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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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.
Coal Scrubber is the word you're looking for.
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.
Is this what clean coal refers to?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?