Sometimes people have to learn things the hard way, even when the lesson is already painfully obvious. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people still don't realize that electricity isn't something you can afford to have be anything other 100% reliable.
I've learned from perusing garbage on Reddit that a lot of people have totally no idea about how any of electricity distribution works. But, since they are on Reddit they know everything about it and are 100% certain the issues are due to right wing politicians, deregulation, rich people, and capitalism.
I've been reading up on it a lot and find it rather interesting myself, perhaps since it's slightly similar to the work I do albeit in a different field of utilities. It's way more complex than most understand and wind power isn't the whole problem. Of course if you mention just one windmill is down they will remind you of this. Lots of lessons to be learned from this, one of which is that wind power is not perfectly reliable. That should have been obvious, and those forecasting it know that already. It's one of those things though where ok you forecast the windmills won't do shit, but there's no where else to get power to make up the difference, so well here you are.
Lol we could have had cheap universal energy 60 years ago if it wasn’t for hippies and democrats, who made egregious propaganda to scuttle and regulate nuclear power to death.
I would have added that the USSR was probably looking to also destabilize the US nuclear program in any way that it could considering how far behind they secretly were in nuclear weapons.
Yeah, it's really sad and pathetic that even a place like Texas with enormous amounts of suitable land, locations that would likely welcome the economic boost, etc. and it only has a whopping two Nuclear plants. Comanche Peak is one of the newest in the country having come on in the mid 90s of all things. Area around it is great for camping and hiking and you'd never even know the plant was there. You can't even see it most of the time from a distance.
I work in a small municipal power plant and the big driver of all of this is a natural gas shortage.
The cold went so far south that a bunch of extra furnaces are on and its putting a huge extra load on the gas grid. Then a bunch of the natural gas wells are in the south but not set up for this cold of weather. The well heads are freezing solid.
Due to the green energy push we have been replacing coal power plants with natural gas. There is no gas to keep them running.
The wind turbines are having 2 problems. The lube oil in them down south is meant for warmer climates and is too thick to function in this cold. Then all the ice on the blades has them out of balance and if they can warm them up enough to get them to turn. The turbines will just tear itself apart.
Finally solar dosen't work well with ice and snow on the cells.
I wonder how many people are gonna die in the attempts to repair.
There is no gas to keep them running.
Hm. Is it possible that the sudden demand could help fuel a recovery in natural gas production? I know that the oil price drop did major damage to the sector.
As you say, they know windmills are not reliable. So why didn't they have a contingency for this event?
Because rolling blackouts is the contingency. The people pushing renewable energy want us living without electricity. The lower our standard of living goes, the better off "mother Earth" will be.
Sort of. Rolling blackouts are the contingency so that the politicians can campaign on "equitable power distribution" while resolving absolutely nothing and pocketing money from energy commodity traders like California did with Enron. Enron's traders were causing brown outs on purpose.
Probably not wrong there. The funny thing is the "rich" will just start buying batteries, solar panels, etc. and the "poor" will all just deal with it. Since everything is class or race to them they will have to stop that.
I kind of think of it as "water that you can't ever store".
Britain's electrical grid basically fucking dies every day around 6:00 because almost the entire country turns on a fucking kettle. The sheer amperage needed to boil that much water basically drains the fucking grid at max capacity for 10 minutes, and they have to pull as much power from continental Europe as they can just to cover the load.
Then, they have to turn all that shit off. It's a fucking nightmare. All because the brit bongs want their tea at exactly one specific time.
I mean if you played fucking SimCity 2000, you'd know that Wind Power is a good supplement to mainline power solutions (natural gas, coal, etc.) but it should not be your primary source.
Every renewable power source right now has some sort of drawback. Solar requires acres upon ACRES of fucking land to gather the kind of energy that nonrenewable energy can make. Wind is subject to shit weather (surprise) and also is extremely bad for flying animals (shishka-bird).
On top of that, you need batteries to store power when solar power/wind power is unavailable. That also takes a shitload of land as well. Texas may have room for that but shitholes like New York and urban California doesn't.
You'd think these leftists would like having a solar power farm with accompanying batteries built in their backyard?
Sometimes people have to learn things the hard way, even when the lesson is already painfully obvious. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people still don't realize that electricity isn't something you can afford to have be anything other 100% reliable.
