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Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

houstonchronicle.com

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Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#21

Post by croes »

makomk wrote: post #18
aseerdbnarng wrote: post #3

I understand that natural gas plants were just as impacted by the storm as renewables ( https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... ) so it is not clear this bill is being passed in good faith

Yeah, the big problem is the death of coal power. Coal power plants can stockpile enough fuel to run for a good while no matter the weather. Natural gas power plants cannot; they rely on a continuous supply of gas, and it turns out that every part of the Texas natural gas supply chain is vulnerable to cold weather and power outages. Fixing this will be slow, incredibly expensive, probably increase CO2 emissions and d…

Coal power is part of the problem in the first place.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#22

Post by XorNot »

makomk wrote: post #18
aseerdbnarng wrote: post #3

I understand that natural gas plants were just as impacted by the storm as renewables ( https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... ) so it is not clear this bill is being passed in good faith

Yeah, the big problem is the death of coal power. Coal power plants can stockpile enough fuel to run for a good while no matter the weather. Natural gas power plants cannot; they rely on a continuous supply of gas, and it turns out that every part of the Texas natural gas supply chain is vulnerable to cold weather and power outages. Fixing this will be slow, incredibly expensive, probably increase CO2 emissions and d…

A nuclear plant went offline due to the recent event. Pretending this has anything at all to do with the type of power generation, instead of properly weatherizing infrastructure is absurd.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#23

Post by XorNot »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #16
hef19898 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still leaves the grid to worry about. Even if the power plant doesn't have issue, if grid lines fail (temperature, wind, snow, ice,...) the power will still be lost. Nulear power plants have problems with freezing temperature (frozen rivers are bad to get cooling water from) and high temps / dry weather (again, low river levels are bad to get cooling water from. That is obviously less of a problem in case nuclea…

> It is also worth to note, that other countries, Canada, Russia, Northern Europe, et... have nowhere near the problems Texas had. Well, of course. There was no problem of "it's cold". The problem was "it's colder than we expected". You don't prepare for things that don't happen. This actually reminds me of a comment I saw on the topic of international shipping: "Slow is fine. Late is not." The goal isn't to arrive q…

Except Texas was warned this would happen again after it happened in 2011 and the conclusion was the same: cold weather proof your infrastructure. Naturally of course, the state did nothing to make this happen.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#24

Post by makomk »

babesh wrote: post #10

The nonpartisan approach would be a carbon tax along with paying higher prices for energy that provides guarantees that it won’t be interrupted during a cold spell. Then the research should center on how high the carbon tax should be and how much higher prices Texas is willing to pay for frost hardened energy. Unfortunately both sides are playing partisan politics and try to tilt the playing field.

"Paying higher prices for energy that provides guarantees that it won’t be interrupted during a cold spell" is effectively a subsidy for fossil fuel power plants and coal in particular - and a real subsidy too that actually gives it a financial advantage over renewable power, not the inflated fake "subsidies" that articles like this quote which usually turn out to be things that are available equally to all power sources or even all businesses.

There's some controversy over capacity payments to power suppliers (effectively, payments for being able to offer a guaranteed supply of electricity on demand) here in the UK for exactly this reason. They're seen as unnecessary subsidies to coal and other unclean fuel sources. The US media coverage blaming this outage on Texas not having capacity payments because it's supposedly run by right-wingers with a delusional belief in the free market above all else didn't mention this, but you can bet that if they introduced such a thing the press would be all over the Texas Republicans subsidising dirty fossil fuels angle.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#25

Post by bsder »

aseerdbnarng wrote: post #3

I understand that natural gas plants were just as impacted by the storm as renewables ( https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... ) so it is not clear this bill is being passed in good faith

>it is not clear this bill is being passed in good faith

You expected otherwise from Goobernor Abboot?

This is a huge distraction in the hope that people won't demand fundamental things like:

1) Fixing the electrical grid to the level that the Feds pointed out needed to be done in a report from 10 years ago the last time this happened.

This isn't just winterizing the grid, but also having enough fine grained control that you could shed enough load to do rolling blackouts.

The Texas grid doesn't have enough fine control so too many extra things are on the same circuits as "essential" services and the grid simply couldn't shed enough load without pulling the plug on things like hospitals.

It also doesn't help that residences just use fundamentally less electricity nowadays thanks to LED lighting and efficient appliances. Pulling the plug on residences just isn't a big enough lever anymore.

2) Giving ERCOT real statutory authority so that it can actual compel actions as opposed to being the toothless political sinecure it currently is.

