The short, controlled outages will begin as early as Sunday night if demand outpaces supply.
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By Krista M. Torralva and Jesus Jimenez
12:55 PM on Feb 14, 2021 CST — Updated at 6:26 PM on Feb 14, 2021 CST
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Rolling power outages could sweep across the state through Tuesday if demand outpaces supply as expected because of the bitter cold.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, emphasized Texans should reduce energy consumption as temperatures dropped. The grid could reach unprecedented winter demands, said Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of system operations.
Demand is one of the issues facing the power grid, but the cold is causing other problems, too. Electric generators are vying for natural gas as people turn to that fuel for heating. Icy conditions also knocked out almost half of the state’s wind power generation capacity as wind turbines froze across the state, Woodfin added.
“Due to this high demand and reduced resource availability … we could be in emergency operations as early as … [Sunday night] and we would expect to be in emergency operations tomorrow through at least Tuesday morning,” he said.
There are three levels of energy emergency alerts, and rotating power outages are the last resort to ensure the state power grid remains stable.
Then, ERCOT directs the entities that own transmission and distribution wires, such as Oncor, to reduce the overall demand and by how much. Those providers will initiate rotating outages, turning off power to neighborhoods for about 15 to 30 minutes at a time, Woodfin said.
ERCOT hopes to reduce the possibility of people losing power for uncertain periods by spreading the outages in small, controlled amounts.
HT/Roger C, John D, k
Should Texans begin a class action against the IPCC for the fraud they have perpetuated about Global Warming.
The Earth has a greater risk of running cold than hot. The tropical Atlantic is not making the controlled limit of 30C right now. I expect it will lifts its game during the boreal summer; but who knows?
Glaciation is a long way off but the tropical Atlantic is the canary:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000PA000506
That is where cooling will show up before the snow starts accumulating.
In 2002, co-authors Dr Sallie Baliunas, Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian, Dr Tim Patterson, Paleoclimatologist, Carleton, Ottawa and Allan MacRae wrote:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
1. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
2. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Allan MacRae published in the Calgary Herald on September 1, 2002:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/10/polar-sea-ice-changes-are-having-a-net-cooling-effect-on-the-climate/#comment-63579
3. “If [as we believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
Allan MacRae modified his global cooling prediction in 2013:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/02/study-predicts-the-sun-is-headed-for-a-dalton-like-solar-minimum-around-2050/#comment-1147149
3a. “Global cooling starts by 2020 or sooner. Bundle up.”
“Icy conditions also knocked out almost half of the state’s wind power generation capacity as wind turbines froze across the state, Woodfin added.”
Wow. Even Texans are falling for the renewable scam. I wonder how the deep south feels about rolling blackouts amid freezing temperatures; purportedly with the end goal of keeping the earth from warming.
Texas was one of the early pioneers in wind energy. Enron (surprise surprise) built wind farms all over West Texas in the mid to late 90s in order to harvest the tax credits and government subsidies. Then in 2003-2005 natural gas prices began to soar. It was believed at the time by everyone that the US was running out of natural gas and that the US was set to become a natural gas importer. EXXONMOBIL began building LNG import terminals. Gas soared to $15 per MMBTU.
At that point the Republican controlled Texas legislator was convinced to build a large and expensive transmission system to move the wind power from West Texas to Dallas and other large population centers. That system encouraged the building of more wind energy in West Texas. Texas embraced wind energy purely for economic reasons during a period in which EVERYONE believed natural gas prices would stay uneconomically elevated for all of the foreseeable future. The decisions were never based on ideology.
Fast forward to today and the US has natural gas coming out its ears. Unfortunately, the investment in wind energy was already made based on faulty assumptions about the future of natural gas pricing and availability.
Don’t forget T. Boone Pickens. He was heavily invested in wind and natural gas as well. As I recall he was covering both sides of his bases.
Boone wanted to harvest those tax credits. He approached EXXONMOBIL to be his partner. They declined because the project made no sense without the tax credits which could die with the changing of Congress.
T. Boone was on the business news centers weekly proselytizing wind power. And spouting regular rants when politicians didn’t buy into Pickens’ investments.
So retire the wind turbines at the end of their life and don’t replace them. They are a blight on the landscape and a blackout hazard. Go nuclear with small modular reactors. Reliability is far more important.
Check out the fall foliage pictures of Vermont. Near impossible anymore to get shots that do not have the wind turbines in them. Not worth the trip. Must have some impact on tourism.
Yes, sadly, there are production tax credits that make scamming profitable. A certain number of people must fall for the scam, but it is all perfectly legal.
Marc, that is somewhat correct, but Texas also stupidly enacted a renewable portfolio standard, FORCING utilities to install wind or solar. Also, other states enacted renewable portfolio requirements, and their utilities came to Texas to build out their required homage to alternate energy. Were it not for the law plus production tax credits, there would not be any of this in Texas.
I’d like confirmation that wind is really frozen now, because if so it’s like Calizuela’s mess. Yes, this is a rare Arctic surge, but a well-built grid of reliable generating capacity and peaking plants should be able to handle it. It is 10 F (-12C) here in south central Texas with about 3 inches of fresh powder and windchill of -8F (-22C).
I was just mapping out how the wind energy mess started in Texas. Once CREZ passed the Texas Legislator and the expensive transmission lines got build I’m assuming (without knowing) that the Republican controlled Legislator felt pushing for renewable portfolio standards made some sense in order to fully utilize the expensive transmission lines. It would be hard to convince me it was done for ideological reasons.
