Why Texas' energy grid is unable to handle the winter storms
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Feb. 16, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC By Kevin Collier
More than 4 million Texans have lost power after a weekend storm crippled the state's energy infrastructure.
The storm, which Gov. Greg Abbott declared a statewide disaster Friday, has led to at least 25 deaths, most of them in Texas, a state whose energy infrastructure was not built for weather of this magnitude. At least two are dead in a household that tried to warm up by running their car in their garage, leading to carbon monoxide poisoning.
The crisis has made the state's energy grid the focus a fresh scrutiny, primarily due to its independence from the rest of the U.S. Critics say that allowed its infrastructure to shirk federal regulations that require cold-weather capabilities.
"This has been an extraordinary event for Texas," said Bill Magness, the CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees about 90 percent of Texas' energy production and has ordered rolling outages across the state.
"This one went from top to bottom and all the way across, with very cold temperatures, freezing rain, snow like we haven't seen in decades," he said in a phone interview. "We knew coming in, it would place extraordinary demands on the electric system."
Texas experiencing power emergency during unprecedented winter storm
CenterPoint Energy, which serves the Houston area, announced Tuesday that its directed outages, currently affecting 1.27 million people, "could last several more days." Austin Energy, the community-owned electric utility for the state's capital, said Tuesday evening that ERCOT had ordered more outages, and that "it could be days before all customers have power."
Texas has been battered with single-digit temperatures, snow and sleet since Thursday, with more expected. The Dallas area saw temperatures below zero Tuesday, the coldest recorded temperature since 1949, with additional precipitation expected Wednesday.
Historically, Texas' days of high energy demands are always in the summer, Magness said. "We were seeing demand forecasts that were close to a summer peak," he said. The state's two largest sources of energy, natural gas and nonhydroelectric renewables, such as wind turbines and solar power, were all severely hampered by the winter storm.
Conservative critics blamed the power outages on a failure of green energy, but that doesn't explain the problem. Wind and solar generate about only 21 percent of the state's electrical power. Instead, natural gas, which powers half the state's electrical generation — by far the largest source — was in use by home furnaces, and some power plants couldn't get enough.
"In the winter, it's harder to get natural gas supplies, because they're much more in demand for home heating and uses like that," he said. Severe wind and snow have interfered with some natural gas equipment and frozen wind turbines, and the overcast weather has drastically slowed solar panel production, he said.
The problems are exacerbated because Texas, the largest energy producer and consumer in the United States, is the only state to use its own power grid. That frees it from federal regulations, including ones that could have required it to be better prepared for a freak cold snap, said Peter Fox-Penner, the founder of Boston University's Institute for Sustainable Energy.
"Texas' deregulatory philosophy has caused them to put much less stringent rules on generators and system operators to be prepared for cold weather than other systems, where extreme cold is more common," he said in an interview.
"They believed that this kind of 'perfect storm' was so unlikely that they didn't need to require the system to prepare for it," Fox-Penner said.
The Railroad Commission of Texas, which despite its name regulates the oil and natural gas industry in the state but not any railroads, said that the weather had stopped fossil fuel production in some parts of the state.
"Some producers, especially in the Permian Basin and Panhandle, have reported experiencing unprecedented freezing conditions which caused concerns for employee safety and affected production," the Commission announced Monday.
The one-two punch of the storm and sudden power outages have caused wide-reaching damage across the state.
For the Fagan Family Farms, a small independent organic produce farm in Kyle, Texas, lost produce from the cold snap was bad enough, but the power outage was devastating. They had about $20,000 worth of lettuce growing in the electrically heated growhouse, owner Shawn Fagan said — about a fifth of his annual business — and that's now all lost.
"I had the next generation growing in the growhouse," he said by phone. "Not only do I not have anything in the field, I don't have anything to put in the field now."
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Has anyone watched the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" about global warming causing a new ice age in which America gets totally frozen? Art doesn't just imitate life, but as I've said and pointed out proof of many times already, life also imitates art.
Good Movie !
A bit of movie trivia - there are three movies that I know of where a person dangling from a rope cuts the rope in order to plunge into the abyss: this one - The Day After Tomorrow, The Guardian (about the Coast Guard rescuers in the Bering Sea), and Vertical Limit (about mountain climbing in Pakistan).
Seen it. The snow scenes are great.
