Texas: day four without power and water for some, fishtanks freeze, pipes burst, “worse than Africa”

Even if the Texas situation resolves tomorrow the anger will burn for months

A few hours ago, about one quarter of Texas still didn’t have power. After three or four days without power some houses are so cold the fishtanks have frozen over. Some people have been without power for 84 hours straight and ERCOT — the Texas Electricity management can’t say when it will be restored (though they have just announced it might be soon). It is still operating under the EEA 3 highest emergency level. Many people have had their power return for a couple of hours only to lose it again. And there is a burning anger at the unfairness of it all. People say they can see houses, shops and office buildings “lit up like Christmas trees” but have had no power themselves for days. Some are using their cars to warm themselves and charge phones but after three days they are running out of gas. There are restaurants that are offering free food.

Others are desperately using gas BBQ’s indoors even though it produces the deadly carbon monoxide gas. The death toll won’t be known for days.

Daylan Cook, 18, said he had built a fire inside a ceramic pot in his apartment living room, aided by hand sanitizer and gasoline. … The local emergency medical services department said it had responded to 63 carbon monoxide exposure calls in 2 1/2 days. 

People are being told to boil water on outdoor gas BBQ’s to fill hot water bottles to keep themselves warm, and advised to stay in one small room, and to seal the doors and windows.

Civilization on the edge

The water supply network in Austin was being drained because pipes in houses without electricity had burst, water mains had broken and customers were both storing water and also leaving taps dripping in an effort to stop their own pipes bursting. The demand for water was so great it exceeded supply in some areas by 250%.  That meant the water pressure dropped below the minimum needed for sanitation. On Wednesday the City of Austin issued a water-boil notice because Austin’s largest water treatment facility, the Ullrich Water Treatment Plant, lost power. They described it as just precautionary, but it meant that many people without power now had to find a way to sterilize water, and people with power added more of a drain to the system.

St David’s hospital in Houston has no water pressure or heat. They can’t transport patients to other hospitals as the others are facing their own issues.

Meanwhile there were dozens of water main pipes also leaking, but Austin Water couldn’t drive out to fix some breakages because of the ice, and sometimes they didn’t even know where the breaches were, their instrumentation wasn’t working, the data wasn’t coming in, and snow was obscuring everything. There were warnings that some fire hydrants wouldn’t be working due to the lack of water pressure.

And so the chaos spread.

How would Texas have fared if they were 100% renewable?

About an hour ago ERCOT said that most power was “able” to be supplied

The grid is now up to 58 GW of capacity. Wind power is now back to 6,800 MW (some more turbines have thawed out).

In the latest update ERCOT says that a “Majority of customers are able to be restored.” Apparently, it’s a theoretical restoration. It’s now up to electrical retailers to connect the dots. There is no longer any forced load shedding although they also say 40GW of generation is still not operational. How does that work? Rolling blackouts are expected to continue and people are being warned not to turn everything back on.

The Real Time System shows things are better than yesterday with 55GW of generation and 3GW in reserve. But since demand rose to 70GW on Sunday, most people are still asking if rolling outages will roll on…  Hundreds of comments on the Twitter feed in response to the ERCOT announcement still don’t have power. 

The latest update on Power Capacity doesn’t necessarily look all that promising. See ERCOT live data.

Though don’t look for the directors names, suddenly the ERCOT webpage has delisted the entire board. As @duncanwrites said “That’s a win for transparency. This page had 20+ names on it earlier today…”.

 

 

 

9.6 out of 10 based on 96 ratings

278 comments to Texas: day four without power and water for some, fishtanks freeze, pipes burst, “worse than Africa”

  • #

    When reality bites, it seems it has icicles as teeth in Texas.

    Pointy

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    • #
      Henning Nielsen

      The Norse version of Hell, Niflheimr, was a cold and icy place. The Green New Dealers of olden days were sent there.

      [Please no more comments like this at the top of the thread.]AD

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    • #
      Leonard

      Pointman reality does indeed bite. And Texans are in dire straights.
      All of this was predictable. A hundred years or so, before rural electrification, most of the West was dotted with windmills to pump water for people, livestock, and some irrigation. As soon as electricity was available, most of the windmills disappeared, except those in the most remote locations and for those too poor to buy electric pumps.
      The point is that everyone that could get rid of windmills did. They were inefficient, unreliable, and required repairs that took a lot of work and time up on the windmills. Our ranchers and farmers knew that electricity would help them rise out of poverty.

      Now Texas. Texas has a reputation of being conservative and having a can do attitude. But, I remember how the capitol city of Austin went left decades ago. The past decade or two there has been a major migration of people from California to Texas. Unfortunately the Californicators bring their liberal beliefs, attitudes, and voting paterns with them. If the trend continues for several more years, Texas will flip to a Democrat controlled state and that will be the end of our two party system.

      I hope this provides a little background for what is happening in Texas. They drank the leftist cool aid and this is what happened to electric energy generation in Texas.

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      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        I hope this provides a little background for what is happening in Texas. They drank the leftist cool aid and this is what happened to electric energy generation in Texas.

        This is hard to follow. The modest addition of wind power to the overall Texas power mix was done under Republican administrations, and by power companies that made business decisions about investing in wind power. Nothing to do with “leftists” – as if believing in wind power makes you a “leftist” anyway!

        Just to reiterate – the power outages in Texas have been caused overwhelmingly by (a) the failure of natural gas power generation, and (b) unprecedented high demand, beyond reserve capacity. Texas shaped its energy grid for maximum profit, and minimum cost, and for critical weather events.

        Unfortunately the Californicators bring their liberal beliefs, attitudes, and voting patterns with them. If the trend continues for several more years, Texas will flip to a Democrat controlled state and that will be the end of our two party system.

        What evidence is there that Californians who move to Texas would be liberal voters? Anecdotal evidence I have heard is that it is almost entirely conservative Californians who leave the Democrat politics of their home state.

        Also – why do decades of Republican state rule reflect “two-party democracy”, but if Democrats achieve power in the state in the future, suddenly it is the end of “the two-party system”? That is just nonsense, to my mind. The whole POINT of a two-party system is that one party isn’t in power for too long at a time.

        (Stand by for claims that a Democrat-controlled state-house will rig elections!)

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        • #
          Tilba Tilba

          Correction:

          “Texas shaped its energy grid for maximum profit, and minimum cost, and not for critical weather events.”

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          • #
            George

            What really happened:

            Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall.

            As demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. Gas-fired plants produced 43,800 MW of power Sunday night and coal plants chipped in 10,800 MW—about two to three times what they usually generate at their peak on any given winter day—after wind power had largely vanished. In other words, gas and coal plants held up in the frosty conditions far better than wind turbines did.

            It wasn’t until temperatures plunged into the single digits early Monday morning that some conventional power plants including nuclear started to have problems, which was the same time that demand surged for heating. Gas plants also ran low on fuel as pipelines froze and more gas was diverted for heating. In addition, pumps and other facilities in the gas transmission system also failed because, under the Clean Air Act, many of these facilities had been converted from gas-fuelled to electricity.

            Gas generation fell by about one-third between late Sunday night and Tuesday, but even then was running two to three times higher than usual before the Arctic blast. Gas power nearly made up for the shortfall in wind, though it wasn’t enough to cover surging demand.

            Between 12 a.m. on Feb. 8 and Feb. 16, wind power plunged 93% while coal increased 47% and gas 450%, according to the EIA. Yet the renewable industry and its media mouthpieces are tarring gas, coal and nuclear because they didn’t operate at 100% of their expected potential during the Arctic blast even though wind turbines failed nearly 100%.

            The wind power investment decision:

            The 1992 Energy Policy Act created a production tax credit to boost the infant wind industry. Generators collect up to $25 per megawatt hour of power they produce regardless of market demand. The credit was supposed to expire in 1999, but Congress has extended it more than a dozen times, most recently in December. It is a low risk profitable business through distortion of the energy market by government and regulators.

            The policy point here is that an electricity grid that depends increasingly on subsidized but unreliable wind and solar needs baseload power to weather surges in demand. Natural gas is crucial but it also isn’t as reliable as nuclear and coal power.

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          • #
            yarpos

            especially not when their pet experts tell them it only getting warmer

            evidence of the immigrants voting patterns can be seen in election results where they congregate, immigrants (domestic and international) commonly bring attitudes and culture with them. You only have to open your eyes to see that anywhere

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        • #
          Bozotheclown

          Tilba says:

          This is hard to follow. The modest addition of wind power to the overall Texas power mix was done under Republican administrations, and by power companies that made business decisions about investing in wind power. Nothing to do with “leftists” – as if believing in wind power makes you a “leftist” anyway!

          Hard to follow if you have blinders on!

          The push for “renewable carbon free” is a push from the Warmist camp and that is a most Left leaning camp indeed. If you can’t see that your blinders are two sizes too large.

          Federal fines and penalties for not having enough “carbon free renewable” energy in your generation portfolio is what drives this failed trend. That it may have developed under Republican governors is entirely irrelevant. The impetus and force behind wind and solar is and was to avoid Federal fines and penalties brought to us by Leftist congress and presidents.

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      • #
        UK-Weather Lass

        All of this was predictable.

        I wish I could give you a million upticks for this one truism.

        60

    • #
      Geoff Croker

      The last ten La Ninas occurred at each Solar minimum. This is about every 11 years. The snow events in Texas follow the exact same schedule.

      There is NO excuse by any state, anywhere, to say its an act of god. It’s a sunspot event. Its 99.999% predictable. The rest is climate change politics.

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      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        The last ten La Ninas occurred at each Solar minimum. This is about every 11 years. The snow events in Texas follow the exact same schedule.

        Sunspot minimal activity > La Nina > extreme cold in Texas … for 110 years. Do you have a source for this theory? Also 2020 was a La Nina year, but it was very hot.

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        • #
          Geoff Croker

          Northern Hemisphere Winter helps when looking for cold weather. Summer in Texas is hot.
          Bottom of solar minimum, La Nina then cold winter in that order with 6-8 months lag.

          In Australia a big Cat 4-5 in the southern Pacific will extend the La Nina time and effect.

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          • #

            that’s assertion not evidence. From what I can see Tilba is asking for the data for the correlation. He’s not even asking for the causation however that might work.

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            • #
              Geoff Croker

              I believe I supplied data last time. Nothings changed, its easy enough to look it up. I have no doubt if we had a lot more data we would see this pattern back a few hundred years.

              The BIG yellow ball controls the climate.

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              • #
                Geoff Croker

                Clough, H. W.: The 11-year sunspot period, secular periods of solar activity, and synchronous variations of terrestrial phenomena. Monthly Weather Rev. 60 (1933), 99.

                1933. A depression, no guv grants, no IPCC. We all got “smarter” since then.

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  • #
    John R Smith

    Wasn’t it supposed to keep getting hotter in Texas?
    No cowperson born in the 21st century would ever know snow?
    Where is The Consensus these days?

    680

    • #
      Henning Nielsen

      And what about the big herds of cows, 13 million of them in Texas alone? Are they out in the open? Can’t imagine they are inside barns in winter like here in Norway.

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      • #
        Travis T. Jones

        All those cow farts.

        How much colder would it have been without them?

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      • #
        PeterPetrum

        Indeed, Henning. When I was a dairyman during my student days in Scotland I looked after a herd of 52 milking cows. They were brought in in late Autumn, fed watered and looked after (and milked!) by me until Spring, when they bounded back out to the fresh spring grass. No way they could have survived Winter outside. I do wonder about the livestock in Texas, they will be in real trouble.

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      • #
        Hasbeen

        I remember reading back in my youth, 60 years or so ago, that a similar freezing snap had killed tens of thousands of cattle in Texas. This is nothing different, but the way we live has changed to being less personally resilient, & more dependent on power supplies.

        Surely lots of voters, & even some politicians will remember this week, & wake up to the reality of the climate change scam.

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        • #
          Hanrahan

          Surely lots of voters, & even some politicians will remember this week, & wake up to the reality of the climate change scam.

          Ya reckon????

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          • #
            William

            Tell him he’s dreaming.

            Too many have become addicted to the cool-ade, and too many are benefiting from those idiots.

            00

        • #
          yarpos

          You may have seen it already but a mayor in a small Texas town went on an epic rant about resilience and self support. The context was he was sick of supporting people who could look after themselves rather than those that really needed it.

          ““Let me hurt some feelings while I have a minute!!” began Boyd, who had led a town of about 4,000 residents some 200 miles west of Dallas.

          “No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim it’s your choice!”

          Boyd continued, “The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout! If you don’t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe. If you have no water you deal without and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family. If you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your (sic) lazy is direct result of your raising!”

          The former mayor, who is a Republican, added, “Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic). Folks God has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this. This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW will work and others will become dependent for handouts.”

