Life Safety is not "politics"

grandpaul

grandpaul

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Regarding very recent Texas power outages: "fact check" all you want, power in Texas is provided by about 15% "green" facilities, and the rest is oil, gas, and nuclear.

Utility spokespeople and authorities assert "a small fraction" of the outages were caused by "green" endeavors. IN ACTUALITY, that "small" fraction (according to THEIR analysis) was 35% - more than ONE THIRD. Color it whatever color you want, those are the FACTS, direct from the utility providers and state & regional utility authorities.

Being that "green" utility facilities comprise far less than 35% of total production facilities, (just under 16%), what it ACTUALLY shows is that "green" boondoggles DISPROPORTIONATELY contributed to the outages. Before you even THINK of challenging THOSE facts, you dang well better get your rubber ducks in a row...

This is the kind of analysis that is typically colored "tin hat", "conspiracy", and worse. All it REALLY is, is BASIC MATH. (and I can cipher clean out to double-naught, so there).

Now, how 15% of the source pool was able to cause 35% of the outages IS partly the fault of the fools that were put in charge of "reliability" (what a SICKENING monicker for electricity traffic cops that draw from whatever source they get the best feelings from). Still, it was what it was, and it *&^%$# better NOT be that way ever again. Over 30 deaths already directly attributed to outages, and the numbers are JUST STARTING to come in.

Yes, that's ONLY Texas.
 
Here in winter , biggest killer is house fires ..... feel for you all in South States dealing with real winter blast .....
 
Didn't at least one windturbine in Texas freeze up?
This was reported on BBC News.
 
I feel for you all, living in AUS and in the sunshine state of Queensland never gets snow, the only snow we get here in AUS during winter is in the highlands and alps down the southern states, we do get very cold on the south western border in our state and they get a silty snow dusting in the early hours of the morning but it melts as the sun comes up and its very rare at that, anyway hope you all stay warm and safe and thinking of you all, we have had a lot of news here in what you are going through and that big pile ups on the highways, no one seems to slow down when things get bad and I don't ever want to experience black ice.

Ashley
 
Paul,
I can understand and am sympathetic to the awful situation in Texas, but I am not following you analysis. In one sentence you state 35% of production, and further on you say 35% of the outage caused by green sources.
Also, no one with any sense expects solar or wind to provide electrical power 24/7. Grid needs storage, or reliable supply of fossil fuel for times when green not viable. Any off grid homeowner will deal with it, why not Texas utility?
Big topic - but it can work when cost saving and profit motive do not muck it up.
Denmark (somewhat more challenged in winter than Texas) gets 74% from green sources as one example.
 
We have a pretty large number of combined cycle generation plants across the state and for the most part they are idled down after peak hours.... if there's no market they don't produce it. it takes a while for them to be brought up and put on line, but things don't work out when there's sudden massive demand and the resources currently handling the load suffer catastrophic failure= total collapse. There were around five or so built in grandpaul's area within the past 20 years..... 1000meg, 300meg, 350meg+-, and a couple I'm unsure of as well as one old coal-fired unit in Bastrop. I'm sure there's more because Calpine stuck them all over. We have an abandoned 300meg about 7mi. from me, and there's several in Corpus Christi.... several sell power whilst others are dedicated specifically to their respective refineries...... Of course the.... bless their little hearts... wind farms covering every open patch of ground in my county.

This all goes back to the 7 P's an old man explained to me in my youth..... Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. When they are observed and vigorously applied failure seldom follows.
 
tomspro said:
Paul,
I can understand and am sympathetic to the awful situation in Texas, but I am not following you analysis. In one sentence you state 35% of production, and further on you say 35% of the outage caused by green sources.
Also, no one with any sense expects solar or wind to provide electrical power 24/7. Grid needs storage, or reliable supply of fossil fuel for times when green not viable. Any off grid homeowner will deal with it, why not Texas utility?
Big topic - but it can work when cost saving and profit motive do not muck it up.
Denmark (somewhat more challenged in winter than Texas) gets 74% from green sources as one example.
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yep, its called hydro and they can also import from France's nuclear power stations
 
The weather we experienced here involved sub-freezing down to low single digits, with snow and icing, but in the entire 10 days surrounding the event, there was rarely a breeze greater than 5 mph. So even if wind turbines had NOT frozen, they would have been producing near zero if ANY power.

My understanding is that the "reliability" council was rotating sources ineffectively, and selecting the wind farm sources at totally inappropriate times. Since the results were inadequate, they implemented rolling blackouts to keep the demand on the few producing resources that they had selected, to under max load available.

We may never fully know what they did, but that's how I read it.

Bottom line is - IT DID NOT NEED TO HAPPEN. It could have been rectified (for the most part) after the first day of record lows.

Nobody could have prevented downed lines due to record icing, broken limbs, etc. That did not play a significant WIDESPREAD factor.
 
The Snowy Hydro Scheme in NSW is used to balance the electricitry grid for most of Eastern Australia. The debate about renewables revealerf that most of the idiots were ignorant of this fact, so we got the spurious baseload argument. When there is excess electricity on the grid, water is pumped uphill at Tumut. when there is greater demand, it is used to run the turbines. Our Prime Minister Malcolm Turn bull was made aware of this fact - BY ME. So he made sure the federal government got control of the Hydro. Snowy Hydro 2 is a current project of the Australian government. IT IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE ! When you privatise energy companies, you are being stupid. They have got you by the balls and they do not care. Government businesses are under control of the voting public.
 
850cmndo said:
Interesting interview with Houston mayor on CBS this morning.
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In Australia, most politicians were completely ignorant of pumped hydro. Barnaby Joyce in particular looked very stupid when he found our about it. Politicians believe they know everything because they are elected. THEY DON'T ! - If you are going to use renewables, the hydro scheme is essential. Large lithium batteries might be very dangerous in a fire. And you might need a lot of them to do what a hydro can do.
 
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I think in America, Elon Musk is the battery king. Is he a profiteer or an altruist ?
 
grandpaul said:
HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!!!!!

I needed a good belly laugh, Virginia.
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You might remember that Australia used to build aeroplanes. That industry failed simply because our elected representatives did not know how to organise and manage it There were two government businesses and one private one. The set-up was the private company got part of every project and one of the government businesses was the Aeronautical Research Laboratories. No politician had the nous to get them to work as one organisation. The result was the Nomad crash, and that was the end There was no political backlash, and there was also none when we lost our car industry. The voting public must take some responsibility for the loss of our manufacturing industry..
 
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