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Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
ETA: It looks like this has been pointed out already but at 18 seconds in length it's still worth a look. And boy did those horses know to get the heck outta dodge!Last edited by rogue06; 02-09-2021, 07:02 PM.
I'm always still in trouble again
"You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
"Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
"Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman
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Unfortunately it looks like renewable energy doesn't fair well in this weather. Reports of windmills frozen causing power drops that left us in a deficit energy situation. This article says that the windmills actually use more energy than they generate due to heaters that keep the oil viscous.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...tm_term=fourth"What has the Church gained if it is popular, but there is no conviction, no repentance, no power?" - A.W. Tozer
"... there are two parties in Washington, the stupid party and the evil party, who occasionally get together and do something both stupid and evil, and this is called bipartisanship." - Everett Dirksen
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Originally posted by Littlejoe View PostUnfortunately it looks like renewable energy doesn't fair well in this weather. Reports of windmills frozen causing power drops that left us in a deficit energy situation. This article says that the windmills actually use more energy than they generate due to heaters that keep the oil viscous.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...tm_term=fourth
ercot power grid.pngThe first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
The "energy policy" in Texas has been exposed as a complete mess. I bet most people don't realize Texas has it's own Power Grid.
Hope you and yours aren't facing too many difficulties."Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."
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Originally posted by TheLurch View PostYeah, pretty much everything's gone down. Exterior pipes froze up, taking out nuclear and coal. About half of your wind turbines iced up and were taken off line. And natural gas supplies got constrained due to extraction hardware freezing up, starting a competition between generation and heating for the limited supply. It's hard to imagine a mess more complete.
Hope you and yours aren't facing too many difficulties.
We shut off the water to our Church Building Sunday after services, and opened all the faucets, and good thing we did, because the Church's automatic thermostats keep texting me that power is off, power is on, power is off.... (Actually, Honeywell's website keeps texting us, because it looses internet connection with the t-stats, which is how I know power is off)
As always, good to see you!The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Ok, having spent a few days researching the Texas situation for my regular job, i'm going to go on a little rant about it all that's not really focused on science. So, forgive me for that, and please ignore if you'd rather.
This is not the first time something like this has happened in Texas. There was an event 10 years go which was extremely similar, and led to a full analysis of what happened from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. There were earlier events as well. These identify a fundamental challenge:
Cold-proofing a generating system costs money. There's no market incentive to do so unless there's some guarantee that you could make up the costs - say by charging far more for the electricity you produce during the cold snap. But the rarity of these events in Texas makes sure that there's no possible way to charge enough money during the cold period to offset the costs of building and maintaining the protections.
The second thing that is clear is that the market for electricity doesn't simply affect the energy economy. These failures have essentially shut down the economy of the entire state for a week, and left behind lots of damage in terms of spoiled perishables, building damage due to frozen pipes, etc. The market pressures on electricity generators - provide power at the lowest cost - simply provide no incentives that are proportionate to the damage caused by the failure to produce sufficient power.
So, while i'm a big fan of the market - i'm typing this on the sort of innovation that the market enables - we also have to recognize that there are inefficiencies and interdependencies that aren't accurately captured by the electricity market (and a number of other ones). And the only answer to that is regulations that force them to be priced into the market.
There's plenty of ways to do that. You could mandate the added costs of cold proofing be spent and let generators pass that on as part of the cost of power, you could simply pay for the cold proofing out of tax revenue, etc. That's way outside my area of expertise, and is really best left to the citizens of Texas to decide.
But then we get to the problem facing the citizens of Texas. We've been told for decades that all government regulation, and any intervention in the market is bad. That's despite the fact that we're a fundamentally reactive society - we don't do much of anything, including imposing regulations, until after an event like this indicates that there's a problem, typically one that kills people. And, when the problem is no longer immediately visible (possibly because of the regulations working), we tend to start ignoring our solutions or actively getting rid of them.
You can see this in recent events. We've gotten casual about vaccines, and now mistrust them - even with something like COVID around - simply because they've been so successful at eliminating the problems they were designed to solve. And we react with wonder at landing a rover on Mars simply because there are so few examples where people have to think through and adjust for every bad thing that can happen in advance.
None of this is to say that every regulation we put in place is the best, most efficient way of doing things. I'm all for going back and re-evaluating and see how they're actually working, and reforming them as needed. But i think the US has adopted an "all regulation is bad and must be eliminated" attitude that is both naive and will inevitably lead to more events like this. And i think Texans are going to face some hard decisions regarding what sorts of regulation - along with their added costs - they're willing to put in place in order to significantly reduce the chances of facing another event like this a decade down the line. And they'll do that with the knowledge that they did react to the same thing a decade ago, but didn't see the reaction through to making sure that they were actually protected."Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."
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Originally posted by TheLurch View PostOk, having spent a few days researching the Texas situation for my regular job, i'm going to go on a little rant about it all that's not really focused on science. So, forgive me for that, and please ignore if you'd rather.
This is not the first time something like this has happened in Texas. There was an event 10 years go which was extremely similar, and led to a full analysis of what happened from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. There were earlier events as well. These identify a fundamental challenge:
Cold-proofing a generating system costs money. There's no market incentive to do so unless there's some guarantee that you could make up the costs - say by charging far more for the electricity you produce during the cold snap. But the rarity of these events in Texas makes sure that there's no possible way to charge enough money during the cold period to offset the costs of building and maintaining the protections.
