Ron Swanson
Full Member
Good on ya
The Day After....
- Thread starter BedfordFrog68
- Start date
The Artist Formerly Known as PhormerPhrog
Full Member
That is a lot of ass. Anyone know if she has an only fans?
HFrog1999
Member
flyfishingfrog
Active Member
Maybe
but there is evidently some truth to what has happened
Not the EPA part - it was the DOE
but they did refuse to remove the generation limits for existing fossil fuel generation assets at least initially
there is lots of discussion on if those restrictions were ever lifted ? And when?
if so was it too late and also in exchange for obscene $1500 and $8000 wholesale pricing floors for generation above the initial limits in an attempt to dissuade the additional generation from being “abused “ at a time where people had no power at all?
seems like at a minimum, the high wholesale prices we saw were not purely due to market dynamics and at a time where they should have been forcing prices to remain low to avoid screwing over the public by price gouging in an emergency - the literally did the opposite
at worst they restricted generation in the plants that were still operational or at least delayed approval for increases in capacity above environmental restriction limits until the situation became a crisis instead of acting when it might have made a difference
I guess I don’t get your comment about not how our system works -
Are you saying a lack of generation supply was not the main cause of the blackouts?
I realize there were also grid infrastructure issues - but given that once supply was available to meet demand - all but 125k of Oncor’s 1.3 million customers that suffered a blackout were restored in DFW within 24 hrs - seems pretty clear the vast majority of the problem was a lack of supply to balance against demand
assets going down were the cause for that lack of generation - but were other assets allowed to operate at 100% capacity at all times during the crisis?
I doubt we ever get an answer to all of it- but anyone trying to ignore the detrimental effects of the move to renewables is having on our power grids reliability because of purely political gains has their head in the sand
the move could be made in a fashion that is beneficial to the overall system- but not when P&L and political power are the two main concerns
BrewingFrog
Was I supposed to type something here?
Out here in the sticks, you cannot find PVC pipe, cement, or ball valves like that. I think I managed to slip out of a local hardware store with the last 1" ball valve in the County.
BrewingFrog
Was I supposed to type something here?
While you are absolutely correct on the above, I simply cannot see the present "leadership" in Texas moving away from windmills.
This episode has plainly shown the rough spots in the grid, and failure modes many had pointed to but were ignored. There is plenty of evidence upon which to base policy, and the Lege in session to codify it.
BrewingFrog
Was I supposed to type something here?
A most bounteous boom-boom...
LSU Game Attendee
Active Member
I've learned that if you cut electricity to compressors you can make "natural gas fail" as an energy source.
Natural gas failed at a ~ 1/3 rate from pre-freeze to nadir. Awesome wind energy failed at a ~ 2/3 rate. PV solar remains mostly useless without batteries, and of course batteries approach uselessness under extreme temperature conditions.
In summary, more people are destined to lose power as we accelerate renewables adoption.
flyfishingfrog
Active Member
I never said we need to move away from any renewable - we need more and better
but right now the approach is we will move that way quickly - at least quicker than the technology, especially the required storage, is ready to handle
and the speed of that move, the messaging around it and the fact that the traditional generation assets are owned privately is having a detrimental effect on our current system because no one has the inventive or requirement to improve any asset that isn’t renewable
yet we will need these fossil fuel based generation assets for quite some time - like decades - even if there role diminishes over time
and how do we reduce their role without increasing the risk they fail us when we need it - like happen this week
flyfishingfrog
Active Member
If we shut off corresponding generation from traditional assets - you are correct
And in a pure free market system that is exactly what will happen because no one wants to own assets that are not utilized
another reason why the power industry has no business being deregulated at this point
we will see the same problem with “gasoline” as more cars become electric and demand for consumer based gasoline falls and gas stations start to close, refineries change their product mix, etc
We should have implemented a strategy to move to hybrids first and then eventually all electric giving the technology and infrastructure the time to mature - but because being "green" is the current equivalent of being "rich" in the 90's - no one is focused on the ability to implement some of these decisions.
supply will drop a lot faster than demand once a critical mass of electric cars is reached - and no one has any idea when that will be nor the downstream affect of it on other indirectly related areas of the petro-chems industry.
