We had four RBO's at LCR today. All began on the hour and lasted exactly 40 minutes each time. Patricia had none but .. was surrounded by areas with power out most of the day .. some still out.
Part of this .. is a result of about 25,000 megawatts of wind turbines, in W. Texas, being frozen up from ice storms, and non-operable. This demonstrates that reliable power generation MUST be from all available sources. Relying on Solar and Wind only is the biggest fairy tale ever.
Natural gas fired power plants .. are still the most efficient/ effective / reliable source of power we have.
Preach it!
Give me clean burn coal and NG.
Yes, they certainly are.
As I understand it, Governor Abbott himself said that some NG and coal generators were frozen out as well as wind. In fact, it seems that most of the facilities that were knocked offline were gas, coal, or nuclear.
I also understand that Texas failed to invest in cold weather packages for their wind turbines, which might have allowed them to continue to operate ? After all, it's always warm there ... right ?
Until it isn't.
Now I don't know if those cold weather packages would necessarily mean that they could operate in whatever conditions are going on down there at the moment, but it seems that someone, somewhere failed to consider a possible worst case scenario.
Something about failing to plan = planning to fail comes to mind.
No idea whether those turbines could be retrofitted with cold weather packages ... or what the cost might be. Could be prohibitively expensive at this point (might be something that needs to be spec'd when the turbine is ordered/before it's actually built)
Might be worthwhile to look to our northern neighbor for some insights and/or advice ... given they probably have extensive experience with cold weather operations.
Wind Energy in Cold Climates - Government of Canada
Also have no idea how much the fact that much of Texas is on its own electrical grid might have played into this, in terms of being able to connect into the rest of the US power grid ... or whether that could have been helpful.
But in what might be the ultimate of ironies, I understand a bill was recently introduced in the TX Leg to secede from the United States. (I thought we settled that question over 150 years ago ... seems some wanna have another go at it however ...
)
Two days ago Governor Abbott made a request to the White House for a Federal Emergency Declaration.
Of course, it was granted.
In any event, hope y'all stay safe and warm.
Been through the lack of power/heat and it surely ain't no fun.
