72 hours without electricity

After Sandy we were out two weeks, my parents six. And they are on a well with oil heat, they had to stay with us.
 
The wind turbines were not the main problem anyway. They only accounted for about 1/3 of the loss in generation that happened. Various units in coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants were all offline for various reasons which accounted for most of the missing power. Even if all the wind turbines were 100% functional it would likely have not been enough to make up the difference anyway. Demand was just too high for the reduced production to cover. It was basically a combination of general unpreparedness, bad timing, and unusually bad conditions for an extended amount of time.
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
If you don't winterize, this is what you get.

Boy Scout motto applies....
Click to expand...
I take it you’d winterize in Hawaii as well? And to what extent? Arctic winterization, perhaps? A few million dollars per windmill? Remember, this is once in three decades event for them.
 
mr_fender said:
The wind turbines were not the main problem anyway. They only accounted for about 1/3 of the loss in generation that happened. Various units in coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants were all offline for various reasons which accounted for most of the missing power. Even if all the wind turbines were 100% functional it would likely have not been enough to make up the difference anyway. Demand was just too high for the reduced production to cover. It was basically a combination of general unpreparedness, bad timing, and unusually bad conditions for an extended amount of time.
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I’ve read this actually varies geographically, and they were a problem in West Texas . You can’t consider the entire state as a whole, you have to account for the local energy mix. If someone is locally powered by turbines and they’re fucked, that someone is fucked as well.

In one case they had to shut down a nuclear power station though, and I’d like to know why.
 
Here's the population density of Texas.

Texas_population_map2.png


Massive swaths of north and west Texas (where most of the turbine farms are located) are very sparsely populated. El Paso (furthest tip of west Texas) is also not on the ERCOT grid.
 
mr_fender said:
The wind turbines were not the main problem anyway. They only accounted for about 1/3 of the loss in generation that happened. Various units in coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants were all offline for various reasons which accounted for most of the missing power. Even if all the wind turbines were 100% functional it would likely have not been enough to make up the difference anyway. Demand was just too high for the reduced production to cover. It was basically a combination of general unpreparedness, bad timing, and unusually bad conditions for an extended amount of time.
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And, being Texas, many of the people who do have power will be economically devastated by the unregulated home energy costs this month. It's basically a textbook example on how to not run a power grid.
 
Straight from the horse's mouth: http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225696

Quote: "As of 6 p.m., approximately 43,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of that, 26,500 MW is thermal and nearly 17,000 MW is wind and solar."

So yeah, them turbines and panels are hurtin' pretty bad, pardner: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45476 Quote: "On an hourly basis, wind output in ERCOT ranged from as little as 0.2 GW to as much as 21.2 GW in 2020"

So for those familiar with arithmetic: a small fraction of thermal power plants went out, and most of solar and wind. "Green new dealers" want no thermal or nuclear and all solar and wind. That'd be entertaining if it was the case, to say the least.
 
The nuclear plant that had the shutdown was right on the coast about 50 miles southwest of Houston. One of its two reactors was shut down because it's feedwater pump went out. Not sure if it froze or what.

Biggest culprits were natural gas powered plants.
 
It's weird seeing the rest of the country get pounded by ice & snow. It's usually us in Minnesota (or the Northern midwesterners in general) that gets the brunt of that kind of crap.

Other than a stupidly long stretch of below zero weather for the past week or two, it's been a relatively mild winter this year.

Hope it gets better quickly for you folks stuck in and stuck without power.
 
Point is all technologies have their limits when conditions are unexpectedly extreme. The only thing that's illustrated here is that lack of preparation can bite us all in the ass.

Texas' grid is normally very reliable and I think that has made a lot of people, myself included, complacent over the years. Corners were cut, warning signs were ignored, and we get this lovely situation. I just hope the folks in charge take note and learn some important lessons from all this crap so it won't happen again.
 
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Reminds me of the idiot question “Well why don’t they make the whole plane out of what the black box is made of?”

Because then the plane would weigh 7 million pounds and never get off the ground, genius.
 
plexi59 said:
As they say on Wikipedia, “citation needed”.
Click to expand...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...er-getting-worse-in-these-20-places/39873609/

https://news.stanford.edu/2020/03/18/climate-change-means-extreme-weather-predicted/

https://www.edf.org/climate/climate-change-and-extreme-weather

https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

https://www.nationalacademies.org/b...ing-is-contributing-to-extreme-weather-events

"These failing sources largely included nuclear plants, coal plants and thermal energy generators. Frozen wind turbines were a factor, too, but Woodfin said wind shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the outages."
-Austin-American Statesman

"Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time."
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change


Is California still on fire?

Merchants of Doubt. They make a living doing this, just as they did with tobacco denialism and fearmongering over the need for materials fireproofing that persists to this day.

As long as that minute doubt exists, naysayers can continue to ignore MASS SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS.
 
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ModelGuitarist said:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...er-getting-worse-in-these-20-places/39873609/

https://news.stanford.edu/2020/03/18/climate-change-means-extreme-weather-predicted/

https://www.edf.org/climate/climate-change-and-extreme-weather

https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

https://www.nationalacademies.org/b...ing-is-contributing-to-extreme-weather-events

"These failing sources largely included nuclear plants, coal plants and thermal energy generators. Frozen wind turbines were a factor, too, but Woodfin said wind shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the outages."
-Austin-American Statesman

"Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time."
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change


Is California still on fire?

Merchants of Doubt. They make a living doing this, just as they did with tobacco denialism and fearmongering over the need for materials fireproofing that persists to this day.

As long as that minute doubt exists, naysayers can continue to ignore MASS SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS.
Click to expand...
The DoD seems to think climate change is a credible threat:

https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/29/2002084200/-1/-1/1/CLIMATE-CHANGE-REPORT-2019.PDF
 
Doubt is the cornerstone of the scientific method. Without doubt you have religion, not science.

None of what you posted explains how global warming can cause extreme cold, which is what we’re dealing with here.

Again, it’s stupid to doubt something that can be measured post facto. So global warming is not up for debate - temperatures are rising measurably.

What’s up for debate is linking them to adverse weather, and in particular cold weather. Hot weather, warmer by a degree or two is explained well - it’s just common sense. Heavier rainfall makes sense too - all that water evaporating has to come down. Cold weather though? Seems like no matter what, you gotta pay off Al Gore, whether it goes up, down, or sideways.

Things like CA forest fires are pretty clearly caused by mismanagement - gotta burn that dead brush and remove deadwood or Mother Nature will do it for you. Which it did. Steps are typical: ban logging, trees grow too dense, suck up all the water from the waterbed, and die as a result. Brilliant "environmental" policy drafted by treehuggers in the 70s backfires today. Who could have predicted it. Certainly not the scientists, some of whom were predicting that we'd have a new ice age by year 2000 due to, you've guessed it, atmospheric pollution.

While on the subject of CA by the way, remember the drought, that folks who pretend to know for certain what’s linked to what couldn’t tell us when it would end? And then it did. I remember.

When someone tries to tie CA forest fires to global warming I know for a fact I’m being lied to. Then again I don’t blame them. I worked in research labs, plural. Whatever conclusion guarantees grants, that’s the one that will be reached.
 
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