I've learned from perusing garbage on Reddit that a lot of people have totally no idea about how any of electricity distribution works. But, since they are on Reddit they know everything about it and are 100% certain the issues are due to right wing politicians, deregulation, rich people, and capitalism.
I've been reading up on it a lot and find it rather interesting myself, perhaps since it's slightly similar to the work I do albeit in a different field of utilities. It's way more complex than most understand and wind power isn't the whole problem. Of course if you mention just one windmill is down they will remind you of this. Lots of lessons to be learned from this, one of which is that wind power is not perfectly reliable. That should have been obvious, and those forecasting it know that already. It's one of those things though where ok you forecast the windmills won't do shit, but there's no where else to get power to make up the difference, so well here you are.
Lol we could have had cheap universal energy 60 years ago if it wasn’t for hippies and democrats, who made egregious propaganda to scuttle and regulate nuclear power to death.
I would have added that the USSR was probably looking to also destabilize the US nuclear program in any way that it could considering how far behind they secretly were in nuclear weapons.
This angle of environmentalism was definitely funded by oil companies. They are the big funders of anti-nuclear propaganda.
Kind of like the anti-vaping propaganda that keeps getting funded by tobacco companies.
Yeah, it's really sad and pathetic that even a place like Texas with enormous amounts of suitable land, locations that would likely welcome the economic boost, etc. and it only has a whopping two Nuclear plants. Comanche Peak is one of the newest in the country having come on in the mid 90s of all things. Area around it is great for camping and hiking and you'd never even know the plant was there. You can't even see it most of the time from a distance.
The Simpsons did more damage to nuclear power than the hippies could ever have dreamed of causing.
No, The Simpsons was just showing off anti-Nuclear sentiments that had been going on for 30 years.
I work in a small municipal power plant and the big driver of all of this is a natural gas shortage. The cold went so far south that a bunch of extra furnaces are on and its putting a huge extra load on the gas grid. Then a bunch of the natural gas wells are in the south but not set up for this cold of weather. The well heads are freezing solid.
Due to the green energy push we have been replacing coal power plants with natural gas. There is no gas to keep them running.
The wind turbines are having 2 problems. The lube oil in them down south is meant for warmer climates and is too thick to function in this cold. Then all the ice on the blades has them out of balance and if they can warm them up enough to get them to turn. The turbines will just tear itself apart.
Finally solar dosen't work well with ice and snow on the cells.
I wonder how many people are gonna die in the attempts to repair.
Hm. Is it possible that the sudden demand could help fuel a recovery in natural gas production? I know that the oil price drop did major damage to the sector.
As you say, they know windmills are not reliable. So why didn't they have a contingency for this event?
Because rolling blackouts is the contingency. The people pushing renewable energy want us living without electricity. The lower our standard of living goes, the better off "mother Earth" will be.
Sort of. Rolling blackouts are the contingency so that the politicians can campaign on "equitable power distribution" while resolving absolutely nothing and pocketing money from energy commodity traders like California did with Enron. Enron's traders were causing brown outs on purpose.
Probably not wrong there. The funny thing is the "rich" will just start buying batteries, solar panels, etc. and the "poor" will all just deal with it. Since everything is class or race to them they will have to stop that.
They're not so hot on food distribution either, in my experience.
I kind of think of it as "water that you can't ever store".
Britain's electrical grid basically fucking dies every day around 6:00 because almost the entire country turns on a fucking kettle. The sheer amperage needed to boil that much water basically drains the fucking grid at max capacity for 10 minutes, and they have to pull as much power from continental Europe as they can just to cover the load.
Then, they have to turn all that shit off. It's a fucking nightmare. All because the brit bongs want their tea at exactly one specific time.
I mean if you played fucking SimCity 2000, you'd know that Wind Power is a good supplement to mainline power solutions (natural gas, coal, etc.) but it should not be your primary source.
Every renewable power source right now has some sort of drawback. Solar requires acres upon ACRES of fucking land to gather the kind of energy that nonrenewable energy can make. Wind is subject to shit weather (surprise) and also is extremely bad for flying animals (shishka-bird).
On top of that, you need batteries to store power when solar power/wind power is unavailable. That also takes a shitload of land as well. Texas may have room for that but shitholes like New York and urban California doesn't.
You'd think these leftists would like having a solar power farm with accompanying batteries built in their backyard?
Yes, but Cities Skylines doesn't factor that in... so.