Texas at -20C, five million without power as Wind Turbines freeze

Welcome to Woke World where states pretend to control the weather while the weather controls the state

An Arctic blast; an ice storm called Uri, has frozen up half the wind turbines in the hot southerly Big State of Texas.

Supplier Oncor is warning it may be hours before power is restored. People are livid, their pipes are freezing, some have had no electricity for 12 hours. Their website is down, their phone lines are out. People can’t even report outages.

UPDATE: NY Times is already blaming Climate Change for the frigid weather. 

While the wind turbines have been working at only 3 – 10% capacity in Texas. Gas wellheads have frozen so there are gas shortages as well. Details at the end below.

Texas cold snap, weather map, record cold temperatures.

Anchorage, Alaska is warmer than parts of Texas.

At least five dead and 5 MILLION without power as winter storm Uri sweeps the nation, freezes wind turbines, plunges wind chills to -20 in Texas and causes tornadoes in the south west

Boats frozen over in Texas

Records will be broken in Texas

 

Daily Mail

Temperatures nosedived into the single-digits as far south as San Antonio, and homes that had already been without electricity for hours had no certainty about when the lights and heat would come back on, as the state’s overwhelmed power grid began imposing blackouts that are typically only seen in 100-degree Fahrenheit

‘We’re living through a really historic event going on right now,’ said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, pointing to all of Texas under a winter storm warning and the extent of the freezing temperatures.

Poweroutage.us  reports on blackouts across the US. Texas has its own grid called ERCOT.

Power blackouts map USA

Texas more than four million people are still without power.

Prices also hit the jackpot – $9,000 as everyone needed electricity but generators were out of action

Reuters:   Real-time wholesale market prices on the power grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) were more than $9,000 per megawatt hour late Monday morning, compared with pre-storm prices of less than $50 per megawatt hour, according to ERCOT data.

Tucker Carlson:

If there’s one thing you would think Texas would be able to do, it’s keep the lights on. Most electricity comes from natural gas and Texas produces more of that than any place on the continent. There are huge natural gas deposits all over the state. Running out of energy in Texas is like starving to death at the grocery store: You can only do it on purpose, and Texas did.

Rather than celebrate and benefit from their state’s vast natural resources, politicians took the fashionable route and became recklessly reliant on so-called alternative energy, meaning windmills. Fifteen years ago, there were virtually no wind farms in Texas. Last year, roughly a quarter of all electricity generated in the state came from wind. Local politicians were pleased by this. They bragged about it like there was something virtuous about destroying the landscape and degrading the power grid. Just last week, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott proudly accepted something called the Wind Leadership Award, given with gratitude by Tri Global Energy, a company getting rich from green energy.

So it was all working great until the day it got cold outside. The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died. This is not to beat up on the state of Texas — it’s a great state, actually — but to give you some sense of what’s about to happen to you.

 

Armutt @hayahapa: 

Issues Texas is having with the cold illustrates a key part of collapse:

The problem is not that we lack the technology to keep society running.

The problem is we lack the social infrastructure to keep the technology running

 

Bloomberg Green says, not to worry about Windpower in Texas, it’s just a small problem. 

There are already claims that it’s not the lack of Wind power that matters, and that gas plants and others have failed due to a lack of “winterization”.

While ice has forced some turbines to shut down just as a brutal cold wave drives record electricity demand, wind only comprises 25% of the state’s energy mix this time of year. The majority of outages overnight were plants fueled by natural gas, coal and nuclear, which together make up more than two-thirds of power generation during winter.

“The wind is not solely to blame,” said Wade Schauer, research director of Americas power and renewables at Wood Mackenzie. He estimates that about 27 gigawatts of coal, nuclear and gas capacity is unavailable, in part because the cold has driven up demand for natural gas for heating. “That’s the bigger problem.”

UPDATE: Trying to figure out how many MW of Wind versus Gas/Coal/Nuclear went down

ERCOT is at EEA 3 Emergency Warning currently with reserves of less than 1,000 MW.

ERCOT announced Sunday night that it had set a winter record for power demand, reaching 69,150 megawatts between 6 and 7 p.m. ERCOT said Monday morning that 30,000 megawatts of power generation had been forced off the system.

The ERCOT Real time demand at this point: 46GW. Wind is 4GW now. But Proletariat Chris reported Texas wind power was just 900MW out of 31,000MW as of about 6 hours ago. Ryan Maue reports that there was almost no wind in Texas today.

 

See #Uri 

h/t RicDre and WUWT

For Fun: what people in Texas do for entertainment on a snowy day: (This video may not display in Firefox.)

9.7 out of 10 based on 78 ratings

262 comments to Texas at -20C, five million without power as Wind Turbines freeze

  • #
    Krishna Gans

    Imagine how cold it wouldt be wuthout AGW

    [ADMIN note: Off topic comments at #1 have been unpublished. Please try to stick to Texas at #1! – Jo]

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    • #
      Lawrie

      I inquired at the Oberon Information Centre what Oberon was famous for. Radiata pine and funnel web spiders was the answer. They sold fake FWs by the hundreds. I’ll bet there are no FWs in Scotland.

      00

    • #
      tonyb

      This is an account of the terrible winter of 1848 which seems to cover a similar area to the one in the reports.

      A TRAGIC EXPEDITION | Texas History and genealogy, written by those who lived it. | Frontier Times Magazine
      https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/the-story-a-famous-expedition

      I am not familiar with Texas so can anyone confirm we are talking about the same area as has been hit the last few days?

      tonyb

      00

  • #
    joseph

    Just imagine how much worse it would be if we didn’t have global warming!

    351

    • #
      joseph

      Should have checked to see if someone had posted before I posted mine!

      200

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I’m still laughing out loud that the anti-global warming bird shredders have frozen up…..

        AGW was a complete joke before, now its an absolute howler…..

        “Did you hear the one about the frozen bird shredders?”

        81

  • #
    Dennis

    Don’t worry about that, it’s renewable energy.

    160

    • #
      Leonard

      During the mild and warm spring and fall the renewables lull the foolish into thinking wind and solar power are good.
      During the hot summer global warming is at fault, and, during the cold winter global warming somehow makes it colder.
      Letting sociologists, politicians, and communication specialists (PR) develop rules and regulate am energy grid is like going to a massage therapist or a palm reader when you are having a heart attack.

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    • #
      Analitik

      Yeah, it’ll average out.

      21

      • #
        Graham Richards

        Not very Analitikal.
        What about the next winter season. It’s getting worse & worse every winter, over the whole northern hemisphere.
        Here in Queensland we’re having the mildest summer in the last 25 years. Haven’t needed to use aircon for around 6/8 weeks.

        The iceman cometh!!

        21

      • #
        Analitik

        Do I really have to use a sarc tag?
        :rolleyes

        00

  • #
    Mal

    Is this the turning point into the start of the next maunder minimum or little Ice Age?
    The solar sunspots are again at a minimum and there is direct correlation with cold climate
    One thing. For certain is that renewables and cold/freezing weather don’t mix

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    • #

      Did you know that the next ice age will be the result of global warming caused by CO2 emissions?

      The idiocracy has virtually declared that only mankind has the power to change the global climate and in order to save the planet, we must stop doing anything that produces CO2.

      Who are we saving it for, the cockroaches?

      261

    • #
      WXcycles

      The last cooling into LIA took about 200 years. This is just weather until then.

      30

      • #
        Frost Giant Rebellion

        I’m not buying that even a little bit. What happened in England prior to the last cooling is that they had weeks of heavy rain which wiped out the crops. Then thereafter the weather was cold and dry and the temperature dived very quickly. We virtually always get a temperature drop after only two weak solar cycles and definitely always after three. Well we have our three now. Solar cycle 23 was pretty anomalous. Still warm even with a weak solar cycle. You get that now and then but you never get three in a row without a serious cooling response.

        It doesn’t take 200 years to bring on a cooling period. It takes about three cycles in a row. Weak cycles are longer than strong cycles. So we are talking less than 50 years. The warm weather held up pretty well over the last two cycles but thats over now. The 2030’s will be both cold and dry. It will be a nightmare.

        00

    • #
      Lloyd

      Remember the movie The Day After Tomorrow? Alarmists tried to use its flimsy science to sound a warning then but they were soundly discredited by the scientific community.

      Looks like some ideas never really go away, they get recycled .

      00

  • #
    roman

    Communities were intended to combine resources to more easily alleviate hardship. Then the stupid hysterical people demanded to be treated equally. Then when they desperately pleaded we take their stupid hysterical ideas seriously, we did, if only to shut them up for a little bit.

    Then it got cold.

    260

  • #
    robert rosicka

    Mexico also had outages so I’m wondering if there’s an extension cord over the wall.