          Boyd then wrapped up his comments by saying he was sorry that his constituents were without water, electricity — not to mention heat.

          But, he added that he would be “damned” if he was going to provide for anyone capable of providing for themselves.

          “Bottom line quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family!” he wrote.”

          I guess he will be cancelled, ridden out of town on a donkey and his existence expunged from all records.

          00

      • #
        Serp

        Here’s the cows: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/usda-livestock-maps-2015-1?op=1&r=US&IR=T
        and here’s the wind turbines: https://nri.tamu.edu/blog/2017/december/map-of-the-month-wind-energy-in-texas/
        as to animal husbandry in this Texas freeze internet searches report no success stories that I can find.

        10

      • #
        bhiggum

        I grew up milking dairy cows in Minnesota, and we didn’t let them out too often when it was sub-zero temps. That was to prevent frostbite on their udders, mostly.

        Beef cows up in Montana and Dakotas survive outside all winter in pastures and feedlots, and it was about -30° C up here in South Dakota during this cold blast.

        The Texas herds should be fine. They’re pretty damn tough, as long as they don’t get wet and can stay out of the wind, most of them will make it.

        10

  • #
    DMA

    “How would Texas have fared if they were 100% renewable?”
    This is the question the Green New Deal pushers need to contemplate. It paints a very ugly picture. If all you have is weather controlled production and the weather turns bad you have nothing.

    671

    • #
      David A

      Apparently, after all the hype and retoric, gas did very well.
      https://i.postimg.cc/tTc1tYnV/texas-GAS-saves-the-day.png

      If someone can post this as an image please do so.

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      • #

        David
        I suspect that the Left have, in usual fashion, tried to deflect on the wind/solar disaster and blame fossil fuels in any way they can.

        This chart shows that gas has not shut off as some claimed. Certainly a much improved performance over the ruinables… but facts don’t really pass muster for the woke.

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        • #
          Tilba Tilba

          I suspect that the Left have, in usual fashion, tried to deflect on the wind/solar disaster and blame fossil fuels in any way they can.

          I don’t agree. As soon as it became known that wind turbines had failed (because they had not been winterised – not because they are inherently incapable of operating in extreme cold) Republican politicians, FF boosters, and a lot of Global Warming deniers blamed the turbines for the massive Texas power outage.

          It’s simply not the case. Turbines failed for sure, but the major issue was a combination between failures among FF (NG & coal) generators, and overwhelming demand.

          The problem is a very common one – a very de-regulated energy grid (and market), public demand for low energy prices, and insufficient spare capacity, maintenance delayed, and inadequate winterised infrastructure.

          I think the whole issue should be “de-politicized” as much as possible, and solutions – bi-partisan ones – found.

          And it would be a good time to be a plumber & gasfitter – head to Texas and make a lot of money fixing burst water pipes all over.

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      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        What planet are people on?

        Where do “gas did very well” and “saved the day” come from? It has been an energy-supply and outage disaster – and all avoidable … nobody has done very well – or saved the day.

        “How would Texas have fared if they were 100% renewable?”

        Such a strawman – nobody from the renewable energy sector has ever said that Texas (or anyone else) would or should be on 100% renewable in the short or medium term … it is a fair way off, and everyone recognises that.

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        • #

          A fair way off – I thought we had less than 12 twelve years to get it done.

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        • #

          Tilba T: You don’t seem to understand what happened in Texas. About 1/2 of the wind turbines froze reducing supply by about 15%. (Eventually nearly all of them froze.) This could have been a minor issue as gas plants could ramp up to cover this. But the extreme cold also increased demand for gas as it is widely used for home heating. That meant regulators had to limit gas supply to power plants. As electric demand increased there was simply not enough capacity. Note, most nuclear plants have been shut down and coal plants are being phased out everywhere including Texas. Anyway as blackouts occurred (intentional or otherwise) gas furnaces wouldn’t operate and people started getting really cold. Water pipes burst, fuel station pumps stopped working, etc. There will be a lot of damage to deal with. There has been very little wind power generated and virtually no solar in Texas for 4-5 days. The failure of wind turbines may represent only a portion of the short fall, but it triggered a cascade of system failures that resulted from an over reliance on unreliable sources and inadequate reserves of reliable dispatchable power when a foreseeable weather event occurred.

          There are not many places with the wind energy resources that exist in West Texas. It’s huge, flat, windy and sparsely populated and normally has mild winters. But big severe winter storms do happen. Electric grid operators should be able to explain how power demand will be met at times when intermittent unreliable sources go down for an extended period.

          Those of us in the US Midwest live through weather just as bad or worse than Texas has had virtually every winter. Fortunately we still have adequate coal and gas power and don’t need to rely on wind or solar. But the anti fossil fuel activist are diligently working to change this. Maybe the Texas fiasco will help slow them down.

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          • #
            Tilba Tilba

            You don’t seem to understand what happened in Texas. About 1/2 of the wind turbines froze reducing supply by about 15%. (Eventually nearly all of them froze.)

            The implication of that is that wind turbines would “normally” supply 30% of total capacity – but the numbers I have read are usually about 8-10% in winter.

            But anyway, setting aside the actual impact of wind turbine freezing, I do pretty-much understand what happened, and it’s much as you spell out: the capacity of the FF generators, coupled with various failure points in the extreme cold, meant it was not able to meet historically high demand, leading to widespread outages, both intentional and not.

            It’s a bit like when a 100-year flood hits a town – people scream about lack of preparedness, but it always seems that no-one wants to pay either higher taxes or higher prices for it to be done.

            Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no-one wants to die.

            Anyway … I just like to push back against the meme that it was commie devotion to renewables that caused the Texas disaster. I think that’s wrong.

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            • #

              Wrong again Tilba, as much as Natural gas increased production during the freeze, while solar and wind collapsed, it was regulations and PC decisions that were cause to natural gas and coal not being able to ramp up enough to cover useless wind and solar.
              How? A regulatory decision was made in one NG plant to use wind generated power for the compressors.
              ( Big oops) Despite the large increase in NG generation as solar and wind failed, additional NG had to be diverted for heating vs generation. The amount of NG surplus and coal surpluses are limited because wind and solar get first right to sell whatever they produce. One does not build a Walmart super store when they are only permitted 7-11 business volume 43 weeks a year.

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              • #
                yarpos

                Tilba will want a link/proof (while rarely offering one himself) There used to be someone else that did that, I wonder if they have just rebadged?

                00

            • #
              Nadia bin Du Natan

              What we see is that it wasn’t only the reliables power that brought on the problem. But the attitude, thinking, and pseudo-science that brought them about. Real science told us that we would have serious cooling at least by the 2030’s. This conclusion was fairly evident around 2008 when the forecast for solar cycle 25 came out. Curiously enough they had a better forecast for cycle 25 than they did for 24. Fake science had people assured that they wouldn’t have to worry about cooling again. So Texas did not plan for excess capacity in a freeze. Why worry about that? Rather than three less coal plants they could have had ten more. Or fifteen more. And run them all at partial capacity. If ever you are having to run at full capacity just to get by, thats a sign that your system is brittle.

              Actually here I’m making a bit of a case for communist electric power with a lot of subcontracting to the private sector. Because its not clear that a free enterprise operation will supply vastly excess capacity of its own free will.

              I don’t really like us using up all this coal quickly either. So we’ve got to get started with the many generations of nuclear energy it will take to build the cost-effectiveness of nuclear up. But we at least we know that we can do this. Doesn’t matter if the EROEI (energy return on energy invested) is very low now. Thats a feature of immature supply lines, and old designs that weren’t really safe, so had to be buffered by all these expensive safety features. We know we can get this right eventually because of the inherent massive amount of energy we have compared to the weight of the fuel.

              There is some idea out there that Australians aren’t good at manufacturing. We are awesome at manufacturing. It will take time but we can have the best nuclear power generation in the world if we want it.

              00

          • #
            William

            Rick and others, I don’t think it is worth debating with TT, he/she will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. The continued reference to Republicans being responsible is one example, those Republicans who push for renewables are RINOs, like Schwartzenneger, or here in NSW, Matt Kean – rabid Green politicians whereing a shabby cloak of conservatism.

            00

          • #
            yarpos

            He doesnt want to understand , the whole facade will crack unless dogma over rules reality.

            00

        • #
          DMA

          What does Biden mean when he says “net 0 by 2050”?

          20

          • #

            DMA, he means good bye to the NG that ramped up generation and heat supply tremendously during this crisis, caused by wind and solar failure.

            30

            • #

              Tonight is the last night of the cold snap in the teens in much of Texas. For 3 hours when solar is useless the wind will be 2 to 6 mph.
              It would be a non issue if coal and or nuclear, and or NG had been built far cheaper at 1/3rd of Texas wind and solar name plate capacity.

              30

          • #
            Serp

            It’s fabulism; he means combustion will have gone out of vogue (carbon tax probably) and lightning will no longer start forest fires (decree of gaia), children will never see a match and all that shtick.

            I don’t really buy that Joe has lost his wits or that it would matter if he did because after nearly fifty years in the racket he’s built his influence machine and it probably runs virtually automatically. He knows he can retire to the basement after state of the union and maybe come out again to sign a couple of gross of prepared executive orders in midsummer and ne only has to keep it up for another eight years, a doddle.

            10

          • #
            Henning Nielsen

            DMA; Biden probably refers to his own personal emissions.

            10

    • #
      Henning Nielsen

      It is amazing. They say that Americans are so independent and able to stand up for themselves, but a chaos like this would have led to widespread riots in Europe. Why were there no contingency plans for such a disaster?

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      • #
        ian hilliar

        Why ? Because the point of using renewables is to try to prevent a theoretical 4 degree rise in temperatures over the next 100 years, not to deal with a REAL 20 degree drop in temperature today……

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        yarpos

        Dont really understand your point, surely a degree of resilience is demonstrated by lack of widespread riots (apart from outside being potentially lethal). Surely if its the Euros you think would be rioting then they should be answering the disaster planning question.

        Its one thing to have disaster plans , its quite another thing to test them or execute them for real. Often its only with hindsight that we see the “obvious” need for disaster plans in specific areas.

        00

  • #
    Klem

    How did Texas end up in a situation where their entire power grid relied on something as unreliable as wind farms?

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    • #
      RooDog

      It’s called the Greens. The hate the environment, and people even more.

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    • #
      Simon

      Most of Texas generation is coal and gas. Windfarms work find in cold temperatures, we use them in Antarctica. The real issue is that Texas refuses to connect to the national grid.

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      • #

        Complete nonsense Simon. 14 surrounding states were doing rolling brown and blackouts. ( So even if the grids were connected it would NOT have helped.)

        Wind advocates claim 25 percent of generation was from wind. Wind is substantial regardless, although it is almost useless.

        When the wind turbines failed, gas mostly picked up the deficit, yet due to the necesitie of heating homes the surplus went mostly went to heat. Gas greatly increased generation regardless, it just could not make up for winds fail. Check it out…

        https://i.postimg.cc/tTc1tYnV/texas-GAS-saves-the-day.png

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        Mike Jonas

        Texas not connecting to the national grid really is not the issue, though it is a part if the issue. The real issue is that Texas didn’t make any contingency provisions and didn’t protect any of its systems from cold. So when cold hit – as it does from time to time in Texas – they had a disaster of their own making. Putting large amounts of unreliable wind and solar in the system is part of their reckless approach, and while they may or may not get away with it this time, it will surely hit Texas hard in future unless someone starts fixing the system , fast.
        https://judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/assigning-blame-for-the-blackouts-in-texas/

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          yarpos

          Why would you protect your systems from severe cold when the “experts” are telling you the world is warming, snow is a thing of the past and every year is the hottest ever, last x years, or just really hottish. Wouldnt you look foolish winterising in the face of such wisdom? what a waste of taxpayer dollars!

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      • #
        Geoffrey Williams

        The last wind turbine I saw in Antartica was standing idle after the blades snapped off !!
        GeoffW

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        Hasbeen

        A mate in Arkansas has had no power other than a little 1KVA camping generator for 5 days. Don’t think they could have helped Texas, they can’t help themselves.

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      • #
        yarpos

        yeah and I sure they are the very same commercial design as used in Texas, and of course the Base where use would depend on it for critical instantaneous power. Epic false equivalence.

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      Tilba Tilba

      How did Texas end up in a situation where their entire power grid relied on something as unreliable as wind farms?

      During winter, wind turbines provide about 10% of power in Texas – how does that nobble the “entire power grid”?

      The outages in an extreme cold event were only in a small way a result of wind turbines freezing – and that can be avoided. The outages were causes by some failures in NG generation, but mostly the huge spike in demand that could not be met.

