4.2 Million Texans Without Power

That's not just your opinion, that's a fact. Hope you can stay warm and things

Apparently Wind turbines in cold climates have built in de-icing systems. Wind turbines in warm weather climates save money by skipping these features. Also, shockingly, Texas apparently generates 25% of there electricity via wind power.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/

 

So I'm reading these posts and apparently Texas gets all its power from wind turbines. Who knew? They should get rid of all the hippies and tree huggers that are in the state legislature and controlling what happens in the state.

 

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/

The primary issue is the bad estimate of the peak power requirement. If you want to lay blame beyond that, It's a natural gas problem. Funny how tying to blame "hippies" is the takeaway?

 

Illuminating quotes:

While the output from all sources of electricity plunged in Texas, frozen instruments at coal, nuclear and natural gas power plants, coupled with a limited supply of natural gas, were the main cause of the rolling blackouts, Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told Bloomberg News on Tuesday. (ERCOT is the state’s main grid operator.)

Energy analysts and electricity experts said a complete failure to plan for extreme weather scenarios caused the kind of cascading disaster.....

Of about 70,000 megawatts worth of gas, coal and nuclear plants, as much as 30,000 megawatts has been offline since Sunday night, said Jesse Jenkins, an electricity expert at Princeton University.

 

Our electric has been off and on for two days. Abilene’s water system froze so we have had no water for 24 hrs and might not for three more days. Today when the power came on My wife and I spent time melting snow to fill the tub with water for the toilet. Also converted the fireplace from electric logs to wood burning for some heat before the electric came back on for 6 hours. It was zero last night

 

Brrrrrr...
Stay Safe my Texas Brothers and Sisters.....

 

I just talked to my friend that moved to Pflugerville outside of Austin 15 years ago........basically no power or water since monday morning plus 8 inches of snow......45 degrees in his house at 8pm eastern when i talked to him tonight.....HA HA.....i told him....move back to Indiana.....we got gas as part of the infra structure(mostly electric in Texas) here so the GENERAC will keep warm!

Peace WildBill

 

Interesting to see the breakdown of the types of power generation they use in Texas:

 

I guess those new electric cars will not charge up either. It was 12 in Dallas there yesterday and was 20 up in Ohio. At 6am this morning it is 21 in Dallas. -2.5 in Ohio

 

This must be that talk about global something happening.

 

It's not just locals being impacted by this. My Credit Union has online banking that is Texas based and I've been unable to access my accounts online. Have to call or go into the main office if I needed to do something. I've had a couple of other issues with Tx based online services because of no power.

Daughter is waiting to hear from a TX Univ on acceptance, notice went out they will be a week later than previously expected.

And Chicago has more snow on the ground than any time since 79, and below freezing temps for a couple of weeks. Son got about a foot the other night in the city and getting around is challenging.

 

Strange, I don't see wind turbines on that graph...

 

Probably the "other renewables"

 

More craziness:

Meanwhile, far from being off line, wind generators are enjoying a fat payday. Thanks to the way power prices fluctuate in Texas, Bloomberg reports that a 100Mw windfarm that could normally expect to clear $40,000 on any two days in February, instead racked up over $9.5 million on Monday and Tuesday thanks to record spikes in Texas power market.

 

Interestingly, when I lived in Medway, MA we had both a Burger King and a MacDonald's. The MacDonald's folded, the Burger King is still there.

 

Just to be clear, that was sarcasm. I'm pretty sure the TEXAS state legislature is not a hotbed of tree huggers and hippies.

 

Texas is down to 3.5 million outages.

 

No electric yet but water came back on at midnight, no busted pipes yet but no heat either, 25 for high today.

 

Hang in there. Maybe a slow drip for the water. This is one technique we use along with opening cabinet doors below any sink.

 

I am in Conroe, just north of Houston, we didn't lose any utilities at my place. Several friends in the area were not as fortunate. Several frozen and burst pipes. Plumbers are telling people they are 2 weeks out for repairs. Bad situation. My main office lost power so we are patching things in just to run payroll. Can't not pay people in this time of need. Supposed to be 65 on Saturday.