    80

    • #
      yarpos

      apparently impacted by reduced gas flow from Texas which is used for their generators, blackouts in Mexico are of similar scale to Texas but doesnt get the media attention

      20

    • #
      RickWill

      Mexico is highly reliant on gas. Only about half the generation is combined cycle. The rest is open cycle so just designed for short term operation. I expect the operation of open cycle relies on gas line pack for its fuel supply. The pipeline does not have enough capacity to run open cycle continuously. Hence all gas becomes fuel constrained when the short term plant it operated continuously.

      There is nothing to match the energy storage of a 3Mt stockpile of coal for emergency needs and a few power stations that burn the stuff. A tonne of coal is good for about 3MWh. A 3Mt stockpile would power Texas for about 2 months. Enough to get through any nasty winter.

      60

  • #
    Bonbon

    A vortex of knowledge a polar did say.

    40

  • #
    Saighdear

    ” NY Times is already blaming Climate Change for the frigid weather” well on a similar line of discussion, recently, this old Hill Crofter remarked that they probably just built them in the wrong place. Aye, it smacks of the old EEuropean/ soviet way of organising farming: What’s discussed in the ivory tower must beexecuted in the remote fields, regardless of conditions…… haven’t we heard these stories before? But the jobsworths are all aboard the Gravy train on tracks to Nowhere Yet Established: Haven’t even organised a return ticket.

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    • #
      Frost Giant Rebellion

      ” NY Times is already blaming Climate Change for the frigid weather”

      Worded that way they are quite literally correct. The language is so Orwellian and confused that they try to lie and they end up telling the truth.

      151

      • #
        Matthew

        Well actually , it’s the notion of global warming that is to blame, it is responsible for all the faffing around with our normally reliable generating plant.

        20

  • #
    yarpos

    We should be watching closely its a good model for what Australia is walking into. Stand alone grid, no ability to lean on neighbours, similar population, ahead of us slightly on the Ruinables over commitment curve. We have the disadvantage of having States going their own way. Never mind though, we appeared to learn little from SA so we sure arent going to notice distant Texas, California, UK, Germany and whatever the next RE domino to fall will be.

    360

    • #
      Jojodogfacedboy

      When you kill off the population, you have more room immigration.
      Good solid globalists plan.

      110

      • #
        OldOzzie

        It Sure Seems Like Joe Biden Is Incapable of Doing His Job

        Joe Biden hasn’t been president for a month and it already seems like a year. His flurry of executive orders, most of which he probably couldn’t even tell you what they do, have killed jobs, caused a surge in illegal immigration, and have turned out federal government into a bastion of wokeness. Yet, despite the great harm he’s already brought about, his schedule has remained relatively light. He almost never takes questions, and certainly not in the impromptu fashion Trump and other past presidents have. You rarely see him outside of staged photo-ops, and he’s always closely monitored and scripted.

        Over the weekend, he was filmed via camera phone at Camp David playing Mario Kart during a period in which 79,000 people have died of COVID on his watch. That’s about as in the public eye as he’s been lately, and I’m not sure that’s by accident.

        Today, news broke that Kamala Harris is taking phone calls with world leaders in Biden’s absence.

        NEW: VP Kamala Harris has been taking calls with world leaders on behalf of Pres. Joe Biden

        She recently spoke with Pres. Emmanuel Macron of France and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau

        I’m not sure if such is unheard of, but it’s extremely unusual for a vice president to be taking those types of phone calls in the first few months of a new administration. This is the time the president is typically making first contact and, you know, doing his job as the leader of the free world. Instead, reports are that he’s going to bed early as if there’s nothing important going on in the world. The White House is starting to resemble a nursing home.

        Meanwhile, Biden has also not called any governors involved in the massive winter storm that has crippled Texas and the South.

        160

        • #
          OldOzzie

          Surprising that Biden hasn’t altered his light schedule today to demonstrate that he is taking the winter storms seriously – Psaki admits he hasn’t even personally called governors of affected states

          Is it surprising, though? Yes, we could just write this off as partisanship and Biden simply not caring, but that’s not usually his style. He likes to feign empathy every chance he gets. Biden being incapable of making those calls and offering help seems more probable. You can speculate as to why.

          Kamala Harris is doing his head of state calls and he hasn’t reached out to any governors about this major storm? Yeah, I’d say so. He’s probably drooling in bed right now.

          Try to imagine a situation where Donald Trump didn’t call the governors of blue states that had just been hit by a massive, debilitating storm that has left millions out of power and freezing? That might make the news, right? The media are more than happy to run cover for Biden, though, who apparently doesn’t have to do much of anything in his new job as president except exist, and even then, just barely.

          Regardless, his handlers can only misdirect for so long. Eventually, Biden is either going to have to show he can function as president, or the rumors are going to become overwhelming.

          120

        • #

          My poor old mother forgot how to use the phone some time back as the dementia bites. Hear about Joe not calling any Governors may be more of this.

          20

      • #
        OldOzzie

        Joe Biden Aims to Erase Donald Trump’s Policies in Combating China

        The Biden administration has already taken steps to undo former President Trump’s policies in countering China, a Republican Study Committee report reveals.

        Instead of displaying “American leadership through a strategy based on peace through strength, the Biden team so far has exhibited a pattern of weakness, and a return to Obama’s failed approach of engaging rather than holding China accountable for it’s bad behavior,” the report states.

        Outlined in the report are ways in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks a continuation of an Obama-style “vision of accommodation and cooperation, rather than containment and confrontation, with the CCP.”

        The following are eight key actions from the report that demonstrate Biden’s approach:

        1. January 21, 2021: Biden issued an executive order to suspend Trump’s E.O. 13920, which protected the U.S. against China from accessing or owning parts of the U.S. power grid.

        These actions are consistent with “a number of individuals who either have had links to the CCP, or have a record of weak statements and actions on confronting [China].” These individuals include high-ranking members of the Biden administration. See below:

        . National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan
        . U.S. ambassador to the United Nations nominee Linda Thomas Greenfield
        . Under secretary of defense for policy nominee Colin Kahl
        . White House National Security Council Director for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell
        . Secretary of State Tony Blinken
        . CIA Director William Burns
        . Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
        . Commerce secretary nominee Gina Raimondo
        . Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
        . Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
        . Climate czar John Kerry
        . Head of the Domestic Policy Council Susan Rice
        . Special assistant to the president for presidential personnel Thomas Zimmerman
        . White House National Security Council Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk

        The report concludes that the Biden administration’s “approach to China reflects much of the failed policies, and failed team, of the Obama administration, which saw China not as a competitor, but a nation that could be engaged on a whole host of issues from climate change to global development.

        60

  • #
    Hanrahan

    Bloomberg says the problem is lack of winterization [sic] of conventional sources. Hello! It seems the bird choppers aren’t winterized [sic] either or they would be providing power.

    Bloomberg says wind provides 25% of the state’s power so don’t blame wind for shortfalls. Failure of a provider of 25% of the market IS a bloody big deal if they have forcibly displaced dispatchable generators.

    Again Bloomberg: He estimates that about 27 gigawatts of coal, nuclear and gas capacity is unavailable, in part because the cold has driven up demand for natural gas for heating. “That’s the bigger problem.”

    Who’d a thunk it: When it’s cold people use gas to stay warm. That’s a novel thought. There is nothing new here, gas becomes scarce when it’s freezing. What value stockpiled coal?

    390

    • #
      Harry Passfield

      I guess, in order to winterise them they would need to heated – generators, bearings and blades – so that would take energy. I bet that would take more energy than any mill could generate so they would be a net power drain on the grid. Isn’t green tech wonderful?

      Solution: If ruinables are to stay with us in the power mix then they should not have preference. They should provide their own back-up and grid connection costs and not be given prominence on the grid. Base-load and gas should be first.

      361

      • #
        RickWill

        Australia does not give preference to grid scale wind and solar. They have to bid lower than the top marginal price to get dispatched. They are often not dispatched when the price goes negative. They have no way of recovering losses during negative price swings. Coal just waits till gas sets the price and they then maximise output. So the bid in blocks of energy near the negative floor price and lots of energy just below the gas bid price. It works as long as there are not too many coal plants trying to make a living.

        The voluntary curtailment of grid scale wind and solar has become a big issue as it is being recognised as poor use of capital. AGL has been hit hard by the reduced income from wind farms it has power take-off agreements with.

        Rooftop solar is the only generation that gets priority. It is now being constrained by local over-voltage. My household voltage sits near the limit of 253V for hours at a time on a sunny balmy day that Melbourne has experienced an abundance of this summer.

        21

        • #
          Analitik

          That just shows the amount of gaming required for thermal baseload generators to be able to run profitably which all drives up the wholesale (and hence retail) pricing along with the costs due to the PPAs you mention.