Texas obtains 20% of its power from wind generation. Its reported that half is down from iced turbine blades. Texas doesn’t have enough peaking stations to back up a 10% generation loss. Thus rolling blackouts. If you want a “well built grid of reliable generating capacity and peaking plants” you had best tell ERCOT and the Texas PUC to get busy building more peaking stations.
Half of Texas Wind Turbines Freeze, Hurting Electricity Output
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2021/02/15/half-of-texas-wind-turbines-freeze-hurting-electricity-output/
“iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas’ installed wind generation capacity,” 12,000 megawatts is 12 NPPs that could have been built providing the same, even more, CO2 Free power.
Dear Texas,
Please don’t charge your electric cars that we told you to buy! You need the electricity to heat your homes since your solar installations and wind turbines aren’t producing any. Hitch a ride with a neighbor who had more sense than you (and stuck with a dirty old fossil fuel vehicle) tomorrow.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
IPCC
P.S. This is going to happen a lot going forward. You are welcome!
One of the ideas of electric cars was that the batteries in situ could be used to store power that could be used in the house at times of power shortages.
Does anyone know of an easy plug in system that would enable power to be transferred from vehicle to house without blowing the house electrics and how much power in terms of household usage the EV could supply?
tonyb
EV power is stored as DC and must be converted to variable frequency AC for the electric machine. Relative to household requirements, an EV battery is just a bit bigger than a flashlight battery.
My only infrastructure dependent on mains power is the deep well pump. All else is fossil fuel or low power.
That is a terrific idea until you need to go someplace and your car doesn’t run. At least with a ICE you can drive to a store or the hospital or deal with whatever emergency you have, while the power is out.
No problem – just plug the car in while you’re using it to power the house and it will charge itself!
(I’ve actually heard that suggested)
Some people are awfully dumb!!
Reminds me of what a friend’s mother asked us during preparations for a water-balloon battle:
“Why do you have to put it on the end of the hose? Just open the balloon end w/your fingers & pour the water in…”
“Does anyone know of an easy plug in system that would enable power to be transferred from vehicle to house without blowing the house electrics and how much power in terms of household usage the EV could supply?”
tony, the new 2021 Ford F-150 hybrid pickup truck will do what you want. The deluxe model can power your whole house, and it is set up to do that.
I’m thinking seriously of getting one of those.
…or buy a 7.2 kW generator for $1k.
One of those generators makes a lot of noise and requires a lot of constant maintenance. Do you want to be out there changing the oil in zero degree weather?
A Ford F-150 hybrid is quiet and will run for the equivalent of thousands of miles without major maintenance.
The F-150 does cost more, but you can use it for other things, too, and if you need to buy a pickup anyway, why not one that can power your house in an emergency?
It probably comes as an option … how much is that option?
I think it comes in two options, one where it is set up so you can power a house using a transfer switch, and then the economy model has a number of outlets where you can plug in extension cords.
It’s aimed at people who work using their trucks and who also need to be able to power electric tools.
But the advertisement I saw also specifically said it can run your house if the electricity goes out.
Mine has an automatic transfer switch that trips when the generator runs and there’s no power. The generator is set on a timer that starts it after a certain time without power (don’t remember exactly how long).
It’s not connected to the HVAC although I think it could power it. Not an issue for me since the house doesn’t get cold enough that we can’t heat it with the fireplace. Had a 3-day outage last year during the worst of winter and weathered it just fine.
We actually don’t run it 24/7 when power is out – just a little while a few times daily to keep the refrigerator and freezer cold. We have these things called “books” to keep us occupied 🙂
You won’t regret having one.
EDIT:
I got the impression you were talking about a whole-house generator until I re-read the thread. Now I see you’re talking about a truck – didn’t realize that was a possibility. Only thing there I would wonder is how long it would last. As for generators, the whole-house ones like I have don’t require much maintenance at all, and is actually quite quiet. But it’s a good bit more than $1000.
It’s a feature. Given the number of traffic accidents caused by snow and ice, having electric vehicles with dead batteries is public safety benefit.
From the Weather Channel:
<blockquote>
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo tweeted that the Police Department was working 134 traffic crashes across the city’s roadways at about 10:30 p.m. Sunday. That included a 10-car pileup on Interstate 45 south of downtown that happened about 10 p.m.
</blockquote>
The article also states that Texas is losing natural gas generation as people turn up the heat in their homes, but I suspect the real issue is all those electric heat pumps running with outside temperatures well below their efficient operating range.
But with all that gas being burned and emitting CO2, the cold snap will be over soon.
/sarc
I think they dismissed the fact that many people would try and eke out the EV’s remaining miles.
Only to have cars stop running somewhere along the roads.
People who get stuck on ice spinning their wheels end up leaving their cars in the road when the batteries shut off.
Using plows to move stuck EVs off of the road may upset EV owners…
They shut down the Nuclear power plant in eastern Nebraska and replaced the power with “Contracted” wind turbine farms built in northeast Nebraska. They also converted three very clean coal plants (they met all 2015 EPA requirements) to Natural gas. Since they shut down the nuke plant all summer long we get at least two momentary outages and a hour+ outage bimonthly, Yesterday we got an email and notice on our cell phones to “Please curtail all unnecessary use of electricity and gas.” That with the temperature at -15 degrees F. My house is insulated to the 2010 Heatpump requirements and with the thermostat set at 70 it is less than 68 in many rooms. And that is while running on NG as it switches to NG below 20 degrees.
