Nukes have always been the answer.
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And it's not just Texas with electricity problems. Oklahoma has rolling blackouts too, and they are part of the big interconnected power grid.
I am fascinated to see the natural gas storage draws, although all that reporting is 1-2 weeks delayed.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02...s-power-storm/
Basically in their winter forecast model they expected renewables to drop to a small fraction anyways but its the thermal plants going down that actually caused the biggest unexpected drop and why they didn't have enough capacity.Quote:
The outages during this storm far exceeded what ERCOT had predicted in November for an extreme winter event. The forecast for peak demand was 67 gigawatts; peak usage during the storm was more than 69 gigawatts Sunday.
It’s estimated that about 80% of the grid’s capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.
Woodfin said Tuesday that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, are offline and that 30 gigawatts of thermal sources, which include gas, coal and nuclear energy, are offline.
“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.
Basically, they wasted a ton of money subsidizing wind and solar, leading to people dying. Yes, I understand completely. It wasn't "better". It was a thing that had no meaningful impact. Like claiming a drop of water in a drought is better than just having water to begin with.
It's actually quite expensive. Part of why they don't want to be part of the grid is because they would then have to upgrade their system to meet federal codes. They don't want that, they enjoy the true 'merica way of paying the lowest bidder to take shortcuts when building infrastructure.
Like anything it works until it doesn't. My bet is this won't be the last cold snap they see in the next few years.
Imagine having such poor critical thinking skills... People are dying because the privately owned power plants both renewable and fossil fuel based chose not to winterize or prepare for cold snap events. Wind and solar work fine in our climate so yeah let's blame something completely unrelated because it doesn't fit your chosen agenda. Fossil fuel based power is frankly stupid and we should be building more nuclear power plants but the problem here isn't the fuel source it's the not preparing for winter/cold and everything freezing.
Actually, there is enough natural gas electrical production to cover the states needs. Summer demand in Texas is definitely over double or triple winter most of the time. If the natgas generators were running properly, they would not need other forms of energy at this time of year in previous years.
It takes 3x as much energy to cool one degree as it does to heat one degree, as you basically have to generate heat to get cold, but if you want just straight heat, nearly all electrical elements are 99% efficient at it.
If the solar cycle minimalists are correct, we can expect more of these kinds of events.
I dont recall something like this much cold, for this long, happening this far south the last 10-15 years.
Celltowers are starting to go down now too. They only have a day or so of fuel backup generator capacity, and they are having problems getting to some of them.
Gotta hire some scrubs to fill up the tanks at the tower.
We need a sun tax.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...itarian-crisis
Yeah, I totally wonder if its full on panic mode in El Paso, where they recycle their poopwater. Noone ever thought that Texas would ever be out of power.
A mayor from a small town in Texas sure fucked up real nice, fucked up so bad even his wife got fired for just being associated with him lol The fuck are people thinking when they post shit like this
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tim-boy...power-outages/