          The distortions caused by semi-scheduled generators (no fines being imposed if they cannot fulfill their bids, which provides some level of priority) helps no one in the end beside those employed and supplying components for the deployment of renewables.

          20

          • #
            Analitik

            Sorry, peaking plants make a bucketload too, since the gaming described requires limited baseload generation resulting in peaking events becoming far more common.

            20

      • #
        Matthew

        Unlike coal power plants which are self warming.

        30

    • #
      Dennis

      Installed Capacity quoted or Capacity Factor – 25 per cent of total?

      60

    • #

      How is nuclear and coal affected by the demand for natural gas?

      110

      • #
        Matthew

        Coal and nuclear should be running MCR and making a motza, at $9K a MWH.

        20

      • #
        Roger Knights

        Ars Technica said that their input water supply pipes were freezing. Could be, I guess. It’s odd that no official info on why all these plants have tripped offline.

        20

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      If, and it’s a big “if”, those wind devices were supported by enough batteries to provide for some of such an outage, would those same batteries be able to operate at that temperature? Of would they need some heating too?

      70

    • #
      yarpos

      There is a lot of infrastructure failing or impacted by this, it really just depends if it in the “I need it right now” category or “this will delay shipments by a few days or weeks category”

      Mobile phone networks are failing or goin intermittent as back up run out of capacity (we see this in bushfires) and of course closures or limits to gas and oil/fuel supplies. Gets back to how much you want to spend on the 1 in a 100+ event, especially if all the alarmists tell you the world is warming. I guess until now it would have been a hard sell.

      30

    • #
      OldOzzie

      Texas’s ‘Nightmare’ Energy Situation Is a Warning to the Rest of America

      Commenting on the blackout in his home state, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry pointed out how important it is to have a diverse energy landscape. In recent years, however, reliance on coal has declined while renewable energy sources have been increasing.

      How’s that working out? We’re seeing it play out now, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson said Monday during his monologue.

      “The windmills froze, so the power grid failed. Millions of Texans woke up Monday morning having to boil their water because with no electricity, it couldn’t be purified,” he commented, noting the Green New Deal has arrived.

      The ironically named Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the grid, had no solution to any of this. They simply told people to stop using so much power to keep warm,” Carlson continued. “So in Houston, hundreds of shivering Texans headed to the convention center like refugees to keep from freezing to death. Some Texans almost certainly did freeze to death. Later this week, we’ll likely learn just how many more were killed as they tried to keep warm with jury-rigged heaters and barbecues and car exhaust.”

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      • #
        OldOzzie

        “Natural-gas-fired power plants generated 40% of Texas’s electricity in 2020, according to Ercot,” WSJ reports, while “wind turbines were second at 23%, followed by coal at 18% and nuclear at 11%.”

        While blackouts have become commonplace in states like California, it’s surprising in Texas, the host said.

        If there’s one thing you would think Texas would be able to do, it’s keep the lights on. Most electricity comes from natural gas and Texas produces more of that than any place on the continent. There are huge natural gas deposits all over the state. Running out of energy in Texas is like starving to death at the grocery store: You can only do it on purpose, and Texas did.

        Rather than celebrate and benefit from their state’s vast natural resources, politicians took the fashionable route and became recklessly reliant on so-called alternative energy, meaning windmills. Fifteen years ago, there were virtually no wind farms in Texas. Last year, roughly a quarter of all electricity generated in the state came from wind. Local politicians were pleased by this. They bragged about it like there was something virtuous about destroying the landscape and degrading the power grid. Just last week, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott proudly accepted something called the Wind Leadership Award, given with gratitude by Tri Global Energy, a company getting rich from green energy.

        So it was all working great until the day it got cold outside. The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died. (Fox News)

        And this is one of the renewable energy sources the Biden administration and his climate allies are so eagerly pushing on the rest of America, despite the fact that they’re less reliable, inefficient, more expensive, and kill a ton of birds.

        70

        • #
          OldOzzie

          A Deep Green Freeze

          WSJ EDITORIAL BOARD

          Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them.

          A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves. Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

          While Texas is normally awash in gas and oil, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s wholesale power market, urged residents this weekend to conserve power to avoid power outages. Regulators rationed gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

          Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”

          Blame a perfect storm of bad government policies, timing and weather. Coal and nuclear are the most reliable sources of power. But competition from heavily subsidized wind power and inexpensive natural gas, combined with stricter emissions regulation, has caused coal’s share of Texas’s electricity to plunge by more than half in a decade to 18%.

          Wind’s share has tripled to about 25% since 2010 and accounted for 42% of power last week before the freeze set in. About half of Texans rely on electric pumps for heating, which liberals want to mandate everywhere. But the pumps use a lot of power in frigid weather. So while wind turbines were freezing, demand for power was surging.

          Gas-fired power plants ramped up, but the Arctic freeze increased demand for gas across the country. Producers couldn’t easily increase supply since a third of rigs across the country were taken out of production during the pandemic amid lower energy demand. Some gas wells and pipelines in Texas and Oklahoma also shut down in frosty conditions.

          Enormous new demand coupled with constrained supply caused natural gas spot prices to spike to nearly $600 per million British thermal units in the central U.S. from about $3 a couple weeks ago. Future wholesale power prices in Texas for early this week soared to $9,000 per megawatt hour from a seasonal average of $25.

          Prices jumped in the Midwest too, though less dramatically because there are more coal and nuclear plants. Illinois and Michigan have more gas storage than Texas, which exports much of its shale gas to other states and, increasingly, around the world in liquefied form.

          Europe and Asia are also importing more fossil fuels for heat and power this winter. U.S. LNG exports increased 25% year-over-year in December while prices tripled in northern Asian spot markets and doubled in Europe. Germany’s public broadcasting recently reported that “Germany’s green energies strained by winter.” The report noted that power is “currently coming mainly from coal, and the power plants in Lausitz” are now “running at full capacity.”

          Coal still accounts for 60% of China’s energy, and imports tripled in December. China has some 250 gigawatts of coal-fired plants under development, enough to power all of Germany. Unlike Democrats in the U.S., Chinese leaders understand that fossil fuels are needed to support intermittent renewables. “Power shortages and incredibly high spot gas prices this winter are reminding governments, businesses and consumers of the importance of coal,” a Wood Mackenzie consultant told Reuters recently.

          California progressives long ago banished coal. But a heat wave last summer strained the state’s power grid as wind flagged and solar ebbed in the evenings. After imposing rolling blackouts, grid regulators resorted to importing coal power from Utah and running diesel emergency generators.

          Liberals claim that prices of renewables and fossil fuels are now comparable, which may be true due to subsidies, but they are no free lunch, as this week’s energy emergency shows. The Biden Administration’s plan to banish fossil fuels is a greater existential threat to Americans than climate change.

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      • #
        Matthew

        Texas now isn’t the Texas of old, they’re woke now, you know.

        40

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Nah…just need to sack anyone who voted for the bird shredders, and lock all politians out of parliament while the grown ups restore power.

          Then jail anyone who keeps pushing for the green deal.

          Job done. Its called peacefully taking control of the mess….

          50

    • #
      OldOzzie

      3 Million Texans Without Power As Grid Chaos Continues Ahead Of Imminent Ice Storm

      Update (1929 ET): Gov. Greg Abbott told ABC13 Houston that ERCOT had provided him with zero answers about the ongoing power grid collapse across Texas.

      ABC13’s Gina Gaston asked Abbott if ERCOT leadership should resign. He immediately responded with “yes.”

      The local media outlet also said residents should prepare for the next round of wintery weather, expected to hit the state on Tuesday night.

      40

  • #
    John R Smith

    So weather is weather.
    By which I mean weird stuff happens.
    Modern affluence has created Camelot Syndrome.
    If it rains after sundown, it’s ‘climate change’.
    When everything is perfect you’re only left to be bothered by mean words and ideas.
    We will know sin is defeated when the glaciers stand still.
    Will Camelot may fall if members if the court are misbehaving with the underage on islands and colluding with barbarians in the East?
    Secrets must be kept.
    Thanks Jack.

    111

    • #
      John R Smith

      … that should read ‘if it rains before sundown’
      Where I am, it seems to rain a lot during lockdown.

      80

    • #
      Kim

      Spot on! Comparing my upbringing, my generation to the snowflake generation who absolutely do not have a clue. They think that there are all sorts of AC controls rather than roughing it out in the bush.

      30

  • #

    How about presenting both sides of the Texas windmills story?

    The bad news, and the good news too.

    The bad news:
    — Texas windmills are not moving.

    The good news:
    — Texas birds are safe.

    440

  • #
    James Murphy

    I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Houston, It would be far from pleasant to be there right now, even with electricity. I hope the situation improves very soon.

