471–480 of 597 posts
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Driving through Amarillo on I-40, the number of windmills on the plains compared to even two years ago is mind-blowing. Saw lots of trucks carrying new blades etc. as well.
Where do all those blades go when they reach end of life?
Problem is that: 1) People's use of energy is relatively insensitive to price, or they don't know the price, or few people care about the price when it comes time to need it 2) When you need the energy, it's too late to make the equipment/house more efficient, and when you don't need it, people don't think it's important to make it more efficient 3) Mandating that people upgrade their equipment is unpopular, they vot…
The problem here is the high tomorrow in Dallas is supposed to be about 10°F. The typical winter high for Dallas is a bit below 60°F. This means that the demand for heating is about 4-6× what it normally would be for winter.
Texas is shockingly green when it comes to power. The windmills have frozen and it is the winter when there isn't as much sun. Most people are on a contract with fixed pricing, but some startups like Griddy are hurting people's wallets. We will likely see some retail electric company bankrupcies. Some of the electric providers are paying customers to move to someone else on Monday. The Joke is all the Californians wh…
Texas fuels mix in 2019 was 20% coal, 47% natural gas. That's shocking, yes, but not green. California's mix is 3% coal (2019 figures; in 2021 it is zero) and 34% natural gas, for comparison.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Driving through Amarillo on I-40, the number of windmills on the plains compared to even two years ago is mind-blowing. Saw lots of trucks carrying new blades etc. as well.
Where do all those blades go when they reach end of life?
[1]: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-announces-first-us-wind-...
Problem is that: 1) People's use of energy is relatively insensitive to price, or they don't know the price, or few people care about the price when it comes time to need it 2) When you need the energy, it's too late to make the equipment/house more efficient, and when you don't need it, people don't think it's important to make it more efficient 3) Mandating that people upgrade their equipment is unpopular, they vot…
The problem here is the high tomorrow in Dallas is supposed to be about 10°F. The typical winter high for Dallas is a bit below 60°F. This means that the demand for heating is about 4-6× what it normally would be for winter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Greetings from Texas. Yeah, all that is true. You build based on how things usually are, or at least usually WERE when the dwelling was built. I live in Houston -- very close to downtown, so I'm only about 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. This makes it VERY FUCKING WEIRD INDEED that my entire yard is covered in snow, and it is 16F outside. This is NOT Houston weather. It's almost unprecedented -- it's certainly neve…
> The first problem is just distribution. Our house has a modern 'open' style floorplan, with soaring ceilings in the middle (living) floor. Heat, of course, rises. This style of house made so that people can feel rich and high status while wasting enormous amounts of energy to heat and cool is an affront to our future generations. And it’s almost inescapable unless you’re interested in custom building or buying an o…
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The second link says: "each utility is required to lower the demand on its system based on its percentage of the historic ERCOT peak demand. "each utility is responsible for determining how to implement the required demand reduction, most utilities use rotating outages for this purpose." There's about 25 different utilities, so who knows what each does. I'm surprised voltage reduction isn't used. It's very effective…
The grid has basically zero capability to change the voltage; frequency is all that matters. Frequency is so low that in the past hour any power line time base has fallen over 5.5 seconds behind. That’s a massive drop in frequency.
Out of curiosity, where did you find this?
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It looks like a tradeoff. The only place in the world doing a significant amount of long distance transmission is China. Their wind and coal resources are in the west, and demand is in the east, and transporting coal by rail just further increases air quality problems in the east. Based on what they are implementing, HVDC make sense at 800km+, and AC for shorter runs. I think it comes down to HVDC requires less condu…
Yes, exactly. But for example interconnecting Houston with AZ or NM power plants, I think HVDC will have fewer losses than AC. Could be wrong thoguh.
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Texas fuels mix in 2019 was 20% coal, 47% natural gas. That's shocking, yes, but not green. California's mix is 3% coal (2019 figures; in 2021 it is zero) and 34% natural gas, for comparison.
Can you share your source? I wonder if you are looking at production or consumption numbers. California is the largest energy importer in the USA (25%) and my understanding is that the number 1 source for this power is coal and natural gas in Arizona and Utah.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
Your understanding sounds completely fictional to me. Where did you come to believe that the primary source of imported power is Utah coal?
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> The first problem is just distribution. Our house has a modern 'open' style floorplan, with soaring ceilings in the middle (living) floor. Heat, of course, rises. This style of house made so that people can feel rich and high status while wasting enormous amounts of energy to heat and cool is an affront to our future generations. And it’s almost inescapable unless you’re interested in custom building or buying an o…
Add zoned areas for the rooms that need heat/cold to isolate your usage.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/94/7b/67/947b6734e9ec93809b2c...
