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Texas gov knew of natural gas shortages days before blackout, blamed wind anyway
- yRbfmm1rVg8K5TR 5y agoCompare the amount of power generated by source the day of the blackouts and one year prior. Wind fell to nothing whereas gas production was way up. But because gas didn't increase enough to meet the crazy demand it is blamed.
- avelis 5y agoThe problem is larger than the power mix. Wind turbines & gas pipes can be winterized (which still hasn't been done yet). However, the Texas Interconnect is purposefully isolated because it does not want to be federally regulated and join the Eastern Interconnect. That is absolutely atrocious IMO. El Paso had power (West Interconnect) while the rest of the state went into the stone age. Crazy demand can happen in the summer as well. San Antonio almost every summer has rolling brownouts due to high demand from the heat. Cooling centers are a regular occurance.
- nob0dyasked 5y agoThanks for your regular dose of leftist journalism
- MattGaiser 5y agoWind was going to get the blame no matter what because energy sources are now partisan. There is the coal and oil party and the solar and wind party.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoThis matters very little at this point. Wind and solar are being deployed in Texas very rapidly (tens of GW of capacity are in the queue [1]). FERC has a recent ruling, encouraged along by Tesla, to make utility storage a first class citizen within ERCOT [2]. By the end of 2023, wind and solar will eclipse Texas’ gas fired generation capacity, before accounting for rooftop solar deployments “behind the meter.” With that said, this illustrates death gasps of a dying ideology. Let the market continue to do its thing and drive out fossil generation. (disclosure: an extended family member comes from rural Texas oil money, so these are frequent heated discussions in our family) [1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/as-texas-digs-out-plans-proceed-to-add-35-gw-of-solar-wind-capacity-to-grid-62719521 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... [2] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/court-upholds-ferc-order-841-opening-wholesale-markets-to-energy-storage https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/court-upholds-f...
- zepto 5y ago> With that said, this illustrates death gasps of a dying ideology. Ideology or party?
- zepto 5y agoAs a follow up - I say this because it’s not clear to me what ‘ideology’ the GOP actually follows these days.
- duxup 5y agoI think it matters policy wise. If you have folks trying to put out false information and it emboldens politicians to change policies, good choices become very difficult.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- imtringued 5y agoGood choices becoming difficult explains 90% of American problems. It's such a common pattern that simply tearing away the crap and doing the absolute minimum would turn you into one of the greatest politicians of all time with almost zero competence needed beyond the willingness to not make obviously bad choices.
- duxup 5y agoIt's certainly a political issue that comes with partisanship. And folks will do it to spite their face. Trump could have made fighting COVID a great nationalistic crusade.... he might even have been reelected had he done so. But he didn't like the news and picked his hill to die on despite the fact that there was no real political reason to do so.
- Covzire 5y agoI really don't see the types of energy as a partisan issue at all anymore, compared to policies that threaten to put the US on a dependence on foreign sources of energy. Nobody wants to burn dirty coal if they can help it, but coal plants in lieu of importing oil as long as there isn't any smog around their homes, most people would take the former. Granted those families or counties that historically have depended economically on specific forms of energy, it's another story, but they're a relatively small segment of the population.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- headmelted 5y agoWe need a spent fission rod party, which when I write it down reads like "fishing rod" which could cause a lot of confusion later. In any case, spent uranium, solar and wind is the way forward regardless.
- cma 5y agoThat joined in too, a reactor had an unplanned shut down as well during the storm.
