Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Texas Wind Turbines Frozen....the Future of America?

Austin "Bread Line" Today

(Twitter feed list of Videos of loong line in the cold waiting to get what groceries might be left.)

https://www.infowars.com/posts/brea...outside-grocery-store-amid-winter-storm/



Quote:

"Update: Still no power. It’s impossible to drive out of our apartment complex so we started walking the 4-mile round trip to HEB — this is the line wrapping behind the building."

There are lines for hundreds of yards!

This is the beginning of the domino effect of things to come. I don't think we even talked about this.

List of twitter feeds showing looong "Bread Lines" of people waiting in the fridged cold for hours to buy what groceries might be left.

https://www.infowars.com/posts/brea...outside-grocery-store-amid-winter-storm/

The breadth of the dumbassery here is staggering.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/

No, frozen wind turbines aren't the main culprit for Texas' power outages

Lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans across the state during a major winter storm.


Texas Tribune FEB.16, 20211 HOUR AGO
Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power-generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans across the state during a major winter storm.

An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, was offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

While Webber said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis, the natural gas industry is most notably producing significantly less power than normal.

“Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now,” Webber said.

Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, echoed that sentiment Tuesday.

“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” he said during a Tuesday call with reporters.

Still, some have focused their blame on wind power.

“This is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source,” U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “When weather conditions get bad as they did this week, intermittent renewable energy like wind isn’t there when you need it.”

He went on to note the shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Bay City because of the cold, and finally got to what energy experts say is the biggest culprit, “Low Supply of Natural Gas: ERCOT planned on 67GW from natural gas/coal, but could only get 43GW of it online. We didn’t run out of natural gas, but we ran out of the ability to get natural gas. Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation —so things were freezing.”

Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, known for his right-wing Facebook posts that have, in the past, spread misinformation and amplified conspiracy theories, also posted an unvarnished view of wind energy on Facebook: “We should never build another wind turbine in Texas."

In another post, Miller was even more forthright, but also misleading, “Insult added to injury: Those ugly wind turbines out there are among the main reasons we are experiencing electricity blackouts. Isn’t that ironic? ... So much for the unsightly and unproductive, energy-robbing Obama Monuments. At least they show us where idiots live.”

While wind power skeptics claimed the week's freeze means wind power can't be relied upon, wind turbines — like natural gas plants — can be "winterized" or modified to operate during very low temperatures. Experts say that many of Texas' power generators have not made those investments necessary to prevent disruptions to equipment since the state does not regularly experience extreme winter storms.

It's estimated that of the grid's total winter capacity, about 80% of it, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or six gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.

Production of natural gas in the state has plunged due to the freezing conditions, making it difficult for power plants to get the fuel necessary to run the plants. Natural gas power plants usually don’t have very much fuel storage on site, experts said. Instead, the plants rely on the constant flow of natural gas from pipelines that run across the state from areas like the oil and natural gas producing Permian Basin in West Texas, to major demand centers like Houston and Dallas.

Gov. Greg Abbott specified that fossil fuel sources were contributing to the problems with the grid when describing the situation Monday afternoon.

"The ability of some companies that generate the power has been frozen. This includes the natural gas & coal generators," he wrote in a tweet.

Heather Zichal, CEO of the industry group the American Clean Power Association, said opponents of renewable energy were trying to distract from the failures elsewhere in the system and slow the “transition to a clean energy future.”

“It is disgraceful to see the longtime antagonists of clean power – who attack it whether it is raining, snowing or the sun is shining – engaging in a politically opportunistic charade misleading Americans to promote an agenda that has nothing to do with restoring power to Texas communities,” she said.

Talked to a friend that works at a Nat gas plant here and he said that the company has another plant but they could not fire it up because they did not buy or have contracts for Nat.gas.

I know that windmills are not the total problem,solar as well BUT there needs to be a solid base in place that one could build on in times of need.

As for the pipe lines not working i call BS.

If it happened we and a lot of other folks would be out of gas.

Those in charge of Ercot need to be carefully looked at and their policies need the same.

They’re not mentioning how many coal-fired plants (that would otherwise have been producing) were shuttered in the last few years, due to EPA regs, and due to ERCOT saying they were “no longer needed”.

The PLAN should be to have a “back up plan”, if one energy source fails.

Tis critical to have more than one source of energy. No one source is the be all, end all. Diversification is critical

Larry Kudlow is on Fox Business News at 3:00 p.m. starting today. He had a field day with this topic. It seems several Texas generating plants had to pay spot prices on gas and coal today to get some electrical power generated. I understand they had to pay huge sums to get those delivered ASAP.

kwg

I wish I had captured the message from our local energy supplier this morning (Entergy). It basically said "We've got the power and everything is good, but the Government says you don't need it. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Source? Beijing Nightly News?

Been in contact with a college buddy who lives in Conroe, TX and works in a energy consultant firm. This is what he summed up for me.

Yes, there are frozen wind turbines, but the grid operator, ERCOT, wasn't counting on most of them because wind in Texas dies down in winter. If you look at the forecasted supply, wind fell short by about 2MW yesterday. Solar actually came in a little over. By comparison, there was about 25 to 30 MW of fossil fuel that failed to show -- about 2/3 of what ERCOT was expecting. Why? A variety of reasons, including limited gas supply. Some plants may not have "firm" contracts, meaning they get gas for cheap when there's space in the pipelines, but when demand goes up they are SOL. Other plants just simply froze because they were built to operate in extreme heat, not cold -- in some cases they literally have no walls. Same thing with the wind turbines -- they don't have the winter weather package because nobody expected it would ever be this cold. A nuclear reactor also went offline briefly. Not sure why.

The other problem is that Texas isolated its grid from the rest of the country to avoid federal regulation, so they can't just import electricity from neighboring states. And all this was happening as demand exceeded ERCOT's most extreme prediction.

Frozen wind turbines are a visible target, especially if that fits your narrative. The reality is much more complicated.

Going back to my OP,
I'll expand.
Remember when...

AlGore led the global warming movement? His biggest "accomplishment" as vice arch villan?
This has made him billions from carbon credits.

Then SodomHussainO aka barry sotero, continued the next step of their handlers plans by starting a war on coal and sending all industries to china.

Since then, coal plants have been closing and been replaced with other electric production.

Just because there's still hydro, gas and coal plants around doesn't mean that the snow on the newer solar panels or wind stations aren't a problem and have no bearing on the grid. That might be the power industries' press release to the article posted, but I don't buy it hook line and stinker.

Question: how much juice do wind turbines produce when there is no wind? Solar panels at night, or during prolonged cloudy weather?

To quote Uncle Joe Vogler, founder of the Alaska Independence Party, "Let the bastards freeze in the dark."

My guess would be none, but we don't have anything like that within 400 miles of us. We do have 27% of the nations petrochemical refining though. It doesn't matter. The Government says we can't use it.

Holy cow!

Thanks for the post!

Anyone checked this out yet?

I heard it's true.

If this is the beginning of the run on the grocery stores, I'd hate to see what it'd be like if this lasted a couple of weeks.

A few extra groceries in a pantry and freezer might not be a bad idea too.

Honestly i cant stand the ugly ass wind mills that litter my mountains here. That being said, we get terrible ice storms and massive nor easters and the damn things keep turning. Not sure what texas is doing wrong