I always wondered why they just didn't go on to that boat that was frozen next to the library and grab all the food they could find. But then that would have shortened the movie by at least 20 minutes when they went on board to find some penicillin and they had to fend off those wolves who escaped from the zoo.
Lol what I didn't understand about that scene is why they didn't shut the damn door behind them
As my wife would say: 'It's a MOVIE!'
Logic limits the entertainment value...
As a bibliophile, I wince when they burn the books but know I would do the same...
Very good - now why don't you try my movie quizzes?
They had some misgivings about that but then they found a whole section of books on Tax Law they could burn with little regret.
It's funny but when I see a movie where they're 'trashing' some place, it drives me crazy, because I'm thinking, someone is going to have to clean that up.
Check out Snowpiercer for an end of the world as we know it/global climate change/apocalypse movie. It's about a train filled with survivors of the world freezing due to climate change. The train is divided by the 'haves' at one end and the 'have nots' on the other end.
Of course, the narrative is king and of course contractual agreements set length requirements and action pacing. Consequently, no 'sudden' endings to shunt or elongate scripting.
Because in real life sometimes women do "clutch" the men fighting for their survival at the most shall we say "inopportune" moments. (See 'her' and 'him' looking for the burglar on the grounds, while she is holding tightly is 'right' arm!.)
Just for laughs (and to enhance the point)!
Note: This video post is for academic purposes. However if deemed inappropriate - please remove it.
Sure enough, occasionally or more often, some sad-sack fails at keeping up standard protocol and let the 'monster' in!
Landshark - SNL
Although I have access to 7 or 8 24/7 movie channels on cable that show not just Chinese but mostly foreign movies here I've not seen that one yet, but I'll watch for it.
I was wondering could you get Netflix or Amazon Prime if you wanted ?
I don't know, but they require payment and I don't put my bank/credit cards on the internet, besides the fact that I am living okay on my pension income but not looking for greater expenses.
Love that movie, but mostly because Emmy Rosen is in it.
I think you mean Emmy Rossum (who played Jake Gyllenhaal's debate mate, then girl friend)..
I stand corrected.
Once a decade or two, persistent arctic air masses like this one can penetrate to the Gulf coast and cause havoc.
The prior planning for worst case events like this was abysmal, and the citizens are paying the price.
It did show clearly that renewables are unreliable and now is not the time to get rid natural gas or other fossil fuels.
Who knows, this might be the beginning a new Little Ice Age!
If that farm had bought a $500.00 generator that ran on Gas, Diesel, or Propane they could have saved the $20,000.00 worth of seedlings they had growing in their greenhouse. Seems strange that a farm wouldn't have a generator but as a small independent organic produce farm I bet they had a Solar Panel. I have a small Generator that I bought new for $300.00 and it's big enough to run my Fridge and my Oil Furnace. I haven't used it in 12 years but it's there if I do need it, I just run it for 1 hour on 3 hours off and it keeps my freezer frozen and my house warm.
So you always have fuel on hand to run the generator, right ?
There's a gas station 500 yards from me and they have an automatic generator so they can always pump gas, besides when they say Hurricane I fill my Gas cans. But I do usually have some gas on hand for my lawn tractor, snow blower, and other things plus I could always drain my motorcycle or syphon from my truck. If I were to buy another generator I would either get a propane like I bought my sister because long term fuel storage is easy or a diesel so I could use the #2 heating oil from my furnace tank. I'd like the diesel but they cost twice as much as the gasoline and propane Generators.
The Texas power grid failed mostly due to natural gas. Republicans are blaming wind turbines.
As Texas on Tuesday entered its third night with sub-freezing temperatures and 3.3 million customers without electricity , the operator of the state's unique power grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), urged Texans who still have electricity to turn off lights, unplug appliances, and turn down the thermostat. People without power took shelter elsewhere, if they could, or resorted to sometimes deadly means of generating heat.
One nuclear reactor and several coal-fired plants went offline, but "Texas is a gas state," Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas, told The Texas Tribune . And "gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now." Instruments and other components at gas-fired power plants iced over, and "by some estimates, nearly half of the state's natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures," as electric pumps lost power and uninsulated pipelines and gas wells froze, the Tribune reports .
After a 2011 winter storm knocked out power to about 3 million Texans, a federal report warned Texas the same grid debacle would happen again if it didn't adequately weatherize its power infrastructure and increase fuel reserves — and reminded Texas that "many of those same warnings were issued after similar blackouts 22 years earlier and had gone unheeded," The Associated Press reports .