The second thing that is clear is that the market for electricity doesn't simply affect the energy economy. These failures have essentially shut down the economy of the entire state for a week, and left behind lots of damage in terms of spoiled perishables, building damage due to frozen pipes, etc. The market pressures on electricity generators - provide power at the lowest cost - simply provide no incentives that are proportionate to the damage caused by the failure to produce sufficient power.
That's a big factor, apparently.
So, while i'm a big fan of the market - i'm typing this on the sort of innovation that the market enables - we also have to recognize that there are inefficiencies and interdependencies that aren't accurately captured by the electricity market (and a number of other ones). And the only answer to that is regulations that force them to be priced into the market.
There's plenty of ways to do that. You could mandate the added costs of cold proofing be spent and let generators pass that on as part of the cost of power, you could simply pay for the cold proofing out of tax revenue, etc. That's way outside my area of expertise, and is really best left to the citizens of Texas to decide.
But then we get to the problem facing the citizens of Texas. We've been told for decades that all government regulation, and any intervention in the market is bad.
It's the overregulation against which many of us stand.
That's despite the fact that we're a fundamentally reactive society - we don't do much of anything, including imposing regulations, until after an event like this indicates that there's a problem, typically one that kills people. And, when the problem is no longer immediately visible (possibly because of the regulations working), we tend to start ignoring our solutions or actively getting rid of them.
Yes, I WANT regulation in many areas.
You can see this in recent events. We've gotten casual about vaccines, and now mistrust them - even with something like COVID around - simply because they've been so successful at eliminating the problems they were designed to solve. And we react with wonder at landing a rover on Mars simply because there are so few examples where people have to think through and adjust for every bad thing that can happen in advance.
None of this is to say that every regulation we put in place is the best, most efficient way of doing things. I'm all for going back and re-evaluating and see how they're actually working, and reforming them as needed. But i think the US has adopted an "all regulation is bad and must be eliminated" attitude that is both naive and will inevitably lead to more events like this. And i think Texans are going to face some hard decisions regarding what sorts of regulation - along with their added costs - they're willing to put in place in order to significantly reduce the chances of facing another event like this a decade down the line. And they'll do that with the knowledge that they did react to the same thing a decade ago, but didn't see the reaction through to making sure that they were actually protected.
I'd encourage you to focus your "Texas" research more narrowly on the ERCOT factor, than infrastructure here in general.
From what I can tell, the Texas Legislature has made "recommendations", but has not made the mandates that require hardening - or cold-proofing - the ERCOT system.
You're probably aware of this, but for those who might not be - there are three main power grids in the US. Texas has its own - ERCOT - which covers most, but not all, of Texas
ercot power grid.png
As always, good to see you, sir!The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostEvery time my wife and I watch Air Disasters, we discover a new rule or policy or requirement that was mandated following the investigation of a crash --- redundant systems, self-reporting monitoring systems, louder or more evident alarms for misconfiguration of flaps on landing or takeoff, etc....Last edited by TheLurch; 02-19-2021, 05:36 PM."Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."
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Originally posted by TheLurch View PostOne of the best sayings i've heard on the topic came from someone who said he picked it up during his service in the airport: "All regulations are written in blood."The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostAnalysis appreciated, and so far, no quarrel --- however, there's big notice in Texas that the parts of the State covered by ERCOT (the vast majority) didn't fare nearly as well as the smaller parts of the State not part of ERCOT.
...
From what I can tell, the Texas Legislature has made "recommendations", but has not made the mandates that require hardening - or cold-proofing - the ERCOT system.
As for what exactly the issues are with ERCOT's management of demand and response to the past cold snaps, there's a lot of inconsistent and incomplete information out there. At this point, i've decided to wait for FERC (federal grid regulators) to issue an expert report, since they'll have access to hourly data on the status of all of ERCOT's assets, will do interviews with responsible parties, etc. Probably will take a year to be complete, but these things take time."Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."
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Originally posted by Littlejoe View PostUnfortunately it looks like renewable energy doesn't fair well in this weather. Reports of windmills frozen causing power drops that left us in a deficit energy situation. This article says that the windmills actually use more energy than they generate due to heaters that keep the oil viscous.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...tm_term=fourth
helicopter-burning-jet-fuel-to-deice-clean-energy-wind-turbine.jpg
If 2020 was the the year of hell on earth, 2021
is turning into the year that hell froze over
I'm always still in trouble again
"You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
"Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
"Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman
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Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
helicopter-burning-jet-fuel-to-deice-clean-energy-wind-turbine.jpg
If 2020 was the the year of hell on earth, 2021
is turning into the year that hell froze over"Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."
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Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
Given that they successfully run windmills in antarctica, i'm pretty sure they can be run quite economically in cold weather. Once again, the problem was Texas not preparing for the cold.
I knew someone stationed in Greenland for over a year (apparently he must have pissed someone off) and he talked about the long and involved processes required just to keep their firearms from freezing solid.
I'm always still in trouble again
"You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
"Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
"Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman
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