...oh...OK...so there were emission issues that had to be observed? and so ERCOT could/would not allow energy providers to power up?...people died and suffered. Good job DOE/ERCOT.

"ERCOT has been alerted that numerous generation units will be unable to operate at full capacity without violating federal air quality or other permit limitations."

...had enough yet of our so-called "experts and non-elected officials?".........I guess we deserve it seeing as how we ignore it.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2021/02/f82/DOE%20202%28c%29%20Emergency%20Order%20-%20ERCOT%2002.14.2021.pdf

What's new on the Disney Channel?

...read the directive, then we can talk about Disney.

The DOE directive actually allows ERCOT to "power up."

"Given the emergency nature of the expected load stress, the responsibility of ERCOT to ensure maximum reliability on its system, and the ability of ERCOT to identify and dispatch generation necessary to meet the additional load, I have determined that additional dispatch of the Specified Resources is necessary to best meet the emergency and serve the public interest for purposes of FPA section 202(c)."

It even allows emissions to exceed otherwise permissible limits due to the emergency nature of the situation, but ERCOT is supposed to attempt to minimize them as much as possible.

"FPA section 202(c)(2) requires the Secretary of Energy to ensure that any 202(c) order that may result in a conflict with a requirement of any environmental law be limited to the 'hours necessary to meet the emergency and serve the public interest, and, to the maximum extent practicable,' be consistent with any applicable environmental law and minimize any adverse environmental impacts. ERCOT anticipates that this Order may result in exceedance of emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon monoxide emissions, as well as wastewater release limits. To minimize adverse environmental impacts, this Order limits operation of dispatched units to the times and within the parameters determined by ERCOT for reliability purposes."

For emphasis, "the times and parameters determined by ERCOT." The DOE isn't at fault here.

...yes. This is right. Here is the authorization memo.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2021/02/f82/ERCOT%20202%28c%29%20Emergency%20Order%20Request%20-%2002.14.2021.pdf

I guess that means "oops."

This is a great start. But when are you going to explain how ERCOT's misfeasance was caused by solar storms?

Tell us why Texas is not part of the interstate power grid.

Because the Department of Energy won't permit it.

Or solar storms.

Because Texas passed a law in 1996 to be independent of the National Grid.

Everything is bigger in Texas. Everyone knows that.

...this not so much a definitive, end-all conversation about the actual directive and it's verbiage, but more of the false willingness to rely on others to provide us with our basic services in a time of emergency. Dismiss if you will, but this does show how dependent we are on our aged systems and our unelected officials. I mean, have they EVER been held accountable? The Flint, Michigan debacle is just NOW starting to bubble up. And, for those affected, hopefully, they now realize it will be more important than ever to prepare for future events...sad, but true.

Right. Everyone should join you in your bunker.

I presume you and your fellow moles have established your independence from the rest of us by building and paving your own roads, drilling your own oil wells and building your own refineries, inventing and manufacturing computers and cell phones and vehicles, restricting your vegetable supplies to corn and soybeans, giving up citrus fruits, and formulating and administering your own COVID vaccine.

Or are you thinking of some other sort of independence from the rest of the country and its economy?

analysis from an economics/political site ...

----


Texas, like so many other areas, has put up windmills and solar "farms" for the last 20 years, shutting down older coal-fired plants and not modernizing and improving their "fossil fuel" energy production infrastructure. At the same time on a national basis the natural gas pipeline operators, in service to the "green" lobby, have replaced fuel-fired pumps (that run on the gas in the pipe, therefore are failsafe so long as the pipe has something in it and is intact) with electrically powered booster pumps because, of course, you can get the power for them from "green" sources instead of all that evil carbon.

I remind you that natural gas does not freeze at other than cryogenic temperatures and as such the problem is not the gas freezing and as for machinery you have plenty of heat source in the pipe.

By putting up with and responding to the green lobby these companies took an ultra-reliable and essential energy delivery system that other than by physical destruction would nearly-always continue to operate and turned it into a fragile system dependent on multiple outside elements where if any of those elements failed so does the natural gas delivery.

Winter in the south is when nuclear plants are typically taken down for maintenance as well -- since it's the middle of summer when the A/C is blasting away. But those NatGas peaking plants and coal-fired base load infrastructure are not green enough, so let's turn that stuff off and rely on the windmills and solar panels -- and hope it doesn't get destabilized.

