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

Yep!!! +100 Bob. Somebody here would snap Gayghost’s pencil dicked neck, if he said that in person to a real Texan.

We have come to the point you have to be critical of anything you read that is portrayed as news. Mostly it is someone's opinion based on their own position regarding that issue. You have to ask yourself what does this person have to gain or loose by this being true. The other thing you have to do is follow the money.

Except Kaywoodie. Kaywoodie pretty much explained what has happened to the western states.

That Wind Farm ain’t far from the Ranch here, as the crow flies. Drive by it all the time.

Don't we still have mountains of coal to use when the crazies give up up on windmills?

Yep

Several lifetimes worth.

DF

I'm not sure nuclear power would have made much of a difference. The nuclear rod just generates heat to produce steam for the turbine. Just as much pneumatic controls and air lines, maybe more, than a coal fired plant. We spend weeks checking heat trace and insulation on air controllers here in KY and still end up with air lines freezing. All our instrument compressors are screw compressors with dryers, but still have air moisture problems to some degree. We are a regulated state and probably have a high profit earning per MWatt than Texas as it is a non-regulated state. I understand that wholesale Mwatt prices went from $30/MWatt to $9000/Mwatt during this event. I doubt Texas wanted to pay that much, thus the rolling blackouts. With coal fired boilers, all you have to do is keep the 2500psi boiler from blowing apart and everyone is happy in the event of control problems. It is my understanding that all redundant controls have to agree and be on line for nuclear to stay online, no phughing around allowed. If the Powerplant Generators didn't heat trace and insulate the coal and gas air lines, probably wouldn't have the nuclear air control lines either. Believe me, once one freezes up and starts problems, it snowballs from there. We had 640 MWatts scheduled to come off line Friday for maintenance outage, called off hoping to sell some power. Believe it or not , this is our slack time for MWatt sales here in KY. Doing outages and maintenance getting ready for the summer high rate usage.

We had four emails. First two said ERCOT ordered the outages to the transmission/distribution company. 1st email stated they expected the outages to only be for 10 to 15 minutes. Then the next stated should expect for possibly a day. The third stated the maintenance team in our area determined maintenance was required and the last stated equipment had failed and it had been repaired. So ... ERCOT or equipment failure? Power went out about 6:35 pm on Monday and came back on 7:30 am today.

Yep. ERCOT has lied their sorry asses off. Just one of the many reasons Gov Abbott is calling for those in charge to resign.

Anyone see the article on wyomingnewsnow.tv ?
They are burying decommissioned turbine blades in Wyoming...
How many bird strikes until a blade must be retired?

Guess that is another operating cost....

The US has about an 800 year supply of coal. There is enough natural gas in hydrates in the Bermuda Triangle to last 10,000 years, yes I said 10,000 years. This was on the Discovery, History, or Nat Geo channels about 15 years ago. I saw it. We have enough shale oil to last 200 years. The government put off limits government owned property for drilling, fracking, etc.

As far as nuclear goes. Australia is building breeder reactors in their new power production facilities and they can use up 90% of the spent fuel rods and are buying the spent fuel rods. The Navy could use breeder reactors in their new ships and could use up 90% of the spent fuel rods in the US if they wanted to. Breeder reactors' waste can be made into bombs, thus why we aren't pushing them.

To my mind there are zero excuses for this. Unprecedented cold my azz. Freezing temps are not something new in TX, even further south it isn't. It happens often enough the power industry should be able to cope with it better than this. There absolutely needs to be some feet held to the fire. Some power outages could understand, but ordered black outs on this scale is ludicrous. It's like saying well, it don't get this cold that often so no I don't have anti-freeze in my engine. It only cracks my block once every three to five years instead of annually.

Over 40 percent of the generating plants in the state are off-line due to gas curtailment or weather related operating problems. That's a staggering number!!

Due to the Covid pandemic, ERCOT did not perform plant spot inspections to check for cold weather readiness, instead they relied on the plants to inspect themselves. However, ERCOT has no written guidelines for safeguards plants should take to ensure cold weather reliability. What a clusterpluck!!!

I can understand some issues when you have a record cold and lows for this long and covering such a large region, but 40% of the plants were unprepared for it??? There's no doubt that some heads should role. Especially when as recently as 2011 we went through the exact same thing here in TX.

It all just goes to show how pussified this country has become. No ability to improvise or take care of ourselves in difficult situations and 1/3 of the country can’t take a week of freezing temps. We have had brown outs in ND because power was being sucked south. Never remember that before in my life. Holy smokes, imagine if there was an actual BLIZZARD. This should give our friends in China great comfort in regard to ability to withstand any kind of hardship, disaster, or, I don’t know, WAR perhaps?

What an f’n joke. We have a society built on leverage, government largesse, and woke BS. Even more amazing, it is top story all day, every day. Nothing like wallowing in our own incompetence.

Its 2021 and 3million plus are/have been without power in Texas(America). Unbelievable.
People need to be prosecuted for their failures and corruption. Or total ineptness.
My Son lives in Austin no power since 4am Monday.
And its 2021.
Renewable Energy my ass.

Its 2021 and 3million plus are/have been without power in Texas(America). Unbelievable.
People need to be prosecuted for their failures and corruption. Or total ineptness.
My Son lives in Austin no power since 4am Monday.
And its 2021.
Renewable Energy my ass.

This^^^^^^^

One thing unique to Texas, at least more common to Texas is ice storms. Temperatures here go from a balmy 60°F to the 20s in a few hours sometimes and extreme cold dry air masses meet warm moist from the Gulf. That scenario creates ice that can be measured in inches sometimes that is a helluva lot devastating and destructive than 2’ of powder.

no, we've been walking away for a long time already...further it goes the more the consequences will be seen, and as this happens the leftists won't GAS

On the other hand, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Maybe this is a needed wake up call.

True Story! NG don’t freeze.