"Upgrades were made following the 2011 winter storm," The Texas Tribune notes , but "many Texas power generators have still not made all the investments necessary to prevent the sort of disruptions happening to the equipment."
Renewables are a small percentage of the energy provided, and the private company that built them went cheap, since Texas regulations are lax. Plenty of states and countries far colder than Texas use them reliably.
Plenty of states and countries far colder than Texas use them reliably.
FACT!
That’s what birds would say before the windmills killed them.
Branco is just another fool who is totally uninformed.
What do they say before a common cat kills them?
That's false. It's not the wind turbines that failed. There are no Green New Deal policies in place.
"Branco is just another fool who is totally uninformed."
That's not uninformed. THAT'S LYING
If Texas is its own separate power grid can they import electricity from other states in a crisis? The answer is, no they cannot.
https://www.cbs58.com/news/texas-produces-more-power-than-any-other-state-heres-why-it-went-dark-anyway#:~:text=Unlike%20other%20states%2C%20Texas%20has,can't%20import%20power%20either.
We have one emergency connection point in East Texas
and three to Mexico to sell excess electric in the summer.
Connection project in West TX never seems to get $$ or attention, just keeps getting downsized.
Snowed again last night covering everything, every roof this time.
I have 4 male geese up against the storm door all night.
Let us in!
Ironically, some parts of Texas did import electricity from, wait for it, MEXICO.
Thank you Steve !!!!
Weren't they going to combine the three connection points to one?
Did that ever happen
newrepublic.com /article/161386/conservatives-wind-turbines-killing-people-texas-blackouts
Conservatives Are Seriously Accusing Wind Turbines of Killing People in the Texas Blackouts
At least two million people were left without power in Texas as temperatures plummeted and snow piled up on Monday. Wholesale power prices careened toward all-time highs. Worryingly, some 60 percent of homes in Texas get their heat from electricity, with many using heat pumps that can fail in extreme conditions .* Perhaps counterintuitively, those conditions are in part the product of a climate crisis driven by the fossil fuel industry. Warming in the Arctic , research suggests , allows for more cold air to escape farther south. Now fossil fuel backers are spreading misinformation suggesting the blackouts are reason to burn more fossil fuels.
About 90 percent of Texas’s grid is part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas . Save for a few lines, ERCOT is largely cut off from power in neighboring states. That’s because back in 1935, the state government was eager to avoid being regulated under the Federal Power Act. The Federal Power Act was passed to regulate interstate electricity sales, in the wake of massive scandals involving utility holding companies. It established what’s known today as the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission. To this day, Texas exists outside of FERC’s jurisdiction.
Grid management is a beast of a planning challenge, requiring different contingencies for turning disparate sources of generation on and off to suit certain conditions. Less important than whether a certain generation source is running at any given point is whether the grid managers expect it to be running. That’s an even bigger challenge for an outmoded grid with fewer tools available. For its winter peaking capacity, Texas relies inordinately on natural gas, which it seemingly assumed would be available around the clock, in the worst of wintry conditions. It wasn’t. And yet already, right-wing pundits are blaming the state’s wind farms for the outages, which incidentally also affected neighboring grids like the Southwest Power Pool and Midcontinent Independent System Operator.
Within a few hours of grid horror stories percolating out beyond the Lone Star state, outlets like Breitbart and the Wall Street Journal began to publish grisly tales of a green revolution: that an abundance of wind turbines in Texas had been rendered practically useless by a chilly day and posed a danger to state residents. “The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died,” said Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Yet a surprising number of mainstream media outlets also adopted the narrative. Reuters, for example, mentioned offline wind resources in the first lines of its story about the outages—illustrated with a picture showing a field of turbines. “Frozen wind turbines contribute to rolling power blackouts across Texas,” ran CNN’s headline. The New York Times led with it, too.
As of Monday afternoon, 26 of the 34 gigawatts in ERCOT’s grid that had gone offline were from “thermal” sources, meaning gas and coal. The system’s total installed capacity in the system, Power magazine’s Sonal Patel noted , is around 77.2 GW. Wind and solar power, meanwhile, produced near or even above planned capacity, according to energy analyst Jesse Jenkins, as only small amounts of wind and solar are utilized in peaking conditions. Wind turbines did indeed freeze, and did eventually underperform. But so did natural gas infrastructure , and to a far greater degree. That proved to be a much larger problem since it makes up such a huge proportion of the state’s power supply in extreme weather. And frozen power lines and equipment were a far bigger cause of outages than generation shortages.