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      • #
        Geoffrey Williams

        Tilba you are trying to defend the indefensible . .
        Truth is wind power is part time energy and as such cannot sustain a working power grid.
        In addition wind power is expensive, ugly/polluting, and completely unreliable as the current situation has clearly demonstrated.
        The green dream has for millions of people turned into a nightmare !!
        GeoffW

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      • #
        Tony K

        Tilba: wind power is capable of supplying 23% of Texas’ electricity (about 32,000MW). When the freeze really started to take effect, wind power dropped to about 900MW with about half the wind turbines frozen. Brownouts started shortly after. When the electricity went down, gas demand went up impacting flow to the NG plants. In addition, the gas lines rely on electricity to keep pumps and ancillary equipment from freezing. The wind turbines set off a snowball effect. Yes, ERCOT could have been quicker allocating resources, but once lines de-energized, the damage was done.
        It took days to ramp up other generators that had been taken out of service for maintenance, but as I said below, maintenance funds are tight when the power stations are facing closure in the near term. There was not enough spinning reserve to cover the rapid loss in wind generation and the equally great climb in demand. Blame traditional electricity generation if you want. But for the sudden loss and unplanned loss in wind generation, this would not have occurred.
        What will come out of this? Biden wants net zero electricity production by 2035. The Texas Republicans are well invested in wind energy. The South Australian solution is my guess. Batteries , open cycle gas turbines and mire wind and solar. The lunatics are in charge.

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        • #
          Richard Jenkins

          The South Australian battery would work for 5 minutes.
          The reasoning was that that is long enough for people to get their diesel geerators running.

          60

          • #
            GARETH LEWIS

            That is not the purpose of the battery. It reacts in a small fraction of the time humans could to potential critical overload or other connectivity issues and is able to help with grid stabilization. It has already done this in the past few years. I am not suggesting SA has a great electricity grid, but the battery is useful.

            03

            • #
              Tilba Tilba

              It reacts in a small fraction of the time humans could to potential critical overload or other connectivity issues

              I worked with a remote area TV station for a while … there was battery back-up if the mains power failed. It was so fast that most people didn’t even notice a flicker on their screens. Staff could see it (we did tests), but it was literally a fraction of a second.

              04

              • #
                Richard Jenkins

                How did they know the tv only flickered? Their power/tv was off too.
                Perhaps their generator started spontaneusly!

                10

              • #
                Tilba Tilba

                How did they know the tv only flickered? Their power/tv was off too.

                As I said – the station staff did a test – turning off mains power to the broadcasting studios, and checking the two stage back-up: (a) the battery kicked in more-or-less instantaneously, and (b) very shortly after the on-site generator was up to speed and took over.

                And also, the TV station broadcast from Daly River to Bairnsdale … if the power went down in Alice, many viewers would still have their power running.

                00

      • #
        yarpos

        Take 10% of the top (if that is even correct) at times of peak demand when you are dealing with instantaneous power delivery and you will get black outs of some dimension. Especially if you havent maintained 100% back up of unreliables, you know , the stuff they never include when talking about how wondefully cheap they are (not)

        10

  • #
    Don B

     Warren Buffet:
    “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

     Subsidies and mandates are why Texas is in such a mess.  When wind power drives out investments in reliable power, it is inevitable that there will be a disaster.

     Serious people predicted this problem long ago. November, 2012:

    “It is well known that Texas is undergoing a major challenge in maintaining resource adequacy due to improper price signals; less well known is that a significant portion of the problem can be laid directly on the doorstep of subsidies for wind generation.

    https://www.masterresource.org/windpower-problems/texas-windpower-negative-pricing-neeley/ 

    601

  • #
    Tony K

    Exactly! A number of Texas power plants had generators offline for maintenance, but who wants to spend money on maintenance when the power plant has every likelihood of being closed as the love affair with wind and solar and the war against fossil fuels carries on. ERCOT managed the electricity supply. It doesn’t dictate how that electricity is generated. Gov. Abbott has already initiated an inquiry into ERCOT as seemingly a deliberate effort to deflect blame. This is a political and media caused problem through generous, obscene subsidies, grants, gratuities and unfair market manipulation. Take note Australia. It’s coming to you next.

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    • #
      Lawrie

      The madness is here already. South Australia survives thanks to a power lead to other states still burning coal. This assured supply is also doomed thanks to idiots like Matt Kean who believes wind and solar are reliable just so long as they are placed in the regions well away from the majority of voters who also think wind is reliable. We are surrounded by idiot politicians and carpetbaggers who seem to enjoy a very cosy association.

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      • #
        Hanrahan

        SA also survives because they have deindustrialised. No car manufacturer [for example] would go back there today.

        ATM they are generating/using less than a third of what Qld is doing.

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        • #
          Hasbeen

          Yep & if Queensland did not supply power to much of northern NSW, NSW could not supply power to Victoria, & Victoria could not supply South Australia.

          So in effect it is only Queensland coal that keeps South Australian lights on.

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          • #
            yarpos

            Not really. NSW is now routinely importing 1GW ish from QLD, NSW isnt a regular contributor of significance to VIC and sometimes the same in reverse. I think thats just the parochial Queenslander!! gene kicking in.

            Lets no forget Tassie either, the “battery of the nation” delusion has them thinking they prop up the nation rather than just south coast VIC and sometimes importing. Wasnt much of a pertubation when they were disconnected for months. Id suggest that outside summer the NSW-VIC link could go down for quite a while with far less noise than if the QLD-NSW link failed.

            00

            • #
              yarpos

              e.g 10AM today 600MW QLD to NSW 300MW VIC to NSW 400MW VIC to SA 180MW TAS to VIC

              In the short term , with Lidell on the horizon and Kean at the helm , NSW is at the most risk
              Followed by VIC were we await the next stupid decision from Andrews and D’Ambrosio
              SA has their half billion dollar + band aid applied so they should be good for now just expensive
              Tassie is good while it rains
              QLD seems to have retained a degree of sanity, but the virtue must be calling strongly to them
              WA operates as an island , or maybe more correctly a group of islands. There a Liberal leader, of all people, is trying to screw things up.

              00

        • #
          Tilba Tilba

          ATM they are generating/using less than a third of what Qld is doing.

          They also have less than a third of Queensland’s population, before you even count tourists.

          07

          • #
            Hanrahan

            In the last ten years SA has grown by just 100,000 while Qld has grown 600,000 and our labor gov is hardly “dynamic”. Would deindustrialisation have anything to do with that?

            40

          • #
            GARETH LEWIS

            You are arithmetically challenged

            20

      • #

        Yes Lawrie, idiot Mat Kean and similar idiots in every state and st Federal levrl. One of the reason Deb Frecklington in Qld failed is she backed the stupid renewal idea instead of taking in the signal about Adani at federal election. Votes give signsls but politicians take no notice. Let us hope voters dump Kean. The Nationals need to take a stand or the coalition will gail at the next election.

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        • #
          William

          Here in NSW we are battling the Photios Phaction – Photios is a former Lib polician, now a lobbyist, and a huge influence on preselection. Gladys, Kean, Wilson and many others at state level, and Zimmerman and others at Federal level vote for his and his wife’s renewable interests.

          10

    • #

      I hope our AEMO is taking notice here. Its disturbing the way that their narrative has changed on renewables such that their reports are basically windmill and solar brochures. This has coincided with Audrey Zibelmann, a self confessed wind power cheer leader, taking control

      Never mind the SA shut offs and other incidents. Never mind the actual records showing long periods of time several times a year where renewables generate at a fraction of their usual output. Just parrot the nonsense.

      Trouble is the nonsense will not power our grid. Nor provide the 365/24/7 availability that is needed.

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  • #
    John F Hultquist

    Texas isn’t the only state with cold temperatures. As one goes north the people and structures are better prepared, but many southern areas do not require water pipes to be buried to two feet (~65 cm), and not to have insulation for serious cold.

    Further, folks to not have a supply of “survival” resources for even 3 days.
    Anyway, this isn’t just a Texas problem.

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    • #
      another ian

      Further north the water pipelines get buried down to 8 feet.

      How do you find a water leak in them?

      70

      • #
        bhiggum

        Usually if the leak is bad enough it will be bubbling back up to the surface or there will be a sunken spot.

        If the leak isn’t that bad, wait until it is!

        The other alternative is to start digging and keep on until you find it.

        00

  • #
    graham dunton

    breaking Australian news,
    Facebook freezes Australia
    If the government had the balls, and piss face book off, this would wake a lot of Australians up, it would demonstrate the manipulation that has been occurring, in other areas.
    Facebook blocks Australian news over proposed media bargaining law
    https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/facebook-bans-australians-from-sharing-or-viewing-news-over-proposed-media-bargaining-law/news-story/9ce6ba707eae120c195d74e4dd5b10de

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    • #
      Travis T. Jones

      Australian government should immediately delete all links and sites to & on fac!stbook, twitter, youtube, google.

      During the recent election big tech showed it is nothing more that a propaganda arm for the fac!st Democrat party.

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      • #
        yarpos

        I am guessing you are not from Oz then.

        Doing that would require the Govt to use its own IT systems to communicate.

        Government IT in Australia is pretty much incompetent and has delivered failure in systems like Census, Tax Office (multiple award winner), Centrelink (unemployment and pensions) and who could forget the hilarious Covidsafe phone app with claimed features that were BS from day 1. These are just the ones the public hears off, Canberra is constantly bubbling with failed, over budget , dysfuntional IT projects. Competence is not the norm.

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    • #
      Lawrie

      I am totally unaffected because I have never been on FB nor Twitter and find my news and information readily available elsewhere. We never needed FB ten years ago so we could quite easily walk away now. Zuckerberg and Dorsey need to know that they are supplying a purely unnecessary product that can be replaced, skirted around or totally ignored. Their fortunes could well be lost and that is why they seek to close down opposition. No one has to buy bottled water and no one has to use FB or Twitter.

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      • #
        Matthew

        Spot on Lawrie

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      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        I agree mostly too Lawrie – and Facebook is being slammed for its ham-fisted shutdown of essentially all content. But it has a long history of going full mongrel if it is ever investigated or regulation is proposed.

        However under the Law of Unintended Consequences, a very large number of smaller for-profit and non-profit outfits have built their whole business model around the “free” hub of Facebook. Even a lot of government agencies, including essential services.

        And while it’s true the majority of these have their own websites (and if they do not, could build one quickly and cheaply), it’s not quite the point. It is the huge, and near-monopoly, presence of FB to generate traffic that is the critical factor.

        I think this story has a long way to run. A “public utility” is in private hands.

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  • #
    Damo

    “Though don’t look for the directors names, suddenly the ERCOT webpage has delisted the entire board. As @duncanwrites said “That’s a win for transparency. This page had 20+ names on it earlier today”

    So in their crisis meetings they started with the most important issue!

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    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Msg to Jo Nova – it can’t be that difficult to find the names of the ERCOT board – the wayback machine? – and a new post listing them would be helpful information for many people, especially thise in Texas.
      The president and CEO appears to be Bill Magness. https://tinyurl.com/unfspwm6

      “As per the ERCOT official website, chairwoman Sally Talberg, who was a former state utility regulator, is now a resident of Michigan. Peter Cramton, a professor of economics at the University of Cologne in Germany and at the University of Maryland, serves as the vice-chairman of ERCOT, while living in Del Mar, California – as per his LinkedIn profile.

      Board members Vanessa Anesetti-Parra is a resident of Toronto at present. She is the vice president of regulatory and compliance at Just Energy. Among the other two board members, who reside out of Texas, Terry Bulger has a career as a banking professional – completely different from the energy and electrical sector. He lives in Wheaton, a suburb in Chicago, Illinois.

      Raymond Hopper is another non-native member who lives in Auburn, Maine. He is a retiree from ISO New England which operates the electrical system in six states.

      Some of the other members include Terry Bulger, Mark Carpenter, Lori Cobos, Keith Emery and Nick Fehrenbach – some of whom do not even remotely hail from a background in energy and power segment.
      ERCOT CEO Bill Magness has revealed that they are unsure how long the power outages will last.”

      https://meaww.com/texas-snowstorm-ercot-power-outage-board-of-directors-governor-greg-abbott-investigation-electricity

      NB. I can’t vouch for the accuracy or up-to-date-ness of any if that information.

