Beating head against wall. Yeah the point went right over your head. Minnesota rates are pretty good yet and we have snow and ice. Bye.
Bet they would have towed a Jaguar out of the way also!
If your point is that power plants in Texas should be built like power plants in Minnesota, thatâs nonsense. Everything is built as appropriate for the location.
OK, power sources need to have back up sources in the event that one goes down, which is quite expected over the long run. So everyone has multiple sources of power depending on the time of day and other load circumstances. Now if you donât design in those back-up sources, or if you are prohibited from using them, that is the issue in a nutshell. Freezing rain on propellers is not uncommon. Airplanes de-ice all the time, even in Texas. Expecting that not to happen is not smart. On my 100 mile drive Sunday in the snow, I drove by several solar farms. Guess what? They were covered in snow and not operating. To be expected and planned for. Failure to plan is planning to fail, unless you are told you cannot implement your plan. That would be stupid.
Most of the failures were the gas, coal, and nuclear plants that went off line. Donât believe the claims that it was a wind/solar problem.
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I saw video of helicopters de-icing the props on the wind turbans. Maybe just for fun. How does a coal, gas, or nuclear plant go off line because of cold and snow? Begs disbelief. Suppose it will be in the report but interesting there have been resignations already.
About 60% of the lost power was from gas, coal, and nuclear plants shutting down due to lost gas supplies and frozen water and steam lines, among other causes. Look it up. The same thing happened with the refineries. Plants arenât enclosed here because of the summer heat, everything is exposed.
You can believe the facts or the video, up to you.
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Hmmm⊠It must have been one of those Iranian plots.
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That is correct, but I have to say that Bing is also correct.
Failure to make all of the power sources resistant to cold weather was the cause of the problem.
Just because something is a remote possibility doesnât mean that it canât happen/will never happen.
I prefer to look at a remote possibility meaning it will happen eventually.
I agree, and that is why I used to remind some of my counselees that failing to plan equals planning to fail. The better students didnât need that type of reminder, but the ones who were always flirting with failure were sometimes able to avert their next academic disaster with that type of reminder.
Hereâs the thing: Iâm going to get charged an extra $300-400 on my natural gas bill because Texas didnât prepare for events that the federal government told them a decade ago they should be preparing for.
Texasâ generation capabilities went down at the same time that the need for them went up and the result was a dramatic price spike that the rest of the country will have to pay for. All because Texas didnât feel like being prepared because that would cost money.
Now, I donât have a problem with Texas deciding to go-it-alone if theyâre truly going-it-alone, but it might be nice if that meant that I wasnât expected to help rescue them when they hit a financial wall.
After all, my state did do the planning and preparation for extreme weather events. And while itâs true that Texas rarely experiences significant cold snaps, itâs not true that it never occurs. Texas had a colder cold snap in 1983, for instance. And another in 1989. Having two major freeze periods within 7 years of each other should have been a wakeup call that such things could be expected in the future. Responsible people and governments prepare for what they know they can expect to happen in the future. Failing to do so is like failing to prepare firewood for the winter because, well, itâs August and itâs nice and warm right now!
If Texas wishes to maintain a philosophy that it alone is responsible for itself and is largely detached from the rest of the country (separate power grid, ignore recommendations from the federal government, etc) then Texas should be prepared to pay for the consequences of its decisions. Instead I and all of my neighbors are paying for them, which means Texas is only going-it-alone when they donât want to pay for something.
Texas saved a lot of money over the last 10 years not preparing its infrastructure for the cold, and itâs not acceptable that the money it saved is money that I and everyone else in my state are now expected to cough up. Thatâs money that should have been spent by Texas years ago, and it boggles my mind why I am expected to pay for a deliberate decision to screw up and offload the consequences onto someone else.
Thatâs not going-it-alone, thatâs a teenager insisting that mom and dad not tell him what to do because heâs running his own life while simultaneously demanding that they give him money because he doesnât have any and he wants to buy things.
Itâs certainly not a responsible way for a state to behave.
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Thatâs was summed-up excellently, Shadowfax!
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Please explain - what state are you in?
Actually you do - because the consequences are so great.
While Texas rates are lower among the lowest in the countryâŠitâs NOT because they didnât add in protection for Extreme cold. They might account for a .02% increase in electric rates.
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To put this on an automotive footing, I guess I could decide that, because I havenât had a car accident since 1970, my chance of being in an accident is so minor that I donât need to fasten my seatbelt.
However, I choose to use my seatbelt because the chance of a car accident still exists (even if it is relatively minor), simply because I donât want to expose myself to the injuries that would result from not using my seatbelt.
MN:
I was going to use exactly that example, but you beat me to it. We prepare for low-probability, high-consequence events all the time. Heck, drive through the Rockies and youâll see steep gravel ramps meant to be used by semis when they lose their brakes going down the mountain. Theyâre almost never used, but they sure are nice to have when theyâre needed. And the need for them is even less predictable than âat some point in the future, Texas will probably get cold again.â
Ah, governmentâŠ
Iâm sure the impact could have been reduced (not eliminated) by additional weather hardening. They canât enclose plants here like they do up north because of the summer weather. Iâm looking forward to actual studies of what happened, where, and what will be done about it.
Regarding natural gas prices, some of that has to do with frozen equipment, much has to do with record demands from the cold snap affecting the entire center of the country. Not just a Texas issue.
Also, the gas comes mostly from storage fields scattered across the country during events like this. There are several south of you. Itâs not from gas wells in Texas. Demand was huge across the system for all states involved. Your higher bills result from lots of things, not just some frozen Texas gas wells or pipelines.
I do want to make sure folks understand this wasnât a âwind/solar went outâ issue, much broader than that.
+1
⊠and yet, there are those who are blaming this on The Green New Deal, which hasnât happened anywhere, no less Texas.
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