    130

  • #
    David Maddison

    Not only are the windmills not producing power, as useless as their intermittent output is, they are adding insult to injury by draining power to keep the blades and other parts of the mechanism warm.

    220

  • #
    Deano

    The Greenies will now claim that wind power is so effective at fighting global warming that even Texas ices up after installing them.

    261

  • #
    Zigmaster

    If a scientist can look at this footage and say with a straight face that this is what global warming looks like I’d be recommending some extended quiet time in a lunatic asylum.

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    That’s life in an ice age, even in an interglacial part of it.

    Pointy.

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    Good thing I live 55 and 75 km from the 1st and 2nd largest coal plants in the Western hemisphere.

    The elections are rigged, but the power is good in Georgia.

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    Richard Ilfeld

    If it fails when it is really cold and fails when it is really cold,
    it’s a friggen failure, cause its gonna get really cold once in a while and its gonna get really
    hot once in a while.
    If Texas doesn’t have the sense to go back to intrastate (not regulated by the feds) gas plants for reserve, then bad on them.
    If you don’t reward failure by firing the bastards that created it, you sure as hell deserve your next dose.
    And if you are in Texas and use the New York Times to do anything but line a birdcage or wrap fish, you are for certain a transplant.

    IT DOESN”T MATTER of “climate Change” caused this mess, ya still need reliable power! Apparently more than ever.
    When your green fantasies start killing people its time to put them where the sun don’t shine. Scrap those
    damn bird cusinarts and drill baby drill. On private land. For purely intrastate energy generation and use.

    I’ll bet you find bodies in the desert around the border. Send those to Washington.

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      sophocles

      cause its gonna get really cold once in a while

      Once in a while? No, this is early days yet and it will happen more and more often.

      Back in 1970, a real scientist made a forecast:

      the climate will continue to grow colder during the 1970s and early
      1980s; then it will become gradually warmer again so that by
      2015 we shall be back to where we were in 1960—no better; and
      after that it will start becoming colder again. In short, the
      outlook for the next fifty years is decidedly chilly.

      Willi Dansgaard. [my emphasis]

      We are now maybe five years into those fifty years — 90% to go!

      I, for one, am glad that we know about and have access to fossil fuel (coal), and also to liquid fuels (oil). We may well be demolishing those “reliable, planet-saving, weather-modifying” Green shibboliths within ten years.

      As Richard Greene so correctly noted above: At least the birds are safe.
      (those which don’t freeze)

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    CHRIS

    Not surprising…I believe that that AGW is split; the Northern Hemisphere is cooling, while the Southern Hemisphere is slightly warming (due principally to the oceans). If we keep listening to the woke-left rubbish, then by 2050 this planet is gone gone gone

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      Murray Shaw

      Dunno about that Chris, here in NSW February average temperature is a full 2C below the long term average. Keep checking the calendar, looks and feels like April.

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        yarpos

        re the April thing, same down here in Danistan

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        GlenM

        January and this month are well below average (2C) my tomatoes are not ripening. I could blame ENSO. What a difference from 2020.

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        Annie

        We have been having some distinctly autumnal mornings for a while, with some nice warm days. This bothers me not in the least as it’s easier to sleep with cooler nights…I dislike high heat.

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        Hasbeen

        Yep here in SE Queensland the days have been about average, or very slightly warmer on occasions, but the nights have been invariably cool, as much as 8C cooler. Average a lot cooler.

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      sophocles

      This has been the coolest summer in Auckland I can remember. The cicadas didn’t come out until the end of January. In my youth (a few decades ago), they were out in great numbers and good voice before Christmas.

      This summer has been mostly very cool. It’s not often I have to wear a track suit top to keep warm, in summer — that’s usually late autumn wear for Auckland. The cicadas came out around the middle of the day — when it had warmed up. They stop soon after sunset. At this time of the year, they should be singing through the night.
      No. They aren’t. Not this year.

      Your answer Chris, is no, it’s not warming in the Southern Hemisphere.
      (Suggest you check the Southern Ocean temperatures.)

      What’s the bet this summer will be declared the seventh warmest summer. Last summer was declared the the sixth warmest when it probably was nowhere near.

      We’re going to have hit back at those fantasists.

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    NoFixedAddress

    Maybe so called Republican Governor of Texas, USA, can do something about it or perhaps he’s just a McConnell republican?

    How the steaming hell can a so called Republican State do this?

    Where are you Dan Crenshaw?

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    NoFixedAddress

    What has Emperor Bidan done for Texas already?

    I guess he will have sent in the diversity squad to make sure there is no white privilege!

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    Tim Spence

    So there will be no de-icing teams sent out anytime soon.

    I was impressed by the quality of snow ploughs available and in use in a State that is not accustomed to freezing conditions.

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      OriginalSteve

      Control is an illusion.

      As Ghandi showed…refusing to participate in thier insane little Punch and Judy show, renders the whole thing null and void.

      Fear is what drives this whole convulsing mess, refusing to give in to fear removes all thier power. All gone.

      We are free men and women, created of free will, by God.

      The Devil uses fear, and from my point of view as a Christian, my freedom is given by my faith in Christ, not some aribtrary medical demonic tyranny administered menacingly at the end of a syringe.

      Darkness craves more darkness, but the light of Gods Word drives out the darkness…..

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    Richard Ilfeld

    Proof of concept, at scale….

    Many, many years ago, I ran some white mice from the Charles River Company through a maze for science.
    No mice were harmed in the experiment.

    I am beginning to empathize with the mice, but have no illusions that those experimenting with us wish us well.
    I don’t remember raising my hand to volunteer to be a part of one of these full scale social experiments the left
    is running on society, and I can’t say much good about their methodology.

    They seem to have a common form:

    We are going to hurt you real bad.
    We are going to tell you its for your own good.
    We are going to tell you the results you see and feel aren’t real; the ones we tell you about are.
    We will assert that in reality you should love us for making your life better.
    Rinse and repeat.

    The fun thing about COVID and an ice storm is that some of the elect have been subjects of their own experiments…
    had to eat a bit of their own cooking, as the old saw goes.

    So now factions of the left are having at it….over Cuomo’s nursing home issues, over opening schools, and now over who let the lights
    go out in Texas. Craven opportunists v. revolutionary zealots in a tag team cage match. Since both are used to operating in a fact fee environment,
    it will be interesting to see how they resolve this, and even more interesting to see if a consensus arises that we need more than a single voice in the press.

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    David Maddison

    When the blades do turn, they can throw a shard of ice up to a kilometre so stay away!

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      Lance

      But when they aren’t turning, how long before the stationary rotor bearings begin to brinnel the bearing races?

      If they do brinnel, it will be quite exciting at some point in the near future.

      Catastrophic bearing failure on one of those things would be quite a spectacle.

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    David Maddison

    Why do so many global warming catastrophists own private jets and waterfront properties? I bet they have diesel generators at their homes as well.

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    David Maddison

    Does Kerry, Gore or Gates fly their jets when the whether is this cold?

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    Dave in the States

    They can always start up their gasoline powered cars and trucks, diesels will probably be gelled up, and run the heaters if becomes a matter of life and death. EVs will be useless.

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      OriginalSteve

      Actually the Elite are setting up our demise it appears. Not only are they coming for our bodies with potentially lethal DNA modification medicines, but also shutting down heat and electricity generation and what powervwe have will be wasted on cold afflicted useless EVs.

      The Elite in thier “Ascended Masters” ( demon ) writings want the earth at 500 million people. With a coming ice age and lowered food production, is it any wonder why thy all appear to own luxury underground bunkers?

      Gates is buying massive amounts of farm land, because when it all goes bang, money will be worthless…..but locking up farm land and holding all organic seeds in an artic seed vault….priceless….

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    red edwards

    I hate to interject facts here, but I must. I a Texan, and very knowledgeable about the oil and gas business.

    When you get natural gas out out of the ground, it is not pure. It has things like water, CO2,and all sorts of semi liquid hydrocarbons like propane, butane, and natural gasoline. The price of natural gas is normally so low these days, so only well that produce those extra hydrocarbons are drilled, because that is where the money is, nowadays. Furthermore it is HOT when it comes out of the ground. 100 C to 200 C. So the NG has to be cooled first, and refrigerated to condense out the water, Propane, ect., and the CO2 – and to remove poisonous gases like Hydrogen sulfide. It’s now so cold that the water is freezing in the output pipelines from the well before it gets to the plant that removes these impurities. This isn’t a Texas problem, you see the exact same thing in the Northeast in these massive cold spells, as the Marcellus (Ohio/Pennsylvania) wells also freeze up.

    NG gets stored in underground caverns, but only so much can go in and out at a time. SO. . .