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      • #
        Mike Jonas

        The ERCOT board as at Feb 2019 is given here: http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172484/ERCOT_Quick_Facts_02.4.19.pdf
        ERCOT Executive Team
        Bill Magness
        President &
        Chief Executive Officer
        Cheryl Mele
        Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
        Jerry Dreyer
        Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer
        Steve Daniels
        Vice President, Application Services and IT Operations
        Betty Day
        Vice President, Governance, Risk and Compliance
        Theresa Gage
        Vice President,
        External Affairs & Corporate Communications
        Kenan Ögelman
        Vice President, Commercial Operations
        Mike Petterson
        Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
        Woody Rickerson
        Vice President,
        Grid Planning and Operations
        Karl Pfirrmann (Unaffiliated)
        Carolyn Shellman CPS Energy (Municipal)
        DeAnn T. Walker Chair, Public Utility Commission of Texas (ex officio, non-voting)
        Segment Alternates
        Bill Berg
        Exelon Corporation (Independent Generator)
        Mark Carpenter
        Oncor Electric Delivery Company (Investor-Owned Utility)
        Seth Cochran
        DC Energy Texas, LLC (Independent Power Marketer)
        Chad Seely
        Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
        Jeyant Tamby
        Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer
        Diane Williams
        Vice President, Human Resources
        Glen Lyons ExxonMobil Power and Gas Services, Inc. (Industrial Consumer)
        Jennifer Richie
        City of Waco (Commercial Consumer)
        Ned Ross
        Direct Energy (Independent Retail Electric Provider)
        Jackie Sargent Austin Energy (Municipal)
        Mark Schwirtz Golden Spread Electric Cooperative, Inc. (Cooperative)
        ERCOT Board of Directors
        Craven Crowell Chair (Unaffiliated)
        Judy Walsh Vice Chair (Unaffiliated)
        Vacant
        Office of Public Utility Counsel (Residential Consumer, ex officio)
        Rick Bluntzer Just Energy Texas, LP (Independent Retail Electric Provider)
        Terry Bulger (Unaffiliated)
        Peter Cramton (Unaffiliated)
        Keith Emery
        Tenaska Power Services Co. (Independent Power Marketer)
        Connect with us:
        http://www.ercot.com ERCOT_ISO
        Electric Reliability Council of Texas
        Nick Fehrenbach City of Dallas (Commercial Consumer)
        Kevin Gresham
        E.ON North America, LLC (Independent Generator)
        Sam Harper
        Chaparral Steel Midlothian, LP (Industrial Consumer)
        Clifton Karnei Brazos Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. (Cooperative)
        Bill Magness
        President and Chief Executive Officer, ERCOT (ex officio)
        Kenny Mercado CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (Investor-Owned Utility)

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    • #
      OldOzzie

      Texas Electric Board Members Live WHERE?

      Texans are getting to know the 50-year-old council and are not liking what they’re learning. For one thing, about a third of its members don’t even live in Texas.

      A third of the board of directors that operate the state’s electrical grid do not appear to live in Texas, and their performance in wake of widespread outages has led to a Dallas-area lawmaker’s call for change.

      Records show the two top office holders of the 15-member board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), live out-of-state. Three other ERCOT board members also appear to live thousands of miles from Texas.

      The thought of some Californian voting on our energy market doesn’t sit well.

      For another, it turns out that the board members nominate each other to it.

      How that hasn’t come up as a glaring conflict of interest before now is a head-scratcher. Pals nominating pals who nominate other pals to this board in Texas? And you don’t even have to live there?

      Well, now that the glare has turned on ERCOT, it has removed the board members’ names from its website. They’re gone. They were all there earlier in the week.

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  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    Apparently hell has frozen over because of global warming.

    Oh, wait, that was 7 years ago …

    … In a recent column, theology professor Susan Thistlethwaite explained that “frigid weather” was an “example of the kind of violent and abrupt [global warming] that results from global warming.

    The good professor also claimed that cold weather in the United States is a punishment sent by God for “our sinful failure to take care of the Creation.”

    Cold as Hell: The Chilling Effect of Global Warming

    “Hell is normally depicted as a “lake of fire,” as in Revelation 20:10.

    This week in the Midwest, however, Hell is likely to look more like lakes of ice, as dangerous cold from a polar vortex, brings “wind chills [that] could hit 50, 60 or even 70 below zero.”
    The Great Lakes will likely freeze over and prolong an already very cold winter.
    The future prospects are chilling.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/christian-theology-climate-change_b_4545090

    If this global warming continues, can we expect another mile thick ice sheet over Chicago?
    No one denies the last ice age.

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    • #
      Jojodogfacedboy

      The invasion of politics has consequences, now everyone does the double-speak where up is down and down is up due to evading their crimes and corruption. Creates a frozen system where now you just discuss as you have no clue what to do. Our governments and politicians are in total idiot mode right now.

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    • #
      RooDog

      Just had a read following your link Travis. About as anti Christian theology as I have ever seen. Definitely wolves in sheep’s clothing.

      60

      • #
        Annie

        I totally agree with you RooDog. It is disgusting. No wonder people become disillusioned about Christianity, I don’t blame them.

        21

        • #
          Annie

          In fact, I am totally sick of all the ‘woke’ rubbish coming out of so many of our ‘Christian hierarchy’ that I have to remember that there is a huge difference between ‘the church’, the institution and ‘the church’ as The Body of Christ.
          Travis’ link shows an attitude so evil when there is so much suffering and misery in Texas. It is utterly evil.

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    • #

      This post is far from Christianity, and created by somebody more in league with Lucifer than somebody who is a true Christian.

      As a Christian I believe we need to think of others and make sure we do everything we can to uplift all.

      The Climate change religion does nothing of that, it is a destroyer of much that is good and the fraudulent “science” used is a complete lie. Some time back I posed to Jo where Christ would be on Climate Change, and its pretty clear to me that he would have nothing to do with fakery, lies and seeking to destroy our society in a mad bid to supposedly fight what are quite natural changes.

      21

  • #
    Penguinite

    A very un-salutary lesson for Australia. Wind/solar Green power benefits are illusory! Misleading mirages! Coal, Gas, hydro or Nuclear are the only reliable known sources that can generate electricity 24/7.
    Write to your MOP and tell them to shake off the Green shackles from their eyes!

    300

    • #
      Mike Jonas

      I have. Write to your federal MP giving your name, address (which shows you are a constituent) and phone number. Make the point of your email (or letter) clear up front. They do take note if many similar messages are received and are not a form letter/email.
      MP contact info is at https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members

      30

  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    Clearly, nature has put us at a decision point; perhaps all of us, perhaps just the state of Texas and those others that can learn from example.
    It is clearly a good idea to have a robust, reliable energy grid.
    Not having one kills the economy, and kills people. In the short term, at least, it becomes, in popular modern parlance,
    an existential threat.
    Fortunately, building a robust, reliable energy grid with required reserves, redundancy, and service staffing is something we both know how to do
    and have the resources to do; in fact the legacy left us by our prior generation provides a baseline we can quickly put pieces of back into service,
    the the knowledge workers to help us do so.
    We can learn the lesson we are being taught, and do this, or we can continue on a course that nature has just taught us is wrong.

    Our modern generation seems to have almost no appreciation that learning is expensive; the modern masters of the universe, to the degree they were aware,
    thought the pain of progress to be something suffered by the little people.

    This may be true in Texas, but one can be damn sure that those of wealth who have, in fact, been personally comfortable through this cold spell will do their damnedst
    to hide it.

    To me, the aviation model works well; we’ve learned how to make the system safe one accident at a time; we have amazing dispatch reliability. Still from time to time,
    nature reminds us that technology has its limits…and cold is often the enemy whether its dumping an Air Florida flight into the Potomac or failing the o-ring on the
    space shuttle. So you harden the system as much as possible, and still have a plan B because nature still has a no-go zone.

    This is not the first time it’s been cold in the southwest. Nor is this the first time the wind farms have failed. Seeing the lubricant streaks on many of the towers suggests the restart this time may require a rebuild first. IF not, I want to be far away when you spin the suckers up for the first time.

    Now, the left is always wanting us to have “conversations” with them about things. Usually, they are able to bring their own “evidence”, mainly assertion, to these talks.
    Lets meet real soon, though, in Austin. In a stadium. The “evidence” can attend, and react to the conversation. Let’s talk about the mission critical nature of the power grid.
    Lets get the folks to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to these spinning wind thingies.

    Good ideas and the truth can usually be put on index cards; its the lies that require a word salad.
    The longer the article you read about “what happened in Texas” the more likely it tries to justify green energy, and is a lie.

    If Texas can’t decide to fix their power grid under this provocation; then it’s time for folks with foresight to go full survivalist mode because the herd is bent on suicide.

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  • #
    Peter Fitzroy

    All this was predicted buy those who believe the false god of AGW (to paraphrase the opinion on this site) Note: the weather does not care how many solar panels or wind turbines, or coal plants or gas plants or nuclear plants your have. Failure to understand well documented trends and take appropriate action is now on display.

    /Again – wind is only a tiny fraction of Texas generation, the bulk is gas, nuclear and coal – they, and the distribution network are the main failures here

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    • #
      Murray Shaw

      Saw one figure that said Wind in Texas, name plate capacity was 42% of generation capacity, not a tiny fraction, Peter.

      240

      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        That was a deliberate falsehood, Murray, go back to yesterday’s Texas post to see it – Someone does not know the difference between giga and mega

        Or

        Post the links that prove your assertion because ERCOT does not support it (ERCOT is the Texas power manager)

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        • #
          robert rosicka

          Fitz if you rely on perfect weather for your electricity generation and the weather decides to be less than perfect what happens ?

          290

          • #

            Peter, if you mean this comment you made yesterday. Thanks for your proof reading correction. Post fixed. It doesn’t change any maths that matters — like that wind was down to 3% of total capacity on Monday afternoon when Texas desperately needed the GW.

            Have you got anything more than typo’s to defend the wind industry?

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            • #
              Peter Fitzroy

              Jo, I’m not defending the wind industry, I am trying to provide a sense of proportion, As Tony from Oz notes the total wind nameplate (which is what you are referencing) can only manage 30% of that, so 3% of total capacity would be more honesetly expressed as 10% of the capacity factor. Am I the only one who understands what Tony is posting?

              Also
              Texas runs a floating pricing system with spot prices just like Australia does, at the moment those spot prices are pushing prices for the average home to 90 thousand per month according to Mark Sumner https://twitter.com/Devilstower/status/1362428673706643456?s=20
              So they are making bucketloads from this disaster

              16

              • #
                R.B.

                Name plate is what you can get out of the plant theoretically on a good day. Close to that value is what they put out in news stories about how wind is all you need. The capacity factor is only about 30% because some days it drops to bugger all.

                The issue is that it’s huge fluctuations that engineers have zero control over.

                Meanwhile, gas fired plants can fail in cold weather but only if relativey cheap solutions are skimped on.

                10

        • #
          MrGrimNasty

          Peter, the only element of truth in your position is that some other sources as well as wind went offline, and some/much of that will have been a knock on effect from the loss of wind power. The whole picture of course is that at the worst point pv/wind were all but completely absent, and fossil/nuclear was supplying nearly everything that was left i.e. it doesn’t matter how much pv/wind is installed, it would still amount to zilch in these circumstances, and only nuclear/fossil fuels could deliver.

          https://twitter.com/AlexEpstein/status/1362262846780805126

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        • #
          Mike Jonas

          According to ERCOT …
          http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172484/ERCOT_Quick_Facts_02.4.19.pdf
          • 21,751 MW of installed wind capacity, the most of any state in the nation.
          • 1,719 MW of utility-scale installed solar capacity as of Dec. 2018

          73,473 MW Record peak demand (July 19, 2018)

          Annual Energy Information
          2019 Generation Capacity
          *Includes hydro, storage and biomass
          0.9% Other*
          2.1% Solar
          5.4% Nuclear
          15.9% Coal
          23.4% Wind
          52.4% Natural Gas

          So solar and wind were 25.5% of capacity in 2019, and 32% of record peak demand. Not 42% (which might have been reported elsewhere or after 2019) but certainly substantial.

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          • #
            Mike Jonas

            PS. It may well be 42% of average demand.

            30

          • #
            Peter Fitzroy

            you still do not understand nameplate vs capacity factor do you

            06

            • #
              MrGrimNasty

              It’s easy Peter, nameplate is at the heart of the great green power con:-

              You get perhaps 10% of PV nameplate, perhaps 35% of windmill nameplate, full time equivalent. But as it’s uncontrollable, even some of that meagre efficiency is dumped but the bill payer still pays.

              You get probably 90% or more of nameplate from nuclear/fossil, if you want that much – it’s controllable, and most of that other 10% is maintenance downtime and can be done when convenient.

              Texas is a massive failure of green policies, whichever way you slice it. Greens have switched from boasting how much green power was produced a few weeks ago, to now denying that it is a significant amount and could be in any way to blame. Snookered by their own dishonesty.

              Of course the situation in Germany this winter has also been rescued by fossil fuels, come up with a narrative to spin that one out if you can.

              https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/coal-rescues-germany-from-its-renewable-folly/

              The punch line to the joke, Germany is objecting to Poland’s plans to go nuclear to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as required by the EU i.e. Germany.

