And the solution to nuclear waste is to figure out how it can be further purposed for energy generation. There is still a lot of potential left in it and the half life is near infinite in terms of a human's lifespan.
Yup, this is why GOETUS' EO on small scale nuclear is so important. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2021/01/13/trump-orders-dod-to-explore-use-of-nuclear-power-for-space-systems/
Just like GPS, what the military tries out and perfects, will eventually come to the rest of society.
Yup. People like Abbot are "true" Centrists in a sense that the do still support right leaning and conservative policies but also play into leftist doctrine. So you get the bad outcomes of both sides and not just the other.
I'm not saying being a centrist or fence sitter is a good thing.
Fellow Texan here, Fully agree. We should have strategic reserves for fast deployment natural gas generation as the state produces it's own gas. In this case natural gas had to be deployed to heating leaving many back up sites that we operable out of fuel. It makes sense to use natural gas as direct heat since there is less losses than first converting it to electricity and then back to heat again at point of use.
My point is storing natural gas is fairly low cost and this problem with peak gas demand could have been avoided.
The grids can still couple to each-other, so the argument that the reason Texas has no power is because it's on it's own grid is false. Other grids didn't have excess to sell Texas, so would have not helped even if it was one large grid, just harder to balance.
This is what happens when socialists "depend" on government. It's always happened and will continue to happen. The only person people should rely on is themselves.
I have the same situation, everything is fine, I prepped a little last week knowing this is bad and didn't leave it up to "collectives" to save me and mine.
Status update from Ercot as of 2-17 1204PM. Solar power is generating 2 GW out of the typical 4-5 GW Wind is generating 1.6 GW out of 30 GW install base (though to be fair the highest output ever has been 19 GW).
So solar is at half normal capacity and wind is at 20% if we are generous. Daily low for wind was 0.6 GW or only 600 MW.
Total projected system need is in the 60-70 GW or 60,000-70,000 MW range. Generatoin capacity actual as reported by ercot is now about 50000 MW or 50 GW. Would really be nice to get an extra 5-8 GW out of wind which is pretty typical (8-12 GW).
Yup. Which they want to nationalize. Plus People are going out of their way to defend wind and solar kinda stinks since that was and still is a big chunk of missing capacity. Proportionally they are still contributing far less than typical.
Austin lefties are blaming fossil fuels now for Texas power outages, because there is difficulties deploying backup natural gas.
In reality no one was prepared that we would only get 3-4GW (Sunday - Monday) out of our 20GW wind farms (technically 30GW nameplate output but it never reaches full cap).
The extreme cold also limited natural gas Energy generation since demand for heating was record high.
Meanwhile lights stayed in Downtowns of the big cities and power distributors were ordered to cut service to balance demand from pretty much everywhere else.
Ercot.com
Wind Energy in Texas typically is about 20% of generation. Loading on Tuesday that could be coped with in total was 45-46MW, wind generation was 4GW so proportonially half of normal. Solar was 2GW, solar typically is 4-5GW.
First I’d like to correct my numbers as I double checked them later. Wind was only up to about 4GW today and solar to 2GW.
Problem with natural gas is households. It’s much more efficient to heat houses with direct heat from burning natural gas than it is to first convert it to electricity and then to heat. So many fast depoly natural gas plants had several issues, one being cold and iceing of the equipment and the second being fuel.
Many houses heat with natural gas, even ones that don’t have electricity. Gas fireplaces, backup generators and gas stoves come to mind. My house heats water with gas. So when you have a situation like this it’s vest to prioritize direct heat since the problem is the cold.
So if you are operating a natural gas grid, should you prioritize supply to housing or power generation. The instant peak demand is too high to do both since 20% (wind and solar) were pretty much offline after Sunday night.
But yes, there are many quickfite natural gas generators, just not enough peak gas supply plus they were all spec’d probably to higher ambient temperatures, because Texas has a chronic need for power for cooling during the summer.
This is also a once in a 30 year event pretty much. Last time it was this cold in Houston was 1989.
Yup, we have 30000MW or 30GW of nameplate wind power potential (practically max measured is 19GW) and another 5GW of solar. We were short about 30GW of power at the start of the week because renewables were almost 100% down and to a smaller extent the natural gas backup generation had issues starting up due to the cold. For every renewable source that depends on climate conditions (wind or sun), there should always be a natural gas or oil backups. Oil and Gas because Texas has both. Today was a warmer day so power is coming back up, but mainly from the backup generators getting their equipment unstuck. Wind only produced 4GW and solar about 2GW today.
Their rush to protect the renewable generation and lie that renewables are not the problem kinda makes it clear what their goal is.
Straight up in a press conference they said this, then you look at ercot.com and see wind producing 600MW (low of today) out of a theoretical 30000MW capacity and go hmmm. The 30000MW is a nameplate value, but they have gotten about 19000MW out of wind, not it's 10-20% available.
The failure is not having enough investment in non-renewable backups and natural gas reserves, and part of that is the money went into investing in windmills and solar farms.