The blackouts during the freeze were not even remotely attributable to a lack of power production capacity here in Texas. Nothing could be further from the truth - lies, misinformation, fake news and false "politically correct" talking point narratives on this subject, notwithstanding. Anyone who says the power went down during the freeze in Texas because we did not have adequate power generating capacity to provide the electricity needed during that time is either ignorant about the topic, or lying straight through their teeth. In some cases, it is pretty clearly a bit of both. In fact, Texas has multiple times more electric generating capacity that it needs to provide for ALL electric needs in our service area during the winter months. It is not anywhere near a close call. That is not where the problem was in that situation. On the other hand, during the summer months, the capacity of the grid is pushed closer to its limits. We have not had any noteworthy blackouts since the freeze, during the peak summer months, or at any other time, as far as I am aware, alarmist screeching from the constantly wrong corporate media led mob, notwithstanding. We currently appear to have adequate electric generating capacity in Texas, as demonstrated by the high mid-summer temperature levels experienced in recent weeks, with no blackouts or significant service interruptions. We should all stand up and give these guys a standing ovation for their work right now. It is go-time for the people managing all of this right now, and they are coming through with flying colors. A basic economics lesson as applied to the electricity generation market: The amount of electric generating capacity and the number of power plants providing that electricity are determined by the prospects of being able to provide an adequate return on investment to warrant investing in a the next new project. This is further complicated by the byzantine government regulatory requirements for the construction and operation of these plants, all of which adds substantially to the cost and in many cases undermines the actual viability of these projects right from the start, even if they otherwise appear to be potentially profitable. All of this generating capacity is privately owned (not owned by the government) and most of these companies are traded on the public stock exchanges. So the addition of new power plants - if needed - are not determined by someone in the government issuing a decree that new power plants will, at their command, now be constructed. That is not how it works. Instead, the companies that are involved in this industry evaluate the current environment, including the financial, regulatory and operational considerations, just to name a few, and then if they think there is a business opportunity that makes sense, they work with regulators, investors, local politicians (NIMBY), electricity marketing companies (TXU, Reliant, etc.), engineers and construction companies, real estate brokers, and so on to try to put one of these deals together. It is not easy, it takes a long time and it costs tens of millions at a minimum and sometimes billions of dollars, which someone has to choose to invest before any of this can truly begin in earnest. As far as your concern about blackouts, if they have not happened in the last few days - which they haven't - they are probably not going to happen this year. Of course it could happen in the future, and in all likelihood if it does, it will be the federal government regulators who are largely to blame, as they are actively making policies which discourage and make much more difficult these sorts of projects. In many cases they make these projects just straight up impossible. They are doing that on purpose across the energy sector, which is driving costs up across the energy spectrum. These are your climate change alarmists doing this, who are not making these decisions based on any real science, regardless of what the fake news "consensus" PC talking points are that some people around here have apparently swallowed down like a baby bird eating its mother's worm vomit. In any case, hysterical screeching about this from the usual irresponsible alarmist hustlers in the corporate media and the mob notwithstanding, this is not actually a problem right now. But if these deranged, constantly wrong climate change fanatics are allowed to continue to choke off the development of new electricity generating projects the way they are currently doing with gasoline refineries and the like, then the same result will happen in this sector and it will be those people who are to blame for that result.
Should take this to some climate change thread. The argument is that there are benefits to fossil fuels that are being ignored. The complaint from that tweet is no one is talking about that but just the bad things about it. Yea, of course, because the replacement of it continues to have the same benefit but without the harm. The harm is thus the focus. We wouldn't care otherwise. That doesn't mean we ignore the cost of transition. If we did, we would have done it already. The reason we haven't is that it's painful to transition from an established standard of use to something new. Lead is a good example. Lead pipes benefit humans (bring water to mass; enable medical electronic devices). Replacing lead with something that isn't harmful to human continue that same benefit but without the negative impact on human. Yet there is still plenty of lead infrastructure in the US. No one is yanking that out because it's critical infrastructure. That benefit is strong enough that the US allows the risk of lead poisoning to continue due to the high cost of replacement. Fossil fuel is the same. Fossil fuel is benefiting humans greatly (energy is a critical need for humans and more energy = more human living). Eventually replacing that with renewable continues that benefit but without the negative impact. But like with anything standard, it will take time to transition. Bottle line - the argument is flawed in assuming that the benefits (of energy lol) don't continue. ps. I just wasted my time looking at that summary - it's just a bunch of idiotic talking points. JFC.
Excerpt On Sunday night, as a burst of Arctic air swept southward across the Great Plains, power plants in Texas started flicking offline. Wind generation fell 32% between 9 p.m. Sunday and 3 a.m. Monday local time, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration figures. Coal dropped 13%. And natural gas generation, the cornerstone of the Texas grid, plummeted 25% over that six-hour period. By the time the sun rose over Texas around 7 a.m., energy demand on the state’s primary electric grid had surged to about 71 gigawatts. Texas power plants were only able to muster up roughly 51 GW of electricity, leaving millions without power and shivering in the cold. More at the link https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-deep-freeze-caused-texas-to-lose-power/
On that end, I expect Texas government to do "enough" on adapting to the impacts of climate change by making sure there's enough generation and transmission to accommodate the increased loads that show up because of climate change. You know we're not going to spend extra money to keep global temperature increases under 2 degrees C unless the feds make us. That's more appropriate to federal policymaking anyway. We continue to build more wind and solar generation because they have a good investment case. They manage to sell long-term power purchase agreements to justify the investment at good prices because their assets have zero variable cost. However, they are not dispatchable; they can make prices lower on normal days, but don't contribute to reliability on extreme days. Combined-cycle gas turbines are reliable but are not being built right now because we have an energy-only market in which they would only be paid when they run, and the prices expected 2 years from now are not high enough relative to their variable costs (the "spark spread") to justify the investment. That's why the debate at the PUC now is how to make the investment case for CCGTs better so more will be built. The new commissioners seem to have quietly given up on the idea that energy-only can work and are looking for schemes in which power plants are paid for existing and being dependable when called. And, to be clear, we haven't had a deficit in generation since Uri. You haven't had a blackout from lack of generation since then, and you didn't have any for several years before Uri. So you're not dealing with blackouts. You've had some calls for voluntary conservation. On timing, PUC did some Phase 1 things that were the quick fix items to try to make sure we don't have another immediate crisis. Those are done. They're working on Phase 2 stuff, like I described, and maybe they'll have a plan H1 2023. Assuming people then want to build CCGTs for the new paradigm, you need maybe 2 years to build and interconnect a bulk of them. So you can expect it to be a recurring theme until 2025 at least. Their outages were from failures in the distribution system, not in generation. Obviously, we also don't want those kinds of outages and they can be deadly, but they are not nearly as catastrophic as a shortage in generation. They are localized and utilities are pretty fast at finding and fixing them now.
Thank you! That's fantastic information. I value it. Thank you! So the one of the big talking points after the freeze is how the Texas power grid isn't connected to the rest of the country, therefore there isn't a good backup solution in a similar disaster event. Is that really the case? If so, why?
Seems like there's a general public relations/marketing failure on the part of ERCOT and the PUC. I have no idea if they're doing enough but they sure as hell aren't making it seem like they're doing anything. This just seems like a case study in awful marketing. Clearly no one trusts ERCOT (or the government) when it comes to energy after the Uri debacle. Once you lose trust like that, you need to be working 24/7 to rebuild it but it seems like they aren't doing any of the public relations required to repair the relationship. So now anytime there's even a hint of any capacity or transmission issues, everyone is just going to lose their mind.
My university in GA sent us the same thing. GA's grid is fine, the Governor is just annoyed were spending money on something besides football
This is D&D it’s all time wasting talking points Yes I agree exactly with your post. It’s a bizarre argument to say we can’t talk about the harm that something does because it’s also done a lot of good. While things like lead and fossil fuels have greatly benefited humanity it is possible to get much of the same benefits while reducing the harm they do. yes any transition is going to be costly but it doesn’t mean we don’t do it just because this is what we’ve been doing all along.
Generating capacity doesn’t matter if you can’t maintain your systems for generation. I could have a diesel generator in my house that can power my whole block but it wont mean crap if i don’t insulate it and it gets so cold that the fuel line freezes.
the web page is literally called "energy talking points" and the web page is https://energytalkingpoints.com/
Since you dragged this to an unrelated thread. I’ll drag it back out of courtesy. you seem to accuse others of “Strawman” when I am responding textually. The tweet said we shouldn’t be discussing the harms of fossil fuels without the benefits. That’s ridiculous. You can certainly discuss harms of an ongoing practice or technology even if it has had benefits. You can certainly argue for replacement of such.
Epstein's argument is exceedingly clear and very transparent: the benefits of fossil fuels have increased human quality of life to historically unprecedented levels, AND those benefits will CONTINUE to occur for the foreseeable future, not only in the developed world but in developing nations as well--e.g., China, India, etc. That's the argument. Lead paint is interesting but beside the point.
related The transformation to coal continues: Hungary declares emergency, revives brown coal, Greece aims to quadruple coal https://joannenova.com.au/2022/07/more-eu-climate-goals-abandoned-hungary-declares-emergency-revives-brown-coal-greece-aims-to-quadruple-coal/