As Rice University’s Daniel Cohan put it on Twitter, “ERCOT expected to get low capacity factors from wind and solar during winter peak demand. What it didn’t expect is >20 GW of outages from thermal (mostly natural gas) power plants.” Despite these realities, the narrative about the outages thus far has disproportionately focused on turbines underperforming in the cold due to ice on their blades—and barely mentioned failures in the vast majority of the grid powered by fossil fuels.
Events like this are a godsend to fossil fuel interests eager to build more polluting infrastructure. Investor-owned utilities can’t simply raise rates whenever they like. Instead, they have to go to regulators in statewide public service commissions to “rate base” new infrastructure, i.e., pass the cost of things like new polluting “ peaker plants ” down to customers. Spun the right way, the chaos playing out in Texas could help them make the case for rate hikes and new fossil fuel infrastructure around the country—all the more so if regulators already enjoy a cozy relationship to the power companies they’re supposed to rein in.
Polluters are eager to argue that all other sources of power generation—especially renewables—are fickle and vulnerable to disruption. While serving as energy secretary, Rick Perry repeatedly droned on about the 2014 polar vortex as a reason to bail out flailing coal and nuclear facilities in the name of grid resilience , even though many piles of coal ended up freezing in those winter weather events. A similar situation played out a decade ago . When Texas was hit with a storm and then rolling blackouts in 2011, Rush Limbaugh piled on and the Drudge Report called the outages “a direct consequence of the Obama administration’s agenda to lay siege to the coal industry.” Then—as now—it was overwhelmingly fossil fuel power that underperformed.
This line gets used as a blanket argument for rapid-fire fossil fuel development, casting doubt on the potential of low-carbon power to meet the country’s energy needs. As it happens, the shambolic nature of the shale revolution over the last decade has seen drillers in Texas, in particular, burn off copious amounts of natural gas— $750 billion just in 2018—rather than putting it to work on the grid.
What’s happened to ERCOT should indeed pose a wake-up call, but not the one industry lobbyists have in mind. Climate change will stress energy grids in ways that are all too real , part of a vicious cycle from burning prodigious amounts of fossil fuels. Thanks in no small part to decades of lobbying from fossil fuel interests in shifting the country to the right, federal investment in modernized infrastructure that could better deal with that stress has been severely lacking.
Transforming the grid for the twenty-first century demands exactly the kind of public-serving administrative creativity that fossil fuel political spending has tried to eradicate: not just to transition off fossil fuels—letting power providers accept as well as distribute power, building out transmission lines to get electrons where they’re most needed—but to make cheap and clean power available everywhere in the country. The real message of this week’s episode in Texas is not that renewable power is inherently unreliable. Nor is it that wind can just pull all the weight on a grid (it can’t). The message is that a system that is supposed to be the tip of the spear of decarbonization is buckling under the weight of stresses that will soon look mild, as we see ever-greater changes in weather thanks to global warming.
A greener and more reliable grid is within reach. Obviously loading it up with fossil fuel infrastructure isn’t the answer. But neither is simply flooding it with renewables. Everything from physical infrastructure to energy consumption habits needs to change. For that, we need a plan.
Alternative fuels will never supply the energy demand... “thermal” sources, meaning gas and coal will always be needed to supplement and as a back up to wind and solar.
We just have to want to ween ourselves off of fossil fuels.... It can be done with today's technology too.
Oil and gas need to be saved for the petrochemical industry, and as portable energy for the transportation industry until solutions for long haul commercial vehicles can be found.
Homes and businesses can and should be run off of renewables now.
Greg, natural gas pumps failed while demand exceeded supply,
pipes at nuclear reactors failed or froze.
Power plants shut off automatically when different pieces of equipment shut down automatically or froze.
This event is unprecedented.
And manufacturing in some instances. Plastics are made with fossil fuels as well as the molds to create the parts with plastic or aluminum.
What's your solution when there's not enough property in the area for wind turbines? What about solar storage?
I'm pretty sure that DTE would be more than happy to charge me a nice fee to store solar energy [considering the city of Wyandotte doesn't have the capacity] after I get my roof redone (approx. $15,000) and get solar panels put on my roof (another $15,000-20,000) [none of which we can afford anytime soon]... the pitch on my roof should be enough to keep snow off of the solar panels though.