    There is an absolute shortage of available NG (natural gas) at this point in time. You can’t burn what you don’t have. If you can’t burn, you can’t drive the dynamos. when we thaw out a bit, we’ll have plenty of NG. But right now, spot NG is going for 20 times and more than it had 3 days ago.

    Texas has it’s own grid tied with Mexico. This has pluses and minuses. Too complex to describe now.

    Yes, wind and solar aren’t working now, as well, making things worse. But there would still be a problem if they didn’t exist.

    Yesterday, the high where I’m at was 14 F, the record (in 1899) was 12 F. This morning was a low of 2 F in my back yard. 1899 was the coldest period on record in Texas. Galveston Bay froze over.

    You can’t predict Texas weather. The little town where my parent were born, have seen snow on Christmas one year, and 100 F for the high another Christmas.

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      Dave in the States

      Some of the unintended consequences of trading out coal for renewables, and not investing in new coal infrastructure.

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      NoFixedAddress

      so Texas just lies about how much natural energy it is supposed to have

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        NoFixedAddress

        good to know that Texas energy is a bulldust story

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          red edwards

          Not hardly! The Permian basin is producing at least 3+ million barrels a day (pushing 4) nowadays. The EagleFord is close to 1 million. And we’ve been selling all the extra gas overseas in LNG container ships.

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            Geoffrey Williams

            If Texas is making so much money from overseas sales of gas, then they should be investing some of it in securing their grid against the predicament they are now in!!
            GeoffW

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      NoFixedAddress

      just show me a photograph of a communist californian that moved to Texas to get away from all them there greeny taxes in california.

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      Chad

      Red, thanks for the insights, ..but i am confused with these apparently conflicting statements..

      ….Furthermore it is HOT when it comes out of the ground. 100 C to 200 C. ……
      ……….. It’s now so cold that the water is freezing in the output pipelines from the well before it gets to the plant

      Can you clarify what you mean.
      Thanks

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        red edwards

        The outflow pipes are not heat insulated to let the gas shed it initial heat on the way to the fractionator. That works great when the temperature is above freezing, or only intermittently below freezing. Not so good at -10 C for days on end.

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          Chad

          Ahh, thanks Red,, ..
          .. for a (presumably) fast flowing supply of gas at 100-200C be chilled below zero by an outside temp of -20C , must require a very long exposed pipe line?

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      Analitik

      I wonder how the Russians maintain production in Siberian winters?

      I can only guess that since the conditions are common during winter, they have heating of some sort provided to the affected components to allow extraction/production to continue as it is economically worthwhile.

      In contrast Texas doesn’t because this is not a normal situation. But then what about the Northeast US and Canada where these freezes would be expected?

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    I rarely post here, but thought I’d add some real time data and other information. People have lined up in their respective camps and are blaming fossil fuels, climate change, or wind turbines for the Texas fiasco. I just checked the Ercot grid stats and as of now (8:39 Mountain Standard Time) wind, with installed capacity of 30GW is providing a bit less than 4GW. In other words capacity factor for wind is roughly 13% — I would call that a failure to supply. Natural gas operates under a curtailment rule that requires supply to residential customers first. Therefore some natural gas electric plants are short of fuel — this is weather related to an extent. One must recognize that electrical energy margins are made difficult to calculate when the focus is on demand for A/C in August, but there are difficult to foresee interactions in fuel supplies in very cold weather. Solar capacity factor is probably zip.

    There are also problems at coal-fired plants. Coal is stockpiled in bunkers at coal-fired plants and under worst conditions these piles can freeze solid making the fuel temporarily unavailable. Another interaction of fuel stockpile, cold/wet weather, etc.

    Finally there is the climate change excuse. This is not unprecedented. I will bet similar troubles occured in February 1962, as so many U.S. record lows were set then; but many people around the internet have said 1890s were similar as well.

    The problem is that energy reserves are difficult to evaluate correctly when people are focussed on only narrow parts of the system, and focussed on August conditions. The “Black Swan” is almost always an unusual confluence of many factors. Ercot is also an isolated system and cannot depend on transfers from elsewhere.

    We will see what people learn from this episode. But the bragging about renewable penetration and installed capacity might end.

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      Thanks for these details Kevin.

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      Kevin – would Texas have been OK if they were connected to the grid via adjoining states

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        Analitik

        Yes, they could spread the electricity shortage, then. Share the pain like South Australia wants to do with New South Wales as well as Victoria

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          Actually it would have helped a bit but the electrons from other states would have been stopped by the infrastructure failures in many places.

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            Analitik

            Correct.

            Long distance interconnectors are fairly fragile components compared to the rest of the non-renewable grid so they aren’t particularly dependable, either.

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        Kevin kilty

        Probably it would have,, but, as I mention there are potential problems at all sorts of facilities. Lots of Texas’s problems are weather related. But most of these problems could have been mitigated with reasonable planning. Would excessive water vapor in natural gas be considered OK if a person weren’t primed to look at summer temperatures and global warming? The question answers itself.Yet planning now looks at heat, A/C, August, global warming, renewables, etc. Too narrow a focus — incompetent conclusions.

        The resource potential for wind resources the past couple of days in the Ercot region has been just about nil. Midmorning estimates have been below 3% of nameplate capacity. That wind has operated at a capacity factor of 4%-10% is then termed “performing above expectations” — a truth not pertinent to the situation. And then to use this non-pertinent fact to absolve renewables from contributing to the problem is fantasy. To rely on wind and solar in the present circumstance would require not just 30GW of installed capacity, but ten times more. Maybe we should consider more baseload from coal, which doesn’t compete with natural gas for residential and commercial heating, and find out from Northern coal plants how to keep coal stockpiles, and waterlines, and other necessary equipment from freezing.

        I know you wish to blame fossil fuels, but how much worse would this have been without fossil fuels?

        When this situation is examined honestly people are going to be amazed at the contributing factors.

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          Texas copes just fine on windless days usually so the wind turbine issue is a non-issue.

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            Nadia bin Du Natan

            How is that for Glibness? A logically sounding throwaway line. Any meme will do. Its not going to relate to practicalities on the ground. Your grid is more or less resilient in relation to how you run it. The best would be to have storage everywhere and zero intermittent sources. Thats one side of the resiliency spectrum. Or you can have a lot of intermittency and no storage and having everyone running around with their hair on fire trying to make it work.

            I admit that what you are saying sounds logical enough. Just a few words and its enough to keep any leftist happy except perhaps those who are going through the crisis.

            I don’t think we want to go back to the old ways. I think we want to move forward to reliable generation and Sadoway batteries everywhere. We need to have a more resilient grid than we had before.

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      Chad

      Kevin kilty
      February 17, 2021 at 1:54 am ·

      There are also problems at coal-fired plants. Coal is stockpiled in bunkers at coal-fired plants and under worst conditions these piles can freeze solid making the fuel temporarily unavailable. Another interaction of fuel stockpile, cold/wet weather, etc

      I guess anything is possible, but it is hard to imagine a coal stockpile being unaccessable knowing the scale of the heavy equipment used in those areas. ?

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        Kevin kilty

        Occurred at Pawnee some years ago. And it isn’t just a matter of breaking the stockpile open, but getting the coal sized right for equipment further along. But this is just one example. There is all kinds of lines for condensed water, mechanical equipment, and controls that can freeze. Plants that operate year to year in very cold conditions are better fortified against bottlenecks caused by extreme cold.

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    MrGrimNasty

    You’ve quoted wind-chill and no units!
    17/18F is about -7/8C not -20 in C or F.

    Anyway, oh for the US winter’s before climate change eh!

    https://miro.medium.com/max/800/1*voL2Zd1_0JHs0I6DXOJ7-Q.jpeg

    https://medium.com/florida-history/the-great-freezes-1894-95-and-the-collapse-of-the-florida-orange-industry-7442e5d75337

    And of course in the 1980’s history repeated.

    “Three hard freezes during the 1980s destroyed a large percentage of Florida’s citrus acreage, but the industry recovered well prior to the discovery of HLB in 2005.”

    Climate change pffffft – plus ça change.

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    Environment Skeptic

    As i have said before, the number one mistake made over and over again is to heat up inanimate objects like bricks, random furniture, plaster, rooms, and in general, the stuff that is outside the human body when heating on a shoestring…But wait!!…there is more…

    The point being that during times of temperature duress, it is no good throwing all ones energy out the window by heating up everything other than ones self.

    For example, during winter, i save megawatts of electricity by using a simple hair dryer to stay warm and a low wattage electric blanket or hot water bottle to stay warm in winter. the secret is to apply local heating to the body, and not attempt to heat up the rest of the inanimate objects in ones perimeter.

    Every now and then i merely get the hair dryer nozzle and inject heat under my clothing configuration du jour or under my jacket and the heating effect is immediate and localized saving vast amounts on my energy bill.

