National Emergency declared in Texas
- Thread starter JustinTyme
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This article in Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...were-just-a-small-piece-of-texas-s-power-woes) says something similar. Sure, the wind farms in Texas haven't handled the weather well, but that's far from the biggest problem.
I don't remember the name. I bought 3 from Home Depot last year. We just got above 32 degrees in New Orleans. I hope for my wife that my lime tree survived. It already had blossoms on it. Wrapped it in heavy plastic and stuck two flood lights that give off a bit of heat inside.
Would not mind having the rights for Generac Sales here. I imagine they are and will be quite busy. Lots of folks are saying....never again ...,,and how can we be better prepared in the future.
I never said it was supposed to run 100% of the time. What is bothering me is that people are throwing out statistics like 21% of our generation here in Texas is wind. That's fine and true but what good is it if you can't count on it as a true resource? My point was that if we were investing in keeping the existing infrastucture from failing as you so brilliantly pointed out, we might not be in quite the mess we are in right now. All I did was quote the statistics from over the past weekend to show what actually happened here. And so tell me, if we have 33000 MW installed, how much should we count on? Please do statistics for me since my PSU Finance degree let me skip that class (thankfully). Should we have 100000 MW and only be able to get 10%? Tell me about the economics of that.
And you're 100% wrong about gas production being down. It's way up which you can do a 5 second search of the EIA website and see for yourself. But go ahead and please keep spouting off and showing people how smart you are. I bet you're a treat at parties!
Is that this guy?
You need to educate yourself on how the grid works.
Seriously? OK tell me what I have wrong? Because I am pretty sure they need to have a certain amount of capacity available to switch on at all times to meet demand and a certain amount to switch off when supply exceeds demand. But maybe you can point out some subtleties that I am missing.
Here in Dallas we are starting to see a cycle of 7-8 hours no power followed by 4 hours of power. This may continue this way for a few days. We can survive if that holds since last night it reached zero degrees but tonight only down to 20. The worry however it's the next form of precipitation. If it's snow we are fine, ice and we are screwed.
You're right. I was thinking about prices and the industry got it confused with production.
Overall production is not down but prices are way down (relative to where they were 10 years ago) and wells have been shutting down and producers have been going out of business for the last 10 years. There's a gas recession in PA and everywhere else and it's not because of renewables being favored by the govt or some such nonsense, it's because there is a glut in supply. Now prices have risen significantly this week because of the storm.
As far as the infrastructure you talk about, the problem is not that things haven't been kept up, it's that nobody in Texas anticipated this kind of weather. They didn't anticipate it this year or 20 years ago. You can't blame this on not properly installing their windmills because they didn't ever properly weatherize their fossil fuel plants either. And the fossil fuel plants are supposed to carry 70-90% of the load.
IDK..it is one of the swamp people guys though; history channel.Is that this guy?
OK. Texas has apparently been running on edge in maintaining its grid. It chose to focus on wind power which varies wildly in its generating rates. In doing so Texas chose to close some plants and run others at reduced rates. Unlike Christmas Vacation, I doubt you can flip the switch on an idled plant or a plant running at 10%. Even disregarding the current weather challenges maintenance issues will occur. In other words you must run a plant in order to count on it performing.
I even heard Texas was doing brownouts with industrial customers throughout the year to help match supply/demand. Elon Musk is going to drill for gas on his property—is this why?
I even heard Texas was doing brownouts with industrial customers throughout the year to help match supply/demand. Elon Musk is going to drill for gas on his property—is this why?
As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about. There are so many factual errors in your post that I can't be bothered addressing them individually.
The problem originated with various natural gas compression/transmission facilities. Unable to properly treat, compress and then deliver natgas further downstream, power plants that rely on natural gas as their primary fuel source were left without deliverable feedstock. That's why cash/spot natgas prices sold for as much as $9000/MMBTU's on Sunday.
Please check back in when you grow a brain and cease talking out of your arse
Yeah I don't see any factual errors. The price spike is due to the demand spike. All of my comments are correct.
Hang in there. I'm thinking only 1 more serious day of this freezing cycle, then it becomes insurance hell with broken pipes, drywall repair, and auto damage. 21F in Round Rock, and that should be the low until Thusday night (16F) but hoping most of the ice is done. Then it is all rainbows and unicorns. Roads are slicker than hell with the tire ruts melted, but refreezing. Storm is supposed be here at 11PM tonight, and so far it is predicting snow.
Again, you appear to be trying to put words in my mouth. I never said anything about the windmills not being installed correctly. I'm sure they did the best they could but have you been to west TX in February because I have many times and it's damn cold. Again and please try to listen this time, my whole point is only that people get all warm and fuzzy over having all this renewable energy and while I agree it's great most of the time, this time it doesn't appear to be helping at all. And if you don't agree with the fact that the energy infrastructure in this country is aging, then you're simply not paying attention.