These are all engineering & technology challenges that can be overcome. We just need to have the desire to make the needed changes. Having recently returned from Germany after six years I can tell you that they embraced the change and made things happen. Germany was facing very much the same situation as we are.
My South facing roofs and panels were partially cover yesterday, the north ones were clean,
Today they are covered in an inch of snow and we still have a dark gloomy day threatening more snow.
My panels were all leased from Solar City for 20 years.
You know that the natural gas lines froze in Texas right?
I understand that there are challenges that can be overcome, but you can't create more land for wind turbines where there isn't any. Are there an abundance of wind turbines in Munich?
How many days does your solar storage last under overcast / snowy conditions?
I haven't seen "lease" options here in SE MI.
I don't store it, everything is sold back to the electric grid/company. my electric bills through the summer are zero
with credits accumulating towards the few cold months dec - march ...
Gotcha. My electric usage goes up in the summer and down in the winter. I don't know if Wyandotte is set up for what needs to happen or not.
This event just shows that alternative fuels can supply some the demand in good conditions, and very little if any during times storms.
As for the NG problems, that should have been predicted (precedented) in when the system was being (poorly) designed.
There were wind turbines throughout much of Germany and Western Europe.
I believe the Portugal routinely gets more than 90% of it's power from renewables....
Renewable energy generated 104% of Portugal's electricity consumption in March | The Independent | The Independent
Hydroelectric dams accounted for 55 per cent of monthly energy consumption and wind power made up 42 per cent.
Again..... A heavily industrialized country like Germany can do something we cant Greg?
Germany can and DOES run of off renewable energy systems at a rate of 40% and growing. Their problem is... can they get enough renewable sources installed prior to 2024 when they want to take their last coal fired plant off line. By 2030 their goal is to run primarily on renewable energy with natural gas plants used for trim capacity of their grid.
Yes... It can be done here in the US..... You just have to stop sucking at big oils tit!
Residential wind turbines have already taken it into account. They exist and are available, technology just needs to get more energy per turbine out of them, and solve the storage problems.
The sun puts out more energy in 1 second than mankind has created in all of history. And get this... The sun won't charge us to use it.
Greg is just here to irritate those with actual knowledge...
He has admitted it before.
Denmark has a few windmill farms off the coast. They are going to build two massive new wind farms to provide
electric to the Danish nation and the EU.
As an expected benefit of the islands storage design they will be producing bottled hydrogen as well.
I don't have that much roof space and you still have to have a more stable / updated structure, which I already can't afford to replace. My house, built in 1906 [like many others in my neighborhood], does not have the structure to handle wind turbines. And solar tech isn't where it needs to be YET for my circumstances.
I asked for a solution and you provided one... that isn't right for all circumstances YET. It's not affordable enough. I've had quotes. I can't afford it.
Then I wish northern MI / less populated parts of MI would do the same. Not happening here.
Why does everything have to be political, this shit happens everywhere from time to time no matter who's running or regulating the grid. Let he who has never had a power outage cast the first stone.
It's the so called conservatives who have made this an issue - by blaming green energy for their fuck-ups.
I was wondering the same thing.
Millions of people in Texas have had no power or extremely sporadic power for at least 48 hours now. The state wasnt hit by some super powerful Category 6 hurricane or massive earthquakes or 500 tornadoes, it was hit by a winter storm system that would be completely average and normal anywhere in the northern half of the United States.
"Shit happens" is not a sufficient answer for people who have had no heat or water for over 2 days when it's 15 degrees outside. Texas wanted to deregulate their utilities so they took their state off the national power grid and now they cant get electricity from outside sources. It's not just one of those things that occur because "shit happens".
John, this is just flat out wrong. Read the history of ERCOT
My sister loses power for multiple days up to a week at least twice a year. It's the curse of living in a rural community, Electric companies fix the wires as fast as they can according to how many people the wires service. They fix the main wires first then go down the list trying to fix the wires that have the greatest impact. If you're like my sister and live at the end of the wire with a quarter mile of wire between you and the next customer you are at the bottom of the list if the break is in that quarter mile. I bought her a propane generator about five years ago so now her food doesn't spoil and her furnace and well pump work and the propane is great because it doesn't gum up the carb like gas when it sits unused plus propane tanks can be stored for many years without degrading the fuel. If "Shit happens" is not a sufficient answer for them I would say "I'm sorry for your troubles but like it or not sometimes Shit Really Does Happen but rest assured it could be worse".
