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There is plenty of politics in Texas, for sure, but it wasn't coal power systems that failed in the winter, it was wind, natgas, and one nuclear power plant.

abathur 4y ago
Iirc wind performed more or less as forecast (admittedly not great, but as expected) during Feb 2021 and nearly all of the shortfall came down to natural gas plants and infra failing.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  I'm all in favor of wind power in Texas, and want more of it, but it did do worse than expected in Feb 2021. It's just a problem to be fixed, not a reason to drop wind power (west Texas has a lot of wind), but it did actually happen.
  - abathur 4y ago
    It's not about who is or isn't in favor of it. The narrative has been misleading here. Check figures 2.c on page 18 and 2.o on page 34 in UT's report on this (https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin%20%282021%29%20EventsFebruary2021TexasBlackout%2020210714.pdf https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin%20%28...) for a sense of the scope of how unexpected capacity outages break down. Yes--a lot of wind was offline. But all of the expected wind capacity could have been met and the grid would have still needed to shed quite a bit of load. In fact, all of the expected wind, solar, coal, and nuclear could have been online and the grid would have still had to shed a meaningful amount. The scale of the natural gas outages was larger than the entire load-shed, afaict.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
My understanding is that this is incorrect, and it was coal power plants that weren’t properly winterized that failed. Of course you had a lot of people claiming the opposite, without evidence. EDIT: Okay there was some loss in capacity in wind power, but the greatest loss in capacity was natural gas plants, which lost 15GW of capacity. I confused natural gas with coal as I don’t consider either to be climate friendly. Wind lost about 3GW of capacity. See at 7:50 here: https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM
- Aloha 4y ago
  Natural Gas may not be climate friendly, but there is lots of it in Texas, and it's more environmentally friendly than coal. The Natural Gas distribution system just fell apart two years ago.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  Excellent video channel, I follow it as well. By the way, natgas is actually much friendlier (well, less hostile) to the environment than coal, if you're looking at carbon/kWh or all of the other things released into the atmosphere when you burn coal. However, you can much more easily make a giant mound of coal next to your power plant, than store up enough natgas (LNG is much more expensive to store). So, the power plants required natgas to show up in the pipeline, and when the temperature dropped and everybody cranked up the heat, not only in Texas, the natgas pressure in the pipelines dropped. Oil (liquid) and coal (solid) are just fundamentally easier to stockpile than natgas or wind (gas) or solar (light). A big freakin' battery would help with this, but that isn't a cost-effective option (yet?).
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Natural gas is 100 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2 though when unburned and it leaks when being collected and transported.
vel0city 4y ago
Actually some coal plants did fail in the freeze as well.

abathur 4y ago

Iirc wind performed more or less as forecast (admittedly not great, but as expected) during Feb 2021 and nearly all of the shortfall came down to natural gas plants and infra failing.

rossdavidh 4y ago
I'm all in favor of wind power in Texas, and want more of it, but it did do worse than expected in Feb 2021. It's just a problem to be fixed, not a reason to drop wind power (west Texas has a lot of wind), but it did actually happen.
- abathur 4y ago
  It's not about who is or isn't in favor of it. The narrative has been misleading here. Check figures 2.c on page 18 and 2.o on page 34 in UT's report on this (https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin%20%282021%29%20EventsFebruary2021TexasBlackout%2020210714.pdf https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin%20%28...) for a sense of the scope of how unexpected capacity outages break down. Yes--a lot of wind was offline. But all of the expected wind capacity could have been met and the grid would have still needed to shed quite a bit of load. In fact, all of the expected wind, solar, coal, and nuclear could have been online and the grid would have still had to shed a meaningful amount. The scale of the natural gas outages was larger than the entire load-shed, afaict.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

My understanding is that this is incorrect, and it was coal power plants that weren’t properly winterized that failed. Of course you had a lot of people claiming the opposite, without evidence. EDIT: Okay there was some loss in capacity in wind power, but the greatest loss in capacity was natural gas plants, which lost 15GW of capacity. I confused natural gas with coal as I don’t consider either to be climate friendly. Wind lost about 3GW of capacity. See at 7:50 here: https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM

Aloha 4y ago
Natural Gas may not be climate friendly, but there is lots of it in Texas, and it's more environmentally friendly than coal. The Natural Gas distribution system just fell apart two years ago.
rossdavidh 4y ago
Excellent video channel, I follow it as well. By the way, natgas is actually much friendlier (well, less hostile) to the environment than coal, if you're looking at carbon/kWh or all of the other things released into the atmosphere when you burn coal. However, you can much more easily make a giant mound of coal next to your power plant, than store up enough natgas (LNG is much more expensive to store). So, the power plants required natgas to show up in the pipeline, and when the temperature dropped and everybody cranked up the heat, not only in Texas, the natgas pressure in the pipelines dropped. Oil (liquid) and coal (solid) are just fundamentally easier to stockpile than natgas or wind (gas) or solar (light). A big freakin' battery would help with this, but that isn't a cost-effective option (yet?).
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Natural gas is 100 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2 though when unburned and it leaks when being collected and transported.

vel0city 4y ago

Actually some coal plants did fail in the freeze as well.