No meaningful storage capacity and the dirty production side of green energy are its two inconvenient truths.

Almost like it was by design? They were too independent? Gold reserve, oil, Texas guard? etc?

You want a real conspiracy theory, this cold front was steered there.

a reply to: Snarl

originally posted by: Nivhk
a reply to: vonclod
It's the infrastructure.

Have you seen what freezing rain and high wind does to power lines?

That's why where I am, we have the major arteries buried. Sure, expensive to repair or inspect, but we're not risking freezing just trying to sleep through a night.

Edit: "Green" energy is just as useless as that bad energy if it can't get to the consumers.

Edit2: The irony isn't lost on me, how Puerto Rico had their entire infrastructure wiped out, politicians playing games with aid and lifes, and the same people panicking now, were like "too bad, so sad, not my problem"

Yes, I'm in Canada, but the "nice" part..lol..jk!!!!

Here on the west coast our winters are pretty mild. The previous couple weeks were cold, -12, or colder with the wind, usually we are above freezing give or take. Thankfully nothing like..anywhere east of the west coast. I have worked/wintered many times at -20, -30, even colder. No fun working in that.

Here, we are lucky to have lots of hydro electric power, no need for anything else, well, natural gas.

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: vonclod

We are lucky, we have hydro electric, and natural gas..which flows no matter the outside temp.

Came back from Cancun and Portland closed their airport, so we had to spend the night in Denver that was at -11 F -24c which is crazy... I had 1/2+ inch of ice on my car too when I finally got to it in Portland yesterday.

Sounds like a no fun zone, I have worked out of town in -20's and colder..it definitely sucks. We are lucky here with a milder winter..hell, when we had the Winter Olympics, there was nothing but sunshine and green grass..lol, they have to make most of the snow. Having said that, everything applicable is underground..for the odd winter we get hit.

a reply to: Xtrozero

I could not over engineer (or engineer in any way) my home because I'm not an architect or an engineer, and even if I was I never worked for the company that built the apartment building where I live.

Also, considering that in all of Portugal's recorded history (almost 900 years) we had only 3 hurricanes, the last one, also the strongest, had a record 176 km/h wind gust and made some damages, and 61 people had to be relocated because of damage to their homes, we don't need that much to worry about hurricanes. Where I live we didn't have any problems.

Earthquakes are a different problem (I witnessed some six earthquakes during my almost 57 years), so modern buildings are built with that in mind.

From what I have seen, it's not that unusual for Texas (and the other locations mentioned) to have such low temperatures as they are having now, so they had a reason to prepare something as important as power stations and transport lines for this kind of weather.

originally posted by: ketsuko
It's especially not something you plan for when all the "experts" are telling you it's not happening again because of Climate Change.

I suppose you have been listening to the wrong people, as anyone that says that is far from an expert. What the experts have been saying for more than 30 years is that global warming (or climate change) will result in more extreme weather, with more pronounced winters and summers and less "normal" springs and autumns. Floods will be more common, but so will draughts, the same happening with extreme hot and cold weather periods.

originally posted by: Snarl
Texas is getting wrecked. Just got a text from a Colonel I used to work for. He's really worried his water pipes are gonna burst and there's no way a plumber can get out there. Can you imagine if everyone's pipes burst?

I lived in a 1920 farm house, I learned real quick after the first winter to crack the facets to trickle when it got down into the 20’s and below. I also went to each water pipe and wrapped those heat wires under the house.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
The truth is our entire country should have been on nuclear power a few decades ago.

According to the article Peeple posted, some of the affected power plants were nuclear, so that's not the problem.

Some of the energy sources powering the grid were knocked out by the inclement weather, most of which were facilities run by gas, coal or nuclear energy.

Source

a reply to: ArMaP

From what I have seen, it's not that unusual for Texas (and the other locations mentioned) to have such low temperatures as they are having now, so they had a reason to prepare something as important as power stations and transport lines for this kind of weather.

This... for some reason... Texans (and presumably other large populations) get amnesia about the weather. Its like people can only remember 11 months. Spring comes around and it starts storming and people lose their minds. EVERY YEAR. The language the meteorologists use gets a little more apocalyptic every year.

I can remember 4 freezes and 2 thick snow falls. I remember one REALLY bad year. Now here we are again with this latest storm.

The media is more concerned with using words like RECORD BREAKING and all this language that freaks the public out. We need to be educating about the cyclic nature of storms and how their intensity is cyclic as well.