Business opportunity!
Sell bicycle generators for recharging car batteries.
Provides exercise and keeps residents warm during blackouts…
Of course, summer blackouts opens up the opportunity to sell battery powered fans for the recharging bicycles.
That is what the Occupy Wall Streeters did to power up their phones. That is about all it was good for.
A solution for no wind — turn half the pinwheels around & power them to blow on the remaining pinwheels for generation.
/sarc
Note that it isn’t only the renewables that are not performing. All the gas fired plant is sucking on the same supply. Maybe that was the reason you need coal fired plant that has a big stockpile. Either that, or nukes.
As far as gas is concerned, obviously, pipelines have to be removed to remedy that situation.
Indeed, then, without pipelines, we can just use a LNG powered fleet of tanker trucks to deliver LNG. Just like New York!
Hopefully these blackouts will be a wake-up call to stop subsidizing them by the Government. (fat chance, I know with the retarded Dumbocrats running DC).
The investors are going to keep building them as long as they get tax credits and subsidies. They are not built to harvest wind of course. Only the ignorant public, duped by years of propaganda, believe that the wind turbine farms are for electricity.
Not only are the wind turbines and solar farms useless when you need them most, they are a detriment to grid stability and to long term planning by uncertainties of availability and replacement.
Oh yes. Do you know why Elon Musk is now the world’s richest person?
The other car companies have to buy regulatory credits from Tesla because they don’t make enough electric cars. link
Once the grid becomes unreliable, rich folks will find ways to cope. Cogeneration is one option. You have a generator and the waste heat heats your house and your hot water.
One doesn’t have to be “rich” to cope. A good whole house on demand generator with transfer box running off NG is not that expensive. As soon as this lowly truck driver is physically cleared to go back to work again, we’re getting one. I’ll have less than $7,000 in the set up for our 1,600 ft abode that has and a 220 V electric water heater and submersible well pump. If things really get stupid the unit can be converted to run on propane.
No Natural Gas pipelines in our area.
That leaves propane, gasoline or diesel.
Few generators are sold with large gasoline or diesel tanks.
Hank Hill will be happy to hear it.
I forgot to mention that I am putting in some excess generating capacity because of the 4 season sun room I’ll be adding on the back of the house.
Just generating your own electricity makes sense. Cogeneration takes things a step farther. Heat for the house and hot water is basically harvested from the generator’s radiator. ie. you wouldn’t need an electric hot water heater.
The cogeneration setups I have read about are more expensive and don’t seem to make sense economically unless you need a lot of heat. They also don’t generate that much electricity. They can heat a 3000 square foot house but supply only about 1.5 kW.
The green mob will soon be attacking home generators. If not illegal in California, I expect they soon will be.
… when they came for the neighbors’ yard barbecue grill I said nothing …
… when they come for the home generators there will be no one left to speak for me.
“Hopefully these blackouts will be a wake-up call”
Somehow I doubt it. Instead it will result in a call for even more “renewables” and more subsidies.
“…as wind turbines froze…”
Really? The #%& windmills won’t take below zero Fahrenheit! These things are worse than I previously thought.
They put in a lot of huge wind turbines down in the valley down in SE Texas.
You would think that while the are operating a portion of their power could be opted to feed back into keeping their turbines heated?
It is, but it can’t keep the blades clean of ice.
I think they use natural gas burners to keep their internals heated in the cold. Apparently the problem is ice on the blades themselves–also, there may not be much wind.
“Electric generators are vying for natural gas as people turn to that fuel for heating.”
is this true? Is NG in such short supply in Texas that power plants and home owners must compete?
It isn’t so much the supply available, as the transport. Only so much gas can be pushed through pipelines,which supply all customers, not just the gas- fired electric generators.
Oklahomans are facing the same situation, with local news broadcasters asking everyone to cut back on both in home electric and gas consumption, to ease demand.
And, of course – good luck getting a pipeline built any time in the next 4 to 8 years.
I heard on news earlier today that Biden is going to help Afghanistan to build a pipeline for their nation.
C’mon Tom, can’t we ship all this natural gas by rail? Surely that won’t cost much 😉
The farmers say shipping the Keystone XL pipeline oil by rail or truck instead of using the pipeline, will cost the farmers $1 billion in extra shipping costs as they have to compete with the oil shipments, and the farmers costs are driven up.
That means higher food costs for the rest of us.
I guess ole Joe doesn’t think about things like that much. He has more important things to think about such as getting his ten percent cut of the profits from son, Hunter, and from the other relatives that are profiting from Joe’s status.
I wonder if ole Joe gets a cut of Kamala Harris’ neice’s business? She seems to be following in the footstep of Hunter and is trying to profit from her being related to Kamala.
I saw some reporters really getting interested in Kamala and her neice. I’m wondering when they will show that same level of interest in ole Joe and his son, Hunter.
The Biden administration told Kamala’s neice to “cease and desist” and stop profiting off her aunt. When will they tell Hunter and Biden’s other relatives to stop profiting off ole Joe’s name?
Kamala’s niece must not be cutting Uncle Joe in on the action. The White House has told Kamala to keep her relatives in line.
