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The blame doesn’t lie on the power grid but on the power sources. Texas has only four nuclear reactors, it should have many more as only nuclear is able to del
by cbmuser 6y ago
The blame doesn’t lie on the power grid but on the power sources.
Texas has only four nuclear reactors, it should have many more as only nuclear is able to deliver power under virtually all weather conditions (yes, I know that South Texas 1 tripped but that was due to a false alarm).
It’s because of renewables and gas power plants that electricity became scarse. Many wind turbines in particular froze because of the low temperatures.
The situation in Texas reminds me of the situation during a blizzard in East Germany 1978/79 where all lignite-fired power plants came to a hold due to the lignite freezing while the two nuclear power plants delivered electricity without any problems.
- pixl97 6y agoRenewables had nothing to do with this and performed better than expected. A nuke plant tripped off and natural gas production and de-watering froze starving the plants. The vast majority of capacity loss was nat gas.
- 0xy 6y agoNatural gas follows all rollouts of renewables, though. In fact I'm not even sure you can separate the two. Grids with renewables would absolutely collapse without natural gas. The only thing capable of replacing natural gas is batteries, which are extremely expensive and aren't exactly renewable, either.
- tomjakubowski 6y agoRenewables may create demand for more natural gas on the grid, but you seem to be saying also that if Texas hadn't expanded renewables, they wouldn't have built so many natural gas plants. What would they have built instead to supply their power?
- 0xy 6y agoThey *should* build more nuclear, but most environmental activists are staunchly against nuclear for misguided reasons.