It’s Thursday. It’s called synchronized snow plowing and the technique appears to be very effective. They don’t do that here in Illinois because, well, that would make too much sense. And they don’t do it in Texas because it takes more than one plow truck!
I saw that Faux News is blaming the power issues in Texas on everything from frozen wind turbines to the Green New Deal. The Director of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said that the lack of power is primarily caused by frozen instruments at natural gas, coal, and nuclear facilities. Nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures. It’s estimated that about 80% of the grid’s capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.
Other contributing factors are several plants that were already offline because they were conducting maintenance. And Texas has a lower energy storage capacity than other states.
It should also be noted that the electrical grid in Texas was deregulated, privatized, and removed from interconnected networks to avoid regulation. That means that Texas isn’t connected to either of the two grids that the rest of the States use and thus can’t borrow power from them.
Nasty Winter
It’s Thursday. It’s called synchronized snow plowing and the technique appears to be very effective. They don’t do that here in Illinois because, well, that would make too much sense. And they don’t do it in Texas because it takes more than one plow truck!
I saw that Faux News is blaming the power issues in Texas on everything from frozen wind turbines to the Green New Deal. The Director of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said that the lack of power is primarily caused by frozen instruments at natural gas, coal, and nuclear facilities. Nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures. It’s estimated that about 80% of the grid’s capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.
Other contributing factors are several plants that were already offline because they were conducting maintenance. And Texas has a lower energy storage capacity than other states.
It should also be noted that the electrical grid in Texas was deregulated, privatized, and removed from interconnected networks to avoid regulation. That means that Texas isn’t connected to either of the two grids that the rest of the States use and thus can’t borrow power from them.
That last sentence is kinda important.
-keep