Green energy

[lipripper]

Guess the 4 million in Texas are seeing the reality of it. Kinda like the outages in cali cause of the fires..hate it for um

[Bouncer]

Guess the 4 million in Texas are seeing the reality of it. Kinda like the outages in cali cause of the fires..hate it for um

If you would like a science/fact based explanation of what's actually going on feel free to read. I'll just say that for this time of year, wind turbines are actually producing MORE power than usual. But in a world where science is ignored and facts are whatever you want them to be I guess we'll go with the "fuck green energy" theme...

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Monday morning, as a jet stream brought frigid air south to the central United States, Texas residents found themselves facing rolling blackouts as the statewide grid struggled to meet demand amid a large shortfall in generating capacity. As the day wore on, many saw these blackouts extend for ever longer periods of the day, and grid authorities are expecting problems to extend into at least Tuesday. As of noon local time on Monday, the Southwest Power Pool, which serves areas to the north of Texas, also announced that demand was exceeding generating capacity.

The shortfalls appear to be widespread, affecting everything from wind turbines to nuclear plants. One source of trouble may be an increased competition for natural gas, which is commonly used for heating in the United States.

Coming up short

Texas is unusual in that almost the entire state is part of a single grid that lacks extensive integration with those of the surrounding states. That grid is run by an organization called ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a nonprofit controlled by the state legislature.

According to a statement released today by ERCOT, the grid entered a state of emergency shortly after 1am on Monday, meaning it could no longer guarantee enough power generation to meet customer demands. This is because roughly 30 gigawatts of generation capacity has been forced offline.

While some early reports indicated that frozen wind turbines were causing significant shortfalls, 30GW is roughly equal to the entire state's wind capacity if every turbine is producing all the power it's rated for. Since wind in Texas generally tends to produce less during winter, there's no way that the grid operators would have planned for getting 30GW from wind generation; in fact, a chart at ERCOT indicates that wind is producing significantly more than forecast.

So while having Texas' full wind-generating capacity online would help, the problems with meeting demand appear to lie elsewhere. An ERCOT director told Bloomberg that problems were widespread across generating sources, including coal, natural gas, and even nuclear plants. In the past, severe cold has caused US supplies of natural gas to be constrained, as use in residential heating competes with its use in generating electricity. But that doesn't explain the shortfalls in coal and nuclear, and the ERCOT executive wasn't willing to speculate.

With generation failing to meet demand, ERCOT was left with no other option other than to cut off customers' access to power. "About 10,500 MW of customer load was shed at the highest point," as the company put it. In a graph posted on ERCOT's homepage, you can watch a sudden plunge in demand occurring at the time the emergency started, indicating that many customers likely saw their electricity cut off at this point. And at two points in the day since, demand experienced an additional plunge when it threatened to exceed supply, indicating further cuts.

Note that the projected demand for later in the day is far, far higher than the expected supply, indicating that Texas is in for a very difficult evening.

By around noon local time, similar problems had struck the Southwest Power Pool, which serves parts of 14 states to the north of Texas. A statement released on Twitter said that the organization had started relying on reserve energy at 10am local time and ran out of that shortly afterward. (The company's website appears to be down, though whether that's due to power issues or many people checking its status isn't clear.) "This is an unprecedented event and marks the first time Southwest Power Pool has ever had to call for controlled interruptions of service," said the company's CEO.

Authorities will probably need several weeks, if not longer, to fully understand how so much generating capacity was taken offline at what turned out to be a period of critical demand. But the event drives home the fact that balancing supply and demand on the grid has always been a challenge and prone to failure at times of extreme heat and cold. While the variability of renewable supplies will undoubtedly increase the challenge, the growing emphasis on pairing them with storage may ultimately help smooth out some of the problems in the coming decades.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021...nder-the-cold/

[Scrumhalf]

[Bouncer]

And if you look at the entire month for wind power expected in Texas it's actually higher than projections.

[lipripper]

But it failed....when the people need it most...not science...just a fact

[Bouncer]

But it failed....when the people need it most...not science...just a fact

no, the power company and it's contingency plans failed. terrible leadership.

you are 100% the guy that looks at a broken down car and says.. "see... horses are better".

you are a product of the past. you are a relic in a world of innovation. unable to adapt you shall decay in destitution.

[lipripper]

Stop making excuses green failed

[Bouncer]

Stop making excuses green failed

Did you make it past the 2nd grade? I don't even need to ask about 3rd.

[Scrumhalf]

I saw a video earlier of wind turbines doing just fine at -15F in Iowa yesterday. Not to mention that places like Denmark and Norway get about half of their power or more from wind turbines.

Maybe if Texas actually took care of weatherizing their infrastructure, they wouldn't be in such a pickle, given that their natural gas power plants broke down in the cold much worse than their wind installations.

[Scrumhalf]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1362034615339335680

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[Bouncer]

Even energy company admits it's not the problem.

But initial reports from fox news was all it took for the low IQ boomers to run with it.

[Scrumhalf]

It's the outright lying that bothers me. Abbott, Crenshaw, Cruz, all of them. And it's not something debatable or has to be teased out of some complicated calculation. The information is so readily available, anyone with half a functioning brain should be able to figure out.

[lipripper]

Lol...so easy...a cave man can do it...