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    • #
      Travis T. Jones

      “Note: the weather does not care how many solar panels or wind turbines, or coal plants or gas plants or nuclear plants your have.”

      Better tell the UN and consequently Scomo …

      At UN Environment, we believe that sustainable energy presents an opportunity to transform lives and economies while safeguarding the planet.

      Why does energy matter?

      https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/energy/why-does-energy-matter

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    • #
      Damo

      So Peter, are you willing to admit that more gas, coal and nuclear, and less wind and solar might have avoided or lessened such a crisis? Or do you think more “renewables” would have done the trick? Do tell us how you think Texas could have avoided this?

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      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        Damo, The problems (as you see them) with renewables are well documented, and so is network performance in cold weather. The failure is not the renewables, but the entire network in Texas. Other states impacted by the cold weather are not killing their citizens by shutting off power.

        Oh, and by the way (and David Maddison should take note) Texas republican senator Ted Cruz is now in Cancun, Mexico, flying there by private jet. I’m sure he will issue a statement along the lines of “I stand with my fellow Texans, at this time” /sarc off

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        • #
          robert rosicka

          Ted Cruz hasn’t drunk your coolaide and rightly doesn’t have your faith in a warming world Fitz so does it matter what form of transportation he uses ?
          And as for Texas why don’t you go over there and tell them how hot it is because of all their cows and SUV’s.

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        • #
          yarpos

          funny how the liberal media and its mouthpieces can focus on a plane flight while Cuomo is on the brink of being charged for the unecessary deaths of thousands of aged New Yorkers. mmmm look squirell!!!

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        • #
          Damo

          Peter, you replied but didn’t answer the question. More or less renewables?

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          • #
            Peter Fitzroy

            I’m on the record here as advocating for a balanced mix, I’ve not changed my view

            016

            • #
              Damo

              So, more or less, for Texas?

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            • #
              Hanrahan

              “Balance” and “bipartisan” are weasel words.

              “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

              ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

              ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

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        • #
          David Maddison

          Peter, I have no problem whatsoever with people having private jets if they can afford them and my taxes don’t pay for it. Good luck to them.

          I do have a big problem with hypocrites who fly around in private jets while making the rest of us suffer with their “climate saving” policies.

          Where does it say Ted Cruz flew by private jet? It appears as though he took a normal commercial flight and he did so because his daughter asked for a holiday while school was forcibly closed.

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        • #
          Harves

          Peter do explain to we mortals just how networks will operate reliably under similar weather conditions when renewables are providing 100% of capacity?
          Indoor windmills?

          160

        • #
          peter

          Fitzy, Cruz is BACK in Texas. He went to Cancun to escort his family there and has returned. Fact check please before commenting.

          181

        • #
          Hasbeen

          My mate in Arkansas has been without mains power for 5 days. Do try to get your facts right.

          100

        • #
          Hanrahan

          Why did you say he flew by private jet with no collaboration?

          at just past 4:00 you will see him in an airport terminal.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kSy5qg2ghc

          50

    • #
      YallaYPoora Kid

      A tiny fraction? Installed capacity greater than 24 GW acc Gov data 2019 on eia.gov website – highest in USA.
      Producing approx 8.5 GWh per annum.

      https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX#tabs-4

      I would say your statement is misleading.

      180

    • #
      ian hilliar

      Wind power is >20% of Texas Grid< Peter, according to the latest figures. You can believe AOC , though, as you believe in fairydust.

      130

      • #
        yarpos

        and where gas requires electricity to operate if fails also

        and of course climate activist resist gas pipelines so supply is constrained

        and dont winterise your turbines because all the climate “experts” tell you winters are getting warmer and snow is a thing of the past

        just like SA, “the wind power is the problem!” and few months later spend half a billion + on gas turbines and battery band aids

        lets watch what really happens after this mess

        220

      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        not quite, it has nameplate of 24% – and we all know that you only get around 30% of that, so it only supplies 6% of the actual power, I do understand what Anton has been posting here for years now, unlike the majority of commentators here

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    • #
      RooDog

      ” Failure to understand well documented trends and take appropriate action is now on display.”
      At least this part of your comment is spot on PF. Unfortunately your understanding of your own statement appears to be antithetical to observed reality.

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      • #
        Serp

        Cognitive dissonance is his stock in trade; time out of mind he posts supporting material which undermines his argument. One can only love such a derelict soul.

        71

    • #
      RickWill

      Peter falsely claimed:

      /Again – wind is only a tiny fraction of Texas generation, the bulk is gas, nuclear and coal – they, and the distribution network are the main failures here

      Installed wind generation is 30GW.
      Installed thermal capacity is 65GW
      Installed solar generation is 6GW
      Installed hydro is 550MW

      That makes wind 30% of the installed capacity. That is a large slice of the installed capacity and represents a massive investment in what has proven worse than useless. It has hidden the inadequacy of the gas supply because, in good times, wind works as a gas fuel replacement. When the wind works then gas demand is reduced and supplies can rely on line pack to take care of the surges in demand for thermal when the wind goes off. Line pack will not cater for more than a few hours of high demand; certainly not days.

      In time of need all the investment in wind generation was simply a pile of poo, iced up and useless. It is great for Australia though. US create dollars to buy wind generators from China. China uses those same dollars to buy iron ore from Australia. Rio and BHP make wads of USD that they pay back to shareholders. China skims enough USD in the game to buy the UN and POTUS. US citizens are left with a incoherent POTUS and a thoroughly useless electricity grid when really called upon to deliver.

      Wind as a gas fuel replacement is a good thing but expensive for those buying power from wind generators. Lowering gas demand keeps prices lower in other jurisdictions.

      It has taken 20 years to replace 2% of fossil fuel with other sources – mostly biofuels. Clearly it will take a long time to wean off fossil fuels. There is some merit in starting sooner than later. However it is criminal to waste money on uneconomic sources of generation by artificially decreeing winners then subsidising them.

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      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        you are talking nameplate, see 13.5.2

        013

        • #
          Furiously curious

          ditto 13.5.2.1 . I just don’t get it. What use is name plate? It speaks of shonky salesmen.

          150

          • #
            Serp

            This is your green revolution. Thirty percent of wind nameplate, seventy-five percent of EV battery capacity, and never a winning proportion of ballots.

            80

        • #
          Serp

          It’s better to post the actual link https://joannenova.com.au/2021/02/texas-day-four-without-power-and-water-for-some/#comment-2407356 to overcome the hachured reference numbers penchant for change.

          10

        • #
          RickWill

          It takes 100t of steel for every MW of wind generation CAPACITY. CAPACITY reflects the amount of materials that go into the generator. If it can only produce at 3% of capacity when needed then that is a seriously wasteful investment.

          Gas turbines get around 100MW of RELIABLE capacity for 1t of steel. Maybe they should have spent more money on the gas pipeline that feeds the gas plants but its size was chosen to suit the average demand. Short term peaks catered for by linepack. So not only are the wind turbines resource hungry and useless, they led to poor decisions for the gas plants. That is where delusional thinking gets people.

          You make your choices because resources are inevitably limited. Burning fossil fuels allows us to make wasteful decisions now. It will not be that way if the world actually had to rely on wind power.

          It does not matter how much “Climate Ambition” the UN can muster, reality eventually prevails.

          Just by way of reminder, average global surface temperature today is 14C (30C in the warm pools ; -2C at the sea ice) as it was a 50 years ago:
          https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.fc.gif

          Sure Texas is a bit colder than typical but I expect there are few spots on the globe a tad warmer than typical. We can only hope that the tropical Atlantic snaps back to 30C soon. The cold side is an ever present risk for the Atlantic but it has been readily reaching the 30C controlled limit during the boreal summer.

          60

    • #
      el gordo

      ‘ … the distribution network are the main failures here.’

      True, Texas had no energy interconnections with other States.

      15

    • #

      Peter, advocates claim wind generated 23 percent of Texas energy on 2020. ( Not a tiny percentages) Yet a very dangerous percentage. So their name plate capacity is likely over 60 percent of total Texas energy if they generated 23 percent of actual energy consumption.

      Look at the actual generation charts during this crisis. Wind and solar failed, and NG and coal increased production.

      40

    • #
      R.B.

      Fits, your name plate argument is silly.

      My car is described as 100 kw. It’s not meant to be reveded at 5000 rpm where all the power is, all the time. It’s there for when needed. The way I drive, it’s a 30kw car on average. If i get to choose, its a 100 kw car. If its not up to me when the power comes on, is it a 30 kWh car or unroadworthy?

      10

  • #
    LisaGinNZ

    I can not share a post from this site on FB.

    F.book has unfriended Australia…. stand strong AUS!!!

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    • #
      bobn

      That’s great news. the sooner everyone abandons bigoted fakebook the better.

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    • #
      OldOzzie

      Not according to China – China: Texas Freeze Shows U.S. Is a Failure

      Chinese state media on Thursday pounced on the winter storm and blackouts in Texas as evidence the United States is inferior to Communist China.

      Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times, took the opportunity to dance on the graves of Americans killed by China’s coronavirus while arguing his government is better at investing in infrastructure, organizing disaster relief, and learning from its mistakes:

      The extreme cold weather in the central and southern US has caused at least 31 deaths, leaving million families to endure days without electricity. Texas, a US state with huge resources, has been severely hit. This is not supposed to be the scenario in the US – the world’s most developed country. But what kind of scenarios are supposed to happen there? COVID-19 has taken nearly 500,000 lives in the country. Was that supposed to occur? Yet it is happening.

      The US has once again fallen down from the altar. The Chinese people care about this because we used to treat the country as a standard of modern governance. Since the 1980s, many Chinese intellectuals idealized the US, and took it for granted that the US-style system could effectively eliminate various drawbacks that the Chinese people hate to see in our own country.

      But China has developed to a level where we no longer need to look up to the US. The internet has brought us more information. And a growing number of people have gone to the other side of the Pacific, and we seem to have “rediscovered” the US.

      Wuhan whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang might have had some different thoughts about the Chinese government’s ability to acknowledge and learn from mistakes but, unfortunately, he was unavailable for comment.

      50

    • #
      RickWill

      What are you doing using FaceBook!. That is as bent as watching their ABC in Australia.

      If no one used FaceBook it would not exist. That would be a good thing. Their business model is quite fragile to democratic choices. No one is twisting your arm to use the platform.

      50

  • #
    Zigmaster

    This is nature’s way of reminding the world who’s the boss.

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  • #
    Rosco

    Surely the infiltration of water which subsequently froze into the bearing outer housings is going to do permanent damage resulting in major maintenance over who knows how long ?

    40

  • #
    Harley

    Seeing only 7 percent of power comes from windmills , the anti renewables scare is a cheap shot, gas pipes have frozen.
    The crisis has highlighted the decades long mismanagement by the Reps,sold out to fossils and unwilling to consider alternatives.

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    • #
      ian hilliar

      Actually, Harley, as there was no wind after the initial dump, there was 0% wind power. Which is a problem, as the solar panels are all buried, so 0% solar power as well. And when your “renewables” normally produce 25% of the power in the grid. That makes for a very unstable grid. Added to that, there has been a concerted push away from gas and oil heating towards airconditioning, as being greener and cleaner. BUT, while aircon is very cheap to run normally, when temperatures plummet it really sucks the power. Double whammy.

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    Zigmaster

    There is an interesting response that alarmists have when you get these clear examples of failure of renewables to deliver. They blame the coal, gas and uranium back up system as the reasons for the failure and try to use such instances to push for more renewables. What they don’t realise it is because of the favoured treatment of renewables that you get issues with the backup generation. There are two obvious reasons for that 1. Fossil fuel generation isn’t exactly suitable to be backup power, it runs more efficiently as a 24/7 base load system. 2. The commercial reality is that by making investment in fossil fuels less financially viable due to government policy tends create less enthusiasm to spend big on maintenance.
    Without wanting to sound callous towards the Texans we need more frequent occurrences of grid chaos to emphasise that not only are renewables useless they are in fact dangerous.
    There are only two solutions , reeducate the population that the dangerous global warming thesis has been debunked and there is no need to do anything or pretend that it’s happening and go nuclear. Either way I don’t mind but if we don’t change direction on this global warming nonsense what has happened in Texas is just the start.

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    • #
      PeterS

      Yes, the people will only ever wake up when it really hurts them badly. As usual we only ever learn the hard lessons of life the hard way never the easy way (obviously).

