Not to mention senior citizens.
I am not sure why anyone would belittle this crises.
THIS is Texas? 6º F
- Thread starter RTexasF
- Start date
I am not sure why anyone would belittle this crises.
Except that's the _____'s job.
Do you judge that everybody who is negatively affected by the cold snap acts as if they're the victim?
Two generations ago you guys were putting asbestos in walls too.
Except the ones who froze to death.
It gets more involved that a first look at those numbers. Most heating systems are cycled off and on and usually only run about 50% of the time.
But the water heating requires heating cold incoming water, and the heat transfer from water in plastic water-hose without a fan blowing in it, is not very good. But the water-heater can run continuously. But it does take a lot of BTUs to heat up the incoming water. It is not like the water leaving the end of the hose will be put back in the system. It goes down the drain, and new incoming cold water goes into the water-heater.
This system did work for my uncle in Rochester NY in the winter for two weeks after the worst ice storm that area ever had, though they had to wear coats in the house.
That's probably because most heating systems are oversized and most people don't do a proper Manual J calculation. Aside from a furnace, you also have hot water boilers and those basically boil the cold water in the boiler into hot water and circulate it in the pipes where heat is loss through radiators until it ends up back in the boiler.
Jackson_Slugger
$50 Site Donor 2022
What are you talking about? The "source" is just ERCOT, it's a snapshot of total installed capacity for each source followed by anticipated capacity. There was no "cute meme", are you so eager to get offended that you'd intentionally misinterpret what has been presented?
The Capacity Factors are available here:
ERCOT MIS
mis.ercot.com
Along with production data and all kinds of reports.
I do find it interesting however that you'd find attempted clarification on something that is clearly misunderstood as arrogant because it pushes-back relative to whatever narrative you've already decided to personally invest in.
You only THINK they contradict what I've stated because you have either willfully made the decision to misinterpret what has been stated or are not properly comprehending the material presented.
Do you understand the difference between capacity and capacity factor? Do you understand what nameplate capacity is? If not, it's OK, most people in the media don't either.
Let's try this again.
Wind was not the major factor in failing to meet demand BECAUSE IT WAS NOT EXPECTED TO SHOW UP IN ANY SIGNIFICANT CAPACITY. That fact in no way invalidates the data I've presented, and in fact is wholly supported by the table from ERCOT, which shows that while INSTALLED CAPACITY for wind, within ERCOT, is about 28,000MW, they only expected 7,000MW to be available. That's a far cry from the amount of gas capacity that became unavailable.
Do you want to try and talk through where the figures I've presented APPEAR to diverge from what the media is stating or do you want to continue to be offended? Because nothing I've said here is offensive or "mean".
The claim that wind power is only 10% of Texas's generation CAPACITY is incorrect. If you'd like a few more sources on that, heck, we can even bring in Wikipedia:
Wind power in Texas - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Which is consistent with the ERCOT data already posted.
So, let's go back to the ERCOT table:
For the period in question, total AVAILABLE capacity, note the emphasis, was expected to be ~78,000MW. Of that 78,000MW, 7,000MW was supposed to be wind, or roughly 9%. Do you see where the 10% figure is coming from now? So of 28,000MW of wind capacity, only 25% of it was anticipated being available. Actual capacity was half that, only 10% of installed capacity showed up on average.
On the other hand, 51,000MW of gas capacity was expected to show up, making up 65% of anticipated output, but only 32,000MW (62% of capacity) actually did, roughly a 20,000MW deficit, resulting in the rolling blackouts because available capacity didn't meet demand.
Does the table make more sense now?
So while wind is 28% of total installed capacity, the grid operators rarely, if ever, count on full nameplate capacity being available. They look at weather conditions and wind patterns and fudge a figure that should be close. In the case for the 15th, that figure was 25% of installed capacity or 7,000MW, roughly 10% of anticipated capacity, which it failed to meet by 50% on average, but since that's only a 3,500MW deficit compared to the 20,000MW deficit with gas, it was not the major factor in failing to meet demand.
