So from what I have read, the issue with the blackouts was the equipment failed pretty much across the board, because the equipment was not "winterized", and should we spend the money to winterize, is it worth it, who should pay for it, etc...

Here is my take. I hear this will cost Texas about $50 billion. So if we get a storm like this say once every 20 years, that is about $2.5B a year, so if the cost to winterize is less than $2.5 a years, it sounds like it is worth it, and we the consumer will probably eat this with higher utility cost. Insurance companies will pay for a large chuck of the $50B, so with a new strategy to winterize, they should lower their cost to us will hopefully offset utility cost.

Thoughts?

Add the price to the grocery bill.......................that way everyone pays.

It's not a "once and done" solution. Winterization lists have to be maintained, parts replaced, PMs performed on critical equipment etc.

Lmao. Beautiful idea.

My guess is the $50 billion is low. Reasons, all of the wind power would have to be retrofitted. The natural gas issues ranged from the wellheads to the power plants.

In one article I read the fix is comparable to a resident of Brownsville buying an expensive parka incase there is a cold spell at Brownsville. I have blamed the engineers, but in reality it is the penny pinchers in finance that creates clusters like this, the cut a nickel here, a dime there to make an extra dollars worth of profit, but are building substandard BS. The consumer is just as responsible, they want cheap, they got cheap.

In retrospect, we lost 40% of our online power power producing assets, about 20% was wind and about 20% was gas, coal and nuclear.

If we had never done wind and instead spent the money on winterizing and building NG or nuclear plants, we'd be fine.

Right, you have to winterize every year, so per my analysis, if it costs less than $2.5 a year, sounds like we should do that. $2.5B a year to winterize is like breakeven cost. So if it costs like $1B a year to winterize, no brainier we should do it. If it is gonna cost $5B a year to winterize, probably not worth it.

So that would mean the same companies that put up the turbines and paid for the land leases are also the companies that own and operate the NG and Nuclear facilities?

Charlie

Who paid for the wind turbines and solar transmission lines.....

End of the day vast majority of those built over seas and assembled here wind turbines are funded by the tax payer dime.

It's the EPA scam. We had to close coal plants to hit the EPA emission requirements that could only be met by expanding wind and solar capacity.

Doesn't matter who owns them, Or who bundles the leases, our which company goes bankrupt, what matters is the regulations requiring them.

If we weren't required to expand green energy, and could of fed demand capacity with more coal, NG, and Nuclear, this wouldn't of happened to this degree

Some winterization will be relatively inexpensive, some too costly, you need to do as much as is economically feasible. One nuclear plant had a safety shutdown due to a monitor not sending. I would think retrofitting that should be relatively inexpensive. I would think upgrading valves on gas lines would not be excessively costly. I think that putting insulated nacelles and variable pitch blades on wind turbines is something best left until your replacing the turbine. If winterizing gas separation plants and pipelines is too expensive compressed natural gas storage might be an option.

My comment above was a smartass attempt(sorry, I don't know what came over me) at outlining different companies own different assets. To opine that winterization wasn't done because wind turbines were installed, is just not logical.

"Who paid for the wind turbines and solar transmission lines....."

The government and the taxpayers did not pay for the wind turbines, nor the transmission lines. Do taxpayers build NG pipelines as a common practice? Did the federal and state government provide some incentives, yes. So on that point I would say ultimately, taxpayers did fund some.

"It's the EPA scam. We had to close coal plants to hit the EPA emission requirements that could only be met by expanding wind and solar capacity."

There is no EPA scam at play, If you will recall our past-President reduced EPA air requirements to benefit coal plants. Coal plants are shutting down due to their cost to operate vs wind/solar and the desire to not use the dirtiest method of power production available.

"Doesn't matter who owns them, Or who bundles the leases, our which company goes bankrupt, what matters is the regulations requiring them."

Actually it does matter who owns them at least as it pertains to our problem of the day. There is no incentive or penalty for not investing in their equipment to meet a minimum or adhere to a performance guarantee. Going back to Guy's opening post, what if there was a rule that said... "If you want to play in the Texas utility market, you have to pass annual checks/certification for "readiness", in this case, winterization. If you fail you either pay big or you're not allowed to participate in the grid until you prove you are ready." We agree on your last point.

