02 Mar 2021, 2:30 pm
goldfish21
Veteran
Joined: 17 Feb 2013
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 22,612
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
02 Mar 2021, 2:48 pm
Like where I live.. we get a bit of snow and the entire city shuts down - because it doesn't typically snow here. Maybe only a couple weeks a year or so, or a little bit of snow and ice for a couple months or whatever.. but not 8 months of Winter like the rest of the country gets.
_________________
No
for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.
02 Mar 2021, 2:54 pm
I remember reading about snowy weather in London when only Poles and Russians came to work and they were surprised no one expected it from them 
02 Mar 2021, 3:10 pm
02 Mar 2021, 3:34 pm
I don't know how much snow needs to fall here to stop things from working. I believe there's no fixed thickness, just a question weather (sic 
) roads are accessible.
People are expected to have winter tyres on their cars and to be able to drive in snow. We have snowplows. Salt and sand are used on roads to prevent forming slippery ice.
Sometimes some remotely placed schools close for a day or two if a particular road remains inaccessible but I never saw it in a city or town.
02 Mar 2021, 3:37 pm
02 Mar 2021, 3:42 pm
02 Mar 2021, 3:43 pm
goldfish21 wrote:
jimmy m wrote:
Texas Legislature held marathon hearings a week after the freeze. That testimony, and an increasing flow of information from operators on the ground, has produced a more complete picture of what went wrong during a storm that plunged Texas into a deep freeze colder than most of Alaska.
Federal and state tax policy have encouraged the overbuilding of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar power, resulting in cheap, subsidized power flooding the Texas grid. This inexpensive but unreliable power has acted as a powerful disincentive to build needed natural gas power plants.
In the past five years, Texas saw an increase of about 20,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity with a net loss of 4,000 megawatts of gas and coal-fired power plants. This 4,000 megawatts, had it been built or not prematurely retired, would have saved lives during the 2021 St. Valentine’s Day Storm.
We know that wind turbines were affected, with half of them freezing up. Over the course of 2019, Texas wind produced about 34% of its capacity – from hour-to-hour and season-to-season, sometimes more than 70%, sometimes close to zero. At one point during the storm, solar was producing no electricity while wind produced about 1% of its potential output. Since electricity must be produced the moment it is needed, that meant that natural gas power plants had to make up the shortfall.
The emerging data from thermal – gas, coal, and nuclear – power plants suggests that there were some cold-related failures. But, as ERCOT struggled to keep the lights on, the grid became unstable, tripping additional power plants offline to protect their massive generators from destructive interaction with a fluctuating line frequency.
As ERCOT issued the order to start load shedding – rotating blackouts – some of the darkened circuits included vital oil and gas infrastructure. This uncoordinated move starved natural gas power plants of their fuel – leading to a further loss of power and the widespread and incorrect rumor that wellhead and pipeline freeze off contributed to the disaster.
When these systems lost power, gas production dropped 75%. An Obama-era environmental rule that forced oilfield compressors to switch from natural gas to electric likely made things worse. Eventually, power was restored, and natural gas production ramped back up to meet electricity generation demand.
Source: Texas' blackouts – here's the truth about why they happened and what we have to do next
Federal and state tax policy have encouraged the overbuilding of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar power, resulting in cheap, subsidized power flooding the Texas grid. This inexpensive but unreliable power has acted as a powerful disincentive to build needed natural gas power plants.
In the past five years, Texas saw an increase of about 20,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity with a net loss of 4,000 megawatts of gas and coal-fired power plants. This 4,000 megawatts, had it been built or not prematurely retired, would have saved lives during the 2021 St. Valentine’s Day Storm.
We know that wind turbines were affected, with half of them freezing up. Over the course of 2019, Texas wind produced about 34% of its capacity – from hour-to-hour and season-to-season, sometimes more than 70%, sometimes close to zero. At one point during the storm, solar was producing no electricity while wind produced about 1% of its potential output. Since electricity must be produced the moment it is needed, that meant that natural gas power plants had to make up the shortfall.
The emerging data from thermal – gas, coal, and nuclear – power plants suggests that there were some cold-related failures. But, as ERCOT struggled to keep the lights on, the grid became unstable, tripping additional power plants offline to protect their massive generators from destructive interaction with a fluctuating line frequency.