One more tough night is what I'm thinking too. The ice in our pool is now too thick to break with a metal shovel. Had to be 2in thick. We have some frozen pipes but not all so we have some access to water.
I'd love to be in the pool equipment repair/replace business in the coming months. Roads up here will be all melted by Saturday I think. I loved through the great blizzard of '78 in Boston when I was in the 7th grade. This reminds me of that. Only we had a working fireplace and a cord of wood. Will be interesting to see what was really the cause of the power problems
Yeah the infrastructure is aging, but renewables are part of the solution not the problem. The reason Texas has so much of it is that land based wind power is the cheapest per dollar per kW hour of all new plants, and due to better production and design, it gets cheaper each year. If the turbines had been properly weatherized, they would be getting something out of them right now. That wouldn't solve the current problem because its a much bigger clusterF$ck than just that much more power. I don't know if the old infrastructure could have handled the current situation even when it was brand new. This weather was not anticipated but it's actually part of what we should be anticipating as a new normal.
Your erroneous rectally-extracted verbiage is growing old.
I, and many associates, have benefitted from investing in wind generation because of the following. We don't believe it is a particularly useful or reliable source of energy, but it allows us to make tax-preferenced returns on our initial investments.
You are supremely stupid.
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Got it. You are a pea brained pompous a$$. Check.Your erroneous rectally-extracted verbiage is growing old.
I, and many associates, have benefitted from investing in wind generation because of the following. We don't believe it is a particularly useful or reliable source of energy, but it allows us to make tax-preferenced returns on our initial investments.
You are supremely stupid.
Hang in there - temps finally going up tomorrow, though slowly. Hopefully sun shines as it really helped roads down here during the day. I had easy slush to drive through this afternoon. It’ll refreeze of course tonight with this next round of junk, but warmer temps should clear the worst by the afternoon I hope.
Your erroneous rectally-extracted verbiage is growing old.
I, and many associates, have benefitted from investing in wind generation because of the following. We don't believe it is a particularly useful or reliable source of energy, but it allows us to make tax-preferenced returns on our initial investments.
You are supremely stupid.
Is this some test board bullshit bitch fight your'e bringing over here? Cause if it is you can go the hell back.
Quit pointing fingers. It appears the entire system was not designed or prepared to function in these extreme conditions. All sources, all systems, all failed.
Just accept it. Learn from it. Work at preventing it from happening again.
Just accept it. Learn from it. Work at preventing it from happening again.
For the record, I have never said that wind generation was the cause of this problem. I have said that it doesn't appear to be an answer either. But people will be pointing fingers starting with the Texas Legislature apparently and it will be interesting to see where ERCOT places the blame.
It seems like the real story is much like most massive failures, a combination of a number of small issues cascading together at exactly the right/wrong time. Outdated instruments, demand growing too fast for infrastructure to keep up, roads frozen preventing additional gas supplies to arrive. Somewhere someone should have stress tested the system but they did not. The last time temps dipped below zero in DFW was 70+ years ago. We shall see what Abbott will do but I have coincidence in him to figure this out and not let ERCOT off the hook. Abbott is a fairly good gov IMHO. Next few weeks will be interesting. We just need to gut it out a few more days.
Holy shiat. You do not presently have a working fireplace?! Hang in there, Rush Chairman.
Just about every major disaster can be traced back to a series of bureaucratic missteps. Inevitably more bureaucratic solutions are the remedy. Rinse. Repeat.
I've worked for TX companies for several years and have a lot of good friends there. Many say that this is a massive change to anything they've seen. One, who grew up in Austin, told me he's never seen it go south of 20 degrees. It was 7 there. And, it has sustained for several days.
That is really the problem, it situation is unprecedented. Gas works in cold weather. Wind turbines do too. They just have to be prepared differently. My friend's home has a gas water heater in the attic, is on a slab, only has a heat pump (which isn't efficient at that low temperature), very little insulation, and single-pane windows. People rarely plan for unprecedented events and that is why they put up red lights were there was a fatality....we react.
Last night, here in Ohio, the low was supposed to be 16. I woke up at 4 am and noticed it was 3. Oops. Just a miss of 13 degrees!
This. I’ve been here 16 years - had 2 snow events before Monday. Both times snow was gone by 10 am. This is like a massive heat wave hitting Maine and Canada - most people would lack AC and be struggling.
Having grown up in the Chicago area these types of conditions are pretty normal in Winter there but in Texas when you have an event that only happens once in a lifetime it's hard to really be prepared for it. Terrible when is does happen and hopefully there are some take aways that the Government and Utilities can learn from but I doubt they are going to spend much money to prepare for an event that may not happen again for 70 years, the same reason people rebuild in areas where they just got flooded out of - playing the odds it won't happen again. Have friends in Texas as well as my boss out of DFW area - they are really struggling right now.