Of course the green lobby always and forever have prognosticated that it will forever get warmer, that wind levels will rise forever and thus both solar panels and wind will forevermore continue to yield more and more useful energy.

All of that got debunked this week. Texas is seeing wind chills in negative numbers along with single digit or below temperatures. That plus moisture equals ice, and windmill blades are wings and not only suffer the same problem an airplane wing does when it gets loaded in addition they go out of balance and thus the windmill has to be shut down lest it destroy itself. At the same time ice and snow cover solar panels and reduce their output to an effective zero.

The problem with the power grid is that in the event you demand more of it than can be delivered it becomes unstable due to a number of factors including, in the case of A/C transmission, phase sag. If expected resources are not available -- such as when your wind turbines ice up -- then you have no alternative but to shed load (turn off people's power intentionally) because if you don't you will get an uncontrolled collapse and possible severe equipment damage.

Most nuclear plants cannot quickly load-follow -- if you need more power quickly you better have something else, and if a bunch of load drops off rapidly you better have some other generation source you can shut down. Go outside the operating parameters and a nuke plant will "trip" and if they do most of them cannot immediately restart due to a phenomena called "xenon poisoning"; if the fuel has some age on it you must wait until that bleeds off because the core does not have enough reactivity to go critical until it does, which can take a couple of days or even more.

That's exactly what happened.

Is there a reason you didn't produce your source? I think there is.

...obviously, you have never been involved in any thing beyond worthless academic studies. Try going outside n the weather for a change, I have built out a huge solar array and coupled it with a massive battery bank + a wind turbine farm. Totally worthless. If you think you can debate me on the merits, good luck. Better stay in your well-heeled community. Next time you feel the need to venture out, call me. I will walk you through the FACTS of how solar and wind to provide current....got'a love it!

You're looking foolish, CC2. Isn't this when you usually resort to sexist suggestions about wanting to "hook up" with me?

Because that's how strong men behave when they make mistakes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2021 12:33AM by Lot's Wife.

..."Free your mind, and your ass will follow."


...well, yeah,....I WILL admit that this is a stretch for Our Lady of Conformity and the RFM Groupthink model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoGoKe8z7Ok

Independence is a strength, creativity is good, and non-conformity can be useful too.

The problem is the object of your non-conformity. You, Archie, are non-conforming to reality. You say solar storms cause global warming and cite in purported support an article that says the phenomenon is anthropogenic; you tell us about your independence from the rest of the country and bolster that assertion with an article carrying a photo of a semi on an interstate highway, indicating your reliance on the national economy and government infrastructure; you tell us that the Texas disaster was caused by federal regulation but cite as evidence documents that say the exact opposite. Finally you declare that you tried unsuccessfully to construct a solar- and wind- farm to generate electricity and claim that failure is proof that you are an expert on the subject.

You are indeed a non-conformist, Archie, sitting there in your end-times Bunker, but not the sort who finds new ways to deal with complex problems. No, you are a person who has manifest difficulty conforming to reality.

There are lots of non-conformists like that. Tin foil manufacturers love them.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2021 12:20AM by Lot's Wife.

Building your own wind farm doesn’t seem too foolish. Joining the church, maybe that was foolish.

I see your sexist attack on my was taken down, which is probably good, but you and I know it's the thought that counts. Perhaps you should approach Jordan, although I don't know how it would work with two bottoms.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at your claims to authority. Above you wrote that you "have built out a huge solar array and coupled it with a massive battery bank + a wind turbine farm. Totally worthless."

You follow that with "if you think you can debate me on the merits, good luck."

Now put on your thinking cap, CC, and see if you can pinpoint the contradiction between those two passages. Hint: if you couldn't get it to work, you don't have much to teach anyone.

But don't let that detain you. After all, Jordan is waiting.

No, that's not at all what happened.

---

"Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected that 80% of the grid's winter capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power."

"It’s estimated that of the grid's total winter capacity, about 80% of it, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT's forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state."

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/

---

>>"Of course the green lobby always and forever have prognosticated that it will forever get warmer, that wind levels will rise forever and thus both solar panels and wind will forevermore continue to yield more and more useful energy."