- shagie 5y agoThe nuclear power plant shut down because its water supply froze and the pumps to cool the reactor shut down. 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... > “It’s very rare for weather issues to shut down a nuclear plant," said Brett Rampal, director of nuclear innovation at the Clean Air Task Force. "Some equipment in some nuclear plants in Texas has not been hardened for extreme cold weather because there was never a need for this.” > According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the shutdown of the nuclear reactor was caused by a disruption in a feedwater pump to the reactor, and that caused the plant to trip automatically and shut down early Monday. https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/021821-texas-nuclear-unit-returns-to-service-after-outage-related-to-cold-weather https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne... > Rowland said Feb. 16 the unit shut "due to cold weather-related issues in the plant's feedwater system." Weather conditions did not impact the 1,312-MW South Texas Project-2, which operated at 100% early Feb. 15-18, according to NRC. > Rowland said the unit shut at 5:37 am CT Feb. 15. STPNOC said in an event report filed with NRC that the unit tripped at 5:26 am due to low steam generator levels. "The low steam generator levels were due to loss of Feedwater pumps 11 and 13," according to the report.
- cbmuser 5y agoAs far as I know, it was a malfunctioning sensor. I generally that it’s a poor design decision to build the steam engines on the outside with no weather protection.
- bigbillheck 5y agoEnergy sources have been partisan since before Reagan had the White House solar panels removed.
- ARandomerDude 5y agoBefore that. Reagan had them removed not to create a new partisan issue, but because it was already a partisan issue.
- bigbillheck 5y agoThat's why I wrote 'since before' and not 'since'.
- falcolas 5y agoI heard the following quote in a youtube piece† outlining what happened, and thought it was interesting and relevant to this disaster: "Energy providers are paid for what they produce, not how reliable their production is." This kind of policy benefits solar and wind power, which are not reliable (without storage), but it hurts the consumers when abnormal weather hits. And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall. Quite the mismatch between what behavior is needed, and what is rewarded. † https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM EDIT: Accuse wind and solar of not being reliable on HN (even with the storage caveat), and you're punished. But it's true. It happened here. Wind turbines were shut down. Solar panels were covered in snow. They didn't have storage attached to make up for these shortfalls. Even a nuclear power plant went down due to problems with its water supply.
- imtringued 5y ago>And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall. If the generator can profit off unreliablity it also means a grid storage provider can profit off reliability and undercut the generator.
- falcolas 5y agoI did not mean to say that producers were doing this intentionally. Energy storage entities would only really profit in extreme circumstances where the prices are driven up so high - where production has decreased to the point where the grid is in danger of destabilizing. The rest of the time they'd be operating in the margins, picking up the solar and wind excesses to sell later. Given the investment and operating costs (battery farms, taking over hydro (or constructing new hydro), etc), I doubt it would be worth picking up given the current incentives.
- sremani 5y agoWhat happened in Texas was Sum of all fears. Every type of energy production failed, and entire state from Dalhart to Del Rio were under winter storm at the same time. The core issue is whether to winterize the infrastructure or not, in 2011 North Texas was effected by rest of the state did not have to endure cold front, that was thought to be once a generation thing. (Remember the cold snow superbowl in DFW in 2011?).
- zero_deg_kevin 5y agoWhat happened in Texas was the sum of all of its past elections and policy decisions. Texas has the government that it wants and rightfully deserves and I’m not about to interfere with that.
- ARandomerDude 5y agoIf only all the Californians moving here felt the same way.
- ovi256 5y agoWith those unusually severe storms covering such a huge area, I don't think it's safe to say any US or EU state would have done better that Texas. Heck, once energy distribution fails because cables have broken, even no-fuel-input needed for the duration of the storm plants like nuclear can't supply consumers.
- avelis 5y agoIt has happened several times in the past and it can happen again in the future. I was most saddened by a kid falling asleep and dying of hypothermia.
- chapium 5y agoI think this is a tell that Abbot is bought and paid for. This is what corruption looks like.
- prewett 5y agoI think you really need some sources if you're going to accuse someone, otherwise you're just spouting baseless accusations (at best), which do not improve either the target or the conversation. IANAL but this looks pretty close to libel to me. [0] https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/libel https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/libel
- chapium 5y agoNope
- whydoineedthis 5y agoI'm shocked AND stunned.
- syops 5y agoWhile you are not shocked that this is the case we should be alarmed that a large percentage of the U.S. population doesn't care. They will not let this fact dissuade them from their ideological servitude to the GOP. That we have come to the point where rampant hypocrisy is the norm and does nothing to get people to question their political affiliations is shocking to me.