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  • #
    Robber

    How long before the Australian AEMO grid suffers, not from cold, but heat, and a surplus of intermittent wind and solar?
    Origin chief Frank Calabria warns of more pain in store for coal fired power
    “The Australian electricity market is headed for a “messy” short-term future, according to Origin boss Frank Calabria, who declared on Thursday that “wholesale prices are “unsustainable”.
    “Calabria’s comments followed similar concerns expressed by AGL boss Brett Redman last week and comes as a flood of new renewable power threatens the stability of the network and the orderly transition out of coal-fired plants.”
    Origin’s profits fell to $13m, from $599m a year ago.
    Fortunately we have had a very mild summer. Average wholesale prices in Vic for Jan/Feb have been $21/MWhr, and for the 2020/21 ytd $48, 2019/20 was $74/MWhr, and 2018/19 $110/MWhr.
    Those dramatic drops in prices have resulted from an increasing surplus of wind and solar, forcing a reduction in the utilisation of coal and gas generators, undermining their ability to make a profit. But closing down some reliable generators can only lead to disaster.

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    • #
      robert rosicka

      Exactly Robber , all it takes is a blocking high over the subsidy farms on the east coast and a touch of cloud cover mid summer . None of which are exactly a rare phenomenon .

      110

    • #
      RickWill

      AGL are hurting because of their investment in weather dependent generators and off-take agreements with others they do not own.

      Rooftop generation is having a big impact on their profitability. The grid scale WDGs are voluntarily curtailing when prices go negative but rooftops only reduce when the local system is on over voltage. The latter is a common problem and will require substantial investment in the distribution network to get the power back up the system. There is 12GW of rooftop solar in Australia so it can produce a big slice of lunchtime demand when skies are clear.

      I have no first hand accounts of people being disappointed with their rooftop solar. Without exception people I talk to have made big savings. People who own a roof can use the subsidies on offer to lower their bills or leave it to the likes of AGL to keep their hand in their back pocket through more generous solar and wind subsidies. In that regard, the subsidies are declining. LGC prices are next to useless now; again part of the reason for AGLs pain.

      Texas has probably occurred at a good time for Australia. There is no good reason for more grid scale WDGs in Australia. Without a subsidy injection, none are looking attractive. They are showing their true economic value. The uptake of rooftop solar alone is threatening the grid and State governments are still subsidising them as well as the Federal subsidy. The last thing needed in Australia is more grid scale intermittent generators.

      The next issue is whether the cost of batteries will be borne by individual consumers (with government subsidy) or placed around the grid by the distributors. At this point in time, both are happening. Then there is Snowy 2, which is a low efficiency big battery and government funding behind it.

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      • #
        Robber

        Rooftop solar still looks good because of the $120/MWhr feedin tariff, while own use avoids retail prices of $200/Mwhr.

        30

  • #
    Rick

    What a great pity that this didn’t happen to California, where the only people to die or be inconvenienced would be Democrats.

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  • #
    John R Smith

    How long is this fraudulent scheme going to haunt us.
    How many years do the predictions of The Consensus have to fail.
    The institution of science is crumbling everyday.
    Mann and Fauci.
    From “don’t wear a mask” to “wear two masks”.
    Get your PCR test at the South end with a hockey stick.
    The Church corrupted.
    Science is born.
    Science corrupted.
    What comes next?

    100

    • #
      PeterS

      Ask PM Morrison if you are in Australia. His answer will be a rehash of his commitment to reduce our emissions. We have two major parties on a unity ticket for the destruction of our economy. Time to wake up peoples! STOP VOTING FOR THEM!

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      • #
        mal

        Vote for One Nation
        Read Malcolm Roberts, only sensible politician pushing anti renewable, pro coal and nuclear electricity generation.
        His background is engineering so he can think rationally and logically

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    • #
      Serp

      What comes next? I don’t know but I’d buy tickets to attend a session of the extended public vivisection of Fauci that must be coming our way befor the decade is out.

      40

    • #
      Great Aunt Janet

      Increase jobseeker so we can move towards UBI? Arghhhhh!

      10

  • #
    Neville

    It’s wonderful to see a young Environmental scientist telling the truth about their so called climate crisis or emergency. And of course he just adds to the accuracy of Lomborg, Shellenberger,Pielke, Christy, Spencer, Curry, Eschenbach, Carter etc.

    Vijay Javaraj completed his degree and works at the University of East Anglia. Phil Jones and the HAD centre would not be pleased . Here’s a quote and the link and his judgement about the anti FF policies is very accurate.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/18/why-i-am-a-climate-realist/

    “So, there is no actual climate emergency. Instead, what we have celebrities, activists, un-elected political bodies like the UN, and even some climate scientists religiously promoting a popular doomsday belief.

    The models do not know the future, and neither do the Climategate scientists. But an exaggerated view of future warming provides the ideal background for anti-carbon-based fuels policies that will undermine the economic well-being of every society in the world. We must not allow that.

    Be a climate realist”.

    Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), is a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and resides in New Delhi, India.

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    • #
      mal

      spot on
      the mass manipulation and hysteria of human beings knows no limits

      41

    • #
      RickWill

      Neville wrote:

      The models do not know the future

      That is dead accurate. What you may not realise is that they do not even know the present. The linked plot is for 9 of the current vintage of CIMP6 models that are being used for the AR6 report currently being prepared. These are the latest and greatest climate models known to the CCC:
      https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNhBlQt8jdeBoZ9NhY

      The data comes straight from KNMI Climate Explorer but I have used the actual temperature prediction for each year rather than squiggly annual forecasts or anomalies. So if you are China looking at their FGOALS model you can continue to burn fossil fuels as there is a long margin before all the water boils off. If you are in the EU looking at their MIROC6 prediction then DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

      This single chart shows how silly as well as sad the whole circus actually is. They only ever focus on anomalies so no one looks at actual values. Anyone curious enough to look at the actual temperature predictions sees how trashy climate models really are. They are nothing more than a pathetic joke on humankind. Based on a fantasy; spewing poo.

      Only one of the predictions is based on physics of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Unsurprisingly it produces the steady 14C. The Chinese model is close but only in prediction. It remains a pile of stinking poo. But that is the standard for climate models.

      51

  • #
    Phillip Charles Sweeney

    Nirvana for the Greenies is wind + Solar + batteries.

    However optimum battery performance is at around 20 to 40 degrees C

    Storage capacity can fall by 50% at zero degrees C and the discharge rate also reduces. Recharging also takes longer.

    The Texas energy debacle has confirmed that the Greenies Nirvana is actually hell.

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    • #
      ando

      Not to mention the massive upscale in mining required to produce all these follies to cover every business/household (greens are opposed to mining of course). Then you have to ask how much ’emissions’ will be saved with all that mining, manufacture, transport and disposal (after short lifespan) of all these batteries, solar panels and windmills? And then you have to ask what will be the change to the temperature or climate? How much did it all cost? If the answer is net increase in ’emissions’, no measurable change to temp/climate and trillions, how on earth do we have so many politicians (mostly ex lawyers) trying to implement this nation destroying insanity?

      160

    • #
      Curious George

      “optimum battery performance is at around 20 to 40 degrees C.”
      For all batteries past, present, and future?

      00

    • #
      Tarquin Wombat-Carruthers

      Our BHP is running ads telling us that each wind turbine requires 4 tons/tonnes of copper. This metal has to be mined, refined and transported to the windmill’s production site, incorporated into the finished product, then transported to its installation site, where it can (sometimes) deliver power. Then it needs connection to the grid! Whoopee duck! Then there needs to be backup when the wind isn’t blowing, or is blowing too hard! They are also telling us about their contribution to solar farms. Have the subsidies been cut back yet, or are we still being suckered in?

      10

  • #
    Phillip Charles Sweeney

    The canaries in the coal mine.

    Neither Darwin nor Perth are connected to the East Coast Power Grid

    Too many solar panels have been installed in Darwin and Perth that produce peak power in the middle of the day when it is needed least.

    Their power grids are now close to collapse

    A trial is being conducted in Perth of charging households 55 cents per KWh for usage between 3.00pm and 9.00pm

    So much for the claim that renewables can provide cheaper electricity.

    200

    • #
      Hanrahan

      A trial is being conducted in Perth of charging households 55 cents per KWh for usage between 3.00pm and 9.00pm

      That will force the PV owners to install batteries, more money spent on another band aid fix.

      60

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    No. No it isn’t.

    Otherwise, wind power would have curbed emissions enough to avoid global warming freezing in Texas.

    Wind power ‘key to curbing emissions’

    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/wind-power-key-to-curbing-emissions

    30

  • #
  • #
    Ruairi

    On renewables, we cannot rely,
    For a constant power supply,
    So, to cook and keep warm,
    In a cold outage storm,
    Keep bottles of gas nearby.

    80

  • #
    Phillip Charles Sweeney

    Coal is better than natural gas

    Coal-fired power stations will generally have a large stockpile of coal on site while natural gas power stations will be connected to a gas pipeline grid where gas is also used for heating.

    As the temperature goes down the demand for natural gas for heating goes up, which can limit the supply for power generation. There can also be Freeze-offs at the natural gas wellheads as liquids in the natural gas can freeze before they have been separated from the natural gas.

    So without nuclear power coal is a must have for a reliable power system

    150

  • #
    PeterS

    Just as well they don’t have many electric cars otherwise there would be far more deaths. Fossil fuels saves lives, renewables kills.

    110

  • #
    RicDre

    Assigning Blame for the Blackouts in Texas

    Posted on February 18, 2021 by curryja
    By Planning Engineer

    https://judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/assigning-blame-for-the-blackouts-in-texas/

    20

    • #
      William Astley

      The sudden cold weather illustrated the weakness in the Texas system.

      If Curry’s summary is correct the problem all Texas electrical users, will need to pay more for electricity to ensure there are standby power plants which will always be available when required.

      It sounds as if Texas will need a Government department/board that will ensure there is alway sufficient capacity and will charge all Texas grid users for that overhead.

      From Curry’s summary (see RicDre’s comment).

      “Unlike all other US energy markets, Texas does not even have a capacity market.

      By design they rely solely upon the energy market. This means that entities profit only from the actual energy they sell into the system.

      They do not see any profit from having stand by capacity ready to help out in emergencies. The energy only market works well under normal conditions to keep prices down.

      While generally markets are often great things, providing needed energy during extreme conditions evidently is not their forte.

      Unlike the traditional approach where specific entities have responsibilities to meet peak levels, in Texas the responsibility is diffuse and unassigned. There is no significant long term motivation for entities to ensure extra capacity just in case it may be needed during extreme conditions. Entities that might make that gamble theoretically can profit when markets skyrocket, but such approaches require tremendous patience and the ability to weather many years of potential negative returns.”

      40

      • #
        RicDre

        William Astley: I agree with your comments about energy-only markets and think the paragraph below from the article explains why Texas went with an energy-only market:

        When capacity value is rewarded, this makes the economics of renewables much less competitive. Texas has stacked the deck to make wind and solar more competitive than they could be in a system that better recognizes the value of dependable resources which can supply capacity benefits. An energy only market helps accomplish the goal of making wind and solar more competitive. Except capacity value is a real value. Ignoring that, as Texas did, comes with real perils.

        40

  • #
    el gordo

    Climate Etc is running the story and in comments ….

    ‘ … the gas plants failed because some water lines froze because they were above ground and not heat traced, as they would be in the North. That sounds like a pretty easy fix.’

    32

    • #
      Hanrahan

      I don’t think there is much they can do about wet gas freezing at the well head.

      30

      • #
        another ian

        H

        I saw a mention of steam trucks to unfreeze well heads earlier.

        But with Texas confidently predicted to be “hotter and drier” there was less need

        # 34

        and (/s)

        30

    • #

      The multiple failures are well documented without needing to quote anonymous commenters from some blog. It is really simple: the system did not cope and wind was a minor part of that problem.

      Your commenter is pointing to the main failure – a poorly managed and regulated system. It is not built to purpose but the powers that be did not ensure that it was.

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      • #
        Frost Giant Rebellion

        Why would wind be a minor part of the problem? Intermittency makes everything more difficult. Surely you can understand this. They closed down three coal generation plants during a time when energy usage and population were growing. You have a few snappy lines for the dumb left. But you don’t have that visceral feeling of likely ground truth. Where people are running around with their hair on fire, trying to make a brittle system work.

        11

  • #

    It’s the greens fault. There I said it.

    69

    • #
      Hanrahan

      You’ve got to believe it.

      But i’ll meet you half way, the engineers could have done better with what they have.

      91

    • #
      David Maddison

      True.

      As Thomas Sowell said:

      It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

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    • #
      Frost Giant Rebellion

      You know the worst thing about the greens? They won’t meet you half way. I’m on green sites all the time. I’m trying to convince them that the great good fortune of having the hydro-carbons is that we can use the opportunity to inter all the carbon in soil-building.

      THEY DON’T CARE. They are not interested. I try and talk to them about town layout, continental hydration, bringing back the overhead tram wires, bringing back canal transport. They don’t care. They just want to destroy hydrocarbons, they want their trading schemes ….. These are not sincere people by and large. The greenies who are big on permaculture ARE serious people. But these other loony toons: They don’t care about us Gee Aye.