Total BS. The "green lobby" has never said that wind levels will rise forever. And a warming planet has never precluded cold winter weather.

---

>>"All of that got debunked this week. Texas is seeing wind chills in negative numbers along with single digit or below temperatures. That plus moisture equals ice, and windmill blades are wings and not only suffer the same problem an airplane wing does when it gets loaded in addition they go out of balance and thus the windmill has to be shut down lest it destroy itself. At the same time ice and snow cover solar panels and reduce their output to an effective zero."

Turbines can be winterized, as they are in (for example) Canada. De-icing and heating solve the problem. Texas didn't do that.

"While wind power skeptics claimed the week's freeze means wind power can't be relied upon, wind turbines — like natural gas plants — can be 'winterized,' or modified to operate during very low temperatures. Experts say that many of Texas' power generators have not made those investments necessary to prevent disruptions to equipment since the state does not regularly experience extreme winter storms."

[see link above]

---

This is tiresome. I'm done with it. Concerned Citizen, I did my part and read the PDF. You do your part now. You owe EOD a discussion on Disney Channel programming.

...didn't say that. Don't like making your elected officials accountable? Good for you. Yeah...I guess you ARE invincible and without any risk...good luck!! I guess you could retreat to the sanctity of the Yale Faculty lounge when it gets crazy...ha, ha.

I presume you are replying to me.

Look, you have a reputation for mangling sources. You take a source that says anthropogenic forces are generating the vast majority of climate change and tell us the article attributes all global warming to solar storms, an error you would have discovered if you had read past the headline. So please forgive us if we ask for some precision.

Why don't you define "independence" as you see it? Bear in mind that you just told us that we are wrong to "rely" on the government or existing economic systems in an emergency that comprises interruptions to the power supply, the water supply, the food supply, and healthcare.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2021 09:29PM by Lot's Wife.

"One Texas mayor threw a truly majestic wingnut shitfit, incensed that the peasants would dare claim the right to any indoor plumbing they hadn’t hunted and killed personally, and frankly, if you haven’t already chopped grandma up for firewood, you deserve to fucking freeze to death." -- ShowerCap

Where is the profanity warning on this thread?

Thought it was an interesting discussion until Old Salty started it by getting salty.

Sorry, elmo.

CC2 has done that with several of our debates over the years. He starts getting the worse of an argument and then starts talking about how he intends to "hook up" with me. It's juvenile, weak, a way for a man to attempt to intimidate a woman.

I simply won't be intimidated. I won't hide from such attacks.


ETA: Now censored.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2021 12:34AM by Lot's Wife.

...you seemed to be receptive at a few of our other encounters before. This mean you are NOW "cutting me off"??? No way!!!! I'm still here for you!!!...Come on girl!!! Let's get our Funk on!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEWrWm0ydnY

I can smell your "funk" from over here. Please stand back. Tic Tacs and Old Spice might help.?


HH =)

I spent half my adult life in the northern Great Plains, and I don't ever recall a power outage because of a storm, except for the occasional flicker during a summer thunderstorm.

Now and then a water main would break from frost heaving in the winter, which would cut off water for half a day.

The fiasco in Texas is not a weather problem. It is a Texas problem. Congrats on having your own independent power grid so you can skip a lot of annoying federal regulations.

How's that working out for you?

I hear Elon wants his deposit back. ;)

Exactly. Plenty of cold weather states have figured out how to keep the lights and heat on, and the water flowing almost all of the time. In Maryland, it takes a hurricane to really knock things out, not routine cold, snowy weather.

I feel for the people of Texas in what can only be termed a disaster. When all of this is over, the good citizens of Texas may wish to examine public policy and to hold their elected officials accountable.

Yes.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...not routine cold, snowy weather.

Except Texas does not get routine, cold snowy weather. They should prepare for polar vortexes the way Saskatchewan should prepare for hurricanes.

In Massachusetts we prepare for blizzards and hurricanes. Earthquakes, not so much.
>

I noticed a post about heating elements in turbines in the upper Midwest. Makes sense. I'll presume that the Texas turbine engineers crunched the numbers for including that in their costs, and decided against them based on what they perceived the risk factor to be. Again, makes sense.

