The scam continues: Why wind turbines are being re-powered at 10-years

[LenZee]

Yes, the forecast for Wind was not very high to begin with, but a lot of people down here blamed it anyway, mainly fossil fuel advocates, which given the large amount of "energy" (cough petroleum) companies down here, is a pretty vocifierous community. I didn't see your other post, when these threads get to 5 more pages it can be hard to find one single post.

Thanks for the correction on the nuclear. I recalled incorrectly about what was under maintenance at the time.

"While some wind turbines were shutting down due to cold temperatures and icing and a lack of cold-weather packages, hourly wind output was accurately predicted."

Makes you wonder if they had sprung for the optional winterization for the wind turbines what they would be blaming instead.

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80071.pdf

 

[SammyChevelleTypeS3]

Britain’s green energy disaster should be an awful warning to Americans​

Britain’s green energy disaster should be an awful warning to Americans

 

[JohnnyJohnson]

I drive past this wind farm at least every year. I wondered why they were replacing the blades and heads after such a short amount of time. It didn't make sense. Now I see why.

Made in China?

 

[PandaBear]

China's renewable goal is for different reason than money alone. They don't have enough oil for the economy, and they aren't guaranteed to be on friendly term with Russia or US forever. They also had enough coal related pollution that their own citizens complain and cause healthcare cost related problems. Sure you can say they don't care about their people, but as a nation they have to for their own long term growth (doesn't have to be perfectly happy but they have to be healthy enough to be productive).

The only choices they have control over is pretty much renewable (solar, wind, and some amount of hydro), and nuclear (eventually with their own design based on the Russian ones they licensed). Battery EV will help reduce their oil import along with high speed rail to reduce reliance on airplanes.

I don't see Texas and Saudi ever go completely EV, it doesn't make sense for them.

 

[PWMDMD]

China's renewable goal is for different reason than money alone. They don't have enough oil for the economy, and they aren't guaranteed to be on friendly term with Russia or US forever. They also had enough coal related pollution that their own citizens complain and cause healthcare cost related problems. Sure you can say they don't care about their people, but as a nation they have to for their own long term growth (doesn't have to be perfectly happy but they have to be healthy enough to be productive).

The only choices they have control over is pretty much renewable (solar, wind, and some amount of hydro), and nuclear (eventually with their own design based on the Russian ones they licensed). Battery EV will help reduce their oil import along with high speed rail to reduce reliance on airplanes.

I don't see Texas and Saudi ever go completely EV, it doesn't make sense for them.

Texas has the greatest amount of electricity generated by wind by a state in the US and I believe the most number of "green projects" overall in the US. They are also second to California in electricity generated by solar.

Wind Energy by State | August 2023 | Choose Energy®

Wind energy generation varies by state. Discover the states with the most wind energy in Choose Energy's August Wind Generation Report.

www.chooseenergy.com

 

[Rmay635703]

I'm saying the overall impact of these sorts of subsidy schemes is ultimately higher rates, which California is good example of.

That was my primary complaint, as an incubator fine but without profit motive to improve the tech it’s a waste.

Your prelude is identical to nearly every example where gov money goes out without very harsh clear benchmarks.

Amazon is the best example of using (wasting) billions of dollars of government money with no strings.

Step 1 Get paid to demolish perfectly usable retail by local government to create X number of jobs

Step 2 maybe create the contractually required number of jobs to get a guarantee of no property taxes

Step 3 Automate and eliminate most of the jobs while also causing hundreds of millions of dollars of road and construction damages

Step 4 if community doesn’t like it move outside town 5 miles to repeat.


And Amazon isn’t the only one, our local areas all have half empty box shaped outdoor retail that was never fully occupied and never paid property tax
Downtown a gas station had one such thing created next door on its out lot, was half occupied 5 years never paid back and now got tore down by an investment bank that also got gov money paying for its existence despite the failure of the last and despite the building there being perfectly usuable.
government investment in commercial real estate of any kind should be illegal as should sweetheart deals .

Even the Chinese like Foxconn are notorious at getting free land and money to jiff an area or with Wisconsin an entire state.

Look into any industry and it’s the same story if there aren’t benchmarks.

 

[Rmay635703]

wellheads should have been winterized period to what ever level of cold is expected, this is poor planning.

Texas doesn’t require anything above the minimal insulation values and building codes developed for their zone in the 1940’s. They don’t even need water mains buried or insulated and haven’t banned the flood/leak prone residential drop down piping through the garage and ceilings which is illegal in most areas for many reasons even including high winds let alone frost breakage.

