The thing that worries me about this is that it’s being increasingly clear that the US is becoming too partisan to do anything.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m guessing that a very high percentage of people will continue to blame wind. And I’m guessing this splits pretty heavily on party lines.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this removes all accountability from the government. If your constituents are always arguing about something other than your governance (I.e constantly in some ideological battle), what incentive do you really have to govern well?
The US still does many things well. But I think the system supporting the ability to do things well is decaying.
It's disingenuous to just call this an partisanship problem, this is specifically a problem with the modern conservative movement, and it's specifically due to the influence of Fox News and other similar media organizations that back up Conservative politician in their lies. As we are currently seeing with Liz Cheney the modern conservative movement in this country has no time for someone who is unwilling to agree with their lies.
I don’t know if it’s so much an issue of partisanship - you don’t see the democrats pulling this sort of science denial + distraction + reframing technique, and I think it only exacerbates the situation to lay blame on both sides equally. The crazy in our government is not distributed equally. The obstinance in our government is not distributed equally.
I’m sure there are crazy and obstinate folks on both sides, but one side does this sort of thing much, much more often. Maybe their constituents who care about that stuff should change parties, or force their party to change?
I don't understand why people keep feeling indignation from these kinds of news. Politics have entered the post-truth age wordwide, and thinking that trying to present the facts will amount to any sort of sensible change is either delusional, or an excess of optimism at best. We failed to adapt to the massive cultural changes brought by mass media first and social media later, and these are the results.
People do now believe in what they want to believe in, no matter what the news or expert say.
Needless to say, what they want very often ("coincidentally" of course) happens to match perfectly with the economic and policy interests of a few powerful people or corporations.
It's a waste of time and effort trying to rebut these people, because they deliberately try to stray away from logic (where they know they would often lose) and always attempt to move debate to a plane of emotions and feelings, where any kind of confrontation becomes basically impossible.
Has politics ever not been post-truth? To win a debate you just need to sway the audience. It has been known since ancient times that's not limited to presenting facts.
This matters very little at this point. Wind and solar are being deployed in Texas very rapidly (tens of GW of capacity are in the queue [1]). FERC has a recent ruling, encouraged along by Tesla, to make utility storage a first class citizen within ERCOT [2]. By the end of 2023, wind and solar will eclipse Texas’ gas fired generation capacity, before accounting for rooftop solar deployments “behind the meter.”
With that said, this illustrates death gasps of a dying ideology. Let the market continue to do its thing and drive out fossil generation.
(disclosure: an extended family member comes from rural Texas oil money, so these are frequent heated discussions in our family)
The Texas Legislature, which meets every two years, is wrapping up a session right now. To get a sense for how the Legislature has prioritized addressing the grid failure relative to other issues, and what they propose to change, see this list of pending bills at the Texas Tribune: https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2021/permitless-carry...
The bills introduced are watered down with no meaningful enforcement. Texas will forget about it in 2 years and we will have this whole problem happen again.
The "unreinforced cockpit door" in the blackout seems to have been turning off power to gas facilities (that send gas to create power) [1] because of failure to complete paperwork on both sides, causing a Factorio-style negative feedback loop.
I think you really need some sources if you're going to accuse someone, otherwise you're just spouting baseless accusations (at best), which do not improve either the target or the conversation. IANAL but this looks pretty close to libel to me.
What happened in Texas was Sum of all fears. Every type of energy production failed, and entire state from Dalhart to Del Rio were under winter storm at the same time.
The core issue is whether to winterize the infrastructure or not, in 2011 North Texas was effected by rest of the state did not have to endure cold front, that was thought to be once a generation thing. (Remember the cold snow superbowl in DFW in 2011?).
What happened in Texas was the sum of all of its past elections and policy decisions. Texas has the government that it wants and rightfully deserves and I’m not about to interfere with that.
Well, the point is that wind was already expected to provide much less than its installed capacity. So expectations weren’t underwhelmed much.
The only electricity source that delivered with 100% capacity, minus a short outage of one reactor due an unfortunate sensor problem, was nuclear.
Nuclear power has - by far - the highest capacity factor of all sources of energy and if you don’t want to risk power outages in winter, your best bet is more nuclear.
> TP Nuclear Operating Co.'s 1,312-MW South Texas Project-1, which automatically shut Feb. 15 amid bitter cold, connected to the grid at 9:07 pm CT Feb. 17 "and is currently ascending to 100% power," company spokeswoman Vicki Rowland said Feb. 18.
> The unit, located in Bay City, Texas, was operating at 36% of capacity early the morning of Feb. 18, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a daily reactor status report.
> Rowland said Feb. 16 the unit shut "due to cold weather-related issues in the plant's feedwater system." Weather conditions did not impact the 1,312-MW South Texas Project-2, which operated at 100% early Feb. 15-18, according to NRC.
While you are not shocked that this is the case we should be alarmed that a large percentage of the U.S. population doesn't care. They will not let this fact dissuade them from their ideological servitude to the GOP. That we have come to the point where rampant hypocrisy is the norm and does nothing to get people to question their political affiliations is shocking to me.
Compare the amount of power generated by source the day of the blackouts and one year prior. Wind fell to nothing whereas gas production was way up. But because gas didn't increase enough to meet the crazy demand it is blamed.
The problem is larger than the power mix. Wind turbines & gas pipes can be winterized (which still hasn't been done yet). However, the Texas Interconnect is purposefully isolated because it does not want to be federally regulated and join the Eastern Interconnect. That is absolutely atrocious IMO. El Paso had power (West Interconnect) while the rest of the state went into the stone age. Crazy demand can happen in the summer as well. San Antonio almost every summer has rolling brownouts due to high demand from the heat. Cooling centers are a regular occurance.