Maybe two years. The radical Democrats may act so outrageously that they lose the House and the Senate in 2022.
They’ve already started, but I’m not really hopeful about the way the elections will go.
Unfortunately, elections are now permanently rigged.
Not a problem at my place in Indiana. We have a high pressure line running underground across the street.
I expected pipiline capacity to be the issue.
Right. If there’s too much demand, pipeline pressure can fall to near nothing.
Oklahoma is not connected to the Texas grid, but is connected to a grid made up of 17 other States and all those States are requesting that customers cut back on electricity usage in order to avoid a blackout.
Its not about supply. There’s plenty of gas to go around. Its about availability on short notice during freezing conditions. Severe cold can cause wells to freeze up and interfere with transmission of gas to the population centers on short notice.
When green dreams collide with reality, the results aren’t pretty. Energy is the most important commodity in the world yet climate change ideology is doing everything it can to put its availability, and the society that depends on it, in grave danger.
There will be many such examples in the coming years and many people will die as a result, unfortunately.6
Dreams you say!
Good. I’ve interacted with enough mask zombies and ignoramuses. The ones calling others Nazis but actually act like them.
As far as I’m concerned, let them all die. Humanity is a species that needs a massive clean up… I think the Georgia guidestones are in to something.
After witnessing all that I have in these last insane decades, they all deserve the suffering they were warned about.
That includes most people on “both sides” of them pill political aisle.
By the way, haven’t been on here in years and the site is pure garbage now. Thanks for selling out to horrendous in page advertisements and is terrible commenting interface
Sure.
Everybody deserves to die, except the really enlightened people, like you.
Question MaxB. = What are the Georgia guidestones?
Advice MaxB. = Use (download) “Brave” browser, it is fast, compatible with most operating systems & you will see no advertisements.
Get an add blocker. And a better attitude.
-38C (ECM) to -42C (ICON) in Nebraska tonight, -5 on the south Texas coast? That’s some crazy cold. Dissonance on a stick.
I’ve seen -20F in Nebraska before but with no wind. 10-20 mph winds there now, that’s cold.
Snowstorm in Texas and Louisiana with very cold temperatures. This is the result of an unusually strong stratospheric attack in the US.
What I find interesting is how a similar phenomenon is taking place in Central and Eastern Europe. Over there the cold is centered to where it is moving past the western side of the Black Sea, and then into the Mediterranean Sea. … https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=44.29,41.01,1391/loc=28.126,43.268
What causes the download to occasionally reject screenshots stating that the file is over 2 mb? Then other times the next attempt will accept the screenshot? Never mind. I see that the pic was 2.11 mb.
Look at it as a wave. Now the wave will go up over the western Atlantic and come down over the eastern Atlantic.
Prediction by Climatereanalyzer for tomorrow (Tuesday) of the temperature anomaly in Celsius:
And these are anomalies to the 1979-2000 base.
World ZERO ºC anomaly for a period starting at the coldest point in the last 800+ years.
Here in mid west NSW, temps are 1 to 2 degrees below “average” for February.. Where’s summer gone ?
Look at how deep into Africa that cold wave is. That must be frigid cold for the residents in that region.
This is what was said back in December 2020 by the director of the National Climate Center (CCN), Salah Sahabi-Abed. Algeria.
His winter predictions:
“Climate models predict, unanimously, that temperatures should be on average likely normal (comparable to the statistical climate average for the period 1981-2010) to above normal conditions over almost the entire region. from North Africa, including Algeria, ”he said.
Then this, snow in the Sahara desert.
Snow is falling on Mount Sinai……
“That must be frigid cold for the residents in that region.”
It’s life-threatening cold. If you lose power in weather like this, you are in Big Trouble.
Alot of snow on the Balkan peninsula.
We just need the Gates Foundation to spread some reflective particles around the upper atmosphere, that will help. Snowpiercer anyone?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the term “atmospheric attack”
Many times human characteristics are assigned to inanimate objects by scientists.
Astronomers are bad about doing that. But they are not the only ones. It’s an easy (bad) habit to fall into. It’s bad because it is not representative of reality when one assigns human characteristics to inanimate objects.
Obviously this is stratospheric intrusion (non atmospheric), although it looks like an attack.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/
Just over a week ago this site had an article ‘Winter Storm Threatens Germany’s Power…Freezing Hell Threatens If Already Rickety Grid Collapses!’ – and what happened? The German grid didn’t collapse.
the USA though doesn’t have a robust grid like Germany: Texas probably will lose power.
(About time to stop posting this stuff about Germany?)
Typical nonsense, Griff. The rolling blackouts are a temporary inconvenience. They are controlled, and the system is stable. Were it not for your stupid renewables, Texas would be just fine, thank you. By the way, this is a very rare weather event for Texas. Single digit (F) temperatures in south Texas occur about once every 40 to 50 years, lasting just a few hours.
Texas won’t “lose power.” ERCOT has directed local grid operators to initiate rotating outages to maintain minimum operating capacity reserve. The outages are not supposed to last more than 15-45 minutes and not occur more frequently than every 2-3 hours. At our house in Dallas, we have not had any outages as of 0900. Although, I doubt our luck will hold out. I will have some “live report” posts on this later today and tomorrow,
There are three reasons why the operating reserve has been crimped so badly:
This is why coal and nuclear power are essential for grid resiliency.
