One thing is for sure, if we switch more and more of our electrical generation to wind and solar, the next time this happens, it will be exponentially worse.

Y’all politics discussing ercot and winterization

Ok I was wrong, it wasn’t ercots CEO talking and almost giggling, it was someone from UT energy institute, Dr tuttle.

Sorry about my Misunderstanding. Honestly never paid attention to this stuff before and this was very early in the issues, Monday evening news.

From what I heard the board at Ercot okays it, sends it to the PUC, Railroad commission, then the state has to approve it.......

Why? Wind is doing better than forecast and turbines don't freeze over up north? It simple physical preparation for the elements, which was not done here.

Charlie

It's OK to have wind and solar to use when it's available, but you dang sure better not be relying on it as your primary source. For wind to work, well there has to be wind. For solar to work there has to be sun and the panels have to be clear. We have zero control over wind or sunlight. When we have 3 or 4 days of heavy overcast and no wind, where will we be if we're relying on wind and solar as primary generation sources?

I got an email from a guy I know that lives in Minnesota, he said our problem is the dumbass that built the windfarms did not know the temperature range they would be subjected to. Their windfarm on his farm is cranking out power, not frozen up, because they have their own system of de-icing. Looks like a bunch of engineers made a lot of huge mistakes.

Have probably posted 10X on renewables - core of my company. They are great in summertime, but TX has to rely on fossil fuels. I am an old O&G guy and know we need both but at the proper ratio to supply the grid.

Ummmm hmmmmmm fellas..... I hope it wasn’t any of you that did this????


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/ercot-board-members-death-threats-texas-1570128%3famp=1

The names, bios and photos of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) board members have been taken off their website after allegedly receiving death threats amid the continuing blackouts in the state.

Just to stop a little of the speculating. This graph displays the usage before and during the cold front and where the power was coming from and or not coming from.

The graph tells an interesting story. There were times when wind was out producing Gas that is until the front hit then wind almost went down to almost zero 3 times (Less than 1000 Megawatts). Gas was the big player and peaked to almost 45,000 Megawatts during that same time. It also shows that our Nuclear power doesn't seem rise and fall and is limited to 5,000 Megawatts of constant production. Looks like coals max production runs around 10,000 Megawatts. It certainly shows which production methods are the most reliable under extreme condition and which are the least and where our efforts need to be concentrated for any future events such as this.

It has been estimated that we have between 50 and 100 years until fossil fuels begin to run out. For everyone that believes in preparation at what point do we start preparing? It sounds like many think we should not be investing in renewable energy and continue to go all in on fossil fuels. If we don’t figure it out prior to needing it where does that get us? A hard cutover is never going to happen but don’t keep your head in the sand demonizing renewables. This is something we must work together to figure out. Maybe not in our lifetime but for our future generations. Put climate science and its politics aside and think about it. Also, if the USA does not we allowing other counties to own the energy technology of the future. We can’t rely on fossil fuels forever. Stop thinking about right now and start preparing for the future. We should all be pushing our political leaders for a common sense approach to figure this out vs each side in their corners.

First off I doubt the claims of 50 to 100 years but that's just me. Once we figured out how to extract oil and gas from tight formations it changed everything and opened up area's we could not produce from before. As for the future I see much more reliance on Natural gas especially in the area of transportation. The ocean is the great generator of all the oil and gas we have in this world and I see investing in ways to speed up the process using carbon based material. Methane is such a common gas that when we actually use a sniffer to find leaks they don't look for methane they look for other gasses associated with NG such as Pentane so it's not confused with earths natural production. There are times when wind energy handle much of our electrical loads but as we just witnessed it's reliability is wanting. There are many direction we can go but non will ever be as cheap, reliable or as efficient as Hydrocarbons.

The petroleum Museum in Midland? Has a display that shows how many times we thought fossil fuels would end, but everytime technology proves them wromg.

Agree there are many options to go including maximizing all hydrocarbons. That should be done as well. We can do both. You can argue that 50-100 years is not accurate but the earths fuels are not endless. I am not one to put all my eggs in one basket especially when the supply will run out. There are ways to make wind more reliable against ice. Texas choose to not take that route. Same thing happened with coal and NG. Texas choose cheap vs reliable across the board.

Midland Petroleum Museum also has an exhibit on Supplemental Energies like wind and solar. I guess that means they believe in these just like believe in hydrocarbon thechnology?

All I am saying is If we continue to keep our head in the sand someone else will figure it out and we will be followers and not leaders. That is not the America I love.

Natural gas is an abundant, clean source that is the easiest to currently exploit. I have never understood why the delivery systems and infrastructure has not been improved to, at the least, power vehicles. Seems a no brainer to me. We have been working hard to liquify it so we can export it. Makes me scratch my head why we don't work just as hard to keep it here as a useful source of energy for us.

Powering vehicles isn't the problem, refueling them seems to be the problem. In this case it has the same problem as electricity. it just takes to long to refuel. There are ways around that an some are working on it by using tanks that can be swapped out in about as much time as it take to refuel a gas vehicle. They would have to have a standardized tank or tanks that can be interchanged among all vehicles. The down size is convincing someone to ride down the road with a tank of NG at over 2000 lb psi. They also have home refueling available with portable units that can refill over night.

Fort Worth powered their city buses with NG back in the 90's. Not sure if they still do that. Seemed like a good solution.

Started watching Planet of the Humans last night. Talks about how some “green energy” is anything but green. I’m all for renewable resources that are reliable and have a small footprint for carbon, or for smaller environmental impact and damages. I think everyone can get aboard the idea of that. But it is an idea that is mired with controversy. Solar panels are sourced from a ton of materials, worldwide, and most solar panels have to be replaced every 10-20 years. It’s a great idea, but in reality, it seems not so “green”. All the solar farms have natural gas plants (or coal in some instances) set up as back up power source, and many are running full time in case the solar drops and it needs to be boosted for the end users of energy.

The wind turbines we have here we not winterized properly, to cut costs and pad profit for SOME folks. Other states with cold weather have winterized materials and they stay working. Same with the natural gas plants.

Our infrastructure needs to be prepared for the once in a decade storm, and we are not.

I think we will see lots of upgrades to all the systems to try to keep this from happening again.

I also think as individuals we all have to keep on hand what we need for when power and water goes out. Living in Texas, we will face things like this again with our natural disasters and other infrastructural issues like we are facing now.

Since the windmills work up north in a lot worse weather, it is not the windmills, it is the engineers that screwed the pooch. I bet there will be a lot of retro fitting in the next few years.

You also have to remember the amount of actual turbines up north is pretty minute and more concentrated when compared to Texas who is ranked 5th in the world

I would rather buy a generator than pay double the going rate.....if we all had that backup plan, they would of never had to do the rolling blackouts......we could ride out the storm without changing anything.....

It’s all a joke.