As ERCOT issued the order to start load shedding – rotating blackouts – some of the darkened circuits included vital oil and gas infrastructure. This uncoordinated move starved natural gas power plants of their fuel – leading to a further loss of power and the widespread and incorrect rumor that wellhead and pipeline freeze off contributed to the disaster.
When these systems lost power, gas production dropped 75%. An Obama-era environmental rule that forced oilfield compressors to switch from natural gas to electric likely made things worse. Eventually, power was restored, and natural gas production ramped back up to meet electricity generation demand.
Source: Texas' blackouts – here's the truth about why they happened and what we have to do next
Why are you ignoring the windmills work just fine in cold states that require grid operators to winterize them so they don't fail?
Windmills didn't freeze up because they're windmills. They work just fine in Alaska. They froze up because Texas was too stupid to make the installers pay to ensure they couldn't freeze up. Full stop.
Because the alternative is admitting that doing away with government regulations and privatizing public services is an awful idea that doesn't work.
But I'm having fun with the lunacy parade, so let's continue! Green energy caused the power grid failure in Texas, Trump won the election, the Capitol rioters were really Antifa agitators, and the Californian wild fires were caused by Jewish space lasers. Also, a gender neutral plastic children's toy is the greatest travesty of our generation.
02 Mar 2021, 3:45 pm
auntblabby wrote:
Pepe wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
it makes me feel like an incomplete human.
Your genetic programming is strong.
does that mean a good thing, or an ungood thing?
If you like being driven by forces outside your conscious control, then it is a good thing.
02 Mar 2021, 3:47 pm
jimmy m wrote:
Texas Legislature held marathon hearings a week after the freeze. That testimony, and an increasing flow of information from operators on the ground, has produced a more complete picture of what went wrong during a storm that plunged Texas into a deep freeze colder than most of Alaska.
Federal and state tax policy have encouraged the overbuilding of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar power, resulting in cheap, subsidized power flooding the Texas grid. This inexpensive but unreliable power has acted as a powerful disincentive to build needed natural gas power plants.
In the past five years, Texas saw an increase of about 20,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity with a net loss of 4,000 megawatts of gas and coal-fired power plants. This 4,000 megawatts, had it been built or not prematurely retired, would have saved lives during the 2021 St. Valentine’s Day Storm.
We know that wind turbines were affected, with half of them freezing up. Over the course of 2019, Texas wind produced about 34% of its capacity – from hour-to-hour and season-to-season, sometimes more than 70%, sometimes close to zero. At one point during the storm, solar was producing no electricity while wind produced about 1% of its potential output. Since electricity must be produced the moment it is needed, that meant that natural gas power plants had to make up the shortfall.
The emerging data from thermal – gas, coal, and nuclear – power plants suggests that there were some cold-related failures. But, as ERCOT struggled to keep the lights on, the grid became unstable, tripping additional power plants offline to protect their massive generators from destructive interaction with a fluctuating line frequency.
As ERCOT issued the order to start load shedding – rotating blackouts – some of the darkened circuits included vital oil and gas infrastructure. This uncoordinated move starved natural gas power plants of their fuel – leading to a further loss of power and the widespread and incorrect rumor that wellhead and pipeline freeze off contributed to the disaster.
When these systems lost power, gas production dropped 75%. An Obama-era environmental rule that forced oilfield compressors to switch from natural gas to electric likely made things worse. Eventually, power was restored, and natural gas production ramped back up to meet electricity generation demand.
Source: Texas' blackouts – here's the truth about why they happened and what we have to do next
Federal and state tax policy have encouraged the overbuilding of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar power, resulting in cheap, subsidized power flooding the Texas grid. This inexpensive but unreliable power has acted as a powerful disincentive to build needed natural gas power plants.
In the past five years, Texas saw an increase of about 20,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity with a net loss of 4,000 megawatts of gas and coal-fired power plants. This 4,000 megawatts, had it been built or not prematurely retired, would have saved lives during the 2021 St. Valentine’s Day Storm.
We know that wind turbines were affected, with half of them freezing up. Over the course of 2019, Texas wind produced about 34% of its capacity – from hour-to-hour and season-to-season, sometimes more than 70%, sometimes close to zero. At one point during the storm, solar was producing no electricity while wind produced about 1% of its potential output. Since electricity must be produced the moment it is needed, that meant that natural gas power plants had to make up the shortfall.