ERCOT couldn't do jack shit when everything went to hell because it has no authority to compel anybody to do what they need to do. For example, the only way ERCOT could force some industrial plants offline that were refusing to shut down was to artificially raise the electrical prices instead of being able to give an order to summarily force shutdown.

But hey, "Regulation bad. Fox News say so."

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#26

Post by the8472 »

makomk wrote: post #18
aseerdbnarng wrote: post #3

I understand that natural gas plants were just as impacted by the storm as renewables ( https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... ) so it is not clear this bill is being passed in good faith

Yeah, the big problem is the death of coal power. Coal power plants can stockpile enough fuel to run for a good while no matter the weather. Natural gas power plants cannot; they rely on a continuous supply of gas, and it turns out that every part of the Texas natural gas supply chain is vulnerable to cold weather and power outages. Fixing this will be slow, incredibly expensive, probably increase CO2 emissions and d…

> Natural gas power plants cannot;

They could. Build them on a salt dome.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#27

Post by electronWizard »

aseerdbnarng wrote: post #3

I understand that natural gas plants were just as impacted by the storm as renewables ( https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... ) so it is not clear this bill is being passed in good faith

This article from Mises actually goes into the numbers, demand was up 24% compared to normal and natural gas made up most of the short fall.

https://mises.org/wire/wind-power-disaster-texas-no-matter-w...

The author compares the day of the Texas Energy Crisis to the same day of the previous year, but I'm taking his word that this is a fair representation of an average mid-February day for the Texas power grid.

There were issues with some natural gas generators having supply issues due to the cold weather, but natural gas provided 91% more electricity (measured in MWh) compared to an average winters day, and was down only 7% from what it provides during the peak summer demand. Wind was down 72% compared to an average winters day.

Renewables do have some downsides despite all their benefits, and maybe there should be an honest discussion about how public policy should address this. Subsidies for intermittent energy supplies should probably be partly contingent on also providing grid storage.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#28

Post by arethuza »

irjustin wrote: post #4
aseerdbnarng wrote: post #3

I understand that natural gas plants were just as impacted by the storm as renewables ( https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... ) so it is not clear this bill is being passed in good faith

Yes, the loud politicians have always been painting this as a Green/Wind vs Fossil problem as soon as the storm hit and that the solution is Fossil. It's frustrating because unlike other debates - the underlying truth is quite clear. Cold temperatures affected both Natural Gas & Wind bringing both power types[0]. Winterizing both can be beneficial. Wind can operating in those temperatures just fine[1]. It wouldn't be…

That Practical Engineering video (the first link) is excellent - in fact I would recommend the entire channel.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#29

Post by VBprogrammer »

XorNot wrote: post #22
makomk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the big problem is the death of coal power. Coal power plants can stockpile enough fuel to run for a good while no matter the weather. Natural gas power plants cannot; they rely on a continuous supply of gas, and it turns out that every part of the Texas natural gas supply chain is vulnerable to cold weather and power outages. Fixing this will be slow, incredibly expensive, probably increase CO2 emissions and d…

A nuclear plant went offline due to the recent event. Pretending this has anything at all to do with the type of power generation, instead of properly weatherizing infrastructure is absurd.

If the grid frequency is not stable enough (i.e. demand outstrips supply) any type of power plant will trip off line when the protection circuitry kicks in. Anything else risks damage to transformers and industrial machinery downstream.

Re: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

#30

Post by piva00 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #16
hef19898 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still leaves the grid to worry about. Even if the power plant doesn't have issue, if grid lines fail (temperature, wind, snow, ice,...) the power will still be lost. Nulear power plants have problems with freezing temperature (frozen rivers are bad to get cooling water from) and high temps / dry weather (again, low river levels are bad to get cooling water from. That is obviously less of a problem in case nuclea…

> It is also worth to note, that other countries, Canada, Russia, Northern Europe, et... have nowhere near the problems Texas had. Well, of course. There was no problem of "it's cold". The problem was "it's colder than we expected". You don't prepare for things that don't happen. This actually reminds me of a comment I saw on the topic of international shipping: "Slow is fine. Late is not." The goal isn't to arrive q…

> You don't prepare for things that don't happen.

Except that in this case, it happens, it happened 10 years ago and the Federal commission recommended winterisation [0] to prepare for such cold spells. It happened 32 years ago as well [1].

Shouldn't one of the richest states of the USA be prepared for an event that has happened at least twice in 30 years and that will happen again, one that not only causes extreme disruptions to its economy but deaths and suffering as well?

[0] https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/Reportonthe...

[1] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/A-t...

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