Skip to main content

Cold weather -- blaming green energy

 I have like many been watching the events in the US (and Northern Mexico), the funniest is via Zerohedge an interesting rightwing blog post website.  Anyway, it has been published everywhere on ERCOT's website that the Principal reason for the power failure is the freezing of the state's natural gas infrastructure (and yes some wind farm have been affected too), the net loss of generation is 30MW in the natural gas sector and 4MW in the wind sector -- there's wind but also icing conditions and the Texan windmills didn't have to install de-icing systems on their wings (because it's warm -- usually -- in Texas).  Every 10 years or so, Texas has a big freeze!  Every 10 years a report is written on the failures of the grid.

The amusing thing here is the right-wing "blogosphere" who seem intent on saying -- we should have kept the coal, we should not use renewable energy... let's be clear coal power plants only work one way 100% of rated capacity -- if you shut it down, you have to rebuild the furnace (yes its a big deal but that's a normal process in a coal-fired power station, and its all part of the process). More importantly, American coal is getting expensive to mine (they could import it from Mexico that has huge reserves) and that would be a solution of sorts, but the reality is that Natural Gas is less than 20% of the cost of coal (and we don't include green credit penalties here!!!).  So the reality is that coal is dead, will stay dead because it's not economical.

Overall, the decision from people who don't understand the first thing about energy, who have, in the past, voted down every energy price increase (as being "unamerican") are bitching because the infrastructure is inadequate, the state of America's electrical infrastructure is well known, it's been known for decades and yet very little money is being spent on America's decaying infrastructure (don't get me started about their bridges and viaducts).  In the rest of the world (but not Texas) windmills all come equipped with de-icing equipment, but Texas' right to cheap energy made it willing to cut corners.

Those commentators (the right-wing guys) will never change their minds -- they see a polar vortex and confuse it climate change -- even if you point out to them that this happens (in Texas) every decade or so, it has little to do with climate change and everything to do with shifting high altitude winds...There is no point in discussing with these "pinheads" because they don't listen, don't care! 

The point here is that 95% of the grid failure in Texas is due to the Natual Gas infrastructure that is frozen, wellheads cannot produce gas safely and so they shut them down.  Those who blame the Green movement or even Biden (who seems actually very concerned -- but has little ability to change the Texas grid).  Is probably getting the National guards ready to deploy so that shelters (where there is electricity and heat) can provide temporary refuge to those in need.

BTW in Quebec during the 1998 ice storm, friends and family opened their houses to neighbors that were without power for weeks...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more