THIS is Texas? 6º F

JustinH said:
We are near San Antonio, have had rolling blackouts since 2am every hour or so for 15 minutes.

Had some frozen pipes but managed to keep everything dripping so now its flowing freely.

We have 5 inches of snow on the ground here and its 7 degrees.

Nobody is going anywhere.

We have a gas furnace and gas range we will be fine.

Furnace still has electric blower so the heat goes off when they cut the power but I can keep my house over 60 degrees so we are good.
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You can handle it Justin. Regards from a snowy Nebraska where the temp is up to 16F. First time in days we have been above 5F.
 
53' Stude said:
I’m gonna say something stupid: why isn’t there any interest in waste to energy plants? Whether it’s landfill gas, used motor oil, cow or animal manure etc. I’m just thinking out loud but just sayin
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We have one locally and there's a bigger one down near Darlington. They don't produce a ton of power and they still produce emissions but it definitely allows for the reduction in what gets landfilled.
 
53' Stude said:
I’m gonna say something stupid: why isn’t there any interest in waste to energy plants? Whether it’s landfill gas, used motor oil, cow or animal manure etc. I’m just thinking out loud but just sayin
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They used to be around. They all got shut down decades ago. They were known as incinerators. Basically the emissions were bad. Think of things like Mercury that's in trace amounts of various things. Now all that gets airborne. If you're going to scrub your emissions, then that costs even more money. Probably the same deal with nuclear plants, no appetite to get them permitted for operation.
 
Wolf359 said:
They used to be around. They all got shut down decades ago. They were known as incinerators. Basically the emissions were bad. Think of things like Mercury that's in trace amounts of various things. Now all that gets airborne. If you're going to scrub your emissions, then that costs even more money. Probably the same deal with nuclear plants, no appetite to get them permitted for operation.
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There's still medical incineration. I don't believe most are required to have scrubbers. I haven't heard of any that heat a boiler or are meant to create useful heat.
 
4WD said:
Yep … already seeing oblique writings in the news … megs and gigs instead of percentages of the whole to start with - and what percentage of that fraction survived the weather - wind/sun being pretty low and may be more difficult to fortify compared to instrumentation just needing heat trace and/or insulation etc …
Perhaps more waste heat recovery could be used on the GTG plants …
Bottom line is that it’s costly having to backup unreliable sources … and direct heat from gas has been awesome
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When I worked for a company that had a gas plant in the northeast, it was permitted to run for 4 days a year on oil. For several years, they never did it but did run a test once to make sure it worked. There were several oil tanks on site to store all that oil and there were oil tankers there for days afterwards filling up those tanks after the test was run. So the gas plants in texas could have been set up to run on oil. They probably just never figured they'd need it and didn't want to spend the money on it. Gas curtailments mainly happened in the winter and I guess maybe the oil was there in case there were issues in the summer. The plant made a lot more money in the summer than the winter. I think most gas plants out there are combined cycle so they already have heat recovery steam generators. Basically I believe at one point you could get more money for running a combined cycle power plant than a regular gas one if at least 5% of the steam energy was used.
 
Wolf359 said:
When I worked for a company that had a gas plant in the northeast, it was permitted to run for 4 days a year on oil. For several years, they never did it but did run a test once to make sure it worked. There were several oil tanks on site to store all that oil and there were oil tankers there for days afterwards filling up those tanks after the test was run. So the gas plants in texas could have been set up to run on oil. They probably just never figured they'd need it and didn't want to spend the money on it. Gas curtailments mainly happened in the winter and I guess maybe the oil was there in case there were issues in the summer. The plant made a lot more money in the summer than the winter. I think most gas plants out there are combined cycle so they already have heat recovery steam generators. Basically I believe at one point you could get more money for running a combined cycle power plant than a regular gas one if at least 5% of the steam energy was used.
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Yes … lots of the aero derivatives can run on natural gas or diesel … Wonder how clean you could get them on GTL based diesel … but like so many things the upfront cost of GTL is substantial on a large scale … youth stages on the smaller scale projects …
There was a test planned in this area to capture power plant CO2 and inject in wells for enhanced oil recovery …
I doubt anyone has the confidence to go forward with that right now …
Lots of ideas out there …
 
4WD said:
Lots of ideas out there …
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1613606137599.webp
 
OilReport99 said:
You're being a Lazy Dog
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Yes, My nick name is Lazy Dog but here is the short version of the article. Texas power grid is not part of the country's grid because it did wanted to winterize their grid which had to be done due to federal regulations. They felt they could do a better job when compared to the rest of the country
so pretty much they are on their own.
 
LazyDog said:
Yes, My nick name is Lazy Dog but here is the short version of the article. Texas power grid is not part of the country's grid because it did wanted to winterize their grid which had to be done due to federal regulations. They felt they could do a better job when compared to the rest of the country
so pretty much they are on their own.
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God Bless Texas!
 
LazyDog said:
Yes, My nick name is Lazy Dog but here is the short version of the article. Texas power grid is not part of the country's grid because it did wanted to winterize their grid which had to be done due to federal regulations. They felt they could do a better job when compared to the rest of the country
so pretty much they are on their own.
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Some things just won’t ever change I guess. Was in Texas actually at Ingleside TX. Nice folks, area and good times. I’ll pray something “changes” soon. Having no backups kinda pisses me off for sure. OVERKILL has made valid points; WHAT IS STOPPING Texas from adding few nuclear plants? Seriously
 
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