      22

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    29 Jan 2021: February Temperature Outlook: U.S. Could Be Split By Colder West, Milder East

    “”We’re having our first winter in a decade with sustained downstream blocking (negative NAO), which, combined with the La Niña forcing, may allow for a few chunks of colder air from western Canada to move southeastward across the major population centers of the eastern U.S.,” said Crawford.

    In other words, it may temper, to some extent, what would otherwise be a warm late winter in parts of the South and East.”

    https://weather.com/forecast/national/news/2021-01-28-february-2021-temperature-outlook-united-states

    Of course they can predict climate in a zero-emissions 2050.

    41

  • #
    another ian

    “The Root Of The Problem”

    “Ten years ago, experts said Texas would be hot and dry for the rest of the century.”

    “One month ago, greens were bragging that new power plant production was almost 100% wind and solar.”

    “Experts predicted a warm February in Texas.”

    “One week ago, greens were bragging about Texas’ dependence on wind power, and said it proved that the Green New Deal worked.”

    “A few days later, reliance on wind power caused millions of people to lose power in Texas.”

    https://realclimatescience.com/2021/02/the-root-of-the-problem/

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    David Maddison

    It us unfortunate and tragic in Texas for those killed by “renewable energy” but since Texas is not connected to the US grid the deficiencies of “renewables” have been fully revealed.

    Otherwise they would be just hidden by the easy importation of reliable power from outside Texas.

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    Wet Mountains

    I am by no means the crispiest pickle in the jar, but I have two months’ worth of food and one month worth of water for my wife and I and maybe some for a few neighbors, along with the fuel to cook, blankets and other supplies to stay warm in the winter. And it did not cost much at all. Rotate stock and you are good to go. When you depend on someone else, particularly a bureaucratic appendage of a government agency, you will always get the dirty end of the stick. And then you can tell everyone how appalled you are that someone did not take care of you. The liberal regressives have this down to a science. They promise to give you everything you need, until they don’t and then…gee they’re sorry. We can have an investigation. Which reminds me, anybody seen or heard from Durham lately?

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    David Wojick

    With luck major changes will be made following this multi-state catastrophe. A little history is interesting. The contiguous US has three separate grids — the Eastern, the Western and ERCOT with most of Texas. The Eastern had a massive blackout in 1965, the Weastern had two in a row in 1996. This was ERCOT’s turn in a way.

    In both prior cases major changes were made in grid management. Also, in the 2006 Energy Act reliability became a Federal interstate function under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

    In particular I hope the destabilizing effect of intermittent renewables gets a hard look. In ERCOT the working wind and solar generators were incredibly erratic. This may be what caused a lot of other generators to trip off mysteriously, including a big nuke.

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      Wet Mountains

      With luck? With luck the American people will start electing responsible adults to office. Thanks for all you bring to this site.

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    PeterPetrum

    An article in the Wall Street Journal has a tale on why the gas generators failed. Apparently, due to climate change concerns, gas is pumped through delivery lines by electric pumps. When power was cut off (due to turbines going down) the pumps stopped working, generators stopped working and gas supplies froze in the supply pipes. Coal generators have moths of supply in stockpiles; nuclear only needs refuelled every two years and both just keep going. Trump, apparently, warned of this!!

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      Wet Mountains

      The compressor engines that move and pressurize natural gas in a distribution pipeline during a grid down event, should be arranged to tap natural gas directly from the distribution pipeline to power the compressors so this will not, cannot happen. So, the compressor stations supplying natural gas to the power plants to produce electricity to run the compressor stations, with no other back up. Something is missing in this equation. No pipeline engineering/design group would make this obvious an error.

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        graham dunton

        Yes,information gleaned from this site, maybe the hot gas should be directed to the generator, and separation occurring at that point?

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        Wet Mountains
        I am an engineer with over 30 years experience. I am gobsmacked by the total engineering illiteracy that pervades all our energy policy these days. When I lived in the Central West I knew engineers who maintained Mt Piper and Wallerawang (when it was open) – they were always very careful, considered all the technical details and did a good job. Instead we now have imbeciles shoving engineers aside to tell everybody how a power station or the grid is run – this will not end well….

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      Hanrahan

      This is not a black swan event. This cascading failure should have been foreseen and planned for, there is nothing here.

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    Gang Green has been very successful in Texas.
    This is a success in their eyes.
    Will be very interesting to see if any of the political animals will now pay attention to what the power engineers and the Utilities have been telling them.
    The opportunities to steal from the many to enrich the connected few,has so far been too much for most Welfare State politicians.
    Using “Saving the planet” to rake in new revenues has served them well.
    The ever increasing cost unloaded onto the consumers..is blamed on the Greedy Utilities.
    The perverse incentives rewarding unreliables and discouraging thermal plant set up these conditions..
    Of course the politicians and bureaucrats who set this mess up,will all claim they didn’t do nothing.
    Global Warming is too blame..Cause there is nothing Global Warming cannot do..In the weird world of the Cult of Calamitous Climate.

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    Liz

    What has biden done to help. B—-e all. Now if Trump was in the White House (as he should be) he would have had the military out to help, he would have used every means he could to help the poor freezing Texans.
    How the heck did Texas get into the renewables in the first place?

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      Len

      Previous Woke Rino Governor. I would suspect back handers from the Wind crowd to Perry

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      • #

        and he’s responded promptly to every other request.

        Now has there ever been a president who responds according to the politics of the state they are helping I wonder?

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          Wet Mountains

          What you are saying is ‘two wrongs make a right’. “Will Johnnie did it so that makes it alright for me to do it.” That is call anarchy. What restrains responsible adults from careless action is the sure and certain knowledge that if they can do a deed, everyone can do the same. At some point as a person matures, they abandon childish ways and take up the ways of adulthood. That is the issue at hand today, our elected leaders are children in adult bodies, along with those who elected them. Both are dependent children that think they are intelligent adults. IMHO.

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        Frost Giant Rebellion

        No amount of good works could make up for the reality that he’s a criminal usurper. Whoever he is. Biden or otherwise.

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    David Maddison

    Tony Heller’s latest video on this topic. Note that I am posting the free speech non-Leftist NewTube link, not YouTube.

    The Root Of The Problem by Tony Heller

    http://newtube.app/TonyHeller/pQ5oItw

    #NewTube

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    If there’s one thing that might come out of all this, people might actually begin to ask about the difference between Nameplate and actual generated power.

    Texas Wind Nameplate is between 30,000MW and 31,000MW.

    The actual delivered power across the full year is a little higher than 83,000GWH. (So, wind generation is operating at a Capacity Factor of 31%, and for comparison, Australia is operating at a tick under 30%)

    The total power consumption for Texas is 365TWH.

    So yes, wind generation does deliver 22.7% of all generated power.

    That average for wind generation ‘drills down’ to a daily average of 9450MW from a Nameplate of 30000MW+.

    However, that average is just that, an average. Wind in Texas can vary from as low as 300MW to a high of (around) 19000MW, and here keep in mind that figure of 19000MW is not a steady maximum, but an outright maximum from one five minute point in time. NEVER at any time EVER, will wind deliver its full Nameplate, NEVER.

    So, keeping that in mind, look at the ONE figure only, the minimum, that total of 300MW. Now I don’t care what people might say about my concentration on that LOW figure only, but ask just one question about why I might do that.

    What is the plan when wind power reaches that low figure, and realistically, it will happen around a dozen or more times a year. What do you do when wind is that low.

    Also, typically the variation on ANY one day ….. and here I emphasise that ….. ANY ….. word. On any day, there is a typical variation in wind power from the daily low to the daily high of between 65 and 70%. And read those percentages again, and as is the case here in Australia right now, across the last six Months, wind power starts high at Midnight goes low across the day and then rises in the evening, the exact OPPOSITE of what power consumption does, so when consumption is at its highest for the day, wind generation is hovering around its low for the day, and that has become more prevalent these last six Months. And from what I can see from some of those ERCOT Load Curves, a similar thing is happening in Texas, with wind low when consumption is high, so again, that yearly average CF is just a guide as a way of expressing Nameplate versus actuality. Total generated power expressed back to Nameplate. (So with Texas having a Nameplate of 30000MW, then that daily average is 9300MW)

    REAL power, coal fired power CAN be made to ramp up and down each and every day, as it does, always following the Load, and that percentage between the low for the day and the high is ALWAYS lower than 30%, always.

    So, there are so many factors when it comes to wind generation, but what is ALWAYS pushed hardest is the total Nameplate for wind generation.

    Now, in Texas as here in Australia, and as I mentioned right at the top here, people may start asking that important question about that difference between Nameplate and actual delivered power.

    Naah! just kidding. That’ll never happen.

    Tony.

    (See the complexities now)

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      Hanrahan

      Tony, the 30% CF for Aussie wind is achieved only by virtue of the wind out of the Great Southern Ocean. WA, SA, Tas are the main beneficiaries of this. On the opposite end of the scale the prevailing winds in Qld are parallel to the coast and the tropics are generally calmer than the southern lats anyway.

      Our green/labor government here in Qld has not been sucked into wind folly so it must be bad.

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      Peter Fitzroy

      Thanks for coming to the party Tony (Anton)

      To sumarise, Texas had a total summer capacity of 125,117 MW through all of its power plants, and a net generation of 483,201 GWh. The corresponding electrical energy generation mix was 53.5% natural gas, 19.0% coal, 17.3% wind, 8.6% nuclear, 0.9% solar, 0.3% hydroelectric, 0.3% biomass, and 0.1% other sources. (wikipedia) – these are tables which are labeled capacity for each county, so I am assuming that this refers to Nameplate

      However wind only delivers 30% of it’s nameplate so the real figure is around 6-7% for wind,

      Is this correct?

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      Tony
      In the Australian I constantly see utterly misleading articles about batteries. They will say a “1500MW battery” or similar. This is a completely useless figure – it is definitely not the same as a 1500MW coal station – it appears to be the MW hr capacity.

      On the latest Hunter Valley battery article, supported by an NSW ex Premier I proved that the actual cost per MWhr would be in the region of $450-500 to pay back the capital alone, let alone buy power (the author almost implied that the battery would somehow generate its own power….).

      This is total fantasy land stuff and so expensive one would never ever even attempt to put such a piece of equipment – unless the hapless tax payer was hit up to subsidise it.

      But somebody allows the journalist to put out complete technical rubbish – and many of the ignorant reading it will turn to their partner and say how fantastic batteries are, and they are the way of the future.

      If this is the way of the future its going to be a very nasty and short future…we will be back in caves within a short space of time.

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    Great Aunt Janet

    I subscribe to Dave Rubin’s Locals, and just read this post by Susan there (so yes, you could say very third hand, but still, thought-provoking):

    Just received this from a friend – very interesting read. They know someone who lives in S. Antonio, Texas

    “Something is not sitting right with me with Texas and it’s not just the weather.

    I mean it really bothers me these millions of Texas families are suffering.

    I couldn’t sleep actually…

    So I woke up this morning, made coffee and got to researching.

    I started pulling Biden’s EO’s this morning and I found something buried in the Keystone Pipeline EO….. way towards the end of the doc.

    It turns out that the same day Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline, he also lifted the security on our power grid for 90 days (Trump’s EO the year prior secured our power grid by giving China no access.)

    Here below is the snippet buried in Biden’s Keystone pipeline EO.

    “c) Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System), is hereby suspended for 90 days. The Secretary of Energy and the Director of OMB shall jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued.”

    Just a small little paragraph tucked away in one of Biden’s EO’s the first day he was in office under the umbrella of “restoring science to tackle the climate crisis”.

    You can find it here:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-protecting-public-health-and-environment-and-restoring-science-to-tackle-climate-crisis/

    So I researched our energy transformers that supply our power grid.

    Turns out, we have had zero transformers in this country that were manufactured in China prior to 2009. From 2009 -2019, China has manufactured 200 of our transformers, supplying 60% of our power grid.

    Trump’s EO states this snippet, interestingly enough.

    May 1, 2020 order, President Trump stated that

    “the United States should no longer purchase transformers and other electric grid equipment manufactured in China. He signaled that it is important to end relationships that U.S. utilities have directly with Chinese businesses and multi-national companies manufacturing transformers in China, which are later plugged into the electric grid in the United States.

    Chinese power equipment can be embedded with software and hardware that can be remotely accessed, enhancing China’s ability to commit cyberattacks. Because power transformers are huge and weigh between 100 and 400 tons, it is not easy to identify embedded software or hardware. There is also a potential hardware risk since counterfeit items can be easily put into large power transformers.”

    You can read Trump’s EO here:

    https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/05/04/2020-09695/securing-the-united-states-bulk-power-system

    What prompted Trump’s EO was this prior report right here. The Department of Energy found in this report, that there were :

    6 – US power transformer manufacturers

    30- Chinese power transformer manufacturers.

