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> Yes, blackouts are cheaper than electricity. Texas has demonstrated that you can have blackouts and expensive at the same time if only you cut enough regulat

> Yes, blackouts are cheaper than electricity. Texas has demonstrated that you can have blackouts and expensive at the same time if only you cut enough regulations. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/how-and-why-a-nuclear-reactor-shut-down-in-texas-cold-snap-when-energy-was-needed-most https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/how-and-why...

cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
Funny, everyone was happy about how Texas scrapped so many coal plants and built so many windmills until it reached a cascade failure point and then the narrative shifted to "OMG, look at all the deregulation!"
- Trombone12 6y ago
  Texas had no power because they forgot everything they learnt the hard way from their "once-in-a-decade snow storm" they had 2011. Coal piles freezing solid because there is no roof, gas valves impossible to operate because nobody would put a box around them, no water too cool reactor cores because the pipes froze: these are not failures somehow cascading from the fact they build some windmills.
  - fuoqi 6y ago
    When I learnt that turbines on Texas nuclear plants stay under the open sky I was REALLY surprised. It was the reason behind the single failure, otherwise nuclear plants have weathered this crisis perfectly.
    - Trombone12 6y ago
      I guess the lesson is that not even Texans think nuclear is so safe it doesn't need weather protection, or maybe it's some pesky federal regulation that says that at least the reactor needs to be protected...
- makomk 6y ago
  It was also... amusing watching capacity payments suddenly cease to be an evil subsidy to big coal and become an essential part of competent grid operations that Texas stupidly didn't have because they're right-wing libertarian nutjobs that think the free market solves everything. And by amusing I mean we're all fucked.
- pydry 6y ago
  Every power source failed in Texas.
  - edbob 6y ago
    Every power source had some failures, but the only power sources that dropped all the way to 0 were solar and wind. Nuclear operated at 75% of capacity, while fossil generation seems to have been around 60%. Wind recovered slightly and "exceeded projections" by producing in the 15-30% range, but closer to 15% at night when it's coldest.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Doesn't winterize wind turbines Blames turbines for not working when it freezes. I'm so freaking tired of hearing this.
      - edbob 6y ago
        All sources were notoriously un-winterized, but wind generation had the additional problem of not working when there wasn't enough wind, which is why it dropped to 0 at one point. Suggesting that wind would perform adequately if it were only winterized is simply inaccurate. It's common knowledge among non-zealots that wind and solar are far too unreliable to supply baseload generation needs, and that unreliability led to a missing 15-20 GW of generation when we needed it. Base load must be supplied by something else, like perhaps nuclear which performed pretty well despite not being winterized.
        edbob 6y ago
        Correcting myself here. Wind output dropped to a low of 2% of capacity, not 0.
    - pydry 6y ago
      This isn't true. Gas and coal production suffered a lot more than wind: https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/feb/16/natural-gas-not-wind-turbines-main-driver-texas-po/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/feb/16/natural-gas-n... Wind ran at about 50% of capacity and that was because it wasn't winterized.
- barneygale 6y ago
  Windmills? Are they making bread?
  - KMag 6y ago
    Yes. The big secret is they're hybrid windmills ;) The grain mills are separated from the wind turbines by electrical lines, unlike their mechanically-linked Dutch grain mill predecessors. Any excess electricity goes into BitFlour, a cryptocurrency that's "milled" instead of "mined". (For those who missed it, the parent is asserting that "windmill" should be reserved for wind-powered mills.)
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      Charles Babbage called his Analytical Engine's ALU its "mill". I prefer his term. In the case of wind turbines, it is clear that the generation unit is its mill, so I have no quarrel with calling them windmills. They may be considered only half-satanic, having only three blades.
- Jedd 6y ago
  This is a challenging position to take. The failure point was a repeat of previous cold events -- it wasn't really a cascade event, of course, given wind turbines provide only 20% of power on the ECOT mini-grid. Given there are similar capacity wind turbines running happily in Antarctica, and the heads-up from the 2011 & 2019 events to winterise the Texas fleet, it's difficult to see how this is a 'windmill problem'.
  - edbob 6y ago
    I wouldn't frame the blackouts as a "windmill problem" as they're primarily a "winterization problem", but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored. ERCOT is a world leader in wind production, and that was pretty punishing when its 25GW of wind capacity was producing 0. We invested billions into a generation source that at one point produced 0 and eventually "exceeded projections" by producing slightly more than 0. We could have invested those billions in basically any other source and had significantly more electricity available. Winterization would have helped somewhat with less turbines freezing, but it doesn't help at all when the wind stops blowing.
    - Jedd 6y ago
      I see you've made many sweeping comments in this thread, some of which I can't confirm the veracity of. > ... but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored. Has that grid suffered lots of blackouts at times other than big freezes? If it hasn't, then that would suggest that the designers / operators of the grid factored in the unreliability of wind, and have the baseload well covered by gas, nuclear, etc. > ERCOT is a world leader in wind production, and that was pretty punishing when its 25GW of wind capacity was producing 0. And yet: "About half of the state’s wind capacity was offline Sunday because of turbines that had frozen in west Texas, according to the Austin American-Statesman, but high winds from the winter storm were spinning coastal turbines faster and generating more power to offset those losses." [1] > Winterization would have helped somewhat with less turbines freezing, but it doesn't help at all when the wind stops blowing. 'fewer' I'm not sure where you're getting information that the wind stopped blowing, or why that's a reason to not use wind turbines as part of an overall power generation strategy, or indeed why you seem to be surprised that if ECOT prepared wind turbines, as well as gas & nuclear (which both lost a fair chunk of capacity) then the outcome wouldn't have been so appalling. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/17/fact-check-frozen-wind-turbines-not-only-reason-texas-blackouts/6784789002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/17/fac...

cheaprentalyeti 6y ago

Funny, everyone was happy about how Texas scrapped so many coal plants and built so many windmills until it reached a cascade failure point and then the narrative shifted to "OMG, look at all the deregulation!"