My step parents live out in the country and identify as country folk. They had no firewood for this event.

Down in the more affluent areas are thousands of dollars worth of imported tropical plants that have been growing and have been irresponsibly planted for 15 years around town will now be absolute compost come Spring.

When will we learn?

originally posted by: ketsuko
Again, the energy share of SPP has become heavily reliant on wind and natural gas.

"Heavily reliant"? Could you give us a percentage?
Thanks in advance.

a reply to: MarkOfTheV

I saw on the link MarkOfTheV posted they were talking about the "2011 rolling blackouts", so it does look relatively frequent.

a reply to: ArMaP

One more thing... rolling blackouts in Texas are EXTREMELY isolated. They get an enormous amount of media attention because people FREAK when the power goes out.

But seriously... they are quite localized events.

Yes, there ARE people out there still without power... but as I've already ranted about... there are lot of personal decisions that led to this misery. It was your choice to live there and ignore things that may become a problem.

I left LA specifically because I started to have an instinct creep into my gut about the realties of my surroundings. I came to conclusion on the highway going out to Pasadena. I said to myself... "If the $@#$ ever hits the fan and we need to vacate the city... we're gonna be really screwed. " Years later and the state looks like a vision of hellfire in areas.

I digress.. I said in another post, we get thousands upon thousands of days worth of really solid uninterrupted power Extreme events (no matter how frequent or infrequent they are) are going to cause extreme results and people should get a little cognizant of their environment and the pitfalls of living on planet Earth.

I'm tired of acting like victim to mother nature. She's a wild one but I ain't judging.

I dunno... we all need to be a little more one with nature instead of constantly playing it up as "out to get us".



I'm cold.

originally posted by: MarkOfTheV
a reply to: ketsuko

Texas’s experience highlights the perils of becoming overly reliant upon wind, solar and natural gas because these energy sources are not as reliable as coal or nuclear power during extreme weather conditions.

That's a dishonest take. Gas and Coal are still the 2 biggest producers of electricity. Wind is a drop in the bucket. This isn't green energies fault.

Texas decided to not share it's grid. We don't export power. So we don't import it either.

That's what's screwing us right now. They been chatting about the dangers/benefits for years.

Why does Texas have it's own grid?

So uh nope
Wind is up to 60%
Gas is up to 40%

No wind and frozen turbines plus frozen gas wells and unprecedented demand make this the perfect storm.
Unreliable base load is EXACTLY the culprit.
Through regulation and bs feels green energy.

It will not get better while biden is in office.
Tho you can thank gina mccarthey and obamas bs green energy scams.

a reply to: shooterbrody



Looks like Gas is still the biggie in Texas.

Gas heat sure is dry though... my lips is chapped.

a reply to: MarkOfTheV

In Texas, where 25 gigawatts of wind capacity feeds into the state’s main power grid, wind can sometimes produce as much as 60% of total electricity. But because wind power tends to ebb in the winter, the grid operator typically assumes that the turbines will generate only about 19% to 43% of their maximum output.

fortune.com...

As much as 60%
As I stated

Too much gas, and coal has been shuttered without replacing it.

a reply to: MarkOfTheV

I perfectly well understand personal responsibility and awareness, had a 5 day outage last tropical storm and ran on gennys just fine.

I lived in DFW area in many locations for 20 years till 97' and at no time in twenty years did an outage last more than 10-15 minutes at any of those locations through high winds, tornadic T-Storms, Ice Storms and last big cold snap in 89'

So what different? supposedly we have all this gee whiz electronic tech and advancements that should be even more reliable right?

Pardon the pun "Houston we have a problem"

The problem is growth without similar growth in baseload capacity and an over reliance on what should be supplemental power generation that's being used wrong way as baseload generation.

Bad public policy let that happen.

a reply to: Phoenix
Were Texas its own nation it would be 5th in nations of the world in wind production.
Green energy is great, it is just unreliable.

Just to get an idea, anyone knows how much electricity does a common home in the US uses per month?

a reply to: ArMaP
Like 1100 kwhrs per bill per month in tx

$1500.00ish per year

originally posted by: shooterbrody
a reply to: Phoenix
Were Texas its own nation it would be 5th in nations of the world in wind production.
Green energy is great, it is just unreliable.

I concur, wind and solar should be used to offset traditional fuel costs associated with summer time peak load conditions hopefully benefitting rate payers - to many hands in the pot though so its done as a for profit endeavor used for all the wrong reasons which helped lead to recent situation - never should have been counted into base load requirements at all.