The vast majority of Texans do not live in rural areas.
So that 84% will get their electricity back fairly quickly while the rural population will wait longer. I live in a city and I'm on a main drag so I rarely lose power for long but it has happened, I once lost it for four days because of a industrial fire that burned the main power sub station "Shit Happens".
In 2003, the entire northeast US and southeast parts of Canada lost power for several days. So, yes shit happens.
Didn't have a generator, but because the city I live in only services our city [we were loaning power to DTE at the time, hence the outage for us too], they used a giant generator to supply the customers with electricity for a day [with the understanding it was for minimal electric usage.. no A/C] until our grid was repaired. Our food was still good. Wyandotte stopped loaning out power to DTE after that and while yes, our bills increases some, it was worth knowing that we're no longer connected to them when shit happens.
I can tell you exactly why.
Many of those on the left simply hate Texas because it is a red state that they can't turn blue yet.
Therefore, a power outage in Texas is the fault of Republicans.
Even if it was Democrats who chose to make Texas operate its own grid. (which I have no problem with).
But look at the comments here and on other articles and you would swear it was all the fault of the GOP!
That is partly because of false claims that the windmills and other renewables let us down, repeated by our asstoot Governor and
double downed on by Tucker Carlson last night,
despite the fact that it was natural gas and nuclear power plants that automatically shut
down when different components failed because of temperature.
Many in the Texas GOP simply hate 'Democrat' states just because:
Turn about is fair play.
Well gee, after 27 years, you'd think that the GOP would get around to addressing that non-issue...
Now you have a Governor who chooses to insult your intelligence by blaming the non-existent 'Green New Deal' and wind turbines when he knows damn well that Nuclear and NG plants were at least 70% of the shutdown added to the HORRIBLE planning by the hilariously named Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
Pffft.
WHO is and has been in charge of the Texas power grid since 1995? WHO failed to address the weatherization issue that was red flagged in the federal report from the 2011 blackouts? That would be the GOP right?
We get power outages here whenever it snows more than 2” or so. Fortunately I still can cook and get hot water and use my oven for some heat as I do have natural gas for those. My heat is natural gas too but the electronic thermostat prevents its use.
So... based on statements like this, it leads me to believe that places like the northern Midwest could have problems with wind turbines and solar panels, correct?
I'm not saying all, I'm not saying they definitely would... I'm saying that the potential of failure is most certainly a possibility.
"So... based on statements like this, it leads me to believe that places like the northern Midwest could have problems with wind turbines and solar panels, correct?
I'm not saying all, I'm not saying they definitely would... I'm saying that the potential of failure is most certainly a possibility."
No, not in places where they've planned ahead and been responsibly maintained and updated and not cut corners.
25% of Iowa is generated by wind farm. They don't go down because they winterize. Denmark generates 42% of their energy use from wind farms and they have winters comparable to much of the midwest and they also winterize. Solar panels require a pitch change and regular cleaning during snowy months as well as battery maintenance. Most of our renewable energy up here in MN and WI is generated by hydroelectric.
Tess and evilgenius, thanks for the response. That's why I asked... I'm not in an area that uses those methods very much... not much property available for solar farms or wind turbines. I would think that hydroelectricity would be easier to benefit from with the current in the Detroit River. I live in a city that has it's own electric production (as well as water purification, drainage, and sewage). We do not depend on DTE for electricity. The only outside resource our city depends on is for natural gas and that's done through DTE. Our city is trying to encourage people to splurge for geothermal heating / cooling, but it's really expensive to get on most existing properties here. New homes built are usually convinced to incorporate geothermal.
18% of MN electricity is produced by wind power...MN is one hell of a lot colder than Texas ever is.
ND produced 27% of its electricity via wind power.
I knew there were wind farms up here, but I didn't know how much they were used. That area of ND is nothing but wind farms and fence posts.
Wind power in the United States - Wikipedia
By September 2019, 19 states had over 1,000 MW of installed capacity with 5 states (Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and California) generating over half of all wind energy in the nation.[5] Texas, with 28,843 MW of capacity, about 16.8% of the state's electricity usage, had the most installed wind power capacity of any U.S. state at the end of 2019.[6] Texas also had more under construction than any other state currently has installed.[7] The state generating the highest percentage of energy from wind power is Iowa at 42% of total energy production,[5] while North Dakota has the most per capita wind generation.