Trombone12 6y ago
Texas had no power because they forgot everything they learnt the hard way from their "once-in-a-decade snow storm" they had 2011. Coal piles freezing solid because there is no roof, gas valves impossible to operate because nobody would put a box around them, no water too cool reactor cores because the pipes froze: these are not failures somehow cascading from the fact they build some windmills.
- fuoqi 6y ago
  When I learnt that turbines on Texas nuclear plants stay under the open sky I was REALLY surprised. It was the reason behind the single failure, otherwise nuclear plants have weathered this crisis perfectly.
  - Trombone12 6y ago
    I guess the lesson is that not even Texans think nuclear is so safe it doesn't need weather protection, or maybe it's some pesky federal regulation that says that at least the reactor needs to be protected...
makomk 6y ago
It was also... amusing watching capacity payments suddenly cease to be an evil subsidy to big coal and become an essential part of competent grid operations that Texas stupidly didn't have because they're right-wing libertarian nutjobs that think the free market solves everything. And by amusing I mean we're all fucked.
pydry 6y ago
Every power source failed in Texas.
- edbob 6y ago
  Every power source had some failures, but the only power sources that dropped all the way to 0 were solar and wind. Nuclear operated at 75% of capacity, while fossil generation seems to have been around 60%. Wind recovered slightly and "exceeded projections" by producing in the 15-30% range, but closer to 15% at night when it's coldest.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Doesn't winterize wind turbines Blames turbines for not working when it freezes. I'm so freaking tired of hearing this.
    - edbob 6y ago
      All sources were notoriously un-winterized, but wind generation had the additional problem of not working when there wasn't enough wind, which is why it dropped to 0 at one point. Suggesting that wind would perform adequately if it were only winterized is simply inaccurate. It's common knowledge among non-zealots that wind and solar are far too unreliable to supply baseload generation needs, and that unreliability led to a missing 15-20 GW of generation when we needed it. Base load must be supplied by something else, like perhaps nuclear which performed pretty well despite not being winterized.
      - edbob 6y ago
        Correcting myself here. Wind output dropped to a low of 2% of capacity, not 0.
  - pydry 6y ago
    This isn't true. Gas and coal production suffered a lot more than wind: https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/feb/16/natural-gas-not-wind-turbines-main-driver-texas-po/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/feb/16/natural-gas-n... Wind ran at about 50% of capacity and that was because it wasn't winterized.
barneygale 6y ago
Windmills? Are they making bread?
- KMag 6y ago
  Yes. The big secret is they're hybrid windmills ;) The grain mills are separated from the wind turbines by electrical lines, unlike their mechanically-linked Dutch grain mill predecessors. Any excess electricity goes into BitFlour, a cryptocurrency that's "milled" instead of "mined". (For those who missed it, the parent is asserting that "windmill" should be reserved for wind-powered mills.)
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    Charles Babbage called his Analytical Engine's ALU its "mill". I prefer his term. In the case of wind turbines, it is clear that the generation unit is its mill, so I have no quarrel with calling them windmills. They may be considered only half-satanic, having only three blades.
Jedd 6y ago
This is a challenging position to take. The failure point was a repeat of previous cold events -- it wasn't really a cascade event, of course, given wind turbines provide only 20% of power on the ECOT mini-grid. Given there are similar capacity wind turbines running happily in Antarctica, and the heads-up from the 2011 & 2019 events to winterise the Texas fleet, it's difficult to see how this is a 'windmill problem'.
- edbob 6y ago
  I wouldn't frame the blackouts as a "windmill problem" as they're primarily a "winterization problem", but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored. ERCOT is a world leader in wind production, and that was pretty punishing when its 25GW of wind capacity was producing 0. We invested billions into a generation source that at one point produced 0 and eventually "exceeded projections" by producing slightly more than 0. We could have invested those billions in basically any other source and had significantly more electricity available. Winterization would have helped somewhat with less turbines freezing, but it doesn't help at all when the wind stops blowing.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    I see you've made many sweeping comments in this thread, some of which I can't confirm the veracity of. > ... but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored. Has that grid suffered lots of blackouts at times other than big freezes? If it hasn't, then that would suggest that the designers / operators of the grid factored in the unreliability of wind, and have the baseload well covered by gas, nuclear, etc. > ERCOT is a world leader in wind production, and that was pretty punishing when its 25GW of wind capacity was producing 0. And yet: "About half of the state’s wind capacity was offline Sunday because of turbines that had frozen in west Texas, according to the Austin American-Statesman, but high winds from the winter storm were spinning coastal turbines faster and generating more power to offset those losses." [1] > Winterization would have helped somewhat with less turbines freezing, but it doesn't help at all when the wind stops blowing. 'fewer' I'm not sure where you're getting information that the wind stopped blowing, or why that's a reason to not use wind turbines as part of an overall power generation strategy, or indeed why you seem to be surprised that if ECOT prepared wind turbines, as well as gas & nuclear (which both lost a fair chunk of capacity) then the outcome wouldn't have been so appalling. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/17/fact-check-frozen-wind-turbines-not-only-reason-texas-blackouts/6784789002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/17/fac...