oohrah wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 9:09 am
Pawpaw wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:23 pm
Contrary to popular opinion, it wasn't the windmills or solar that failed us. It was the gross mismanagement by ERCOT that had gas-fired and other plants offline due to poor preparation or maintenance. With 25% of those plants offline, the production capacity couldn't meet demand.
Correct. Even if the wind turbines that were slated to be operational were 100% up and running, we'd still in a pickle. The one thing that could've saved us is the natural gas supply to those particular plants. They were not designed for this level of cold. Now the wind turbine critics do have a very fair point, though. Those just cannot run in the cold. 1/3 of the generation lost during the crisis was from those wind turbines, which only make up 11% of the winter power generation. So let's not discount the critics and their complaints. This is still a prime example of why wind and solar are NOT the way to go for electrical generation. My vote goes to current generation nuclear. They are meltdown proof. They eat their own waste. They are compact enough to bury underground. They generate a ton of green electricity 24/7. What's not to like? Why isn't there a bipartisan push for it?
Another thing to keep in mind are the different types of fossil-fueled powered generators. There are some low powered generators that can be turn on in a pinch. Those typically take hours to activate. The normal large generators that we rely on normally take days. Yes, days. Many of them were offline because they end up costing more money to run than they make in the wintertime.
Then there's the way many homes in Texas are warmed. My entire neighborhood - scratch that. My entire town relies on electricity only. I have a larger-than-average home that relies on two air handlers to warm and cool. I am pulling 100 amps (22KVA!!!) when both heaters are running. Many of my homes in the neighborhood are the same way. In fact, huge swaths of homes rely on electric furnaces. When things get really cold. electrical requirements skyrocket. 03lightningrocks explained it well, saying 8-10 neighborhoods need to be shut down for my single neighborhood to be powered up. Considering the logistics involved with rolling blackouts, I'm not surprised Oncor just left the majority-furnace neighborhoods on. I probably would've done the same in their situation. The north doesn't have that problem, since they still rely on gas furnaces and even pellet-fueled furnaces for heat. They don't have insane power requirements to heat their homes. Not to mention their gear is designed for winter weather. Ours aren't.
Speaking of which, I wouldn't know if I would require 0-degree rating of our power generators. It is just so rare that all 254 counties were under the cold snap warning. So rare it's never happened before. We've been cold in the past, but not to this large of a geographical scale. I would presume it would cost a lot to get the generators to operate at both 0 degree and 120 degree weather. It may not make economic sense. The pareto principle would apply to reduce cost on tax payers and the burden and time to make it work just for something that may or may not happen. I can't really fault the Texas government on this. Of course, hindsight is a b***h.
On that note, do you think new homes foregoing natural gas and relying 100% on electricity has to do with going green and not relying on fossil fuels anymore? Because well, natural gas is a fossil fuel after all.
There's also the winterization of homes. Most builders won't account for that sort of stuff. PEX plumbing is not a consideration. Freeze-proof hose bibs aren't a thing. Insulated piping? That just costs extra money. They just want to get things done on the cheap because they both want to maximize profits and to appease the cheapskate clientele. And yes, they can get away with it because it's not part of building code here. Should it be?
We can also talk about the grid, but there are upsides and downsides to having an independent grid. Yes, this storm is an example of a downside because we can't borrow from our neighbors, but there are other upsides we don't talk about when times are good.
Ultimately, I believe it's a huge swath of issues that caused this perfect storm of an event. I would say the whole electrical grid failure could have been mitigated if ERCOT actually listened to NWS when they said things will go south 2 weeks before Uri rolled in. It takes days to power up a plant, sure, but they had weeks. No excuses there. Despite that, there are still shortcomings we can still address all across the board. This makes a perfect learning experience, not a blame game.
