121–130 of 1001 posts
Lots of folks in these comments seem to want to use this event to litigate wind vs. solar vs. gas vs. nuclear vs. coal, but it seems like, across the board, power generation facilities in Texas were simply unprepared to operate in such low temperatures. All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates.
This whole episode also reminds us how far we are from going 100% renewable. In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious. I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we…
I find it really weird that everyone is jumping to blame wind here, but totally ignoring all the natural gas plants that are turned off.
"Most of the power knocked offline came from thermal sources, Woodfin said, particularly natural gas."
So natural gas and other thermal sources (i.e., coal and nuclear) created most of the problem.
Wind power is actually potentially a very good solution for occasional cold spells, because extreme colds usually comes with high winds. Of course you have to design your turbines not to freeze.
Lots of folks in these comments seem to want to use this event to litigate wind vs. solar vs. gas vs. nuclear vs. coal, but it seems like, across the board, power generation facilities in Texas were simply unprepared to operate in such low temperatures. All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates.
Also: I live in Texas and have 100% renewable energy, so I feel sidelined by such comments.
Currently in ATX we haven't had power for over 24 hours, wood fireplace is saving the house from completely freezing but the whole city of Austin needs to evaluate how they setup their critical infrastructure to allow for rolling blackouts instead of having parts of the city with power and parts without for the entirety of an outage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give me a break. Actually, the whole reason for this series of outages is because Texas took the bait and installed a bunch of solar and wind instead of taking the safe route and doubling down on coal. Peak energy consumption in Texas is almost always in summer when there's a lot of AC units running -- which just happens to be when solar and wind work best. They gambled on green, paid the price in the past few days,…
> the whole reason for this series of outages is because Texas took the bait and installed a bunch of solar and wind instead of taking the safe route and doubling down on coal. That’s an outright lie. The vast majority of the missing production is in fossil plants. Wind only accounts for about 20% of nameplate capacity, and has been performing above expectations for the period. And that’s with Texan wind being as un-…
The Texas-only grid was definitely part of it, and should be a lesson to people who thought the lesson from Covid is "do more locally." No, having stronger, longer distance connections is what makes you more resilient, at least when there are local problems.
When California encountered power issues, it was easier for Texas politicians (and many of their followers) to espouse malicious soundbites about Commifornia than to empathize, offer support and self reflect on what lessons can be learned and applied locally.
Now that Texas is reaping its own fruits of decades of anti-"other side" politics and political mismanagement it's all too easy for whatever "other side" to treat Texas with the same derision and malice instead of empathy and support.
The government run Texas grid is ill prepared because the responsible parties are more interested in playing division politics than in governing.
Cold and snow are not novel, it's not a technical problem.
Lots of folks in these comments seem to want to use this event to litigate wind vs. solar vs. gas vs. nuclear vs. coal, but it seems like, across the board, power generation facilities in Texas were simply unprepared to operate in such low temperatures. All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates.
The technologies can work, but only if measures are taken to make them work that way, and those measures are expensive. Texas' grid, like most of the nation's grid, is optimized to keep prices low for consumers and profits steady for generators and distributors, and it's worked amazingly well at that.
But "running lean" is great and everyone wins until you get hit with a highly consequential long-tail event (Taleb's Black Swan), and then you sometimes get caught without any backups.
Lots of folks in these comments seem to want to use this event to litigate wind vs. solar vs. gas vs. nuclear vs. coal, but it seems like, across the board, power generation facilities in Texas were simply unprepared to operate in such low temperatures. All of these technologies can and do work well in very cold climates.
Solar panels don't work well under a foot of snow.
As for the wind turbines - they work fine in cold weather. It's just that with ice build up on the blades the operator will force the unit to lock down so it doesn't become unbalanced and destroy itself.
Edit: To add some additional color I know Texas is not the only state dealing with some rough weather over the last few days / week - but for context, where I live, today was the first day we broke 0F since February 10th. Yesterday morning it was -27.6F in my backyard (Ambient weather station - air temp). I'm curious to see what the actual root cause of the outages really was in Texas. Curious if it was all naturally related or if we see any inklings of strategically timed cyber related events.
is this the wakeup call that texans need to acknowledge that climate change isn't a coastal elite type thing, and that it affects us all and requires investment from all of us? imo texas is in a great spot to capitalize on the shift to green tech. they have strong engineering talent, large investments from the energy sector. car manufacturers are already clamoring to be the next to go fully electric. get your leaders…
Give me a break. Actually, the whole reason for this series of outages is because Texas took the bait and installed a bunch of solar and wind instead of taking the safe route and doubling down on coal. Peak energy consumption in Texas is almost always in summer when there's a lot of AC units running -- which just happens to be when solar and wind work best. They gambled on green, paid the price in the past few days,…
2) This might be a black swan event, but we've seeing a lot of "once in a 100/500 year" weather events in the last decade. Which is exactly what climate scientists predicted would happen if we continued ignoring climate change.
3) and as everyone else said, the fossil fuel plants are also offline.