I’m not clear about Griff’s complaint here. The article said that Texas power companies could institute rolling blackouts to ease demand. As of this morning, Texas power companies are instituting rolling blackouts. Where was the article incorrect?
Not the article was, griffwas / is 😀
Well, if Texas had a bunch of States surrounding it feeding it electicity, like Germany has, then Texas wouldn’t be having to be planning on having rolling blackouts.
If Germany were like Texas, and only depended on its internal ability to produce electricity, then the Germans would be in the dark right now.
We are seeing the problems that windmills and solar cause in situations like this. They just are not a viable solution to our electrical generation problems.
Let’s hope this winters experience will open the eyes of the politicians and let them see that windmills and solar cannot power the whole world, and cannot be relied on to do so.
The Powers-that-Be need to take a new approach that doesn’t include depending on undependable windmills and solar.
Fossil fuels are not reliable in cold weather: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-deep-freeze-shutters-texas-oil-refineries-disrupts-pipelines/ar-BB1dHC3L
All of the problems listed are caused by failure to anticipate cold.
The problems can be fixed, northern states that face much worse every year, have no problems with the cold.
The icing problems with windmills can’t be fixed. The problems with snow covering solar panels can be fixed, but only at great cost and reduced efficiency.
I wonder why they failed to anticipate cold weather. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with prognisticators continually droning on about how “snow will be a thing of the past” and such.
Until you understand the work which occurs behind the scenes to prevent an electrical grid collapse, keep away from the keyboard. Your electricity is needed elsewhere. And you’re just helping the grid destabilize.
You must be kidding Griff. Perhaps you should stay away from The Guardian and Google. The number of brownouts and blackouts has skyrocketed as more renewable power has been added in Germany. There has been talk of two hour rotating blackouts in the future. 50% of the Texas wind turbines are shut down due to ice and cold.
Yep… In Texas wind works fairly well, but only delivers about 40% of its capacity. Right now half our wind capacity is frozen and not working at all.
As more an more backups will shut down, and new plants aren’t in sight, it’s a question of time, massive blackouts will occure. *)
The last European on Jan. 8 couldt just be prevented.
*) Most people in respective functions are warning about the danger,
Yes thanks to the Russians… {cough} … Nord Stream 2.
And in Sweden we have been running reserve oil fired power stations full blast for the last two weeks while the State owned TV and radio is telling us to conserve power.
Sweden once had the World´s only completely non-fossil and extremely robust power system running all on hydro and uclear.
But the the greens (about 4 % of voters) got into the position where the social democrat party couldn’t gain a majority without them, and started closing down the nuclears. And now the power system is close to collapse.
The problem has been explained, but as usual, griff didn’t bother to actually read the article.
The problems in Texas can be attributed primarily to two things.
Windmills that aren’t producing any power and a shortage of natural gas because you green fascists won’t permit the building of any pipelines.
PS: Nobody predicted that the German grid was going to collapse this time. Just pointed out that the margin of safety is getting dangerously thin.
Un-Greening: Mexico gives up on renewables, revives coal industry
What, griff, do you think is the reason ?
They know more and better than you.
Wind and solar need at least back-ups, or are to be eliminated for reasons.
Green energy is no energy – period
“Green energy” is burning in my wood stove, providing me lots of energy.
Air contaminator !
I think my neighborhood in the Irving, Tx area just had a rotating outage. However, they left the empty and unused office buildings across the street operating.
Houston is found at the latitude of South Maroc, Africa. For Houston today weather.com expects a maximum (!) temperature of -4 degrees Celsius and a minimum of -9 degrees Celsius.
https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/Houston+TX?canonicalCityId=e7763a6187b4cb5fd0f85ad30c23f37f320bfe7e910e6fdbe90b501f206d265c
That’s exceptionally cold for Houston and the humidity makes it bone-chilling.
I suppose many houses along the coast are not equipped to keep the cold outside and I think there will be many houses without sufficient – if any – heating. I once traveled through the region.
People (except the poor) insulate their homes here like elsewhere, but mainly due to heat (which of course works for cold as well). The poor and elderly also tend to have insufficient heating. We will undoubtedly have some tragedies among the elderly and folks who accidentally kill themselves with CO.
You’re right. Houses are generally constructed to meet minimum codes.
When I resided in Houston, I had a pipe freeze in the attic, which in colder areas are run within the basement. Anyway, for some reason, the attic insulation was underneath the pipe. It made finding the leak easier but certainly didn’t prevent the the water inside the pipe from freezing.
Pipes are frozen all over Houston and SE TX right now causing tremendous damage. Many communities have boil water advisory’s in place as water pressure fell below the minimums.
There is a painful irony in this deep winter chill story.
The wind turbines in Texas were erected and subsidised by government because they were an insurance against global warming (apparently). There they stand frozen unable to produce anything, as the snow and frost builds around them ever higher..
They are the modern day equivalent of Shelly’s Ozymandias. Perfect and pointless statues of political ignorance of science and nature..
“[Wind mills] are the modern day equivalent of Shelly’s Ozymandias”
Good one!
On edit:
Wind mills are a 14th century solution to a 21st century non-problem.
Steve Case,
Wind mills are a 14th Century solution to a 21st Century paranoid fantasy!
There, fixed it for you!