- avelis 5y agoThe electorate has largely given up or been brainwashed to think this is ok.
- krapp 5y agoAll you have to do in Texas to deflect political blame is point to a Democrat and say "get a rope." I don't think the state was even entirely thawed before they started blaming the Biden Administration and AOC personally somehow.
- avelis 5y agoIt's terrifying to think that the problem in 2021 has largely gone un-addressed at its core.
- throw_nbvc1234 5y agoI personally have little hope. The "left" and the "right" can't find any common ground. And you have powerful entities (media, social media) that make billions a year who benefit from this. And also entrenches government officials in power as they can play on the partisanship to get easily elected. The Unity 2020 movement was interesting. I thought it had no chance of working but seeing it shutdown by social media companies basically eliminated all hope in my mind of a grassroots movement emerging. The "best" case scenario in (left and right) people's heads is that one side will magically "win" but naively thinks that'll happen without violence. That they can convince the other side to change their minds by just making moral arguments. Not acknowledging that each side has fundamentally different values (tradition's tension with progress for example) that they use to make moral judgements. I'm just hoping i have the ability and foresight to go someplace quiet when everything kicks off. Maybe that'll bypass the whole conflict, maybe just allow me to have a few extra weeks of peace.
- billsmithaustin 5y agoThe Texas Legislature, which meets every two years, is wrapping up a session right now. To get a sense for how the Legislature has prioritized addressing the grid failure relative to other issues, and what they propose to change, see this list of pending bills at the Texas Tribune: https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2021/permitless-carry-abortion-restrictions-texas-bills/ https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2021/permitless-carry...
- avelis 5y agoThe bills introduced are watered down with no meaningful enforcement. Texas will forget about it in 2 years and we will have this whole problem happen again.
- hourislate 5y agoI was reading that list and burst out laughing. I tend to lean right of center but realize we have a Kakistocracy.....
- jedimastert 5y agoThat list of bills is...distressing to say the least.
- qalmakka 5y agoI don't understand why people keep feeling indignation from these kinds of news. Politics have entered the post-truth age wordwide, and thinking that trying to present the facts will amount to any sort of sensible change is either delusional, or an excess of optimism at best. We failed to adapt to the massive cultural changes brought by mass media first and social media later, and these are the results. People do now believe in what they want to believe in, no matter what the news or expert say. Needless to say, what they want very often ("coincidentally" of course) happens to match perfectly with the economic and policy interests of a few powerful people or corporations. It's a waste of time and effort trying to rebut these people, because they deliberately try to stray away from logic (where they know they would often lose) and always attempt to move debate to a plane of emotions and feelings, where any kind of confrontation becomes basically impossible.
- bruce343434 5y agoHas politics ever not been post-truth? To win a debate you just need to sway the audience. It has been known since ancient times that's not limited to presenting facts.
- secstate 5y agoI think the information age has introduced a lot of people to the public square who've no idea what rhetoric is.
- ryandrake 5y agoWe crossed this threshold almost 20 years ago during the GWB administration. A senior administration official, believed to be Karl Rove, responded to a reporter: “People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” [1][2] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-...
- cbmuser 5y agoWell, the point is that wind was already expected to provide much less than its installed capacity. So expectations weren’t underwhelmed much. The only electricity source that delivered with 100% capacity, minus a short outage of one reactor due an unfortunate sensor problem, was nuclear. Nuclear power has - by far - the highest capacity factor of all sources of energy and if you don’t want to risk power outages in winter, your best bet is more nuclear. > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity
- shagie 5y agohttps://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/021821-texas-nuclear-unit-returns-to-service-after-outage-related-to-cold-weather https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne... > TP Nuclear Operating Co.'s 1,312-MW South Texas Project-1, which automatically shut Feb. 15 amid bitter cold, connected to the grid at 9:07 pm CT Feb. 17 "and is currently ascending to 100% power," company spokeswoman Vicki Rowland said Feb. 18. > The unit, located in Bay City, Texas, was operating at 36% of capacity early the morning of Feb. 18, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a daily reactor status report. > Rowland said Feb. 16 the unit shut "due to cold weather-related issues in the plant's feedwater system." Weather conditions did not impact the 1,312-MW South Texas Project-2, which operated at 100% early Feb. 15-18, according to NRC.