"If we weren't required to expand green energy, and could of fed demand capacity with more coal, NG, and Nuclear, this wouldn't of happened to this degree"

Sorry, but it's been widely reported there was approximately only a 10% loss of grid capacity due to wind being unavailable (Approx half of it was down, half was not) 40% of the loss was from the thermal methods you mention, failing. One did not cause the other, other than cutting power to a NG compressor station as an example. We have enough generation to get through a Texas summer, they just couldn't keep it going to get us through an arctic blast.

Charlie

You are FOS... It happened under Obie and you knew that.

First you are in fairy tail land. The depart of engery’s education administration tracks Texas usage daily. Wind Went from a day time high of 23kmwh to day time high 9k meh or LESS, that's alot bigger then 10%

Second no one could revamp almost 13k wind turbine back to coal and NG in four years. Especially on 20 year leases

Third the PTC subsidy is over $120 Billion since 2010 with 28% going to Texas turbines. The property tax easing is another huge one. This isn't including the millions in research grants paid by tax payers

Defend it all you want but the numbers don't lie, and the reporting is comical, basically let's divert So we don't ruin green energy for the rest of the country is what it comes down too.

I am in Flower Mound, but it's only purported to be close to fairy tale land, not the actual place...

"Second no one could revamp almost 13k wind turbine back to coal and NG in four years. Especially on 20 year leases"

I didn't say that and why would anyone want to do such a thing?

"Third the PTC subsidy is over $108 Billion since 2010 with 28% going to Texas turbines. "

OK, not going to argue the numbers, but it does mean it was not "paid for" by taxpayers, we paid a portion, via taxes.

"This isn't including the millions in research grants paid by tax payers"

You know the full amount of said grants? There was not corporate money in those grants? Who paid more, taxpayers or corp?

"Defend it all you want but the numbers don't lie, and the reporting is comical"

I'm not defending anything, just pointing out areas where I disagree with your assertions. The reporting is not comical just because you don't agree with it, though that's a common concept of late.

", let's not ruin green energy for the rest of the country..."

?



I'm assuming you're referring to my past-president reference. I'm not poking him, it has nothing to do with politics. Trump certainly gave coal a good try.... the "market" killed coal.


Charlie

Not a quick read, but a good one if you're interested in how there was actually some effort to change things after 2011 and 2014. Even mentioned was my idea on penalties, etc. but evidently to no avail, just more government at work for us. I'm sure they'll study it again.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/22/texas-power-grid-extreme-weather/

Charlie

Charlie "the market killed coal" with a vast amount of help from subsidies. So was it market or subsidies? Because without the subsidies green is not cheaper than clean coal.

Duck, I'm not an expert, don't work in the renewables or utility industry, just have an interest in the area. My dad worked his entire career for Pennzoil, I worked offshore after high school and I've had an O&G focus (mostly upstream) for my job the past 9 years.

Agree subsidies helped, and from what I've read were about 30% of a project. With the subsidy, it had the desired effect to get things going, develop the technology and lower the cost of production. The largest wind farm in the world is here in Texas, I bet they wish they had also bought those heated blades now... Sorry, but "green" is cheaper than coal. Solar will continue to grow, overtaking wind and get cheaper, storage of power will be the game-changer.

https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020


Whether you agree/believe or not, climate change is reshaping business. Coal has lost it's scale and with the losing of scale, cost goes up. It's no longer competitive from an economic or social perspective and will continue to die a slow death.

Shell has declared their proven reserves will now decline annually and their stock didn't tank, can you imagine if that had been said even two years ago? BP has reduced their Geophysical staff from 700 to 100. Total has even pulled out API. Those 3 outside of Saudi and China are half of the top producers. Bit of a message there, don't you think? NG will be with us for a while I believe.

I am not saying O&G is dead, far from it, but it will be different.

Charlie

Ok let's spend billions of dollars to fix a multi tiered problem. No matter what ya spend it will happen again. Will always be a perfect storm of event to break something man built. Bottom line, be prepared for it to happen.

Truth

First green only dropped 10%- false
Second wind wasn’t subsidized-false
Then coal was being cut because of efficiency not EPA mandates=false

I would of accepted at least thoughts on climate changes over CNN/AOC type false information agruements

And a bunch of ercot board is GONE...........

1. In general, it was reported that approx. 20% of the grid is wind powered. 50% of that was frozen out or 10%. The remaining 10% reported to be coastal generation actually did better than the 10% they were expected to generate.

2. I agreed that the green options were subsidized.

3. I posted a chart and a source of the data above on costs. Since when does anyone pick the high-cost producer as the better option?

4. I also posted my thoughts on the climate change piece, but I guess you don't accept them, even though you said you would.

Charlie