Well, Spring's coming. But then, this is the year "twenty-twenty-won." Don't be surprised by anything.

Changing gears (but not topics) I came across this image of Lots Wife going after Concerned Citizen 2.0:

https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2021/02/image012.jpg?w=436&ssl=1

But this has happened repeatedly in Texas. Similar events occurred in 1989, 2003, and 2011 – not as intensely, but bad enough that a light should have gone off in state leaders' heads. And certainly more often than hurricanes in Saskatchewan.

"Even leaving aside the state's comparative lack of rigor in assessing climate risk, it wasn't as if those running the Texas energy system's various fiefdoms — the grid, the power plants, the natural gas–production facilities — hadn't been warned about the dangers of severe weather. Hell may not freeze over, but history suggests that Texas's energy system does — and with some frequency. In 1989, in 2003, and in 2011, the state experienced, to varying degrees, simultaneous shutdowns of power plants and parts of its natural gas–producing infrastructure, as significant swaths of both of those critical systems were incapacitated by arctic temperatures, triggering blackouts."

https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/texas-blackout-preventable/

So many moles, so much whacking…

Just went through 2 weeks of -20F and colder here and no interruption in power. And our natural gas lines didn't freeze up either

No need to apologize. We know you can't do as well as the United States does.

1. Through incompetence craft a shortage.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/539693-texas-households-face-massive-electricity-bills-some-as-high-as-17k?amp
2. Because of that shortage, charge astronomically!

(Extra Credit: Discharge responsibility by blaming xxx and escape to xxxxxx.)

I have a wind farm a few miles from my house. How come those turbines never "freeze up" ?

Florida Power and Light put up a massive wind farm near Rugby, ND. There's a lot of low-grade coal in ND. It has such low energy content, that it is not worth shipping, but the rural electric co-ops can function burning the lignite locally. They had a very strong vested interest in protecting their long-term coal contracts (as did the coal stripping operators).

ND is the windiest state in the country. I believe SD is #2, and WY #3. WY has stronger winds, but they are not as consistent. Anyway, when the powers that be in ND saw Florida Power, fergodssake, putting up wind generators in ND, they decided they perhaps should rethink their opposition to wind power. Now there is a major manufacturing plant in Grand Forks for those big blades and towers, and wind generators are popping up like big fiberglass mushrooms. A major transmission line was built a couple years ago from Fargo to Minneapolis to get all that power onto the national grid.

Wind generators survive cold just fine. To be fair, I think it is possible freezing rain could be a problem. I know airplanes do really poorly if parked in freezing rain and wet snow.

Short answer is that Texas went cheap. They didn't buy the Cold weather turbines that Norway (-30) and other consistently cold climate areas buy. They didn't winterize their turbines either. They figured that they'd never have an issue like this. They figured wrong.
Remember when American cars came with optional engine block heaters? People in MI, IA, WI, IL,MN, NY. etc. would buy them. Hotels and businesses used to have rows of outlets in the parking lots for owners to plug into. Basically, Texas didn't buy the optional block heaters.

Let Texas make good on their threat to secede from the Union and take the rest of the Bible Belt with them. What’s left of America can annex Canada and be called “United States of Canada”.

I for one am amazed that Texas seems to have allowed variable energy pricing for households so that those using these plans are now being bankrupted by massive spikes in their bills, while they try to stay alive.

Honestly, there are times when a little regulatory government activity should be celebrated, even if it comes with the potential for some 'inefficiency' or even higher net cost.

Don't get me started on the benefits of universal health care...

EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas

It's a variation of the Jim Inhofe snowball.
Yet another republicommie fraud.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/

What's True
In the late 2000s, Al Gore made a series of high-profile statements suggesting the possibility that Arctic sea ice could be completely gone during the summer by around 2013 or 2014.

What's False
Gore did not himself make these predictions but said (in some cases erroneously) that others had, and he never referred to a year-long lack of ice for both poles but instead largely referenced Arctic sea ice in the summer.

Summer sea ice =/= "all the snow"

Humberto provided an accurate description of your memes – "unclever heaps of dog dung":

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2360391,2360438#msg-2360438

Perhaps powerlineblog.com isn't the best source for your lib-owning endeavors.

Please make up your mind!