    You can read the report here:
    https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdate-040914.pdf

    Most recent projects were completed in

    Houston
    Las Vegas
    New Jersey

    If you lookup “ Electric Panda”…. you will wonder why in the heck this isn’t front page news now with Texas.

    Conclusively, Biden, on his first day in office, opened up the American electrical grid to China.

    His very first day in office. 3 weeks later, 5 million are without power and struggling to keep their families warm, and many livestock are unable to survive the emergent conditions caused by my power and limited water.
    XMA Header Image
    Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis | The White House
    whitehouse.gov

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      Serp

      Thanks for that; it’s always better to know exactly how bad the situation has become than pine for a better tomorrow.

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      Len

      It has been determined that these EOs were commenced before the November Election so as to be available for Joe Biden on the 20th Jauary 2021. Apparently they had to be checked by the dodgy DOJ

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    David Maddison

    ***Off topic***

    US conservative and President Trump supporter, “Black Conservative Patriot”, BCP, has just been removed from YouTube.

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    KevJ

    Don’t worry.. Bill Gates is on the crusade for climate change.
    A lovely article from Greg Callaghan in the Sydney Morning Herald today. /sarc

    https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/we-have-no-time-to-lose-why-bill-gates-is-on-a-planetary-crusade-20201203-p56kbx.html#comments

    The opening paragraph sets the tone……

    On the momentous day of January 6, as a huge mob of rabid Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, spurred on by a rogue president set on whipping up mayhem on his way out of Washington, Bill Gates was sitting quietly at home in Seattle, glued to his television.

    The solution, he says, is to make clean energy sources such as wind and solar so cheap that every country will choose it over climate-warming fossil fuels. In 2015, Gates and a coalition of private investors set up Breakthrough Energy, which researches new technologies and enhancements that can lead to net-zero emissions. Gates is counting on a new generation of entrepreneurs who will drive economic growth through clean energy, regardless of climate-change deniers holding on for dear life in government. This is not pie-in-the-sky fantasy, he insists, and the figures back him up. In 2019, for the first time, renewable energy consumption surpassed coal consumption in the US, despite all the incentives the Trump administration introduced for the fossil fuel industry.

    I apologise, I know the article is behind a paywall..

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      Frost Giant Rebellion

      All part of the same genocidal jive.

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      Curious George

      “rabid Donald Trump supporters”
      Armed with a rabid fire extinguisher. Ban fire extinguishers!

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      TdeF

      This ‘clean energy’ is based on the idea the CO2 is dirty, pollution. Why?

      Regardless of the fact that this gas has gone up 50% in the last 120 years, it is the gas from which all life on earth is made. Trees are not made from dirt or there would be a big hole around a tree. And all life outputs CO2 in slow combustion. So why is CO2 ‘dirty’? Who said? Bill Gates?

      You may as well label water as deadly pollution which kill lots of people and should be banned. A nasty industrial byproduct and the result of combustion, it covers the earth, is the greatest greenhouse gas and causes floods, tidal waves, killer storms, tornadoes, hurricanes and can drown everyone.

      And sunshine, light pollution which dries, causes skin cancer, heat and droughts and the third component of evil phytosynthesis.

      All Dirty pollution. We deserve a clean planet. No CO2, no H2O and no sunshine. And no life on eaerth.

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        TdeF

        And to explain the problems in Texas, dirty CO2 causes heating. And heating causes Global Warming. And Global Warming causes Climate Change. And freezing is also Climate change so dirty CO2 causes freezing. Texas needs clean energy. That will fix everything. Don’t you love it when Climate Scientists talk dirty.

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          Kalm Keith

          Well said TdeF.

          What’s so amazing is that this story of CO2 danger has been used now for three decades to corral us taxpayers and destroy our future.

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    dp

    Water tanks, windmills, and troughs across Texas are also frozen meaning fenced and even some range animals are facing hydration challenges. It grieves me all the Teslas and awaiting their turn at the charger teat, but I really feel for the critters. Natural selection being absent in their lineage, they lack a proper winter outfit their arctic brethern boast.

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    David Maddison

    Gates is now America’s largest owner of farmland. (Ref:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bill-gates-is-now-the-largest-farmland-owner-in-america-11610818582)

    Plus he wants us to eat synthetic meat. (Ref: https://www.beefcentral.com/news/synthetic-meat-investor-bill-gates-calls-for-rich-countries-to-eat-only-synthetic-meat/)

    Other members of the Elites/Leftists and The UN are pushing for us to eat insects. (Ref: https://news.un.org/en/story/2013/05/439432)

    Of course, the Elites will still enjoy real meat.

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    ralf ellis

    .
    It was falsely reported that only 5 gw of wind went offline, leaving 5 gw remaining.
    That is a fiddled figure.

    Texas installed wind capacity is 30 gw, which COULD have all operated given the right conditions. So in reality 25 gw of wind was offline – which demonstrates the complete unreliability of wind. And wind suppliers have done NOTHING to build in backup storage facilities. If Texas went all renewable, it would require 6,000 gwh of backup energy – just for electricity, not including transport or heating. At present Texas has less than 10 gwh of storage facilities.

    .

    What happened is that there was a lack of storage – for both renewables and gas. Wind was offline due a lack of wind and and lots of blade icing. Gas went offline due to everyone turning on their gas heaters, so no gas was available for the power stations. As far as I can see the Texas electrical mix totals went something like this – for the 15th Feb…

    Wind …. 30 gw installed – 10 gw expected – 5 gw online
    Solar …. 2 gw installed – 0.5 gw expected – 0 gw online (day only)
    Gas ..… 35 gw installed – 35 gw expected – 15 gw online
    Coal …… 15 gw installed – 15 gw expected – 15 gw online
    Nuclear… 11 gw installed – 11 gw expected – 10 gw online
    (Note: a total of 25 gw dropped off the grid during the freeze.)

    So wind and solar COULD have alleviated this situation, if they were remotely reliable. But they are not reliable, so Texans froze.

    Note that coal and nuclear were doing fine, because they have sufficient fuel storage facilities. While gas does not have so much storage, as it is expensive. And domestic gas usage went through the roof, depleting supplies to the power stations. But if gas had any incentive to invest in storage, it could. Meanwhile wind and solar make no effort whatsoever to construct backup storage systems, because they are hugely expensive and would make them totally uneconomic.

    So wind and solar only remain sort-of economic, because they are wholly dependent upon fossil and nuclear fuels to back them up. Were they to construct sufficient backups, they would be 10x more expensive.

    This is NOT a sustainable electricity production system. And we have not even begun to look at enough renewable energy to cover transport and space-heating requirements.

    Ralph

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    Jonesy

    The good news is that there is still power available in the network. The scary thing is the power started shedding at 2:00AM local. In the life of the grid, this is THE most stable time in the cycle. What really did go wrong to cause this?

    ERCOT activated the state’s Energy Emergency Alerts. The first alert happened at 12:17 a.m. Monday. A level two alert went out 55 minutes later, asking people to conserve energy or they’d face “rotating outages.”

    Just 13 minutes later, at 1:25 a.m., ERCOT activated its third-level EEA, and Texans started to lose power in what was supposed to be rotating power losses.

    The load dropped from 63543.66kw(methinks kw) to 54334.91kw and keeps dropping for the rest of the day the lowest 44259.2kw (Maybe, someone is better than me to try and graph this data from the ERCOT site)

    I reckon they have lost more than a gas fired plant.

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    Anne Simon

    OK find the mistakes and correct them. Hopefully. But imagine what an EMP would do. Solar or military. It could happen in the dead of winter.

    Every home should be prepared. Prepper websites have excellent information on how to stay warm even if you are living in an apartment. The rest — basic water, food, candles, crank radio etc. can be stored under a bed and in the back of a closet.

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    red edwards

    Here is the “just the facts, ma’am” overview of the Texas crisis – what went down what was used, and often WHY. I have been reading the attached site for a decade+ – it is reliable, and solely focused on the Oil and gas business in all its aspects – including competition from renewables.

    https://rbnenergy.com/perfect-storm-sustained-arctic-weather-exposes-weaknesses-in-texass-power-industry

    A quote from it – “The frigid temperatures and wind-chills that overtook most of Texas earlier this week froze equipment at many gas- and coal-fired power plants (as well as some coal piles) within the ERCOT region; a 1,350-MW unit at the South Texas nuclear station in Matagorda County, TX, also tripped offline on Monday due to the frozen feedwater pump. At the worst of this week’s crisis (on Tuesday, 2/16), about 28,000 MW of generating capacity from gas, coal, and nuclear plants — or about one-third of ERCOT’s total capacity of about 83,000 MW — was unavailable to operate due to freezing issues or (as we’ll get to next) gas supply problems.”

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    feral_nerd

    Writing this from Ground Zero: Austin Texas. The snow fell on Monday and largely has not melted, except on heavily trafficked avenues. Lots of icy patches to trip you up. Went briefly above freezing in some spots yesterday, otherwise continuously in the twenties Fahrenheit since late afternoon last Saturday. Roughly half of the town without power at peak on Wednesday. Few business open. The handful of stores open had blocks-long queues and shelves stripped bare. Water pressure was a trickle yesterday, improved a bit today. The sun just came out so likely to go above freezing. Will take a few days for all the snow to melt. This appears to be the longest stretch of below-freezing temps in the record book.

    Very fortunate to have kept power and heat throughout. Trusty Subaru handled the deep snow and slick ice ridiculously well. Able to keep housebound friends and loved ones supplied with essentials.

    Obviously, the grid operator, ERCOT, was not ready for this. The icy windmills were only part of the problem. Well heads and pumps and valves all froze in the unusual cold. Obviously this can be rectified, should they wish to avoid a repeat, as these things operate in much colder places without a problem.

    I almost hate to say this, but I very much enjoyed the free 7-day trial of living in Minnesota. Sign me up.

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      Anne Simon

      Great attitude Feral. I moved from Kansas to Atlantic Canada years ago. Foot-deep snowfalls and 0 F temps are normal, and on the coldest Saturday nights out behind my country house I can hear the snowmobilers racing on the logging roads — you can cross the whole province on those trails, and there are pit stops here and there like old roadhouses, only peaceful.

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    […] Texas : day four without power and water for some, fishtanks freeze, pipes burst, “worse than Afri… […]

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    Aloha! It’s a domino effect! I am in Texas and it is not any worse than Toronto every Winter but like Hurricane Harvey long slow moving storms do the most damage. This is the same except it was a winter storm.

    As a nation we prepared more for Y2K than we did for a two week winter storm in Texas! Nobody died in Y2K!

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    PeterS

    Trusty Subaru – so true. Soon I’m going to miss mine as it’s getting old. It handles all weather conditions wonderfully.

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    John PAK

    Has COVID taken out Common Sense over in Texas?
    By necessity I live with:
    1) a month of drinking water in a high tank and I can also have a cold shower if need be,
    2) a 3.5kW generator with 50 litres of fuel to chill the fridge and freezer once a day. It is wired into the metre board and runs one circuit with an overload circuit breaker. The 12 V DC output can light the entire house.
    3) several months supply of LPG for my kitchen cooker and separate small BBQ bottles,
    4) a small solar panel and deep cycle batteries with LED strip lights,
    5) a composting toilet,
    6) 2 comprehensive First Aid kits with a litre of Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide,
    7) a month’s food, e.g. rice, flour, nuts and dried fruits, powdered milk, trace mineral water, Vitamin supplements.
    8) 2 wood fires which I can cook on,
    9) a 44 of diesel.
    10) Matches, candles, LED head torches, battery radio, rechargeable batteries and a 12 V Lithium battery that runs my mobile phone for a week.

    It took a few major wind storms and bushfires to chip me into action but now I’m moderately unaffected by power outages. They are inconvenient but life goes on almost the same.
    These Arctic excursions are going to be a regular event of the Grand Solar Minimum period of history. Adaption is easy for the individual but harder for large organisations.
    There is talk at my son’s power station about smaller islanded grid structures in the future rather than singular national grids. Part of his coal unit’s problem comes from the daily input from solar PV and wind. Politics has it rigged that a floating megawatt-hour price causes them to have to idle one of their 750MW generators quite often.
    The engineers say that Australia will see rolling power outages in the next decade. Then we’ll build some small combined cycle gas units and the talk about carbon dioxide will be relegated to history.
    Texans need to learn from this little event.

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      Dennis

      Once upon a time in developed nations we the people were provided with infrastructure and services, example energy supply, by the people elected to represent us and our nation.

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    David Maddison

    Let’s face facts. Renewables are not only economically destructive, they kill people.

    21

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    EWM

    How could their masters do this to them?
    “Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” Herbert Marcuse

    00