The Great Texas Blackout of ‘21

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16 Feb 2021, 9:34 am

https://abc13.com/weather/officials-outraged-as-residents-pass-24-hours-without-power/10343928/

Abbott is completely to blame for this.

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Fnord
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16 Feb 2021, 9:38 am

Tim_Tex wrote:

... Abbott is completely to blame for this.

Yes, and that diabolical weather-control machine of his must be destroyed!

:wink:

Bravo5150
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16 Feb 2021, 9:56 am

Tim, do you at least have like a solar phone charger?

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16 Feb 2021, 9:57 am

Bravo5150 wrote:

Tim, do you at least have like a solar phone charger?

Or maybe a charger that plugs into a power-port in your personal vehicle?

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16 Feb 2021, 10:04 am

Fnord wrote:

Bravo5150 wrote:

Tim, do you at least have like a solar phone charger?

Or maybe a charger that plugs into a power-port in your personal vehicle?

That would work too. I just thought solar power, because if the power is out, gas for vehicles might be scarce since the pumps run on electricity. So, solar might be a better option in the long run.

kitesandtrainsandcats
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16 Feb 2021, 10:32 am

Also a factor,

Quote:

"Energy systems in Texas and Oklahoma, which are major energy exporters to other U.S. states, are built to withstand extreme heat – not extreme cold. The result is a disruption to the gas supply at exactly the time the U.S. energy system is demanding those molecules.

“Given how far south it’s gone into Texas, this is where you have a lot of gas production that isn’t properly winterized,” said Jeremy McCrea, an analyst with Raymond James covering the natural gas industry. "

https://financialpost.com/commodities/i ... rgy-sector

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16 Feb 2021, 11:35 am

This was a Blue Norther gone bonkers!

NaturalEntity
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16 Feb 2021, 2:00 pm

Wait, Texas had a blackout?

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kraftiekortie
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16 Feb 2021, 2:10 pm

Many Texans lost power because of the weather. It wasn't an individual "blackout," per se. It was a combination of many things, really...almost all caused by the extremely cold temperatures (for Texas), and ice.

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16 Feb 2021, 2:29 pm

Governor says Texas power grid 'not compromised'

Quote:

In a pair of tweets posted Monday afternoon, Texas Governor Greg Abbott weighed in on the widespread power outages across the state during an unprecedented winter storm.

Gov. Abbott says he has gathered information from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and other public utilities across Texas and that "the Texas power grid has not been compromised."

Entergy and other utilities began planned rolling outages to help ensure the system wasn't overwhelmed due to the massive winter storm and demand for electricity.

CBS Austin's Walt Maciborski spoke on the phone with Gov. Abbott and Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd:

Gov. Abbott on state power outages

Abbott says some of the companies that provide electricity have their generators frozen, including coal and natural gas providers.

Just after 3:45 p.m., Abbott tweeted that 500,000 residential customers are now coming back online.

ERCOT also said that around 2 million Texans are being affected by the outages.

Texas power grid operator declares highest state of emergency amid outages

Quote:

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has declared its highest state of emergency in the aftermath of an unusual winter storm that has battered the Lone Star State, bringing record low temperatures while also leaving millions without power.

The power grid operator had previously requested that Texans reduce their electric usage as much as possible through Tuesday.

"We are experiencing record-breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas," said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness.

He added, "At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating usage as much as possible through Tuesday

In a Tuesday interview with WFAA, Magness noted that 70 to 80 of the state's 680 power plants are still offline. As of Tuesday morning, at least 4 million Texans were without power.

Texas residents are criticizing state officials' lack of emergency preparedness as they continue to brave unusually cold temperatures.

These US cities had the coldest morning in decades -- with some reaching all-time record lows

Quote:

The coldest temperatures in decades hit a large portion of the Central and Southern Plains on Tuesday morning, with lows dropping below zero all the way down to Texas.

Hundreds of record low temperatures have been set with the current cold blast, and many locations Tuesday morning saw their coldest temperatures seen in decades, if ever.
Here are some of the cities setting records:

Oklahoma City: -14 degrees Fahrenheit, coldest since 1899, second-coldest temperature ever. (Oklahoma didn't even become a state until 1907.)
-- Dallas: -2 degrees Fahrenheit, coldest since 1930, second-coldest temperature ever.
-- Houston: 13 degrees Fahrenheit, coldest since 1989.
-- San Antonio, Texas: 12 degrees Fahrenheit, coldest since 1989.
-- Little Rock, Arkansas: -1 degrees Fahrenheit, coldest since 1989.
-- Fayetteville, Arkansas: -20 degrees Fahrenheit, all-time coldest temperature.
-- Hastings, Nebraska: -30 degrees Fahrenheit, all-time coldest temperature.

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16 Feb 2021, 2:35 pm

I have friends in the Austin area, Taylor to be exact, that have been without power for two days. Crazy!

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16 Feb 2021, 2:47 pm

Texas is one of the states that relies heavily on renewable energy. In a storm like this one, snow covers the solar panels and they go offline. The wind turbines freeze up just like the jet turbines on aircraft and they go offline until they are de-iced.

Over Two Million Texans Lose Power During Winter Storm, Rolling Blackouts Continue

Over two million homes and businesses in Texas are without power Monday morning as winter storm Uri sweeps across the central United States.
“The agency that oversees Texas’ electric grid declared an ‘energy emergency alert three’ early Monday after the grid experienced a systemwide failure,” the Weather Channel reported.

The alert turned into rotating outages that are likely to continue through Tuesday morning, according to grid managers.

About 2.5 million people were without power as of 9:00 a.m., the outlet tweeted:

“Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” explained Bill Magness, who is president and CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

The intense cold weather has seen power demand rise to levels normally seen in mid summer, but the real problem has been the failure of wind farms:

* Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.

* Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.

* As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas' installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don't typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year.

Wind power now supplies about a quarter of Texas’s electricity, more than double the figure five years ago.

Fortunately Texas can still get most of its electricity from reliable sources.

However, six coal fired power stations, totaling 3.9 GW, have closed in the last three years. Two more are scheduled to shut in the next few years. With these still on line, these blackouts could easily have been averted.

So with the trend towards Net Zero and the Green New Deal, we can expect more of the same and just sit back and watch as our electrical grid becomes an unreliable beast.

Texas Outages Put Reliability Of Renewable Energy In The Spotlight

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jimmy m
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16 Feb 2021, 3:05 pm

Nearly 4 million homes and businesses were without power early Tuesday in Texas, where temperatures dipped into the single digits overnight.

More than 1 million of those outages were reported in the Houston area, according to Poweroutage.us, a website that tracks disruptions. Elsewhere, more than 300,000 customers are without power in each of the Dallas, San Antonio and Austin areas.

Source: Winter weather death roll rises across US as tornado slams North Carolina

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16 Feb 2021, 3:10 pm

jimmy m wrote:

Some European countries had the same issue in that they suddenly had to re-open coal power stations because they found that they were without power after trying to go all "Green".

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16 Feb 2021, 3:51 pm

Power and communications are down in one of our Texas facilities. I have to be on-duty by 2:00a to compensate.

Odd thing ... the GOP in Texas is blaming "Green Energy" when it is the transmission lines that have failed. Green Energy comprises only about 13% of Texas' power generation systems. The rest are based on fossil fuels.

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16 Feb 2021, 5:46 pm

Most of that power grid in Texas is fueled by fossil fuels, not by green energy. Since Biden is not a narcissist, he's willing to send federal aid to Texas and other states that didn't vote for him.

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