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What I'm interested in, and what I'm talking about, is judging each method of power production from its total current output relative to nameplate capacity. Al

What I'm interested in, and what I'm talking about, is judging each method of power production from its total current output relative to nameplate capacity. All I'm really arguing is that non-renewables are able to accommodate bursty and unpredictable demand much better than renewables. For every dollar spent on solar and wind, if that built X amount of coal or NG plants, they would have such an excess of capacity that the few plants that have gone offline would be completely irrelevant. My point isn't that Texas shouldn't have invested in renewables. It's just that this is really not an appropriate time to be lecturing Texas about renewable energy, because had they invested their money in non-renewables instead of renewables, they would likely not be in this situation. The problem is not a lack of regulation. It gets below freezing every single year in Texas. The problem is that it doesn't get this cold in Houston every year, and they misjudged demand.

jcranmer 6y ago
As I understand the situation, the problem is that several coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants had to shut down because it was too cold. It's not that there isn't sufficient baseload capacity to deal with the demand, it's that the baseload capacity wasn't sufficiently winterized to handle the situation. Many wind farms were also insufficiently winterized to handle the extreme cold. With the exception of natural gas (where some plants shut down to allow the pipeline capacity go to people who heat their homes with natural gas instead), the primary driver of the lack of capacity appears to be a failure to winterize for what is objectively a pretty rare situation, combined with an unwillingness to draw the power from those places where production isn't so heavily impacted by the weather.
ashtonkem 6y ago
> All I'm really arguing is that non-renewables are able to accommodate bursty and unpredictable demand much better than renewables. You do realize that all of this is happening because a bunch of non-renewable power plants failed, right? You're making an argument that's literally countermanded by the exact situation we're discussing.

jcranmer 6y ago

As I understand the situation, the problem is that several coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants had to shut down because it was too cold. It's not that there isn't sufficient baseload capacity to deal with the demand, it's that the baseload capacity wasn't sufficiently winterized to handle the situation. Many wind farms were also insufficiently winterized to handle the extreme cold. With the exception of natural gas (where some plants shut down to allow the pipeline capacity go to people who heat their homes with natural gas instead), the primary driver of the lack of capacity appears to be a failure to winterize for what is objectively a pretty rare situation, combined with an unwillingness to draw the power from those places where production isn't so heavily impacted by the weather.

ashtonkem 6y ago

> All I'm really arguing is that non-renewables are able to accommodate bursty and unpredictable demand much better than renewables. You do realize that all of this is happening because a bunch of non-renewable power plants failed, right? You're making an argument that's literally countermanded by the exact situation we're discussing.