This is an immense oversight as even in the 1970’s when the so called climate change ice age propaganda was coming out of Texas the plants and gas at that time stayed up and running due to better insulation and code being followed then versus now.

Unless you fire the bums populating various Texas entities you can figure having a polar vortex like event every -11years or so with inevitable and completely avoidable water damage every time to housing.

It would take very little to recognize and start setting better laws on even the most basic of problems but it appears as long as the fed bails Texas out they will continue subject their citizens to stupid nonsense that isn’t even that much cheaper up front to do.

 

[Rmay635703]

China's renewable goal is for different reason than money alone. They don't have enough oil for the economy, and they aren't guaranteed to be on friendly term with Russia or US forever. I don't see Texas and Saudi ever go completely EV, it doesn't make sense for them.

Saudi may not go completely EV but they have many initiatives that are more progressive than anywhere else in the world including the worlds most efficient light bulbs.

Every gallon they use domestically is wasted profits so they are taking a different approach to using as little energy as possible outside desalination and for wasteful things they take advantage of other stupid country policies, like the us allowing them to waste water in the desert for alfalpha and wasting our fuel on the trade imbalance allowing them to ship it back virtually free of charge.

 

[OVERKILL]

Texas has the greatest amount of electricity generated by wind by a state in the US and I believe the most number of "green projects" overall in the US. They are also second to California in electricity generated by solar.

Wind Energy by State | August 2023 | Choose Energy®

Wind energy generation varies by state. Discover the states with the most wind energy in Choose Energy's August Wind Generation Report.

www.chooseenergy.com

And yet their grid is still filthy. Interestingly, California emissions intensity has been going up.

 

[Rmay635703]

Source: Solar helps Texas carry energy load as heatwave puts power grid to test | Environment | The Guardian

As a deadly, record-breaking heatwave puts Texas’ grid to the test, renewable power sources are helping the state maintain energy reliability, contrary to some of the state’s lawmakers claims that clean energy is less reliable.

Texas has for more than two weeks been blanketed by an oppressive heat dome, and federal forecasters say there is “no end in sight”. The sweltering temperatures have forced people to stay in their homes with their air conditionerscranked, causing energy demand to soarto record levels.

An atypically large number of the state’s ageing, run-down coal and gas-fired power plants have failed amid the spikes. That’s especially troubling because as the only state in the continental US with its own grid – a decision made to avoid federal regulation – Texas can access very little power from other states.

But even amid three-digit temperatures, the state has still managed to avoid rolling blackouts this month. A key reason, energy analysts say, is the state’s abundant supply of solar power, which has doubled since early 2022.
. . .
It’s a fact that clashes with the narrative pushed by some Texas lawmakers who insist on blaming renewable energy for the grid’s vulnerability to outages.

“There is a group of elected officials,” said Lewin, “that routinely trash renewables.”

 

[OVERKILL]

Source: Solar helps Texas carry energy load as heatwave puts power grid to test | Environment | The Guardian

As a deadly, record-breaking heatwave puts Texas’ grid to the test, renewable power sources are helping the state maintain energy reliability, contrary to some of the state’s lawmakers claims that clean energy is less reliable.

Texas has for more than two weeks been blanketed by an oppressive heat dome, and federal forecasters say there is “no end in sight”. The sweltering temperatures have forced people to stay in their homes with their air conditionerscranked, causing energy demand to soarto record levels.

An atypically large number of the state’s ageing, run-down coal and gas-fired power plants have failed amid the spikes. That’s especially troubling because as the only state in the continental US with its own grid – a decision made to avoid federal regulation – Texas can access very little power from other states.

But even amid three-digit temperatures, the state has still managed to avoid rolling blackouts this month. A key reason, energy analysts say, is the state’s abundant supply of solar power, which has doubled since early 2022.
. . .
It’s a fact that clashes with the narrative pushed by some Texas lawmakers who insist on blaming renewable energy for the grid’s vulnerability to outages.

“There is a group of elected officials,” said Lewin, “that routinely trash renewables.”

Yup, solar does a pretty decent job of matching daytime peaking requirements for Air Conditioning use. There is of course the problem with the morning/evening ramps, but I don't believe Texas has enough of it to make that a considerable issue at the moment.

Despite having 36.2GW of wind, gas was of course still the largest single source: