Yup. For years, money was spend to build wind and solar Green Energy rather than perform capital maintenance or upgrades on nuclear or coal/natural gas fired plants.
They have the tax funnel set up. We either set up a better one or destroy theirs. Logic and Reason have nothing to do with the lies Democrats use to Steal from the Middle Class.
Those have existed for a long time. CO2 capture systems are the newest thing, but of course they are unfunded. Only a few plants have been retrofitted with them in the US.
Uh, that's a refinery, not a power plant. Without even looking at the description of the image you can tell its a refinery by the holding tanks and the almost 2 dozen separating towers within the image.
If these eco types were truly concerned about the environment, they would focus on scrubbers that break down the exhaust into inert or reusable matter.
Then we can burn as much coal as we want and use the byproduct for another useful application.
If they were concerned about the environment, they wouldn't destroy beautiful landscapes with ugly windmills and service roads. If they cared one whit about wildlife, they wouldn't chop up hundreds of thousands of endangered raptors and other birds each year. Just like BLM, its all about money and control, using leftist rhetoric to harness the power of gullible useful idiots.
And the technology is there. Obama even said at one point that he had solutions "right off the shelf". They know. The Sierra Club opposes solid storage of carbon but that may have something to do with the use of biomass or other things to get the process to net zero. At the end of the day, scrubbing CO2 is a lot less hard on the planet than producing wind turbines and solar farms.
They kinda did that with 2008 era diesel engines. They were fitted with extra large EGR feed tubes and coolers, a large catalytic converter, a DPF, and an air intake heater with a variable vane turbocharger and variable intake.
Together it all catches 99% of the soot, produces 50% less nOX than traditional diesels, no carbon monoxide with the palladium catalytic converter, and has soot filter pressure differential sensors to sense when it needs to be cleaned, then puts the engine in "regen mode" where it injects diesel fuel between the engine cycles to dose fuel downstream to the catalytic converter that ignites it and heats up the soot filter so hot it burns the captured soot off as ash at 40+ MPH for about 35mins given or take
Yup, and engines from that era and on are nowhere near as reliable as the earlier engines, nor do they have the fuel economy. A 12v Cummins powered Ram 2500 can get 20 mpg and the engine will literally last a million miles. The regen cycle on the engines unfortunately equipped with them kills the turbo. You have to rip all of that junk off of them to make them reliable again.
In part. The original intent during the time the term came about was to capture carbon but that never happened. Environmentalists were against it because they wanted coal itself stopped so instead of having byproducts in solid or other form we still have it in the air. But fortunately the environmentalists have not blocked the cleaning up of other bad gases. And oddly enough they were very quickly bought off when we discovered that VW had been pumping tons of that stuff into the air for decades but hid it from regulators.
Yes and no. It can also refer to the grade of coal. Clean coal having few contaminants in the fuel itself. But the most often used terminology is indeed in the systems and filters that clean the fumes created by burning coal.
Most gas turbines, unless they are peaker plants, are a combined cycle plant, which is a gas turbine combined with a HRSG and steam turbine.
Coal plants use steam, CC plants use steam, nuke plants use steam, even CSP solar plants use steam. Everything but hydro, PV solar, and wind turbines use steam.
Yep, steam drives the turbine to spin, then the kinetic energy from the turbine is converted into electricity through movement in a magnetic field. That's how electricity is generated. Whatever power source you use, the purpose is always the same, which is to boil water and create steam.
Not to get too enginerdy on you (because from an engineering perspective, you are 100% correct) but some of the other reasons water is used is because of its massive capacity to "store" heat as both its heat capacity and phase change. It also is only moderately corrosive in an oxidizing environment, is non-toxic and ubiquitous on Earth.
All-in-all, water is an amazing molecule and most leftists don't understand that the majority of their electricity comes from a system that is very similar to the first steam locomotives and Aeolipile.
I've often wondered if the net effect of humans was global cooling until we started to clean up the particulates from our industrial/heating emissions.
Remember the heart-wrenching cover picture of a polar bear on a floating ice? That created the illusion of a melting north pole where polar bear became an endangered species. They'd never tell you that polar bears are excellent swimmer. They can swim miles of distance and spent hours in icy water.
CO2 is a small fraction of a percent of the atmosphere. It’s a greenhouse gas but to see the temperature rises we’ve seen there’s no way you can attribute more than a minuscule portion of it to CO2.
I wish I could remember the exact quote and who said it (Iowahawk maybe?) - but it went something like: "Changing the earth's climate would require a massive variable energy source, something on the order of our own sun."
This right here. They have the cause and effect backwards.
The system is self regulating and CO2 levels are part of the mechanism to shift from warming to cooling so how can it also cause warming? It's so stupid.
Nuclear burns cleaner than literally any other form of energy. AND SAFER!!! You have to account for all cost, deaths given from the ENTIRE process, from mining, sourcing, storage, transport, secondary storage, burning, waste streams, waste transport, etc.
If you DO account for it all then nuclear wins by about 100,000 per capita deaths and billions in supply and waste cost per year.
And, of course, "green energy" bullshit fails entirely with the highest per capita death rates and lifecycle cost of any source.
Nope, more deaths per capita, by a fairly significant amount, throughout the last 60ish years of each. Hydro loses due to massive loss of life in comparison.
Hoover dam alone was 96 people killed. That level of death, even back then, would have permanently shut down every nuclear plant in the country.
Paul Allen makes me think of Bill Gates who is apparently into the TWR (traveling wave reactor), but I don't remember TWR even mentioned in the film, for what that's worth.
I'm not sure how close they are. Bill was caught scheming with Ballmer on how to claw back Allen's shares in Microsoft after Allen was diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness and effectively disinheret his family.
I also recommend watching Pandora's Promise, especially if nuclear "worries" you, because it shouldn't.
Also check out Kirk Sorensen on YouTube. He did a great TED talk about 10 years ago talking about nuclear which I highly recommend if you have 9 minutes:
For anyone who clicks this link and sees it is 2 hours long and says, "that's too long to for me to dedicate to something brand new to me", then I'll say this:
Watch the first 5 minutes. There's a compressed version of the info upfront to grab your attention.
Cool. Thanks for the link. It sounds very promising and if produced on mass scale (per city, per town, per neighborhood, per building), the cost per plant could come way down.
Also, if broadly accepted, it could replace the electric power grid, natural gas, green energy, and petroleum-based industries. I can't imagine why we haven't adopted this technology sooner.
Are you aware of any working Thorium-based plants?
Oak Ridge had a working MSR (molten salt reactor) running for something on the order of several months in the 1960s, but that was on the Uranium fuel cycle. The reactor in Shippingport, PA ran a Thorium fuel cycle in the late 70s/early 80s, but it was in a LWR configuration. The point there is we have DONE this. The Thorium cycle can work, and molten salts can work.
As for currently working, no I'm not aware of any. There are several small startups that are working towards a goal of launching more advanced reactor designs, but investment is thin because of the immense regulatory burden to penetrate the market. It's worth noting both India and China have active research programs into Thorium MSRs. In fact, China basically visited Oak Ridge and asked to see what worked they'd done there and the people working there were just like, "yeah, here ya go" and handed over tons of research. The original scientists were long-retired, and the people at Oak Ridge had absolutely no idea the gold mine they'd been sitting on. The story gets more and more frustrating the deeper you dig.
Nuclear power is clean and efficient, but the fuel is too scarce to be a major part of the world's power supply indefinitely. Given known and estimated supplies, and trends in increasing efficiency of use, at current levels (11% of current world electrical production), the world's primary supplies of uranium will last about 90 years. After that, further supplies could only be gotten by extraction from granite and similar rocks, or extraction from seawater, both of which would be enormously inefficient and expensive.
Realistically, the only fuel source currently viable indefinitely is wood, although future technologies may alter that reality.
Big money is going into the fusion reactor technology race. Hydrogen (split from water) is far more plentiful than wood.
We are finding natural gas and oil are being made through an abiotic process deep down in the earth.
We have plenty of fuel for the next several centuries, if needed.
The only problem we have with it are people dead set on making millions die over the years, needlessly, by denying these fuel sources to power our grid.
Get rid of the unnecessary red tape and useless regs...let's power our grids right.
But without those subsidies for those billionaires' fake "green" energy scams, they wouldn't be billionaires and would have to work and contribute to society
There are some places on earth where there is so much sun that solar outcompetes even without subsidies. That said the US and EU are only trying to move manufacturing back to China so we have disposable crap produced in the worst factories that needs constant intercontinental shipping. Sounds like a Biden plan.
I have friends who worked in solar in Southern California, where there is lots of sun, and they told me that without the subsidies it was not competitive with fossil fuels. Not even close, in fact.
The easy way to resolve any doubt is to eliminate the subsidies. If "green" energy can truly compete with fossil fuels - great! I doubt it.
The duplication of transmission infrastructure alone makes it a loser. Funny how the eco terrorists don’t care about all the land and waste that goes into renewables.
I'm not sure which subsidies he means. The raw price of a solar panel now is in many cases under a dollar per watt, with no tax rebate applied, just like you went to amazon and ordered a solar panel, and it shows up to your house. The manufacturer potentially could be subsidized in some ways, I'm not sure, like low interest loans or whatever. Anyway a sunny place like florida, texas, or southern california, you can generate about 1.5 kwh per day from a 200 watt solar panel that costs $180. This is about 18 cents of electricity per day, so 1000 days, about 3 years, to offset it's cost. Most panels have 20-30 years warranties.
A gallon of gasoline produces in the mid 30's kwh of power, except ICE engines only harness about 40% of that. If your commute to work is 20 miles, you need about 9 of those panels to harvest enough electricity for that task per day, say 10 to be safe. A 40 mile round trip at average passenger vehicle mpg is 1.6 gallons of gas per day, with holidays and vacation, lets say 50 weeks a year, 5 days per week, that's 400 gallons of gas per year. At current average prices that is $1028 per year, so the panels take less than 2 years to save you money in that scenario.
The real cost savings are in DIY, you can buy panels from wholesalers as low as $0.60 per wat rating that i've seen, and make your own lithium iron battery packs, do the install yourself, it can for sure be cost effective. If you go for a commercial install, you get into more sketchy territory.
The main reason I like solar is the independence, if an idiot like biden takes office and starts jacking up prices of energy with a few strokes of their pen, you are independent and unaffected, at least directly. I think individual independence is nearly as important as national independence, when it comes to things like energy, or the nation's food and medical supplies, we shouldn't be dependent on nations like china or middle eastern dictators literally for our survival, and on an individual level I think most people should have gardens, maybe a few chickens, a tilapia pool, and some solar panels, plus emergency supplies for reasonable natural disasters. Then you still have the grid as a backup and mostly industry is powered by the grid so more energy available for businesses to utilize. As far as that goes, nuclear and solar go hand in hand, solar produces the most power during the day, which is when demand is highest, unlike wind which produces whenever it feels like, often at night, when demand is lowest(if you have batteries it's okay but grid scale batteries are way too expensive). Nuclear creates steady power output so you have to build excess capacity to meet peak needs, but not if you combine with solar.
What hot sunny regions like that are good for is more for is solar steam turbines, since solar EV panels as noted by other posters become less effective when overheated.
Bonus points if they manage to incorporate it into a desalination process for creating potable water while they are at it.
The challenge that as always remains with inconsistent generation methods like solar and wind is storage of that energy.
I know a bunch of people who have allowed wind farms to be established on their ranch land. Every time they say the "green" part of "green energy" they make that rubbing fingers together to say "money" gesture.
That includes Jimmy Carter, who the Democrats praise as a "Climate Champion" for converting 10 acres of his peanut farm into a solar farm. They completely overlook the fact that he is being paid more for leasing the land than he would make farming it.
NG pumping stations running on electric instead NG. Cant no longer get NG to plant to make electric to power pumps.... They added several points of failure.
They converted natgas pipeline compressor stations from being driven by natgas engines to electric motors. Why? FedGov NOx regulations on those engines made doing something to reliable and sensible a PITA.
Yup, this is dumb. My family got a house that has a fancy fireplace that has catalytic converter and ductwork to go to the whole house to distribute heat. It even has a convection fan to circulate the air, which should just run from the heat of the fireplace. But, they added a stupid electric switch to the fan, so then when the power goes out, instead of being a backup furnace, it's just a normal fireplace.
Yup. In some of these places, the actual processing plants went offline because they were reliant on wind power which froze up. So now it causes a cascading effect down the system. The processing plant shuts down so less gas flowing into the system so your natural gas plant can't operate at maximum power.....
The cold reduced wind production by more than 50%.
The wind energy is processed through the electrical grid, then onto power plants.
The plants can only produce enough power if the various types of energy are available.
Since wind production was down by more than 50%, much higher than typical shipments of natural gas and coal were required.
And demand was up substantially. Transmission for natural gas is limited by existing pipelines. In Texas; coal is commonly transported by rail but the cold also impacted rail service.
Plant operators had to scramble to obtain natural gas and coal to substitute for the lack of wind power. And natural gas companies tend to send supply to households rather than power plants.
Some plants shut down to weatherize; this should have been done as capital expenditures or scheduled maintenance. However, the sexier Green Energy and highly beneficial Federal Tax credits likely delayed these actions.
I also read that the older coal-fired plants were being decommissioning due to stringent EPA regs and would cost too much to retrofit. Also, even the newer clean coal-burning plants are running at lower than full capacity due to stiffer regulations and restrictions on mining.
Meanwhile, they allow other countries to build less restricted coal-burning plants and continue to mine.
It's almost as if our Government wants us to suffer. 🤔
Wow, that's insane. If Trump were in office he would have found out this was the case and declared a disaster and waived all the rules. But JB doesn't give a fuck and is napping the day away after declaring a lid at 8 AM.
Why is it always leftists supporting the worst ideas ever? I guess that’s what happens when you stumble through life with your mommy and daddy dragging you through it until your late 20s
We are calling it energy of colour now. Additionally if you describe the colour of the technology that failed you'll be canceled and GELM will show up at your house and unplug all your appliances
And I bet it's higher than 40% too probably closer to 50% but seriously the 13% includes all women children and elderly. It's only the young males doing this.
LOL yeah. Its pathetic to watch people cling to a failing system, while it fails right in front of everyone. "But... but... Bill gates said... it wasn't the windmills, right? RIGHT?"
The moment every news cycle starting repeating around the clock that this had nothing to do with green energy, I knew it had everything to do with green energy. These are the same people who told us Joe Biden is the most populate President of all time, Covid-19 will kill us all and that HCQ is the most dangerous drug on the planet.
Oh man so true. There's always that 12-36 hour hesitation period of "What do we say??" and then horse's ass gates comes out and says Texas is wrong to blame green energy. And BOOM all of a sudden the world has the safe leftwing narrative to dish out at everybody. Imagine being dumb enough to believe all of the nonsense that the mainstream media says?
For years, the State of Texas has been filing lawsuits against the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, trying to stop it from enforcing regulations aimed at reducing power plant pollution.
Texas has lost most of the cases, including a major ruling earlier this summer by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court gave the EPA the go-ahead to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. At the PUC hearing, there was testimony that Texas would again file suit over these latest rules.
States have until 2016 to formulate their plans to cut power plant pollution but in the meantime, there will likely be battles in court over how much Texas must do.
Shit like that got power plants like the one at Lake Monticello closed. Monticello was one of my favorite fishing lakes, BTW.
Vistra announced in October 2017 that all three units will cease power generation in January 2018 due to advancements in renewable energy and a glut of natural gas depressing wholesale power prices.[5] The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) permitted the closure of Monticello at a hearing in November 2017.[11] The closure was scheduled for January 4, 2018.[5]
Well, my guess is that wind turbines did show some promise so they decided since the courts were never going to back us might as well cut our losses. But people here now are just learning exactly how this all happened so I think the fight is back on.
Nuclear is the only green energy I will currently waste my time on. Until the retards on the left say that single word I assume anything they try is a scam.
I'm a huge fan of Hydro - we already have most of the dams we need in place, may as well take advantage of them! but nope.
i understand the fish migration issue, but most places like the one near me have an elevator system and they do their best to get as many fish up and over the dam as possible.
Plus it's a great educational thing for all ages, I usually spend 3 months watching fish swim into the elevators and up to the other side.
Yes, but geothermal uses a lot less electricity than any other heating/cooling method. With a solar roof, Tesla power wall, and geothermal you can essentially be off the grid and could even get through several days without sun. I guess if you really wanted to be comfortable in all possible circumstances, additional backup gasoline generator would be good too.
Well, you don't have to be hooked into the grid if you are self-sufficient. But, if you are hooked in, then you can use your batteries to run your house during peak hours (when energy is expensive) and even sell some electricity back to the grid (for money), then at night you can recharge your batteries with less expensive energy.
That's the thing. If green energy was really worth it then regular energy companies would use it. The only reason energy companies are pursuing it now is because of the free money from subsidies. Let the free market work.
The greenhouse where I work, we're on solar. Our electric bill went from $400+/month to $28, sometimes < $10. Very cool to know we can pass on that savings to customers in our prices and employees in their paychecks. Large area dairy farmers use methane converters for their farms, and not only power 100s of homes, but have so much of what we call "black gold", liquid cow manure byproduct, they spread it for free on other farmers' fields. Natural fertilizer good for two years. I would be interested to know more about tidal power/generators for here in Maine, and remember when my state had its own hydro electric power companies. We're a state of many rivers, and sold power to other NE states. Many of the dams were dismantled, which honestly, needed to be done to get the fish stocks back once we became aware of the dangers of pesticides, runoff, everything detrimental in our waterways. We were once a huge industrial state too. But we're all cleaned up now, and have made so much progress. Hydro electric power has been around since the early Middle Ages, surely we could do it responsibly now, I think, for humans and wildlife. I'm not so keen on wind power, at least those huge wind turbines. How many birds and bats do they actually kill, I'd like to know. And what affect on the sea bed do they have when constructed there? Two of my brothers are lobstermen and log in winter. In this state, fishing and forestry(logging) are the true sustainable industries. Sorry to ramble. lol I just get what you're saying.
I'm not against what they said. If capital investment can lead to a decrease in operating costs, it's not a bad idea for a facility to look into it.
That said, this kind of thing should only apply at the individual level. A greenhouse using solar power is fine. Trying to run an entire state on it is not.
No offense taken. We're a greenhouse in central Maine, heating greenhouses from January1 24/7 thru 2nd week of April, after that, maybe nightly for another 30 days. Under Dept of Ag regs, we're considered seasonal, so all the tax right offs and Ag rebates the big plug producers and plant growers get, we don't qualify for. If a crop dies, there's no crop insurance that'll cover it; if we have to dump half a greenhouse worth of product, there's no tax right off. Under seasonal greenhouse Ag regs, if I lost my job, I can't claim unemployment. Heat is our biggest expense. Right now, it's 800 gallons propane a week @$2.20/gallon. Wednesday the big house gets turned on, and heat costs almost double. We're too small to qualify for REAP grants from D of AG, so no taxpayers paid for anything. It was a 30k loan, and the monthly payment is about what the electric bill used to be. It's a commercial installation, and we do net metering, no batteries. We had to do something to save money somewhere. We're retail/wholesale, and the only wholesale grower in the state(there are 3, total in Maine) that has no minimum purchase requirement, which means a lot to other small growers, farmers, grocery and hardware stores in the 5 counties we service. We have to stay open, matter what. There's such a thing called Yankee ingenuity here; if a dairy farmer who milks 1000 head can use cow shit to power his farm, save on electric and save $20k per year in fertilizer for himself, and hay and potato farmers nearby, I'm all for it. Not pushing the Green New Deal, at all. I'm a greenhouse grower, remember? I have loggers in my family. Plants eat carbon. The only thing keeping us from plunging into another ice age is carbon emissions. So you know GMOs are the hoax before climate change, right, or did you figure that one out?
Why are these “green” projects even approved when nuclear plants exists? What possible reason could there be to spend millions and millions on what is categorically an inferior energy production method?
If they are able to get to the point they want, they can issue carbon "credits" to companies, the credits being representative of how much co2 they are allowed to produce. The credits could be traded... and there's the rub. It creates a completely artificial commodities market where government 100% controls supply of said commodity. Consider all that and then consider that we also exhale co2, and try not to be a little terrified of the future implications if they end up being successful in this. Nuclear is efficient. They don't want more efficiency, they want more control.
I was laughing hysterically when I saw a Forbes article that said essentially "no you dumb eco bigots, it was actually our reliance on fossil fuels that caused this." I was just baffled how blatant the propaganda is.
I would have warm conversations with strangers in Austin, but they usually creep me out and would probably sucker punch me if they got a hint I was conservative.
Yup, thermal is essentially heat source turns water into steam, steam builds pressure and hits fins on a turbine and then steam condenses into water to 'circle back' to the heat source. Nuclear operates the same way. Only ones without water as a thermal transfer fluid are internal combustion, same as how your car works but those are the small home generators or backup generators and are way less efficient.
Here is the bigger kicker: Had we just skipped the wind energy BS, we would have had more than enough money to winterize. It was liberal democrats throwing a tantrum and policy makers, energy companies and regulators bending their knee to these idiots.
Also liberal idiots did everything in their power to openly undermine the grid and to block essential infrastructure, like natural gas pipelines, that were needed during this period of time.
From what I gathered there were 3 categories of failures:
Solar and wind were offline due to the weather (and, to my knowledge, one hydro plant suffered a major failure).
However.....
~30 gas fired generation plants went offline due to the ice disrupting plant instrumentation and safety systems + other temperature related failures
An unknown number of generation plants were fuel starved. Due to unprecedented consumer demand for gas? Ice/cold related gas distribution failures? Don't know yet.
Possibly fuel starved because the compressors used in gas pipelines were converted to electric rather than gas because of emissions. Some of those compressors may have lost power and that caused cascading failures.
More information seems to be coming out pretty often now.
If only there was some sort of hydrocarbon available to power a backup system. For some reason thoughts keep drifting back the the USSR circa early 1990s
Gas compressors at my utility are electric; we have black-start capable (diesel) generators which in the event of a loss of station power are "supposed" to start but, good luck with that. And performing an actual black start is very tricky indeed for a variety of reasons. Adding in all of the weather issues that probably rendered their (likely non-winterized) backup equipment even less reliable than ours in my balmy area and, well... yeah, they were fucked.
Don't forget nuclear. Unstable grid makes them trip. Those turbines suck up a lot of energy. If the generator hall is offline for very long, the plant can't deal with the heat, so they have to bring the reactors offline. And if a reactor is stopped on short notice, you generally can't restart it for a few days minimum, until the xenon (etc) has decayed.
In other words, several days of outage were pretty much baked into the cake when the failure cascade reached a certain size.
2 hours of power, in 15 minute aliquots, since 2am Monday. NONE from 2pm Tuesday to 7am Thursday. To save our Overlords the political embarrassment of accidentally killing customers by crashing their crappy Green! Grid, we are intentionally killing customers to "protect the grid". "We had to destroy the village, to save the village." Politically fungible Grandma Termite in Texas...
Without knowing any of the details of their nuke plant, I'm going to speculate that the nuke portion of it wasn't the problem, but more than likely balance-of-plant issues. Not saying that excuses it, but there are a lot of things that can go wrong to cause even a conventional generating unit to have to shut down, much of it having very little to do directly with power generation. I would imaging a nuke plant is even more susceptible in that regard for "abundance of caution" (I hate that phrase) reasons if nothing else.
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If TX utilities are anything like utilities in my state, while green energy was certainly a contributing factor, there were likely many others as well. For example: in the push for cleaner fossil fuel generation, generating units have become FAR more efficient but also far more fickle. Where I work we have generating units built in the 1960's and some built ~10 years ago. The new ones are much more efficient, but trip off if someone farts sideways; the old ones are not efficient but can limp along with even the most inept of operators.
Which brings me to my next point: the crews. When I started 20 years ago the performance standards and expectations of staff were pretty high. I have watched first-hand as those standards and expectations have plummeted and while there has always been deadwood, there's a lot more of it percentage-wise now than there was when I started. When things start to go wrong, even if there is a chance to correct it before units trip (a long shot to begin with for newer equipment as I mentioned above) chances are that the crew on shift won't have enough skilled employees to save things anyway.
It's not even a diversity-hire problem and Lord knows we have plenty of those; it's really a cultural "don't hurt people's fee-fees and risk getting sued over it" problem.
Add a once-in-a-century severe weather anomaly to those and any utility would be fucked.
Hydro and nuclear are the only green energy sources. Natural gas is above average.
Wind is the worst. The insulating gas leaking is causing a bigger greenhouse gas effect than all the CO2 not released for the entire history of wind driven electricity generation. It can't be stored or predicted, and it is inefficient for both space and materials.
Did you all see **Jen Psaki **when asked she blamed coal and gas fired plants and said that the wind and solar energy was the most resilient.. It was a pure propaganda moment ...
The irony of this situation is undeniable. More green energy sources were created to combat global warming but are rendered inoperable by record cold temperatures.
Green is a money grab. Its not ready for showtime. Some solar panels on houses cool. Dams great green engery. Nuclear is awesome. Great jobs, great energy source.
This is the problem with these climate change grifiters they want to invest in energy that is not ready for problems of a sudden winter storm. That can never be good enough all because someone is getting money in their back pocket.
It’s like saying something similar to “A certain demographic is responsible for 50% of violent crime, despite only making up 15% of the total population. Nothing to see here. It’s clearly the fault of another demographic.”
Yup. For years, money was spend to build wind and solar Green Energy rather than perform capital maintenance or upgrades on nuclear or coal/natural gas fired plants.
Federal Tax laws encouraged this type of shit.
Coal plants are burning clean as steam these days. But muh CO2.
Pretty much all thermal power plants use steam as the working fluid, only places without gas turbines are super super rural.
No I meant that the filters on the fumes from coal plants basically cause them to emit H20 and inert gasses.
Shhh don't hurt the narrative with your mean facts.
Facts are racist!
The green energy lobby has Democrats in its pockets..
These companies spend millions of dollars bribing Democrats to give them Federal money which they then funl back to the Democratic politicians
Under that in Texas 21 people died.. green energy killed peopl
The green energy lobby are Democrats.
They have the tax funnel set up. We either set up a better one or destroy theirs. Logic and Reason have nothing to do with the lies Democrats use to Steal from the Middle Class.
Coal Scrubber is the word you're looking for.
Those have existed for a long time. CO2 capture systems are the newest thing, but of course they are unfunded. Only a few plants have been retrofitted with them in the US.
Heres one in Norway
That's weird, I have multiple CO2 capture systems in my yard, and they've been here for decades. Best part is, in the fall, they make apples.
We need to get rid of all the CO2 so the trees can grow! 🤡🤡🤡
That, and water them with Brawndo. It’s what plants crave!
KEK <3 MAGA2021
I got some CO2 suckers in my backyard, too. But no apples; mostly crabgrass.
Maybe if we controlled our CO2 the apples would stay on the tree.
algae soaks up more CO2 than trees but the point is not to let it circulate in the environment.
Uh, that's a refinery, not a power plant. Without even looking at the description of the image you can tell its a refinery by the holding tanks and the almost 2 dozen separating towers within the image.
This is what a gas turbine power plant looks like - one of the newer ones
i was talking about CO2 capture systems, not CC power plants. I know what power plants are, I have been designing them for 16 years.
Don't worry, our lord and savior William Gates is already funding carbon capture.
Knowing liberals they probably think that's a racial slur.
If these eco types were truly concerned about the environment, they would focus on scrubbers that break down the exhaust into inert or reusable matter.
Then we can burn as much coal as we want and use the byproduct for another useful application.
If they were concerned about the environment, they wouldn't destroy beautiful landscapes with ugly windmills and service roads. If they cared one whit about wildlife, they wouldn't chop up hundreds of thousands of endangered raptors and other birds each year. Just like BLM, its all about money and control, using leftist rhetoric to harness the power of gullible useful idiots.
I am sad every time I drive out into West Texas. They have destroyed the beauty of our State.
And the technology is there. Obama even said at one point that he had solutions "right off the shelf". They know. The Sierra Club opposes solid storage of carbon but that may have something to do with the use of biomass or other things to get the process to net zero. At the end of the day, scrubbing CO2 is a lot less hard on the planet than producing wind turbines and solar farms.
They kinda did that with 2008 era diesel engines. They were fitted with extra large EGR feed tubes and coolers, a large catalytic converter, a DPF, and an air intake heater with a variable vane turbocharger and variable intake.
Together it all catches 99% of the soot, produces 50% less nOX than traditional diesels, no carbon monoxide with the palladium catalytic converter, and has soot filter pressure differential sensors to sense when it needs to be cleaned, then puts the engine in "regen mode" where it injects diesel fuel between the engine cycles to dose fuel downstream to the catalytic converter that ignites it and heats up the soot filter so hot it burns the captured soot off as ash at 40+ MPH for about 35mins given or take
Yup, and engines from that era and on are nowhere near as reliable as the earlier engines, nor do they have the fuel economy. A 12v Cummins powered Ram 2500 can get 20 mpg and the engine will literally last a million miles. The regen cycle on the engines unfortunately equipped with them kills the turbo. You have to rip all of that junk off of them to make them reliable again.
coal gassification is what is needed. Turns coal into something similar to natural gas called "synth-gas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwardsport_Power_Station#IGCC_units
If they were concerned about the environment and CO2, they would expand nuclear. If the future is electric cars and trucks, we need lots of power.
Is this what clean coal refers to?
In part. The original intent during the time the term came about was to capture carbon but that never happened. Environmentalists were against it because they wanted coal itself stopped so instead of having byproducts in solid or other form we still have it in the air. But fortunately the environmentalists have not blocked the cleaning up of other bad gases. And oddly enough they were very quickly bought off when we discovered that VW had been pumping tons of that stuff into the air for decades but hid it from regulators.
Yes and no. It can also refer to the grade of coal. Clean coal having few contaminants in the fuel itself. But the most often used terminology is indeed in the systems and filters that clean the fumes created by burning coal.
Gas turbines don't use steam. Those are steam turbines. Gas turbines use combustion gasses.
Correct in the most technical sense!
Most gas turbines, unless they are peaker plants, are a combined cycle plant, which is a gas turbine combined with a HRSG and steam turbine.
Coal plants use steam, CC plants use steam, nuke plants use steam, even CSP solar plants use steam. Everything but hydro, PV solar, and wind turbines use steam.
Yep, steam drives the turbine to spin, then the kinetic energy from the turbine is converted into electricity through movement in a magnetic field. That's how electricity is generated. Whatever power source you use, the purpose is always the same, which is to boil water and create steam.
Not to get too enginerdy on you (because from an engineering perspective, you are 100% correct) but some of the other reasons water is used is because of its massive capacity to "store" heat as both its heat capacity and phase change. It also is only moderately corrosive in an oxidizing environment, is non-toxic and ubiquitous on Earth.
All-in-all, water is an amazing molecule and most leftists don't understand that the majority of their electricity comes from a system that is very similar to the first steam locomotives and Aeolipile.
Get Super Nerdy. I love Engineering.
k
Ehmahgerd! H2O is 100000x the greenhouse gas that CO2 is!
Actually you could argue scientifically that water vapor does cause more heat trapping than CO2...Im not kidding.
I've often wondered if the net effect of humans was global cooling until we started to clean up the particulates from our industrial/heating emissions.
2010’s-2020’s was climate change scam
2000’s-2010’s was global warming scam
1990’s-2000’s was the hole in the ozone layer scam
1980’s-1990’s was acid rain scam
1970’s-1980’s was global cooling scam
2020 + Were just gunna turn everything off. And you'll like it.
You’ll eat bugs and estrogen laced fake meat, and you’ll like it.
Wow, you're so right. This shit is a scam.
Remember the heart-wrenching cover picture of a polar bear on a floating ice? That created the illusion of a melting north pole where polar bear became an endangered species. They'd never tell you that polar bears are excellent swimmer. They can swim miles of distance and spent hours in icy water.
Yes, the step up in the 70's coincides with clean air laws.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/air-pollutions-upside-a-brake-on-global-warming
Yes. This is why Bill Gates wants to block out the sun.
Hey man your facts aren’t welcome here. Emotions only.
Yup, it's called cloud cover. If CO2 were was a significant greenhouse gas, its activity would be as detectable as cloud cover.
CO2 is a small fraction of a percent of the atmosphere. It’s a greenhouse gas but to see the temperature rises we’ve seen there’s no way you can attribute more than a minuscule portion of it to CO2.
Solar activity? Seems like that could raise or lower global temps more easily than anything else.
I wish I could remember the exact quote and who said it (Iowahawk maybe?) - but it went something like: "Changing the earth's climate would require a massive variable energy source, something on the order of our own sun."
Except that CO2 levels only go up AFTER temperatures do.
This right here. They have the cause and effect backwards.
The system is self regulating and CO2 levels are part of the mechanism to shift from warming to cooling so how can it also cause warming? It's so stupid.
I know right? Cant argue with these clowns, except by not producing anything at all.
Nuclear burns cleaner than literally any other form of energy. AND SAFER!!! You have to account for all cost, deaths given from the ENTIRE process, from mining, sourcing, storage, transport, secondary storage, burning, waste streams, waste transport, etc.
If you DO account for it all then nuclear wins by about 100,000 per capita deaths and billions in supply and waste cost per year.
And, of course, "green energy" bullshit fails entirely with the highest per capita death rates and lifecycle cost of any source.
I will vote for a nuclear power plant in my back yard every day for the rest of my life if I could.
Hydro has Nuclear beat
Nope, more deaths per capita, by a fairly significant amount, throughout the last 60ish years of each. Hydro loses due to massive loss of life in comparison.
Hoover dam alone was 96 people killed. That level of death, even back then, would have permanently shut down every nuclear plant in the country.
Technically water vapor has an even higher greenhouse factor than CO2. But I like clouds so I’m ok with clean coal.
Imagine a nice stream of HOT CLOUDS pushing against that cold front in texas.
Fissile materials don’t exactly grow on trees either but I am a big fan of nuclear.
I worry about nuclear I wish a pede in the industry would make an honest video.
Pandora's Promise is interesting but I believe it was funded by Paul Allen, so it is probably shilling for some project he was involved in.
It’s so sad we have to sift through the garbage heap of content and hucksters for one iota of truth to keep the soul warm.
We are like the garbage kids of India
Paul Allen makes me think of Bill Gates who is apparently into the TWR (traveling wave reactor), but I don't remember TWR even mentioned in the film, for what that's worth.
I don't know if they worked together on nuclear projects but I think it's a safe assumption that they had conversations about it.
I wish Bill Gates would stick to things like trying to modernize nuclear and not be so involved in vaccines.
Bill gates should stick to being a theiving ass nerd and stfu.
I'm not sure how close they are. Bill was caught scheming with Ballmer on how to claw back Allen's shares in Microsoft after Allen was diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness and effectively disinheret his family.
I also recommend watching Pandora's Promise, especially if nuclear "worries" you, because it shouldn't.
Also check out Kirk Sorensen on YouTube. He did a great TED talk about 10 years ago talking about nuclear which I highly recommend if you have 9 minutes:
https://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel
Love you fren will do.
Keep up new posts I’m sick of garbage.
I think Thorium Remix 2011 is Sorensen's finest technical presentation of just the nuclear essence.
For anyone who clicks this link and sees it is 2 hours long and says, "that's too long to for me to dedicate to something brand new to me", then I'll say this:
Watch the first 5 minutes. There's a compressed version of the info upfront to grab your attention.
Cool. Thanks for the link. It sounds very promising and if produced on mass scale (per city, per town, per neighborhood, per building), the cost per plant could come way down.
Also, if broadly accepted, it could replace the electric power grid, natural gas, green energy, and petroleum-based industries. I can't imagine why we haven't adopted this technology sooner.
Are you aware of any working Thorium-based plants?
Oak Ridge had a working MSR (molten salt reactor) running for something on the order of several months in the 1960s, but that was on the Uranium fuel cycle. The reactor in Shippingport, PA ran a Thorium fuel cycle in the late 70s/early 80s, but it was in a LWR configuration. The point there is we have DONE this. The Thorium cycle can work, and molten salts can work.
As for currently working, no I'm not aware of any. There are several small startups that are working towards a goal of launching more advanced reactor designs, but investment is thin because of the immense regulatory burden to penetrate the market. It's worth noting both India and China have active research programs into Thorium MSRs. In fact, China basically visited Oak Ridge and asked to see what worked they'd done there and the people working there were just like, "yeah, here ya go" and handed over tons of research. The original scientists were long-retired, and the people at Oak Ridge had absolutely no idea the gold mine they'd been sitting on. The story gets more and more frustrating the deeper you dig.
Nuclear power is clean and efficient, but the fuel is too scarce to be a major part of the world's power supply indefinitely. Given known and estimated supplies, and trends in increasing efficiency of use, at current levels (11% of current world electrical production), the world's primary supplies of uranium will last about 90 years. After that, further supplies could only be gotten by extraction from granite and similar rocks, or extraction from seawater, both of which would be enormously inefficient and expensive.
Realistically, the only fuel source currently viable indefinitely is wood, although future technologies may alter that reality.
Big money is going into the fusion reactor technology race. Hydrogen (split from water) is far more plentiful than wood.
We are finding natural gas and oil are being made through an abiotic process deep down in the earth.
We have plenty of fuel for the next several centuries, if needed.
The only problem we have with it are people dead set on making millions die over the years, needlessly, by denying these fuel sources to power our grid.
Get rid of the unnecessary red tape and useless regs...let's power our grids right.
Yeah, and we ran out of oil 3 decades ago
How quaint. We are in an icarus moment
But without those subsidies for those billionaires' fake "green" energy scams, they wouldn't be billionaires and would have to work and contribute to society
Same story with solar.
There are some places on earth where there is so much sun that solar outcompetes even without subsidies. That said the US and EU are only trying to move manufacturing back to China so we have disposable crap produced in the worst factories that needs constant intercontinental shipping. Sounds like a Biden plan.
I have friends who worked in solar in Southern California, where there is lots of sun, and they told me that without the subsidies it was not competitive with fossil fuels. Not even close, in fact.
The easy way to resolve any doubt is to eliminate the subsidies. If "green" energy can truly compete with fossil fuels - great! I doubt it.
The duplication of transmission infrastructure alone makes it a loser. Funny how the eco terrorists don’t care about all the land and waste that goes into renewables.
Yes i wasn't thinking the US in particular.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/04/28/abu-dhabis-2-gw-tender-draws-world-record-solar-bid-of-0-0135-kwh/
Maybe if Biden brings on mass inflation and job losses and mass immigration the labor cost going down just might make it work.
I'm not sure which subsidies he means. The raw price of a solar panel now is in many cases under a dollar per watt, with no tax rebate applied, just like you went to amazon and ordered a solar panel, and it shows up to your house. The manufacturer potentially could be subsidized in some ways, I'm not sure, like low interest loans or whatever. Anyway a sunny place like florida, texas, or southern california, you can generate about 1.5 kwh per day from a 200 watt solar panel that costs $180. This is about 18 cents of electricity per day, so 1000 days, about 3 years, to offset it's cost. Most panels have 20-30 years warranties.
A gallon of gasoline produces in the mid 30's kwh of power, except ICE engines only harness about 40% of that. If your commute to work is 20 miles, you need about 9 of those panels to harvest enough electricity for that task per day, say 10 to be safe. A 40 mile round trip at average passenger vehicle mpg is 1.6 gallons of gas per day, with holidays and vacation, lets say 50 weeks a year, 5 days per week, that's 400 gallons of gas per year. At current average prices that is $1028 per year, so the panels take less than 2 years to save you money in that scenario.
The real cost savings are in DIY, you can buy panels from wholesalers as low as $0.60 per wat rating that i've seen, and make your own lithium iron battery packs, do the install yourself, it can for sure be cost effective. If you go for a commercial install, you get into more sketchy territory.
The main reason I like solar is the independence, if an idiot like biden takes office and starts jacking up prices of energy with a few strokes of their pen, you are independent and unaffected, at least directly. I think individual independence is nearly as important as national independence, when it comes to things like energy, or the nation's food and medical supplies, we shouldn't be dependent on nations like china or middle eastern dictators literally for our survival, and on an individual level I think most people should have gardens, maybe a few chickens, a tilapia pool, and some solar panels, plus emergency supplies for reasonable natural disasters. Then you still have the grid as a backup and mostly industry is powered by the grid so more energy available for businesses to utilize. As far as that goes, nuclear and solar go hand in hand, solar produces the most power during the day, which is when demand is highest, unlike wind which produces whenever it feels like, often at night, when demand is lowest(if you have batteries it's okay but grid scale batteries are way too expensive). Nuclear creates steady power output so you have to build excess capacity to meet peak needs, but not if you combine with solar.
Your friend is wrong.
How much does SPG&E charge a kWH? Something like 80 cents? Even offsetting that with solar and your ROI will be around 8-10 years.
And SoCal doesn't do solar nearly as hard as NorCal does.
You mean, like the deep Sahara desert?
What hot sunny regions like that are good for is more for is solar steam turbines, since solar EV panels as noted by other posters become less effective when overheated.
Bonus points if they manage to incorporate it into a desalination process for creating potable water while they are at it.
The challenge that as always remains with inconsistent generation methods like solar and wind is storage of that energy.
Do you not see my reply with a to an article about abu dhabi? Very strange if shaddow banning or link censoring is going on.
This was my reply but i now took out the dot etc
Yes i wasn't thinking the US in particular.
Pv-magazine com/2020/04/28/abu-dhabis-2-gw-tender-draws-world-record-solar-bid-of-0-0135-kwh/
Maybe if Biden brings on mass inflation and job losses and mass immigration the labor cost going down just might make it work.
No. Solar is ideal in sunny and cold locations. Like Colorado.
Voltage decreases with heat. That's why it's important to keep the modules as cool as possible.
Doesn't natural gas and coal get subsidies?
I know a bunch of people who have allowed wind farms to be established on their ranch land. Every time they say the "green" part of "green energy" they make that rubbing fingers together to say "money" gesture.
That includes Jimmy Carter, who the Democrats praise as a "Climate Champion" for converting 10 acres of his peanut farm into a solar farm. They completely overlook the fact that he is being paid more for leasing the land than he would make farming it.
^^THIS^^
The whole thing is a scam. Even if climate change is real, human activities have no or negligible contribution to it.
Is that why there were outtages at all with fossil fuel plants?
NG pumping stations running on electric instead NG. Cant no longer get NG to plant to make electric to power pumps.... They added several points of failure.
They converted natgas pipeline compressor stations from being driven by natgas engines to electric motors. Why? FedGov NOx regulations on those engines made doing something to reliable and sensible a PITA.
Thanks Obama!
Texas doesn't have to follow federal guidelines their oower grid doesn't cross state borders.
"They knowingly added several points of failure." Fixed that for accuracy
I’m a tradesman and this is just despicable.
Someone said yes when they installed woke on the backup systems.
Why would Texas do this? They have been read for decades.
Omfg. That's kinda what I feared.
I'm learning a lot about heat and power systems during this. Hopefully the people in charge do, too, and they can fix this for next time.
Now involve a bunch of complicated software like they did with the elections.
And make sure it's all connected to the internet!
Yup, this is dumb. My family got a house that has a fancy fireplace that has catalytic converter and ductwork to go to the whole house to distribute heat. It even has a convection fan to circulate the air, which should just run from the heat of the fireplace. But, they added a stupid electric switch to the fan, so then when the power goes out, instead of being a backup furnace, it's just a normal fireplace.
Our gas stove doesn't work when the power is off thanks to a "safety feature".
Fucking imbeciles.
Replace it with a heat powered fan or a DC fan connected to a large UPS battery.
Great idea!
Are you fucking kidding me?!
I wanna see who they hang in the companies. Better be woke middle men.
Yup. In some of these places, the actual processing plants went offline because they were reliant on wind power which froze up. So now it causes a cascading effect down the system. The processing plant shuts down so less gas flowing into the system so your natural gas plant can't operate at maximum power.....
In 2020, 23% of Texas' energy was from wind.
The cold reduced wind production by more than 50%.
The wind energy is processed through the electrical grid, then onto power plants.
The plants can only produce enough power if the various types of energy are available.
Since wind production was down by more than 50%, much higher than typical shipments of natural gas and coal were required.
And demand was up substantially. Transmission for natural gas is limited by existing pipelines. In Texas; coal is commonly transported by rail but the cold also impacted rail service.
Plant operators had to scramble to obtain natural gas and coal to substitute for the lack of wind power. And natural gas companies tend to send supply to households rather than power plants.
Some plants shut down to weatherize; this should have been done as capital expenditures or scheduled maintenance. However, the sexier Green Energy and highly beneficial Federal Tax credits likely delayed these actions.
I also read that the older coal-fired plants were being decommissioning due to stringent EPA regs and would cost too much to retrofit. Also, even the newer clean coal-burning plants are running at lower than full capacity due to stiffer regulations and restrictions on mining.
Meanwhile, they allow other countries to build less restricted coal-burning plants and continue to mine.
It's almost as if our Government wants us to suffer. 🤔
https://tnm.me/news/political/the-disgusting-reason-that-millions-of-texans-spent-the-night-without-power
Wow, that's insane. If Trump were in office he would have found out this was the case and declared a disaster and waived all the rules. But JB doesn't give a fuck and is napping the day away after declaring a lid at 8 AM.
Trump would be down there warming peoples hearts with his presence.
And putting a foot up any ass that needed it to get the situation under control.
Yep, but dems are vindictive cunts... they relish doing all they can to not help and see others who disagree with them suffer.
The attached Bloomberg article is so damning.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-15/pollution-limit-waived-for-texas-power-plants-in-emergency-order
Thanks, 0bama
^^THIS^^
Taxation is the root of all government evil.
Beyond the fact that it is theft, it is an unconscionable system of control
Yeah, why don't we just do tariffs instead?
Despite being only 15% of the production green energy accounts for 40% of lost power.
I noticed that too, that's fucking hilarious
Eli5?
No one tell him
Bixnood.
Violent Crime statistics.... There's your hint
I was an hour late to make this comment
Lmao you beat me by three hours to make this same comment, but then again I am a victim of windmills' crime so it's hard for me to shitpost currently
Why is it always leftists supporting the worst ideas ever? I guess that’s what happens when you stumble through life with your mommy and daddy dragging you through it until your late 20s
Why did Texas change to wind?
To comply with the federal regulations
Obama.
Obama made them install wind?
The Texas grid doesn't fall under federal regulations...
Coal-fired power plants hit hard by the EPA back in 2011 TX AG filed lawsuit against the EPA to prevent their decommissioning.
Wasn't 2011 the last Texas power vortex were the coal and gas plants froze and there was a blackout?
The EPA can't order Texas to close plants that's not how it works.
Majority of coal plants closed 2017-2018
Hey hey hey
We are calling it energy of colour now. Additionally if you describe the colour of the technology that failed you'll be canceled and GELM will show up at your house and unplug all your appliances
Listen here feller, Green Energy commit nearly half the Energy Loss but are only 15% of the population, why is that?
15/40
Best comment thread of the day.
In reality that number is like 2 or 3 /40.
And I bet it's higher than 40% too probably closer to 50% but seriously the 13% includes all women children and elderly. It's only the young males doing this.
The women are doing it too. By a lot..
12/80
"I Can't Freeze"
It’s what solar grids would have wanted
green privilege
Socioeconomic factors
TOP KEK!
EXCUSE ME?! IM AN OCTARINE BODY OF ENERGY YOU CANT TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!
Oh but the twitter fact checkers say that green energy had NOTHING to do with it! smh
I’ve already seen the lefties trying to downplay the failures: “REEEE. More power was lost by traditional plants!!!”
LOL yeah. Its pathetic to watch people cling to a failing system, while it fails right in front of everyone. "But... but... Bill gates said... it wasn't the windmills, right? RIGHT?"
Well you know how it is, when there's nothing to complain about, they'll complain about things that are too good.
Yeah but, nuclear’s scawy
No county in Texas would allow a new nuclear plant.
But muh rest of the world
lol "I want to make sure that kids 180 years from now can learn about sustainability" WTF?
The moment every news cycle starting repeating around the clock that this had nothing to do with green energy, I knew it had everything to do with green energy. These are the same people who told us Joe Biden is the most populate President of all time, Covid-19 will kill us all and that HCQ is the most dangerous drug on the planet.
Oh man so true. There's always that 12-36 hour hesitation period of "What do we say??" and then horse's ass gates comes out and says Texas is wrong to blame green energy. And BOOM all of a sudden the world has the safe leftwing narrative to dish out at everybody. Imagine being dumb enough to believe all of the nonsense that the mainstream media says?
Didnt Jen Psaki just say that it was coal and other fossil fuels that led to the energy crisis in TX? 🤔
Can I get a circleback on that?
You can circle back on this cock, Jen
You're rather daring.
I think she looks cute, she's just retarded is all.
Might be a sin, but I always liked ginger women. Lol
Your dick betrays you. Don't betray your dick
Words of wisdom
Lmao, you can keep her... it... communist... idk whatever
She's not wrong, but it's the lack of coal and other fossil fuel plants that caused it.
Texas fought this shit for years, don't let people say they didn't, but the fucking Federal government gets the final say...
From 2014...
https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/08/18/texas-officials-blast-new-pollution-rules-for-power-plants/
Shit like that got power plants like the one at Lake Monticello closed. Monticello was one of my favorite fishing lakes, BTW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monticello_Steam_Electric_Station
Why does Texas have to listen to federal regulations if their grid doesn't cross state lines?
Because Federal law trumps state law and we are still part of the US.
If only that were true for election law too.
Funny how that works.
They get what they want by breaking laws. They get what they want by enforcing laws.
Heads they win. Tails you lose.
We have to hold them accountable. Grassroots style.
So the most red state can get a stealth green new deal right under our noses?
Damn that's doomer fuel
Well, my guess is that wind turbines did show some promise so they decided since the courts were never going to back us might as well cut our losses. But people here now are just learning exactly how this all happened so I think the fight is back on.
Reading her name made me fart just now. She causes the climate to change
Jen Psaki? More like Ball Sacky amirite??
Yup, lots of circles in her sack
Like rings on a tree
Guys solid fact based post. I applaud
I am a green energy proponent but I think the technology is in its infancy
Until he gets better technology wise, it should not be promoted as the end all be all solution
Nuclear is the only green energy I will currently waste my time on. Until the retards on the left say that single word I assume anything they try is a scam.
Thermal and hydroelectric are pretty good too.
I'm a huge fan of Hydro - we already have most of the dams we need in place, may as well take advantage of them! but nope.
i understand the fish migration issue, but most places like the one near me have an elevator system and they do their best to get as many fish up and over the dam as possible.
Plus it's a great educational thing for all ages, I usually spend 3 months watching fish swim into the elevators and up to the other side.
Yes, but geothermal uses a lot less electricity than any other heating/cooling method. With a solar roof, Tesla power wall, and geothermal you can essentially be off the grid and could even get through several days without sun. I guess if you really wanted to be comfortable in all possible circumstances, additional backup gasoline generator would be good too.
Well, you don't have to be hooked into the grid if you are self-sufficient. But, if you are hooked in, then you can use your batteries to run your house during peak hours (when energy is expensive) and even sell some electricity back to the grid (for money), then at night you can recharge your batteries with less expensive energy.
Where can I read more about this?
That's the thing. If green energy was really worth it then regular energy companies would use it. The only reason energy companies are pursuing it now is because of the free money from subsidies. Let the free market work.
The greenhouse where I work, we're on solar. Our electric bill went from $400+/month to $28, sometimes < $10. Very cool to know we can pass on that savings to customers in our prices and employees in their paychecks. Large area dairy farmers use methane converters for their farms, and not only power 100s of homes, but have so much of what we call "black gold", liquid cow manure byproduct, they spread it for free on other farmers' fields. Natural fertilizer good for two years. I would be interested to know more about tidal power/generators for here in Maine, and remember when my state had its own hydro electric power companies. We're a state of many rivers, and sold power to other NE states. Many of the dams were dismantled, which honestly, needed to be done to get the fish stocks back once we became aware of the dangers of pesticides, runoff, everything detrimental in our waterways. We were once a huge industrial state too. But we're all cleaned up now, and have made so much progress. Hydro electric power has been around since the early Middle Ages, surely we could do it responsibly now, I think, for humans and wildlife. I'm not so keen on wind power, at least those huge wind turbines. How many birds and bats do they actually kill, I'd like to know. And what affect on the sea bed do they have when constructed there? Two of my brothers are lobstermen and log in winter. In this state, fishing and forestry(logging) are the true sustainable industries. Sorry to ramble. lol I just get what you're saying.
Solyndra
I'm not against what they said. If capital investment can lead to a decrease in operating costs, it's not a bad idea for a facility to look into it.
That said, this kind of thing should only apply at the individual level. A greenhouse using solar power is fine. Trying to run an entire state on it is not.
Not in a privately owned greenhouse we aren't.
At a presumably private greenhouse?
And subsidies are? Taxpayer dollars
Coal and gas get federal subsidies too, about 300 million a year.
Agree.
No offense taken. We're a greenhouse in central Maine, heating greenhouses from January1 24/7 thru 2nd week of April, after that, maybe nightly for another 30 days. Under Dept of Ag regs, we're considered seasonal, so all the tax right offs and Ag rebates the big plug producers and plant growers get, we don't qualify for. If a crop dies, there's no crop insurance that'll cover it; if we have to dump half a greenhouse worth of product, there's no tax right off. Under seasonal greenhouse Ag regs, if I lost my job, I can't claim unemployment. Heat is our biggest expense. Right now, it's 800 gallons propane a week @$2.20/gallon. Wednesday the big house gets turned on, and heat costs almost double. We're too small to qualify for REAP grants from D of AG, so no taxpayers paid for anything. It was a 30k loan, and the monthly payment is about what the electric bill used to be. It's a commercial installation, and we do net metering, no batteries. We had to do something to save money somewhere. We're retail/wholesale, and the only wholesale grower in the state(there are 3, total in Maine) that has no minimum purchase requirement, which means a lot to other small growers, farmers, grocery and hardware stores in the 5 counties we service. We have to stay open, matter what. There's such a thing called Yankee ingenuity here; if a dairy farmer who milks 1000 head can use cow shit to power his farm, save on electric and save $20k per year in fertilizer for himself, and hay and potato farmers nearby, I'm all for it. Not pushing the Green New Deal, at all. I'm a greenhouse grower, remember? I have loggers in my family. Plants eat carbon. The only thing keeping us from plunging into another ice age is carbon emissions. So you know GMOs are the hoax before climate change, right, or did you figure that one out?
That guy's running solar. In Maine
Why are these “green” projects even approved when nuclear plants exists? What possible reason could there be to spend millions and millions on what is categorically an inferior energy production method?
Follow the money.
If they are able to get to the point they want, they can issue carbon "credits" to companies, the credits being representative of how much co2 they are allowed to produce. The credits could be traded... and there's the rub. It creates a completely artificial commodities market where government 100% controls supply of said commodity. Consider all that and then consider that we also exhale co2, and try not to be a little terrified of the future implications if they end up being successful in this. Nuclear is efficient. They don't want more efficiency, they want more control.
Same reason the first “all-women’s” bridge that collapsed and killed civilians sitting in traffic was approved.
$$$ and virtue signaling
Because muh scary nuclear MeLTdOwNs
Those damn windmills are such a fucking eyesore.
All the dead birds at the base disagree
I was laughing hysterically when I saw a Forbes article that said essentially "no you dumb eco bigots, it was actually our reliance on fossil fuels that caused this." I was just baffled how blatant the propaganda is.
Must have been inspired by the article "You Must Not 'Do Your Own Research' When it Comes to Science" by Ethan Siegel.
They came hard today with that shit. Really hard.
Dude. What was the conversation? You left us hanging.
It really was a great conversation, though.
"I don't hate america it's not a bad place"
"REEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"
I imagine it went like that
I would have warm conversations with strangers in Austin, but they usually creep me out and would probably sucker punch me if they got a hint I was conservative.
Well, at least you had something to keep you warm while the green energy failed you.
Green energy didn't kill anyone. A lack of sufficient real energy is what killed em
Chad energy vs Green energy.
I like where you're going with this.
Which is why the left is sending everyone chasing the Ted Cruz flying to Cancun squirrel.
I have one question about that.
WHERE THE FUCK IS FEMA??
Nothing can happen until 10% is secured for the big guy.
Giving us a whopping 60 generators 6 days into this fucktastrophe
I don't understand the title of your post based on the content of that article. Am I missing something?
