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.
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.
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.
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.