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      Environment Skeptic

      Point number two: During times of cold temperature duress, it is decadent and life threatening to waste valuable resource like wood in order to heat up inanimate objects in ones perimeter and instead firewood should be used to heat water to make hot water bottles using a small rocket stove or other small wood burning device, and the lid of the boiler pot should have an insulated lid in order to not throw away heat as far as is possible.

      If over 95% of the heat energy from wood burning or any other burning is lost out in the yonder and only 5% is actually heating the person in cold weather survival mode, then if goes without saying that all the wood resource will be gone in no time.

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        I have to ask,do you actually do any indoor tasks in Winter?
        Or are you a plant,sat in one spot under a heat lamp.
        Cause what you describe is how my wife keeps her house plants at 40 below.

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        Yarpos

        You would need to put in context what region you are in. People heat inanimate objects like houses so water pipes dont freeze and burst. Family groups especially involving young children are also difficult. One anectdote does not equal universal strategy.

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      MrGrimNasty

      E.Skeptic, you sound like you’re trying to prove that the human body can act like a wick and support spontaneous combustion – good luck!

      If you had an insulated ceiling that could be lowered in cold weather, you could reduce the volume of air in the room that needed to be heated. Entering the room crawling commando style is a small price to pay. Patent applied for.

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    tom0mason

    So after years of political virtue signalling with ‘green’ projects the frozen chickens have come home for vast swaths of the USA. Will people now appreciate what Trump did in starting to restore some rationality to the electricity system by allowing some reinvestment in COAL power? I doubt it — the antisocial Green Malthusians would rather you all die of cold before admitting they are wrong.
    My prediction is that the windmill industry will screech a demand for more taxpayer money to sure-up all the damage that this freeze-up has brought. Watch out USA, big price gouges are likely coming care of the stupidity of relying of uneconomic, unreliable, gold plated virtue signal, regressionary technology of non-renewable ‘renewables’ and all the green ©rap.

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    Ruairi

    In Texas the Arctic winds blow,
    Bringing widespread cold, ice and snow,
    Where many could die,
    Without power supply,
    With a wind chill of twenty below.

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    John F Hultquist

    ” . . . and causes tornadoes in the south west ”

    There was one in North Carolina’s coastal Brunswick County.

    Did someone move it?

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    Peter Fitzroy

    Fact: more capacity was lost than the total nameplate capacity of wind turbines, let alone the normal capacity factor. That is why I suggest that AntonofOz do the math.

    Of course I checked the source ERCOT, but here, where facts are banned, prejudice rules

    Have at me, but remember, I have the facts, and you are too lazy to bother with that

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      Harves

      So if wind power is 25% of the capacity and say they lose 27% of total capacity including 100% of the wind power then wind power is not too blame. Yeah, right?
      Pity the guys trying to stabilise the grid as the frozen windmills one by one went offline.

      Don’t you even wonder a little bit why colder places that don’t depend on wind, didn’t have power grid problems? Or is that sort of inquisitive thinking not allowed? Purely a coincidence that bin places with high wind dependency the rest of the grid is always faulty. So funny.

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      Kalm Keith

      Save the Koalas.
      Stick to what you know best.

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      Serp

      I’m not sure that smug certitude is appropriate given your history of wrongheadedness.

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        All you can do is laugh really. That’s why I’ve stopped responding to it, whichever one it is.

        What I have found is that most of you readers here want to understand electrical power generation, so I try to do what I can.

        He couldn’t care less, and doesn’t want to know, so there’s no point addressing what he says.

        Tony.

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          Peter Fitzroy

          So you lack the skill to do the analysis of Texas power data. Good to know that you are only a one trick pony

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            Annie

            What a daft comment, ‘lime green avatar’ PF.

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              Peter Fitzroy

              If you really want to hide your identity, which is why the whole avatar thing, and apparently this is for your own protection. Do not do what TonyfromOz does and link to a site which contains your personal information. I my case, there are any number of email accounts which are associated with your main email (unless you have used a bigpond one). These emails are designed by the service provider to keep your ID secret. I am using this to maintain my anomoninity

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                Geoff Sherrington

                Petr Fitzroy writes of “anomoninity”
                Dictionary: 1. A state of the human mind besotted by Biden belief and thirsting to speak like Biden, when the real person wishes to remain without a name in case she/he attracts retribution.”
                Peter, what letters describe an anonymous anemome mnemonic? Geoff S

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              • #

                Look you f*****g ldi0t Fitzroy, I have told you this more than twenty times. Now, even I know that the people who tell you what to write say that you should pick something to personally denigrate and attack the other person when you have no answers, and then to stick at it, because it wastes his time explaining it, and he may write something which can then be used against him later, (straight from their playbook really) but this is also for the all the other people as well to show what he is doing, and how many times he has done it.

                So, as I have so often explained, and as you have even responded to, when I started doing all this 18 years ago, back in 2003, if I ever responded to any article at any site, the recommendation, in fact the only advice they actually Stressed, was that you NOT use your real name, but to select a screen name, and that was the same for many years. The first (and only) name I used at all sites was TonyfromOz, and I explained why, as I have also done to you all these numerous times, you f00l. I used that name at a number of sites, and also after joining what is now my home site back in March of 2008. It was the screen name by which I was so well known by at at least three sites where I was a regular contributor, and I kept using that screen name because I was so well known by it.

                Many years later, when zillions more people started using the Internet, hence using their real names as that security thing originally used went by the wayside, I then started using my real name, as well as that screen name, because I was so well known by that screen name.

                That Bio at my home site has been there almost since day one, showing my real name, and the only times it has been updated was after I moved locations, and that has happened three times now, the only thing changed, as everything else has always been there.

                Now, I know that you actually know all this, because you have responded many times saying so, so now I know you’re using it for the sole purpose of personal attack. Look up the Thread and at others. Yopu have NEVER used my correct name or screen name.

                I can see you there right now, smirking to yourself and saying ….. Gotcha!

                THAT is why I do not respond to you any more.

                And hey, you really need to apologise now.

                And the ONLY reason you use so many different Avatars, different email addresses, has nothing to do with security whatsoever, otherwise we would all be using it. The only reason you use it is to get around moderation.

                And Joanne, and the Mods, I humbly apologise, but I have finally had enough of this m0r0n.

                Tony.

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                Kalm Keith

                Tony,

                Andy and I “marked” him as a non contributing contributor some time ago and tried to have the situation assessed.

                He remained; Andy left.

                KK

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                Yarpos

                I have dream, that one day we will have an ignore button.

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            Annie

            In moderation. A s1lly comment from the green version of Peter F.

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              OriginalSteve

              Its all Fitz has……and it aint much…

              Its the intellectual equivalent of picking twerps out of your navel….

              For Tony to go off like that would suggest that Fitz should stuck to thd shallow end of the intellectual pool and not venture out amongst the adults….

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            Neil Crafter

            Better a one trick pony than a zero trick pony……..

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            Antoine D’Arche

            Do you get paid for this? Is activism and blog trolling a viable profession? I mean, do you get an hourly rate like any other whore, or do you get paid based on replies? If it’s the latter than you owe me. Seriously, you’d have to get paid for this otherwise why would you bother? Who signs the cheques? GetUp? Soros? Labour Party? Understand, we can find you anytime we like.

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          williamx

          Tony,

          What you write is appreciated.
          There is so much info and data posted on the web that is spurious.
          You often point me in the right direction. To research and review what is qualified.
          And I thank you for that.
          You have way more integrity than my fellow Comrade.
          So please, keep keeping us informed my friend.
          Because… You make a difference.

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    Simon

    If you look at the temperature anomalies ay https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom you will see that although the mid-southern US is extraordinary cold, the Artic and other places are extraordinarily warm.
    The power cuts and prices are primarily due to the weather taking out the distribution network.

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      don’t say that. It is frozen wind. That’s all. It is not a failure of policy or of the free market failing to provide a stable system or of the self-contained grid or of… hey look over there California is democrat.

      At least this blog didn’t serve up the relabeled old photo from Norway of a helicopter thawing a wind turbine that is doing the rounds.

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      GlenM

      Normally that is what happens Simon. Cold air is drawn down and replaced by warmer air at the Polar region -such is is mechanism that causes this phenomenon. There is no anthropogenic signal in this only a wider natural one. Get it.

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      Harves

      When there’s a wildfire it’s ‘climate’.
      When renewables fail it’s weather’.

      You guys are a parody of global alarmism.

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      Geoff Sherrington

      Simon, There are also numerous web sites that have snow records of Dallas Texas to illustrate this type of weather happening quite often way before anthro CO2 times, when coal was King for electricity. I see no need to even consider if the trendy climate change meme has any thing to do with the present flurry. Geoff S
      https://www.iweathernet.com/dfw-weather-records/monthly-snowfall-records-for-dfw-since-1898

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    David Wojick

    As much as I love this story I doubt that any of the hammered utilities depended on wind at all to meet peak demand. Wind normally produces next to no power about 20% of the time, especially in the extreme events that cause peak need.