I wonder how many decision makers understand that wind turbines are complicated machines with many moving parts in the nacelle. If any of those moving parts “freeze” then the system grinds to a halt.
https://www.mrt.com/news/state/article/Frozen-wind-turbines-hamper-Texas-power-output-15951141.php
I believe that it is more the ice loading on the blades that requires them to shut down. With that long of a moment arm, it doesn’t take much imbalance to cause them to self-destruct.
I wasn’t there, but my parents and one sister were, when a nasty storm hit our ranch in southeast New Mexico. The regular windmill at the house had the blades (a bit less than one meter long) freeze up, and then it came apart catastrophically when high winds followed. (Then the pump, and about a meter of the well pipe also froze, since they depended on flowing water to keep them from freezing.)
Yes, that makes sense. Any imbalance on those huge blades is a recipe for disaster. And I seem to recall that to prevent damage the operators must shut down the windmills when it gets too windy, regardless of other conditions.
Well the winter storm warning is not even close to fulfilling the hype here in central Indiana. We were forecast to get 6-10″ and looking out the window I would say we might have gotten 1″. First wave is nearly by with snow to end in 20 minutes and the radar isn’t showing much behind it as of yet. Temps are not as low as forecasted either. Currently at 10 deg. F.
I will say that we have had snow cover for longer than we’ve had any time in the last few years. Total on the ground now is about 4″. Have had snow cover for over a week now. Enough to shovel the deck and walks but not enough that anything needed done to the driveway.
Be careful what you wish for Rah, there is a lot of February still left to come.
I am in Kansas. It is -8 degrees here, with about 2-3 inches of snow on the ground. It has been very cold for over a week now, and maybe by Wednesday we might get up close to 20–which is below our average low. Maybe this will come your way, or slide north, but someone will get some it.
In central Arkansas they were calling for 4 to 6 inches. There’s about 5 inches on the ground and it’s still falling.
Temperatures aren’t anticipated to get back above freezing until Friday, and another storm is anticipated Wednesday night.
Several record lows have already been set and 9 days below freezing will also be a record.
We got lucky here and only had snow. The people east of us are going to get a big ice storm coming their way, which is about as bad a scenario as there is, considering how cold it is. Lots of people losing power for possibly weeks in extremely cold temperatures. Not good.
We had one to two inches of ice last Thursday night. It had only started to melt before the snow came Sunday.
“Well the winter storm warning is not even close to fulfilling the hype here in central Indiana. We were forecast to get 6-10″ and looking out the window I would say we might have gotten 1″.”
It was forecast that Oklahoma would get anywhere from 5 to 10 inches of snow, but here it ended up being about 3 inches, and the storm front has now passed us by, heading east. We’re supposed to get more snow tomorrow as another weather front moves in.
If Joe Bastardi was correct during his latest Saturday Summary NE Texas is libel to have some power outages due to icing.
This reminds me of my childhood where the Tilley lantern hung above the kitchen table ready for when the power went out.
At least I can’t see us being on party lines for telecommunications again.
The stratospheric forecast for five days does not predict major changes in the weather. Still heavy frost in the same areas of the US with a small shift eastward.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/
That cold arctic air just pushed the west-to-east jetstream down to the Gulf. That jetstream was keeping our weather fairly mild, as we are south of it, but now, it’s south of us! Ouch!
Very dangerous freezing rain in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Let me get this straight: the CAGW crowd wants to switch to Green Energy (but not nuclear) because we are some (5? 10? 12? 20?) years from a burning hell on earth, and North Texas will have a problem due to cold? I must have dreamed I took the class “Philosophy of Science” in Graduate School.
The Climate Czar, John Kerry, said the other day that we only had nine more years until disaster.
He said it with a straight face. He’s probably dumb enough to believe it.
6:11 am San Antonio, Tx 10F feels like -5F
San Antonio rolling black outs
San Antonio – looks to be about 4″ of global warming on the ground.
Are you sure it’s not white privilege?
The little renewable energy forum I follow here in UK recently had a new post.
They actually are more like Preppers tbh
It came from a forum member who had moved into a ‘New Build’ house, heated solely by a heat pump at some place in Portugal
(Nice. I fancied Portugal, wanted to retire there and grow sunflowers)
His post/query was about his heat-pump and how it had used 80kWh per day of elektrickery all throughout this January.
A continuous draw of 3.25kW (you don’t/can’t switch these fuggers off)
The ‘renewable’ crowd were not especially surprised by that figure.
I ‘did a wunderground’ and found a station in Central Portugal, just East of Lisbon and it said Average January 2021 Temp was 10.0 Celsius
Compare to my Jan average of 2.7 Celsius
OK
Boris wants all of UK houses to have these contraptions as their sole heating source.
It cannot be done all at once so,
For each million homes running a Heat Pump, UK will need 3.25GW of continuous 24/7 supply. All of it = New Demand
Maybe now add in Nutty’s demand for Electric Cars, at 400Wh per mile, 10,000 miles per year thus an extra new demand, 24/7/365 of 500MW per million cars
There are 30 million homes here in UK and on average, each/every one owns a car
Thus, Boris/Nutty have dictated an extra 24/7 demand on the UK grid of over 110GW
At present, 60GW really is its Absolute Limit, incl over 5GW imported from Europe/Ireland
See here for the next bit.
Add up all the sources – I get 95.2 Maximum UK Grid Grunt (UKGG)
Hello hello Boris, I see a problem upcoming.
No matter, Boris doesn’t see any problem, in fact sees quite the opposite when he asserts:
‘UK will be the Saudi Arabia of Wind before we know it’
Fine Boris, you’re the boss.