This does however highlight an issue I've opined about on here before, and that's the low inherent capacity VALUE of wind. As we can see, its expected contribution relative to nameplate was quite low, which shows that grid operators are not planning around wind capacity being available in any significant amount to meet periods of high demand and instead are relying on fossil sources, typically gas, instead.
I don't have time to go point-by-point as I am working a lot essentially covering for two employees that recently left. But maybe we'll get back to this tomorrow.
But I have a bit of a problem with your entire gist of your posts here. You seem to be advancing an agenda via a prosecutorial argument, not an objective truth, that involves a lot of ossifications, strawmanisms, slippery reframing, and I believe a lot of what you are trying to advance here is completely irrelevant to the events unfolding (and God willing hopefully gradually improving with warmer temps) in Texas. My guess is that you are trying to advance notions regarding nuclear power as the ultimate solution, correct me if I am wrong on this. Or as Ozzy once sang, "nuke yeah, nuke yeah!"
Interestingly I might actually agree with you on that - at least to a certain extent...
But here is one quick example:
Do you want to try and talk through where the figures I've presented APPEAR to diverge from what the media is stating or do you want to continue to be offended? Because nothing I've said here is offensive or "mean".
The claim that wind power is only 10% of Texas's generation CAPACITY is incorrect. If you'd like a few more sources on that, heck, we can even bring in Wikipedia:
Wind power in Texas - Wikipedia
Who said "10%"? The "media article" I posted clearly says plus 13%. I mean, who are you even debating here? I think you mentioned the true number was 17%, which is interestingly almost smack dab between your assertion, the actual quoted number, and what you believe to be the true number. Couple this and the fact that you refuse to apparently provide a simple link to your ERCOT image and instead post a useless link just kind of brings up all sorts of questions that perhaps you are mischaracterizing things a bit to advance an agenda.
I am not even really at all sure what your issue is with "the media" here? It's like you are implying that they are just pro-windmill or solar or something. But that isn't at all the issue here! The "media" articles you seem to be abstractly and indistinctly referencing without providing any actual samples are actually pushing back perceived lies by politicians and officials attempting to pass the buck to that 'hippie power crap'. But in a sense, you actually kind of agree with the gist of the media articles and acknowledge that the gas froze along with the turbines and a lot of people are just CYA’ing here. We use gas (albeit more directly), wind turbines, and the Niagara Power Project here (and everything works just fine in the winter) I also take issue with your clearly biased assertions regarding the wind and gas combo existing because it is the "cheapest option". Wind turbines ain't all that cheap and the two offer a redundancy and augmentation to one another. The real issue is storage and the means of the delivery infrastructure, you can have all of the exotic power sources from next gen reactors to lunar carbon harvesting, but with an aging, neglected decrepit infrastructure all that won't matter. But I really am running short here so chow for now!
Jackson_Slugger
$50 Site Donor 2022
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Judgements and allusions to nefarious motivations and agendas removed, to answer this most simply, I think this could have been if not avoided, greatly reduced in impact if more of their power was provided by sources that weren't weather dependant or didn't rely on JIT infrastructure (which collapsed) to remain operational. Yes, that could be nuclear, and that's my personal favourite, but it could be more hydro, if geography permits and we are limiting our scope to low emissions technology.
The post you replied to, where I quoted user "doitmyself" and listed actual installed capacity:
doitmyself said:
Which was incorrect.
In terms of installed capacity, wind is 28% in the ERCOT.
Well, I was speaking to doitmyself until you jumped in and attacked my correction of installed capacity versus anticipated capacity or share of annual output.
Personal judgements on character and motivation once again removed, no, I don't believe I mentioned 17%, the Wikipedia article notes that in terms of annual output wind is 17.4% of power produced in the ERCOT, but that's not installed capacity, which is what I was discussing with doitmyself and which you appear to be confused on.
The media tends to mix-up installed capacity, output and various other terms when discussing power generation, similar to what you've done when you attacked my 28% figure. Instead of trying to understand the potential disconnect you've instead chosen to attack my character and motivations. That says a lot more about you than it does about me.