    What happened is something of a mystery. They ran out of gas but a lot of units tripped as well. See https://www.utilitydive.com/news/millions-in-texas-oklahoma-without-power-as-grid-operators-call-for-conser/595122/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202021-02-16%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:32467%5D&utm_term=Utility%20Dive

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      Muzz

      Increasing the amount of renewables destabilises the grid – hence the other shutdowns.

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    • #

      So David, you love the story because it is bashing one of your favourite bogey men but you admit that it is wrong.

      Why not call it out?

      Maybe the energy server in germany was stolen?

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        David Wojick

        I love it because it gets people thinking about how bad wind energy really is, which is something I write a lot about.

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      Roger Knights

      “What happened is something of a mystery.”

      I agree—and I wonder why the news ,media isn’t asking more probing questions—or contacting better experts.

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      • #
        David Wojick

        FERC and NERC are both investigating. Reliability is a Federal responsibility. NERC used to be a volunteer group of the big utilities but FERC nationalized them about a decade ago.

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    David Maddison

    -40C and -40F are the same temperature. Just sayin’.

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    red edwards

    Don’t just take my word for it. Here are the official NOAA weather stats.

    Amarillo:

    https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KAMA.html

    Dallas/Fort Worth Airport (official)

    https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KDFW.html

    (Actually, I miswrote – it got to -1 F (-18.3 C) at the low at DFW airport.

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    PeterS

    This is a taste of what we ought to expect as we keep shutting down our coal fired power stations. Both major parties are deliberately going out of their way to destroy our economy and our very well being. Victoria is doing a great job of it already. We simply get the government we deserve because we keep voting them back in. China and Russia must be laughing their heads off and licking their chops waiting for the day to step in and “help” us out of our own mess.

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    TdeF

    How prescient that the anti fossil fuel, anti nuclear, anti Western Democracy people at the UN decided years ago to bypass the inconvenient truth that there was no Global Warming and move to Climate Change. Just in time. Now freezing to death is the direct result of fossil fuel use in Democracies.

    Odd also that in China they are freezing because of the current embargo on Australian coal, barley, lobsters, wine for daring to question the origin of a Wuhan Flu from next to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This bioweapon was either invented by the Americans or came in on a frozen chook. And the Chinese controlled WHO agrees. And now they control the WTO as well. To which his fraudulency, Joe Biden agreed.

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      TdeF

      And this disaster will get suddenly worse, as predicted by real scientists and mathematicians for some years now. Take Professor Weiss’s simple and factual temperature graph at 12:18. It’s amazing what you can do with just two sine curves of well documented phenomena. After the predicted ‘pause’, we are on the steepest part of the slope down right now at 2021. The prices of coal, gas and uranium are going to soar as the windmills freeze and the solar panels are covered in snow. Real science, not fantasy ‘Climate Science’. Even the rains which fall are not going to fill the dams.

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    Angus Black

    Of course Global Warming is responsible – if it weren’t for the scam, they’d still have a functional electricity supply.

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    Penguinite

    Great opening line Jo! I’ve already sent it to PM Morrison.

    “Subject: Global warming
    Comment: I sincerely trust you and your Government are watching what’s happening in Europe and North America right now! Welcome to Woke World where states pretend to control the weather while the weather controls the state. Wind and solar just can’t cut it! Neither can battery storage, even if it’s disguised as Snowy 2.0! If ever you needed real-time evidence that “Green New Deals” are fatuous and illegitimate this is it. Carbon Neutrality will drive Australia into penury!”

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    Travis T. Jones

    The notion that Swampy Joe Xiden could prevent cold weather in Texas whilst simultaneously making the planet cooler is incredibly stupid.

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    Robber

    They use a lot of electricity in Texas, despite all that oil and gas.
    Peak demand 69 GW for a population of 29 million, compared to about 36 GW for Australia’s 25 million.
    Interesting that Houston Texas latitude is about 30°N, not much difference to northern NSW, 31°S, while London UK is 51°N.
    Strange world we live in, with this varying weather/climate.

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    • #
      TdeF

      The US has the Rocky Mountains which channel freezing air from the far North in winter and very hot humid air from the Carribbean in Summer.

      In Colorado, in the middle, it was common to have long periods of +40C in summer and -40C in winter. Denver is at 40 degrees North, top of Tasmania.

      In fact the very idea that the two hemispheres are acting in sync with climate is utterly ridiculous. This is just guesswork as the Northern Hemisphere is mainly land and the Southern half is mainly water and the water contains 1400x as much heat and 50x as much CO2 as the thin atmosphere. I am so sick of the fantasy science of the IPCC and their wild hypotheses about CO2. And the fact that whatever ‘the Science’, China is exempt.

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      • #
        TdeF

        In Texas there was often 1″ (25mm) of ice on the roads in winter. You would not believe the days of tropical rain in spring. Australians never see climate extremes like these. Or temperature extremes.

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        • #
          TdeF

          You just have to wonder how ‘scientists’ factor in the temperatures in Antarctica which at the size of South America, twice that of Australia, it is an average of 2500 metres in the air. You are not even measuring the same thing in a ‘global (Air) temperature’. And there is a lot less atmosphere over Antarctica. Still who cares about science when you are making billions with windmills and solar panels for China?

          And where did they get records over the last 100 years on this giant continent which dominates the Southern Hemisphere land surface. Or the vast empty Southern ocean? Most of that Antarctic height is solid ice, an ocean on top of land. What a licence to fudge the figures! Interpolate and homogenize and Bob’s your uncle.

          So we are told the world has warmed in the last 100 years. Where?

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  • #
    robert rosicka

    Sweden have got the Texas problem Sussed out , just don’t vacuum and if prices go up it’s a win for the planet .
    Presumably by making it cooler?

    https://climatechangedispatch.com/sweden-wrestles-with-power-shortage-as-cold-weather-hampers-supply/?fbclid=IwAR22vjrQeK41sk15eVK19ObwVRbo2-TNphxRXb0UtemcIbAjZ1GQM7E1PO4

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    • #
      John of Cloverdale

      Just shut everything down. That will be good for jobs as the factories close. Is that guy for real?
      ” …. said de Maré, who also believes that the higher electricity price is good for the environment, as it leads to industries shutting down and people halting their vacuuming habits at certain times.”

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    John of Cloverdale

    It has been called ‘unprecedented’ (there’s that word again) by Gov Abbot and the MSM but it has happened a few times before. A similar weather event is shown on the Houstorian twitter page which occurred in February 1895.

    60

    • #
      PeterPetrum

      According to Tony Heller, who seems to have access to a full range of uncorrupted and unhomogenised temperature records, Valentines Day in the entire US was the lowest Feb 14th temperature on record.

      31

  • #
    • #
      robert rosicka

      Simply jaw dropping but I suppose a sign of the times , in Texas it’s snow and ice but here it could just be a blocking high on the east coast on a hot day .

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  • #
    Ross

    That’s why coal is so good. You don’t deliver it via pipelines, so it’s not dependent on other users and reduced pressure problems. You have a couple of weeks supply in the bunker ready to go at all times.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    I always thought Texans were strong, sensible and independent thinking people.

    How did these Leftist policies take hold?

    Is it the influx of illegal immigrants who are now Democrat voters?

    Or is it the immigrants from Kaliforniastan who bought their Leftist policies with them?

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    • #
      John of Cloverdale

      Believe it or not! George Bush.

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    • #
      John of Cloverdale

      David, I saw this comment at Breitbart

      Heartland Patriot • 3 hours ago
      “In Texas, the power grid, which is technically separate from the rest of the US grid, is controlled by ERCOT, Electric Reliability Council of Texas. From their site: “The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers — representing about 90 percent of the state’s electric load”. The person most to blame is the woman running ERCOT, Sally Talberg. She doesn’t even live in Texas, she lives in Michigan. She’s a big “green energy” supporter, and formerly worked for the State of Michigan and its Democrat governor, Gretchen Whitmer, one of the worst governors in the entire nation. I hope that Talberg will lose her job over this fiasco. Lot of other states have problems, too, and hopefully each respective state will take a long look at what happened, and get things set up to prevent future occurrences of this nature. But especially in Texas, where there is more energy available than perhaps any other state, this sort of thing should never occur again.”

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      • #
        Murray Shaw

        Sorry John, went to hit the “like” and got the thumbs down, don’t see where to edit it, but just remove one thumbs down from the count.

        50

        • #
          PTR

          Hey Murray, noticed in a previous post that you reside in NSW. Wonder if at some time previous, you were associated at U.P. in D.P. If you were and give a bit of thought to my tag, you will realize my identity.