Grab a calculator. Learn how to use it. Divide the total power needed by the amount "missing" from wind and solar. About 17,000/40,000 by memory
Don't confuse "capacity" with "production"
You're not supposed to read the article.
learn to math, the title is an exact summarization of the facts in the link.
We need to swing those numbers a bit so they are more in line. Maybe get the wind and solar down to about 13%, get their failure/loss up to 56%?
Can somebody math this one out for me? I see 40,000 missing megawatts, 23k is thermal, the rest is wind and solar right?
What is thermal? Just burning coal/gas?
Thermal I believe is coal, natural gas and nuclear.
Yup, thermal is essentially heat source turns water into steam, steam builds pressure and hits fins on a turbine and then steam condenses into water to 'circle back' to the heat source. Nuclear operates the same way. Only ones without water as a thermal transfer fluid are internal combustion, same as how your car works but those are the small home generators or backup generators and are way less efficient.
Yes, combustion (coal, gas, and rarely oil)
I’m assuming geothermal.
Here is the bigger kicker: Had we just skipped the wind energy BS, we would have had more than enough money to winterize. It was liberal democrats throwing a tantrum and policy makers, energy companies and regulators bending their knee to these idiots.
Also liberal idiots did everything in their power to openly undermine the grid and to block essential infrastructure, like natural gas pipelines, that were needed during this period of time.
Windmills are actually around 25% of Texas’ generation.
I think it's less in winter
Much less. In freezing temps it's 0%.
Please provide source for claim that wind and solar caused 40% of energy loss despite only being 15% of the grid. I did not see it at OP link.
Grab a calculator. Learn how to use it. Divide the total power needed by the amount "missing" from wind and solar. About 17,000/40,000 by memory
Snide comments damage OP's claim. Please, if there is a source, provide it.
Who is doing that..?
Please link some because I haven’t seen any of that here on .win
From what I gathered there were 3 categories of failures:
Solar and wind were offline due to the weather (and, to my knowledge, one hydro plant suffered a major failure).
However.....
~30 gas fired generation plants went offline due to the ice disrupting plant instrumentation and safety systems + other temperature related failures
An unknown number of generation plants were fuel starved. Due to unprecedented consumer demand for gas? Ice/cold related gas distribution failures? Don't know yet.
Possibly fuel starved because the compressors used in gas pipelines were converted to electric rather than gas because of emissions. Some of those compressors may have lost power and that caused cascading failures.
More information seems to be coming out pretty often now.
If only there was some sort of hydrocarbon available to power a backup system. For some reason thoughts keep drifting back the the USSR circa early 1990s
Gas compressors at my utility are electric; we have black-start capable (diesel) generators which in the event of a loss of station power are "supposed" to start but, good luck with that. And performing an actual black start is very tricky indeed for a variety of reasons. Adding in all of the weather issues that probably rendered their (likely non-winterized) backup equipment even less reliable than ours in my balmy area and, well... yeah, they were fucked.
u/residue69
Don't forget nuclear. Unstable grid makes them trip. Those turbines suck up a lot of energy. If the generator hall is offline for very long, the plant can't deal with the heat, so they have to bring the reactors offline. And if a reactor is stopped on short notice, you generally can't restart it for a few days minimum, until the xenon (etc) has decayed.
In other words, several days of outage were pretty much baked into the cake when the failure cascade reached a certain size.
2 hours of power, in 15 minute aliquots, since 2am Monday. NONE from 2pm Tuesday to 7am Thursday. To save our Overlords the political embarrassment of accidentally killing customers by crashing their crappy Green! Grid, we are intentionally killing customers to "protect the grid". "We had to destroy the village, to save the village." Politically fungible Grandma Termite in Texas...
That's all well and good but the fact that a fucking nuclear reactor had to be partially shut down due to cold is in fact laughable.
Everyone on ERCOT needs to be flogged right next to Ted Cruz.
Without knowing any of the details of their nuke plant, I'm going to speculate that the nuke portion of it wasn't the problem, but more than likely balance-of-plant issues. Not saying that excuses it, but there are a lot of things that can go wrong to cause even a conventional generating unit to have to shut down, much of it having very little to do directly with power generation. I would imaging a nuke plant is even more susceptible in that regard for "abundance of caution" (I hate that phrase) reasons if nothing else.
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www.ercot.com
2021-02-18 23:02:07 UTC
If you believe you have a valid business reason for accessing ERCOT resources, please contact the ERCOT HelpDesk at 512-248-6800 or 1-866-870-8124 (USA) or [email protected].
Please provide the HelpDesk with the information supplied below.
Your IP: 81.246.172.201
Error code: 16
What happened?
This request was blocked by the security rules
Your IP: 81.246.172.201
Proxy IP: 149.126.72.144 (ID 10770-100)
Incident ID: 770000290082164078-54918084712073034
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That's what I get when I try to reach the website.
You on a VPN?
No, just in Belgium.
Despite being only 15% of generation, green energy caused 40% of blackout.
The new eco-racist dog whistle.
Don’t confuse 15% of grid resources with 40% of scheduled resources.
If TX utilities are anything like utilities in my state, while green energy was certainly a contributing factor, there were likely many others as well. For example: in the push for cleaner fossil fuel generation, generating units have become FAR more efficient but also far more fickle. Where I work we have generating units built in the 1960's and some built ~10 years ago. The new ones are much more efficient, but trip off if someone farts sideways; the old ones are not efficient but can limp along with even the most inept of operators.
Which brings me to my next point: the crews. When I started 20 years ago the performance standards and expectations of staff were pretty high. I have watched first-hand as those standards and expectations have plummeted and while there has always been deadwood, there's a lot more of it percentage-wise now than there was when I started. When things start to go wrong, even if there is a chance to correct it before units trip (a long shot to begin with for newer equipment as I mentioned above) chances are that the crew on shift won't have enough skilled employees to save things anyway.
It's not even a diversity-hire problem and Lord knows we have plenty of those; it's really a cultural "don't hurt people's fee-fees and risk getting sued over it" problem.
Add a once-in-a-century severe weather anomaly to those and any utility would be fucked.
Hydro and nuclear are the only green energy sources. Natural gas is above average.
Wind is the worst. The insulating gas leaking is causing a bigger greenhouse gas effect than all the CO2 not released for the entire history of wind driven electricity generation. It can't be stored or predicted, and it is inefficient for both space and materials.
Did you all see **Jen Psaki **when asked she blamed coal and gas fired plants and said that the wind and solar energy was the most resilient.. It was a pure propaganda moment ...
Notice fingers are being pointed at everyone other than Biden, or whoever is standing in for him, signing EOs that limit Texas power output.
What EO was that?!
You think Biden cares? He doesn't even know what month it is!
Make fossil fuels great again!
Call your reps and tell them to support HB 1359, the Texas Independence Referendum Act.
Despite being only 13% of the grid...
People have died and there is so much property damage that the costs to the public are atrocious.
Democrats killed it.
We all know b solar and wind is bullshit juju tech but I don't trust shit ercot says. They're covering their asses.
Your link doesn’t say what your headline does, did you mean to link a different industry press release?
The irony of this situation is undeniable. More green energy sources were created to combat global warming but are rendered inoperable by record cold temperatures.
Cool. Now do race. Black people commit over 50% of violent crime despite being only 15% of the population.
Green is a money grab. Its not ready for showtime. Some solar panels on houses cool. Dams great green engery. Nuclear is awesome. Great jobs, great energy source.
Eff green energy. Give me some Jed Clampett bubblin' crude.
Just like it's doing for California, but the lefties will never admit it.
"Despite only being 15% of the..."
^How to deactivate an NPC's eyes, ears, and brain in six words.
Despite being only 15% of the grid, windmills commit 40% of the crimes
I feel bad for the Texans that are suffering. God Bless them.
This is the problem with these climate change grifiters they want to invest in energy that is not ready for problems of a sudden winter storm. That can never be good enough all because someone is getting money in their back pocket.
Entergy lost power. Teccus didn't. One is controlled by commies, the other isn't. Do with that what you will.
start calling reps and inform them you have no confidence in the fed to lead. the time to get referendums going is now.
It’s like saying something similar to “A certain demographic is responsible for 50% of violent crime, despite only making up 15% of the total population. Nothing to see here. It’s clearly the fault of another demographic.”