Look again at ‘Energy Numbers’ and see that 31GW of UKGG comes from wind, solar and pumped storage and thus Do Not Count, Can Not Count as suppliers of 24/7 grunt
On top of that, 9GW of UKGG is coming from the Interconnects and thanks to the complete debacle that is= Brexit, the folks on the other end of those connectors, Hate Our Guts and would take great delight in seeing The Entire UK, Crash & Burn
Lets try to be fair, the Portugal Commentator mentioned a 3 month (winter) home heating season so the figures need adjusting.
But, UK has a home heating season of easily twice that plus, as I stated, it is easily demonstrably much colder here.
In fact, at less than 5 Celsius, heat pumps entirely cease to do any pumping. None. Zero, Nil
To try maintain face and some sort of heat supply, they simply triple or even quadruple their electricity demand by switching on a great big fook-off immersion heater
So, with 30 million heat pumped homes, 30 million EVs, an average outdoor temp of less than 5 Celsius, static demand of 35GW as per now, UK electricity demand would reach 440GW
Did you see what Boris said in his Saudi dreamings?
Where he was ‘taking a bet‘
Are politicians supposed to or allowed to actually do that?
Have a nice meeting in Glasga wont you
Notice how the Dutch Police are taking no pleasure in smashing the will of the Netherlanders – do you see any cops in there?
Any Cops At All?
Where was UK Plod here
Two weeks in the water FFS
and Real Actual People saw it happen and tried to rescue!!!
Was this the reason
Aw, I see now, because the town is ‘poor’
OK, where did all the money go?
Here maybe. Not unexpected but words fail all the same.
Was this the reason
Oh, we know where Nottinghamshire Plod were, smashing up a baby’s 1st Birthday party. While taking completely No Pleasure in doing so I really sure
Aimed gently towards and on the same lines as Rick Will…..
Boris, this article might not immediately seem relevant but only the very dimmest of the really dim lawyers amongst us, could not see where it could go…
See Donald mentioned in there?
Epic, he really stirred things up and Holy Cow, did they need stirring.Thus and in a very lovely turn of unexpected consequence,
We Owe You Donald, we owe you Big Time
“In fact, at less than 5 Celsius, heat pumps entirely cease to do any pumping.”
Rotten technology you are using in that case. In Sweden they work as sole heat sources down to about -10 Celsius or a little colder. Below that extra electrical power is needed. Admittedly we have better insulated houses.
I don’t disagree with you except for this comment.
“On top of that, 9GW of UKGG is coming from the Interconnects”
Looking at G.B. National Grid Status site their description of the interconnects only add up to 6GW.
http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225210
AUSTIN, TX, Feb. 15, 2021 – The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) entered emergency conditions and initiated rotating outages at 1:25 a.m. today.
About 10,500 MW of customer load was shed at the highest point. This is enough power to serve approximately two million homes.
Extreme weather conditions caused many generating units – across fuel types – to trip offline and become unavailable.
There is now over 30,000 MW of generation forced off the system.
“Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness.
Rotating outages will likely last throughout the morning and could be initiated until this weather emergency ends.
ERCOT wind production is doing very well at the moment….
.
http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.html
Well, is relative.
You need to compare what they are producing now, compared to an average day this time of year.
All you have shown is that they are producing, something nobody disputed.
The unreliable fossil fuels are not doing any better: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-deep-freeze-shutters-texas-oil-refineries-disrupts-pipelines/ar-BB1dHC3L
Unlike wind and solar, the output of refineries can be and usually is stored for those times when the weather cuts down on production.
What you want so desperately to believe is a big problem, has been dealt with quite adequately for decades.
Storage doesn’t help when your natural gas lines freeze, or the oil tank trucks can’t drive on ice covered roadways.
1) The “freezing” problems that are being seen are caused by poor planning. It has nothing to do with the fuel itself. If you would for once stop and actually think, then you would realize that northern states, the ones that see much worse temperatures every single year, are able to ship fossil fuels without any of the problems that Texas is seeing.
Secondly, if the storage is on site, then shipping isn’t an issue.
But, BUT, they have all of that (un)RELIABLE wind energy!
Yeah, that’s the problem.
I’ll have some “live reporting” posts on this over the next couple of days.
David, My son south of you in the Woodlands, is not doing any better. I told him to turn on the pool heater and cover the pool with 6mil plastic. I hope you will comment on the need for low gravity oil at various Gulf refineries and where that oil is and will come from. Thanks.
I’ll have some video of my ice-breaking operation in an upcoming post.
Wasn’t the lower gravity oil supposed to be coming from Canada… via the Keystone XL pipeline? The pipeline that the asshat-in-chief just killed.
David,
I imagine the Griffter will be along any minute now with some comments to warm you up! Stay safe and don’t run around the pool today! Thanks again for the Allen Barra book recommend!
Not a good day for a swim. Unless you are a polar bear.
The ice was a couple of inches thick in the downwind corners.
I saw a news item yesterday on tv where they showed police in Tulsa around a swimming pool and they had cut a piece of ice out big enough to allow a diver to enter, and they were doing cold-water underwater training! The temperature was about 5 degrees F.
How about these polar bears?
They are saying that 2 million people have now lost power in Texas. Earthnull shows temps in the north of Texas are down to -12 F. Hope all stay safe. This would be no time to not have power.
