Yeah, with Texas deregulated market the windmills would have been useless without the subsidies. Anyone who can fund and build an appropriate power system can connect to the Texas grid to do business for the most part. Why do the windmills work as a business case? Because if I understand correctly they not only get a subsidy to put them up, but they get a subsidy for every kWh they generate from the feds. They are a profitable endeavor because we the taxpayer pay them their profit. Otherwise, well around here it's generally Natural Gas. Coal and Nuclear would be also but they are also beaten down by politics.
The cold weather failures were all-in-all due to the lack of winterproofing. My understand is while the windmills took it the worst there were issues at the natural gas and the nuclear plant. The thing is I'm still not convinced there should be winterproofing. The thing with engineering is conditions are a factor in designing a project. Why don't we all drive an MRAP around? Clearly they provide more protection against explosives. If there aren't explosives then they still work and you're protected anyway. What, they cost more, are slower, less efficient, heavier, and would cause more damage to the roads? The conditions of driving on a highway in the US currently don't warrant protection against explosives. It's no different with winterproofing power plants. There hasn't been this type of weather event covering the entire state (this is a key factor) in 100 years. Wouldn't the better solution for a 100 year event that lasts a week be to educate the public on how to deal with that one week?
Wouldn't the better solution for a 100 year event that lasts a week be to educate the public on how to deal with that one week?
There's that and not make an infrastructure exclusively dependent on that green energy. However, the Left keeps making demands, not only to build more windmills, but to tear coal power plants down.
Yeah just in the past few years a small handful of coal plants in Texas have been permanently shut down. It was around 6,000 MW of capacity if I recall. That might have been helpful.
It's everywhere too, there's a couple I read about in Arkansas that are being planned to be shut down in the next 10 years. The reasoning I could find as to why is they were massively losing money because of judgements and/or settlements from court cases brought up by green activist groups. So not because they are old and require too much maintenance or whatever, but because they are getting sued to death.
That's pretty standard policy for the Left in regards to lawfare: create burdensome regulations with harsh fines, then file endless lawsuits until you ban the companies from operating entirely.
Yeah, with Texas deregulated market the windmills would have been useless without the subsidies. Anyone who can fund and build an appropriate power system can connect to the Texas grid to do business for the most part. Why do the windmills work as a business case? Because if I understand correctly they not only get a subsidy to put them up, but they get a subsidy for every kWh they generate from the feds. They are a profitable endeavor because we the taxpayer pay them their profit. Otherwise, well around here it's generally Natural Gas. Coal and Nuclear would be also but they are also beaten down by politics.
The cold weather failures were all-in-all due to the lack of winterproofing. My understand is while the windmills took it the worst there were issues at the natural gas and the nuclear plant. The thing is I'm still not convinced there should be winterproofing. The thing with engineering is conditions are a factor in designing a project. Why don't we all drive an MRAP around? Clearly they provide more protection against explosives. If there aren't explosives then they still work and you're protected anyway. What, they cost more, are slower, less efficient, heavier, and would cause more damage to the roads? The conditions of driving on a highway in the US currently don't warrant protection against explosives. It's no different with winterproofing power plants. There hasn't been this type of weather event covering the entire state (this is a key factor) in 100 years. Wouldn't the better solution for a 100 year event that lasts a week be to educate the public on how to deal with that one week?
There's that and not make an infrastructure exclusively dependent on that green energy. However, the Left keeps making demands, not only to build more windmills, but to tear coal power plants down.
Yeah just in the past few years a small handful of coal plants in Texas have been permanently shut down. It was around 6,000 MW of capacity if I recall. That might have been helpful.
It's everywhere too, there's a couple I read about in Arkansas that are being planned to be shut down in the next 10 years. The reasoning I could find as to why is they were massively losing money because of judgements and/or settlements from court cases brought up by green activist groups. So not because they are old and require too much maintenance or whatever, but because they are getting sued to death.
That's pretty standard policy for the Left in regards to lawfare: create burdensome regulations with harsh fines, then file endless lawsuits until you ban the companies from operating entirely.