I've simply indicated that they are downplaying the significance of the fact that wind capacity wasn't expected to be a significant contributor when demand spiked, which was the reason for the heavy reliance on gas.
This is all answered in the previous statement.
Yes, we do do in Ontario too, but wind isn't 28% of our installed capacity, nor is gas the largest generator of electricity so even if a supply issue like what happened in Texas were to take place it wouldn't have the same impact. That's the same reason we still have the old dual fuel (gas/oil) Lennox plant, in case gas supply price spikes or gas becomes unavailable.
That's exactly why the wind/gas pairing is pursued in a deregulated market like Texas. Wind is cheap to procure and has next to no OPEX, gas is cheap to procure and its low OPEX can be even further reduced by having its capacity displaced by gas. Fracking has really helped drive gas share up.
Infrastructure is definitely a key issue here, no disagreement from me on that, however storage, at any meaningful scale, is a topic most people haven't run the numbers on. I'll leave it at that.
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Actually no, and I'm not going to bicker. I'll stay plugged in the internet and follow any investigation that occurs. Have a great day. I heard its not freezing any more.
Did you think of putting the food outside to keep it cold and safe to eat?
Poor planning causes panic.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
It's a screencap from one of the spreadsheets you unfortunately need a login to access, so I can't link you to the direct document (hence the linking to the ERCOT site). However, perhaps these links will be sufficient:
Seasonal assessments show sufficient generation for winter and spring
News releases published by ERCOT.
www.ercot.com
www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/197386/Capacity_Changes_by_Fuel_Type_Charts_September_2020.xlsx
From that 2nd one, I've snapped the following:
If you look at "notes" you'll see that the 4th point states:
Which is where the 28,755MW figure in the table I presented the capture of came from. It's official Installed Capacity (24,976MW) + Synchronized Capacity in addition.ERCOT said:
This PDF from ERCOT:
Only uses Installed Capacity (does not include synchronized) which is why it shows wind at ~25% vs the 28% I calculated earlier, which is based on the higher Synchronized figure they use in their Operations reports. Wind has peaked at providing >60% of power for the ERCOT at one point, as noted in that pamphlet, which likely would have been during a period of low demand and high wind across the state.
You'll note this quote from the first link however:
ERCOT said:
Which highlights what I've pointed out all along: Utilities do NOT plan on there being significant wind capacity available to satisfy demand peaks.
And in the linked SARA table:
which shows that despite there being 28,755MW of installed capacity, Anticipated Capacity (average Forecasted capacity) is only 6,142MW for non-peak periods.
Does any of this help or am I wasting my time trying to explain this?
The forests need to burn due to the firefighting efforts over the past 100 years or so the forests are too thick with undergrowth and the trees get old and weak then the bugs get then.
I wouldn't even say most of the problem was that they had a decrepit system. A lot of it is reasonably new and in good working order. But they were warned about impending failure and proper starting procedures if they had a repeat of the 2011 winter. However, there was really no incentive to spend the money on winterizing the natural gas delivery infrastructure.
Some of the issues were that Texas is the #1 natural gas producing state, and they couldn't even pump gas out of wells. Pennsylvania can do that though, but they're set up for colder temperatures. I heard that even where they stored gas in Texas, some could be transported because they weren't set up for the temperatures.
There is a thing called thinning and selective cutting. Thin out the forests so they don’t get so choked with trees. Diseased trees go too. That will help with the undergrowth.
Not really. Thinned forests are often worse when a fires comes through. The main problem isn't mature trees but the underbrush. Thinning actually promotes the grown of underbrush as well as drying it out.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Natural fires would tend to burn most of this out, often leaving the big old resilient trees but taking out the underbrush. I know in some areas controlled burns are/were a thing, but I believe that's not the case in the areas being alluded to, correct?
So basically Texas bought a Harbor Freight tool kit because it was cheap in the short term? Now that things don’t work and are breaking-down, they’re learning it would have been less hassle and cheaper long-term to just buy the good tools from the start? 