Definitely not a time to lose power. A rolling blackout where you only lose power for about an hour would not be so bad, but a power outage that lasted much longer than that would be life threatening.
In South Africa, with the ‘load shedding’ due to “unscheduled failures” in the generating systems, the switching off and on of whole suburbs is straining the transformers and switchgear, so that sometimes when the power has been switched off – it doesn’t come on again! We’ve had day-long power outages, especially after one such failure started a fire in a main switching station. Some years ago, a whole town outside Johannesburg went powerless for a WEEK, when a switching station caught fire.
Earlier today it was reported that 1.1 – 1.5 million people in the Houston/Harris County area were without power. My ex and son both lost power last night around 2AM. Hers came back on in the last hour (it’s now a little after 4PM here) and my son’s is still off. This is a major calamity. It was reported that a Nuc plant went offline as well. I have been unable to verify if this was Comanche Peak or the STNP facility.
Eight degrees F and Six inches of snow on the ground here in Austin. Below freezing until sometime on Friday, with additional snowfall. Even though it just one data point, it is a very dramatic one. I think minds will me changed in the next few days, even in this deep Blue city.
It’s been below freezing in Dallas since Wednesday, with a brief break on Saturday afternoon. It got down to 6 F here this morning, with 4-8″ of snow… More snow expected Tuesday-Wednesday.
Get 100 Texans together in a basement. At rest, each human produces about 70 watts or about 4 btu/min (per i-net sites). So you’d have 400 btu/min or 700 watts for heat.
Then, expand the cave and stuff in 10 times that number for 7,000 watts or 4,000 btu/min
Just keep stoking the cave with Texans until you get to the heat level you desire.
A very Green, AOC solution (??/lol). Renewable even.
Vote blue, turn blue.
Something similar is happening through parts of Colorado:
https://www.9news.com/amp/article/weather/cold-weather-reduce-energy-utility-providers/73-e2b54612-8dd9-4b26-a3e1-0207d7b44364
I was working at the Tolk station outside Mule Shoe, TX back in Jan 2011 when they got a -3 F cold snap. Froze up the pipes in my Clovis apartment.
Unit 1 was down for maintenance. The plant bought probably three dozen diesel fueled portable radiant heaters from Lubbock to spread around unit 2 on critical instrumentation.
The gas supplier called its interruptible contracts which meant several of the NG plants had to shut down or curtail.
Coal plants stockpile coal for such situations.
NG plants can’t do that.
Guess they did not learn.
Must run gas plants should never be buying interruptible gas for winter months.
I would look forward to Dave Middleton weighing in on this, but there was an article from last summer about ERCOT’s reserve margin estimations being an illusion and that true margins were much smaller.
Texas reserve margins are based on projected demand under certain credible scenarios during summer, most specifically August. They are based on electric demand for A/C. But in real life the “black Swan” is always a confluence of various factors that are more difficult to foresee. For example, during a blizzard one can get a good estimate of what temperatures and snowfall will be like, and, in turn, what the load will be like from these factors. But there is a potential for power lines coming down from ice load. Wind turbines and solar panels present new potential events.
Here are a couple of questions I have.
1) I don’t know if anyone looks at ERCOT reserve margins in Texas for winter conditions. Does anyone know about this? I see only summer reserve margins.
2) Are there reserve margin calculations for natural gas demand? These would pertain to gas utilities, not ERCOT. Yet we can see there is an interaction between them.
Where I live we currently have good baseload reserve from coal, but the green disease is busy trying to undermine it. The new wind farms are, ostensibly to provide power to regions west of us, and south, which have unreasonable REPs. But one has to know that increasing supplies of non-dispatchable energy will leak into local utilities.
I tracked it pretty closely yesterday and was impressed with how they managed to stay ahead of the spiking demand without ever getting close to the 3,000 MW reserve limit. This morning, we were already in rotating outage mode, generation capacity never came close to yesterday’s capacity.
I haven’t found any detailed information on ERCOT’s website regarding natural gas capacity forecasts. The focus seems to be on wind.
Thanks, Dave.
How much power do grid-backup batteries lose in cold weather?
Frozen windmills!! That will hurt because they went all in with wind power.
There are plenty of elected Dems in TX. Ask them to recite their global warming Party lines on this.
Commie-party line:
“Let them eat ice”
No “could” about it – been going on now since early morning.
I expect the blame will fall on “climate change” as the culprit for the storm being “worse than we’ve ever seen” which will be the reason things went so far bad – just given more reason to stop the hydrocarbon generation and use more “renewables”, which will lead to the same situation, which will lead to the same response, etc…
Send in Gina McCarthy with a crack engineering team from EPA to fix it like they performed on the Animas River.
The MSM and local Texas news sources bury the loss of half of their wind turbines power.
ERCOT is claiming it’s getting plenty of power from wind turbines. I still hope in a free state like Texas the truth comes out. The ERCOT communications person recommends “people keep warm”.
Peoples lives and livelihood have been put at risk since the Texas utilities went for tax subsidized unreliable power sources when the state sits on oceans of reliable natural gas.
Heads need to roll!
Gas pipelines and nuclear plants need to be built.
My granddaughter making snow angels in San Antonio this morning!
Shocker! Who, I mean WHO could have predicted this?
Shadenfreud anyone?
A major snowstorm is approaching the Great Lakes.
We call that “a warm spell” in Northern Wisconsin where I live.