The emerging data from thermal – gas, coal, and nuclear – power plants suggests that there were some cold-related failures. But, as ERCOT struggled to keep the lights on, the grid became unstable, tripping additional power plants offline to protect their massive generators from destructive interaction with a fluctuating line frequency.
As ERCOT issued the order to start load shedding – rotating blackouts – some of the darkened circuits included vital oil and gas infrastructure. This uncoordinated move starved natural gas power plants of their fuel – leading to a further loss of power and the widespread and incorrect rumor that wellhead and pipeline freeze off contributed to the disaster.
When these systems lost power, gas production dropped 75%. An Obama-era environmental rule that forced oilfield compressors to switch from natural gas to electric likely made things worse. Eventually, power was restored, and natural gas production ramped back up to meet electricity generation demand.
Source: Texas' blackouts – here's the truth about why they happened and what we have to do next
Will they learn from the experience?
02 Mar 2021, 3:51 pm
02 Mar 2021, 3:55 pm
kraftiekortie wrote:
Most of Central and Eastern Europe gets a decent amount of snow every winter.
It doesn't snow in Sydney.
goldfish21
Veteran
Joined: 17 Feb 2013
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 22,612
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
02 Mar 2021, 4:51 pm
XFilesGeek wrote:
goldfish21 wrote:
jimmy m wrote:
Texas Legislature held marathon hearings a week after the freeze. That testimony, and an increasing flow of information from operators on the ground, has produced a more complete picture of what went wrong during a storm that plunged Texas into a deep freeze colder than most of Alaska.
Federal and state tax policy have encouraged the overbuilding of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar power, resulting in cheap, subsidized power flooding the Texas grid. This inexpensive but unreliable power has acted as a powerful disincentive to build needed natural gas power plants.
In the past five years, Texas saw an increase of about 20,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity with a net loss of 4,000 megawatts of gas and coal-fired power plants. This 4,000 megawatts, had it been built or not prematurely retired, would have saved lives during the 2021 St. Valentine’s Day Storm.
We know that wind turbines were affected, with half of them freezing up. Over the course of 2019, Texas wind produced about 34% of its capacity – from hour-to-hour and season-to-season, sometimes more than 70%, sometimes close to zero. At one point during the storm, solar was producing no electricity while wind produced about 1% of its potential output. Since electricity must be produced the moment it is needed, that meant that natural gas power plants had to make up the shortfall.
The emerging data from thermal – gas, coal, and nuclear – power plants suggests that there were some cold-related failures. But, as ERCOT struggled to keep the lights on, the grid became unstable, tripping additional power plants offline to protect their massive generators from destructive interaction with a fluctuating line frequency.
As ERCOT issued the order to start load shedding – rotating blackouts – some of the darkened circuits included vital oil and gas infrastructure. This uncoordinated move starved natural gas power plants of their fuel – leading to a further loss of power and the widespread and incorrect rumor that wellhead and pipeline freeze off contributed to the disaster.
When these systems lost power, gas production dropped 75%. An Obama-era environmental rule that forced oilfield compressors to switch from natural gas to electric likely made things worse. Eventually, power was restored, and natural gas production ramped back up to meet electricity generation demand.
Source: Texas' blackouts – here's the truth about why they happened and what we have to do next
Federal and state tax policy have encouraged the overbuilding of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar power, resulting in cheap, subsidized power flooding the Texas grid. This inexpensive but unreliable power has acted as a powerful disincentive to build needed natural gas power plants.
In the past five years, Texas saw an increase of about 20,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity with a net loss of 4,000 megawatts of gas and coal-fired power plants. This 4,000 megawatts, had it been built or not prematurely retired, would have saved lives during the 2021 St. Valentine’s Day Storm.
We know that wind turbines were affected, with half of them freezing up. Over the course of 2019, Texas wind produced about 34% of its capacity – from hour-to-hour and season-to-season, sometimes more than 70%, sometimes close to zero. At one point during the storm, solar was producing no electricity while wind produced about 1% of its potential output. Since electricity must be produced the moment it is needed, that meant that natural gas power plants had to make up the shortfall.