Solar Generation by State (February 2021) | Choose Energy®
Ain't that the truth!
Wind turbines are used all over the world in weather far worse than what Texas or the midwest has experienced. So that information is BS.
The solar panels can be impacted by overcast weather.... That part is true.
That's why I asked the question.
I also wonder how many days solar power is available when overcast.
Obviously you get bigger bang for your buck when it's bright and shiny out. Efficiency depends on panel, batteries and the amount/duration of cloud cover. The technology is getting better all the time.
But currently, in northern states that get more overcast days throughout a majority of the year, it simply doesn't make sense... YET. I'm not poo-pooing the idea; I'm just someone that is going to wait until it's feasible and makes sense for my circumstance.
Don't make the common mistake of thinking solar panels require DIRECT sunlight to work. Like noted above , "you get bigger bang for your buck when it's bright and shiny out", but even under cloud cover you still get some power generated.
To go completely "off the grid" you would have to rely on multiple types of renewable energy. However there is no need to do it all in one step, baby steps are called for. Start with reducing your dependence on oil, then 1 step at a time, moved toward energy independence.
In 2016 Red Lake Ojibwe made a major investment in solar. All government buildings, Red Lake College and the three casinos have gone solar. It's about a far north in the lower 48th that one can go and also one of the coldest regions in the US.
The Leech Lake band and Cass Lake have done the same.
It works.
You mean like working from home and not driving?
I still can't afford what was quoted for solar for my home.
Good to know.
They could have problems, but they don't have to have problems.
He is once again, spot on. Too bad the people that would need to hear this would either ignore it or come up with some other bullshit lie.
Talk about tilting at windmills...
Thank you for sharing.
Good for me but not for thee is their mantra...
And they're also blaming the failure of their grid on renewables when it's on them!!!!!!!!!!!!
It has been below zero over night for a few days and not above 15 degrees yesterday.
Our neighborhood oil derricks had stopped or slowed to a crawl, but today we are up to 24 degrees and the two I saw were working again.
From what i have read a lot of what happened had to to with equipment failure related to weatherization , some have asked why is it things can continue in places that experience such weather , but not in others like what happened in texas.
A lot has to do with how the equipment itself is protected from the weather extremes , here , valves , meters and such are not kept out in the open exposed , there is at least some level of protection from the elements be it a tin shed that can be quickly heated to thaw things out , thats an expense that here is accepted , now in other places , that expense might not be justifiable to the producer in the long run if its not used as often or seen as needed .
up here with wind chills that often dip the temps down to the -30s out in the open , its considered needed not just for the workers , but for the equipment.
I heard a report that some of the power plants shut down in winter because historically, their peak use is in summer. So they didn't have a plan to get plants up and running in an emergency. That's all on the government.
Texas is a 'keep government small enough to drown in a bathtub' so when the NEED government to work there just isn't enough to go around. Low taxes and almost no regulation...you get what you pay for.
Well that could explain a few things , going from a cold start and adding draw loads usually takes a sequence to be followed or things get overloaded .
example would be when i worked on a rock crusher, the genset that ran all the power , had to be started and warmed up before it could be energized ( BIIIG cat generator), then the sequence of starting different pieces of equipment had to be followed or the gen set would kick out and stall. Usually the largest power drains were started first, (crusher cones ) then the next drains such as the shaker screens and on down the line to the individual belts for discharge which usually had the least start up drainage of power. that is IF everything had been properly run out and cleared and cleaned at the end of the day before.
so from a cold start up , just going in and getting things running , is more than a simple flip of a switch or the pushing of some buttons.
Geothermal energy could be a viable power source.
Worldwide, 13,900 megawatts (MW) of geothermal power was available in 2019. [6] An additional 28 gigawatts of direct geothermal heating capacity is installed for district heating, space heating, spas, industrial processes, desalination and agricultural applications as of 2010. [7]
Geothermal power is cost-effective, reliable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly, [8] but has historically been limited to areas near tectonic plate boundaries . Recent technological advances have dramatically expanded the range and size of viable resources, especially for applications such as home heating, opening a potential for widespread exploitation. Geothermal wells release greenhouse gases trapped deep within the Earth, but these emissio ns are much lower per energy unit than those of fossil fuel.
SKI DUBAI
The next time some dumbass righty claims that climate change is a hoax please remind them of this...