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Hit the wrong button. See green.

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    • #
      Matthew

      Texas ain’t the Texas of old.

      40

    • #
      Philip

      The cities like Austin have been diverse for a long time now. Its a dichotomy, rednecks and deep metropolitan types occupy the space. Like the town Im from, traditional logging and farming which still exits, but now neo hippies rule the roost via demographic change over 40 years. So despite being conservative, its also hippy central.

      20

  • #
    Steve of Cornubia

    Most of my relatives live in Cheshire, UK. Some of them are adherents to the AGW faith and frequently bleat about the +2C catastrophe that looms – apparently. Those few degrees are going to make life in the UK unbearable it seems.

    The average summer maximum in that neck of the woods is 21C and the most favoured holiday and retirement destinations are Spain and the Mediterranean region, where the average summer maximum is 5C+ higher than Cheshire, well beyond that catastrophic 2-4C that will bring the apocalypse down around them. Yet, by some miracle, the people living there not only thrive, but they pretty much NEVER head to Cheshire for their holiday …

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    David Maddison

    Perhaps ask them how some UK streets got their names, e.g. Vine St, London.

    In warmer times the UK had vineyards and a winery industry.

    At the time of the compilation of the Domesday Survey in the late eleventh century, vineyards were recorded in 46 places in southern England, from East Anglia through to modern-day Somerset. By the time King Henry VIIIth ascended the throne there were 139 sizeable vineyards in England and Wales – 11 of them owned by the Crown, 67 by noble families and 52 by the church.

    Of course, some Leftists are now even denying that there was a Medieval Warm Period.

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  • #

    The truth about the Texas “incident” is the frozen windmills were a problem but not the primary problem.

    The energy sector in Texas, from coal plants, to natural gas plants and natural gas pipelines == all not ready for the unusually cold weather.

    That is very disappointing because a similar Texas “incident” happened in 2011, when wind power was about 4%, not 25%, of Texas electricity generation..

    And nothing was done to prevent it from happening again.

    More windmills since 2011 just makes the problem worse, although the Texas windmills that were NOT frozen, were spinning pretty fast from the winds. No one mentions that.

    A brief summary of the incidents in 2020 and 2011 are in my short blog article with a link to the 2011 Report.

    I suppose no one read the report, or acted on it. sort of like the many Australian bush fire reports that collect dust on shelves.

    https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2021/02/weve-had-fun-mocling-frozen-texas.html

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    • #
      Chad

      Unless Wiky is way off,..Texas should have over 100+GW of Gas, Coal, and Nuclear generation capacity .
      So even with peak demand of over 60 +GW,.. there is something seriously wrong in the management of resources there ?

      10

  • #
    MarkMcD

    Temperatures nosedived into the single-digits as far south as San Antonio, and homes that had already been without electricity for hours had no certainty about when the lights and heat would come back on, as the state’s overwhelmed power grid began imposing blackouts that are typically only seen in 100-degree Fahrenheit

    Wait… Hot and sunny Texas has blackouts when it gets HOT? I mean you can understand they might not be prepared for Arctic conditions, but when they get normal temps?

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  • #
    Dennis

    You will all be impressed, as I was of course, to learn via CNN that President JoBama has an open fire burning in the White House Office, and being the ordinary person CNN wants him to be occasionally puts a new log on the fire himself.

    I hope he doesn’t burn his slippers.

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    Philip

    Brilliant! As wind fails, blame coal !

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    • #

      And if anything fails in a democrat state blame the government.

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      Apparently one coal plant couldn’t come on line because the water in the cooling tower froze. Herein lies a dilemma, a cooling tower of a working plant can’t freeze so clearly this plant was shut down. So this was operator error not a failure of the technology.

      Is it beyond the intellect of the operators to keep things warm if the weather is getting cold?

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  • #
    NZer

    You are all imagining things… with a little scientific adjustment, homogenisation, maybe a few days blanked out in the record, all of this freezing will simply not have happened, and we are all still catastrophically anthropogenically globally warming due to thick cosy blankets of ultra-high atmospheric CO2 levels, just as the expert computer models have always predicted.

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    • #
      Steve of Cornubia

      It’s even simpler than that. Just mark all previous warm and current cold spells as outliers.

      Bingo.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Fortunately for us, your wise leader, Ardern, has decided to shut down much of your agricultural industry, fossil energy and replace private transport with public.

      70

      • #
        NZer

        Oh yes, no doubt we are in trouble… even talk of removing all gas heating and cooking from homes and restaurants (everywhere ?) having started closing off all options to have our own local natural gas supplies – I’m desperately hoping the antarctic temperatures can’t swing up north and visit us. Complete idiocy to have only one very unreliable energy supply option, and also to have removed all the fireplaces too. If I were in Texas, and family freezing to death, I’m sure I would be building an indoor fire pit of some kind (survival mode).

        00

  • #
    David Maddison

    As the world cools, this should be a warning that windmills, solar panels and big batteries cannot supply the required cheap and reliable energy to sustain mankind.

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    Old Goat

    Cold hard reality meets warm fuzzy fantasy episode 1. More to come….Ill wager hollywood won’t touch that !

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  • #
    Steve of Cornubia

    This is how Their ABC covered the story of the Texan renewable energy fiasco:

    “… And the Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities across 14 US states, has called for rolling power outages because reserve energy supplies have been exhausted.

    Some other utilities have said they are starting blackouts, while others have urged customers to reduce power usage.”

    That’s it. Nothing about frozen windmills and hibernating solar panels. Surprise!

    70

  • #
    RooDog

    “Fashion accessories”. Now there’s a bit of honesty.

    10

  • #
    RickWill

    Forget toilet paper, the new rush in Texas is for bottled water as reticulated supplies dry up.
    https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/international/20210217/texas-deep-freeze-leaves-millions-without-power-21-dead/59318.html

    Shoppers crowd a display of bottled water at a United Supermarkets location not long after the city announced it had 2-3 hours of water left at normal consumption, due to loss of electric power caused by the winter storm in Abilene, Texas, U.S. February 15, 2021

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  • #
    el gordo

    They are asking the rank and file to cut back because they can’t afford the luxury.

    Kansas Governor Laura Kelly pleaded Monday with residents to conserve power.

    “I can’t stress this point enough. We all must cut back on natural gas and electricity usage now to ensure we have enough available to make it through these sub-zero temperatures,” she said. “How we respond over the next 48 to 72 hours is critical.” (CNN)

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  • #
    KevJ

    According to a friend in Texas, the cooling ponds for one of the nuclear power plants are frozen. This covers about 400 acres according to him. These ponds are “secondary” cooling, so no heated coolant is returned to these ponds.
    Sorry I don’t have a link.

    His home has no water due to district pumps being frozen and of course no power to run the pumps anyway. So he has no water and no power.

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  • #
    TdeF

    The NY Times article on the Texas storm must get some sort of gooblydegook, science fantasy award..

    The Times article argues that because the planet is warming, extreme cold weather could lessen over time.

    But some climate scientists have also suggested that global warming could, paradoxically, bring more winter storms like the one seen this week,” the Times reported.

    There is some research suggesting that Arctic warming is weakening the jet stream, the high-level air current that circles the northern latitudes and usually holds back the frigid polar vortex. This allows the cold air to escape to the South, especially when a blast of additional warming strikes the stratosphere and deforms the vortex. The result can be episodes of plunging temperatures, even in places that rarely get nipped by frost.”

    So ‘some climate scientists’ and ‘some research suggests”. Sounds like proven data based rational science to me. No need to ask for references. Some scientists never publish some research which only suggests.

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  • #
    David Wojick

    Reliability is a Federal issue so FERC and NERC are investigating. NERC used to be a volunteer utility org, formed after the great 1968 blackout. FERC nationalized them over a decade ago. It is not just TEXAS that blacked out either.

    30

  • #
    David Wojick

    Heads to roll in Texas? ERCOT on the chopping block.

    https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article249299100.html

    30

  • #
  • #
    Yonason

    Just to be clear, the bird/bat abattoirs (windmills) didn’t cause that, but they didn’t help, either, and more of them would have only made it worse.

    The power companies knew the bad weather was coming and apparently did nothing to prepare for it.

    Don’t mess with Texas?

    Right, they’re doing a bang up job all on their own.

    And apart from their poor performance in severe weather, there are many more reasons to say “NO!” to windmills.
    http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/AccidentStatistics.htm

    If this were any other industry, they’d have been shut down long ago for safety violations.
    http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/fullaccidents.pdf

    40

  • #
    another ian

    “Reliable Green Energy”

    https://realclimatescience.com/2021/02/reliable-green-energy/

    “The helicopter is working just fine!

    20