"Wind turbines were a factor, but only a small one. Wind in Texas doesn’t produce as much power in the winter, and regulators don’t typically rely on wind turbines to provide significant amounts of power. Instead, regulators anticipated that natural gas and coal power plants would meet demand."
This is a key paragraph that the author waves over without elaboration. Wind power makes up 25% of the power grid. When winter storm hit wind production collapsed and the load all shifted to natural gas which couldn't sustain the load.
Here is a thought experiment, if that 25% of the grid had been coal power plants instead of wind would the grid have still failed?
I heard the following quote in a youtube piece† outlining what happened, and thought it was interesting and relevant to this disaster: "Energy providers are paid for what they produce, not how reliable their production is."
This kind of policy benefits solar and wind power, which are not reliable (without storage), but it hurts the consumers when abnormal weather hits.
And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall.
Quite the mismatch between what behavior is needed, and what is rewarded.
EDIT: Accuse wind and solar of not being reliable on HN (even with the storage caveat), and you're punished. But it's true. It happened here. Wind turbines were shut down. Solar panels were covered in snow. They didn't have storage attached to make up for these shortfalls.
Even a nuclear power plant went down due to problems with its water supply.
>And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall.
If the generator can profit off unreliablity it also means a grid storage provider can profit off reliability and undercut the generator.
[+] [-] Bukhmanizer|4 years ago|reply
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m guessing that a very high percentage of people will continue to blame wind. And I’m guessing this splits pretty heavily on party lines.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this removes all accountability from the government. If your constituents are always arguing about something other than your governance (I.e constantly in some ideological battle), what incentive do you really have to govern well?
The US still does many things well. But I think the system supporting the ability to do things well is decaying.
[+] [-] neaden|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] efnx|4 years ago|reply
I’m sure there are crazy and obstinate folks on both sides, but one side does this sort of thing much, much more often. Maybe their constituents who care about that stuff should change parties, or force their party to change?
[+] [-] qalmakka|4 years ago|reply
People do now believe in what they want to believe in, no matter what the news or expert say. Needless to say, what they want very often ("coincidentally" of course) happens to match perfectly with the economic and policy interests of a few powerful people or corporations.
It's a waste of time and effort trying to rebut these people, because they deliberately try to stray away from logic (where they know they would often lose) and always attempt to move debate to a plane of emotions and feelings, where any kind of confrontation becomes basically impossible.
[+] [-] bruce343434|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|4 years ago|reply
With that said, this illustrates death gasps of a dying ideology. Let the market continue to do its thing and drive out fossil generation.
(disclosure: an extended family member comes from rural Texas oil money, so these are frequent heated discussions in our family)
[1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
[2] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/court-upholds-f...
[+] [-] headmelted|4 years ago|reply
In any case, spent uranium, solar and wind is the way forward regardless.
[+] [-] bigbillheck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] billsmithaustin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hourislate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avelis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedimastert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analyte123|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://archive.is/cTZV4 / https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-texas-went-dark-the-state-pa...
[+] [-] chapium|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prewett|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/libel
[+] [-] sremani|4 years ago|reply
The core issue is whether to winterize the infrastructure or not, in 2011 North Texas was effected by rest of the state did not have to endure cold front, that was thought to be once a generation thing. (Remember the cold snow superbowl in DFW in 2011?).
[+] [-] zero_deg_kevin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avelis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbmuser|4 years ago|reply
The only electricity source that delivered with 100% capacity, minus a short outage of one reactor due an unfortunate sensor problem, was nuclear.
Nuclear power has - by far - the highest capacity factor of all sources of energy and if you don’t want to risk power outages in winter, your best bet is more nuclear.
> https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity
[+] [-] shagie|4 years ago|reply
> TP Nuclear Operating Co.'s 1,312-MW South Texas Project-1, which automatically shut Feb. 15 amid bitter cold, connected to the grid at 9:07 pm CT Feb. 17 "and is currently ascending to 100% power," company spokeswoman Vicki Rowland said Feb. 18.
> The unit, located in Bay City, Texas, was operating at 36% of capacity early the morning of Feb. 18, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a daily reactor status report.
> Rowland said Feb. 16 the unit shut "due to cold weather-related issues in the plant's feedwater system." Weather conditions did not impact the 1,312-MW South Texas Project-2, which operated at 100% early Feb. 15-18, according to NRC.
[+] [-] okprod|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nob0dyasked|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whydoineedthis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syops|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yRbfmm1rVg8K5TR|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avelis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barbacoa|4 years ago|reply
This is a key paragraph that the author waves over without elaboration. Wind power makes up 25% of the power grid. When winter storm hit wind production collapsed and the load all shifted to natural gas which couldn't sustain the load.
Here is a thought experiment, if that 25% of the grid had been coal power plants instead of wind would the grid have still failed?
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|4 years ago|reply
This kind of policy benefits solar and wind power, which are not reliable (without storage), but it hurts the consumers when abnormal weather hits.
And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall.
Quite the mismatch between what behavior is needed, and what is rewarded.
† https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM
EDIT: Accuse wind and solar of not being reliable on HN (even with the storage caveat), and you're punished. But it's true. It happened here. Wind turbines were shut down. Solar panels were covered in snow. They didn't have storage attached to make up for these shortfalls.
Even a nuclear power plant went down due to problems with its water supply.
[+] [-] imtringued|4 years ago|reply
If the generator can profit off unreliablity it also means a grid storage provider can profit off reliability and undercut the generator.