- cbmuser 5y agoYes, that’s what I mentioned. The reactor was offline for just a few days and the shutdown is more a result of the rather unfortunate decay to build the steam turbines on the outside with no weather production. Nuclear plants have no problems with arctic temperatures, just look at Russia (Pevek, Kola NPPs).
- okprod 5y agoAbbott should work at Comcast and supervise outage communications.
- Bukhmanizer 5y agoThe thing that worries me about this is that it’s being increasingly clear that the US is becoming too partisan to do anything. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m guessing that a very high percentage of people will continue to blame wind. And I’m guessing this splits pretty heavily on party lines. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this removes all accountability from the government. If your constituents are always arguing about something other than your governance (I.e constantly in some ideological battle), what incentive do you really have to govern well? The US still does many things well. But I think the system supporting the ability to do things well is decaying.
- neaden 5y agoIt's disingenuous to just call this an partisanship problem, this is specifically a problem with the modern conservative movement, and it's specifically due to the influence of Fox News and other similar media organizations that back up Conservative politician in their lies. As we are currently seeing with Liz Cheney the modern conservative movement in this country has no time for someone who is unwilling to agree with their lies.
- willcipriano 5y agoThe most Orwellian thing I have recently witnessed was around the days prior to the inauguration. MSNBC was covering the border and commentators frequently used the phrase "kids in cages", after Biden took office they suddenly went from frequent coverage of "kids in cages" to infrequent coverage of "migrant overflow facilities". Nothing had changed policy wise, the man took office less than a week prior. Point being, Fox News aren't the only ones like that, they are just the only mainstream conservative outlet like that.
- neaden 5y agoArizona is currently hiring a disreputable security firm to scan the ballots for bamboo based on the belief that China sent over thousands of prefilled ballots to sway the election in the state. A republican congressman said that the people who stormed the capital and killed a police officer were participating in a normal tourist visit. Meanwhile MSNBC might have changed the phrasing they used but they are still publishing articles critical of Biden's immigration: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/biden-s-immigration-promises-are-running-against-reality-n1258692 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/biden-s-immigration-promises-a...
- analyte123 5y agoThe "unreinforced cockpit door" in the blackout seems to have been turning off power to gas facilities (that send gas to create power) [1] because of failure to complete paperwork on both sides, causing a Factorio-style negative feedback loop. [1] https://archive.is/cTZV4 https://archive.is/cTZV4 / https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-texas-went-dark-the-state-paid-natural-gas-companies-to-go-offline-11620385201 https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-texas-went-dark-the-state-pa...
- barbacoa 5y ago"Wind turbines were a factor, but only a small one. Wind in Texas doesn’t produce as much power in the winter, and regulators don’t typically rely on wind turbines to provide significant amounts of power. Instead, regulators anticipated that natural gas and coal power plants would meet demand." This is a key paragraph that the author waves over without elaboration. Wind power makes up 25% of the power grid. When winter storm hit wind production collapsed and the load all shifted to natural gas which couldn't sustain the load. Here is a thought experiment, if that 25% of the grid had been coal power plants instead of wind would the grid have still failed?
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoWhy didn't Texas import power from other parts of the country? Or Mexico?
- barbacoa 5y agoBecause those grids were strained by the winter storm too.
- Tagbert 5y agoNo, Texas’ electric grid is not connected to any others to enable power sharing. They do this so they are not subject to federal oversight and regulations about the electric grid.
- barbacoa 5y agoERCOT has the ability to share power with Eastern grid and Mexican grid. This is done through high voltage DC interconnects so they do not need to sync the AC transmission. That is why they are still considered separate grids.