The emerging data from thermal – gas, coal, and nuclear – power plants suggests that there were some cold-related failures. But, as ERCOT struggled to keep the lights on, the grid became unstable, tripping additional power plants offline to protect their massive generators from destructive interaction with a fluctuating line frequency.
As ERCOT issued the order to start load shedding – rotating blackouts – some of the darkened circuits included vital oil and gas infrastructure. This uncoordinated move starved natural gas power plants of their fuel – leading to a further loss of power and the widespread and incorrect rumor that wellhead and pipeline freeze off contributed to the disaster.
When these systems lost power, gas production dropped 75%. An Obama-era environmental rule that forced oilfield compressors to switch from natural gas to electric likely made things worse. Eventually, power was restored, and natural gas production ramped back up to meet electricity generation demand.
Source: Texas' blackouts – here's the truth about why they happened and what we have to do next
Why are you ignoring the windmills work just fine in cold states that require grid operators to winterize them so they don't fail?
Windmills didn't freeze up because they're windmills. They work just fine in Alaska. They froze up because Texas was too stupid to make the installers pay to ensure they couldn't freeze up. Full stop.
Because the alternative is admitting that doing away with government regulations and privatizing public services is an awful idea that doesn't work.
But I'm having fun with the lunacy parade, so let's continue! Green energy caused the power grid failure in Texas, Trump won the election, the Capitol rioters were really Antifa agitators, and the Californian wild fires were caused by Jewish space lasers. Also, a gender neutral plastic children's toy is the greatest travesty of our generation.
You may join me for potato chips & beer this evening.
_________________
No
for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.
02 Mar 2021, 5:50 pm
Pepe wrote:
Will they learn from the experience?
Asking how long Texas has been running this crazy experiment attempting to generate power in isolation from the rest of the USA power grid and how many winter outages there have been since it started should provide an easy answer.
02 Mar 2021, 6:33 pm
05 Mar 2021, 2:12 pm
goldfish21 wrote:
Why are you ignoring the windmills work just fine in cold states that require grid operators to winterize them so they don't fail?
Windmills didn't freeze up because they're windmills. They work just fine in Alaska. They froze up because Texas was too stupid to make the installers pay to ensure they couldn't freeze up. Full stop.
Windmills didn't freeze up because they're windmills. They work just fine in Alaska. They froze up because Texas was too stupid to make the installers pay to ensure they couldn't freeze up. Full stop.
That is an interesting stawman. But it seems more like a "red herring".
Alaska is a large state. It is 2 1/2 times the size of Texas. Alaska has many different climate zones. Alaska is a thinly populated state. Its three largest cities (Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks) combined have less population than the city of Arlington, Texas.
My brother lives in Fairbanks. Fairbanks is located in the middle of the state. It gets extremely cold in the winter and will drop down to -50 degrees F. Fairbanks is geologically located in a bowl. The pollution form automobiles and wood stoves collects in the winter producing quite a bit of smog. This is because there is almost no wind to blow the pollution away. It just sits and collects. So when you say that they operate windmills in the extreme cold of Alaska, this doesn't make logical sense because Fairbanks doesn't have wind in the winter.
The other two large cities of Anchorage and Juneau are located along the coast. They do not experience the extreme cold that Fairbanks experiences because they are next to the Pacific Ocean, a large heat sink. This is similar to the same mechanism that allows Vancouver B.C. to experiences mild winters. As you said:
goldfish21 wrote:
Like where I live.. we get a bit of snow and the entire city shuts down - because it doesn't typically snow here. Maybe only a couple weeks a year or so, or a little bit of snow and ice for a couple months or whatever.. but not 8 months of Winter like the rest of the country gets.
So when you compare Texas and Alaska. Texas is getting 20% of its electricity from wind. How much does Alaska rely on windpower? In 2019, natural gas fueled 44% of Alaska's total utility-scale electricity generation and hydroelectric power generated 27%. Petroleum liquids accounted for 15%, coal was 11%, and other renewables—mostly wind and biomass—accounted for 3% of Alaska's generation. Wind farms are located primarily along the state's southern and western coasts and on the Railbelt grid.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration: Alaska
So in general, Alaska relies on only around one tenth the wind that Texas does for its electrical generation and these windmills are located along the coast and as a result do not experience the extremes of cold temperature.
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