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HToady
Full Member
For those in the know, how difficult would it be just to be absorbed by the two federal grids?
I know we Texans like to be independent, but that's only when what we have is better...this is clearly not.
Look at the millions of dollars in salaries that are eliminated if we just get rid of ERCOT.
I know we Texans like to be independent, but that's only when what we have is better...this is clearly not.
Look at the millions of dollars in salaries that are eliminated if we just get rid of ERCOT.
Horny4TCU
Active Member
Can't we go back to pre-IceBowl power supply? In 2011 we were frozen solid and experienced 100+ days of 100. I don't remember losing power back then.
Either we need to close our borders, because too many Californians have slipped in, or we need to reallocate our resources to better (and more reliable) power generators.
Either we need to close our borders, because too many Californians have slipped in, or we need to reallocate our resources to better (and more reliable) power generators.
Eight
Member
simply do as fff has suggested and texas goes back to regulating the industry, you make requirements, and the powers that be above ercot which would be the puc and governor scheissing do something
we need to do something about providing adequate power to ensure the healthy growth of the state as well as the state needs to do something about the water problems that are looming for the state and especially the metroplex
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BrewingFrog
Was I supposed to type something here?
What "storage"? Unless somebody builds a Dallas-sized battery, there ain't no such thing as storage. Oh, if you had a Lake Titicaca that you could pump water up to every night and hydro off the flow every day, or monstrous molten salt reservoirs in which to store heat... But we don't have any of those. There is no storage, save for piles of coal, zillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and those fabulous unstable atoms of the Actinide series. They have great potential, you know...
We don't need any "renewables" at all. They wouldn't exist without shovelfuls of subsidies, and the very idea of paying out the nose for peaky, unreliable power sources is absurd. The juggling game played by the grid to utilize these things makes for an inherently unstable system.
I have no problem with somebody putting up solar panels on their house. I very seriously looked at them myself. The difference between solar at that scale and solar on the grid-scale is storage: I was going to utilize a battery system which would buffer and store the power the panels produced. There is no battery big enough to do that for a town, or city, or State. Nor will there be. The simple physical limitations inherent to chemical batteries prevent it.
As to fleets of electric cars, and a public willing to buy them. Sure. Keep on believing that. Unless the Feral Government under His Fraudulence mandates it, there will always be gasoline or diesel powered vehicles on the roads. Again, the efficiency of the engines is far and away superior, and there isn't an electric car that will take me from San Antonio to Houston on a single charge. My F-250 will go there and back on a single tank. I will also add that even the estimable Elon Musk has pointed out that there isn't enough power in the grid to charge that many cars.
"Renewable" energy is a fantasy, and we have been extremely foolish to even indulge in it. It is fine for some limited applications, but worse than useless for large-scale applications due to it's instability and unreliability.
flyfishingfrog
Active Member
so I agree with all of what you pointed out - but I don't think that means you give up on it - I think you have to continue to prove it out and mature it before it becomes a core of your delivery just like with any new technology
the problem is we are pushing out proven technologies in the generation arena for "the new shiny object" as if the new thing is capable of being a replacement in all conditions - and as you said, it is not.
Battery storage is a long way from being able to scale to any level it makes a difference - and even then it will probably have to be at the consumer/commercial level not the wholesale. But Elon Musk can produce a wall mounted battery and sell it to a few thousand people to help out under certain conditions - so everyone assumes we are at the point it works for 380 million (or 5 billion)
The Harvard Professor running around talking about making batteries out of dirt is the only guy I have seen that has any level of serious discussion on what needs to happen to create battery-based storage at a volumetric level to truly be applicable in the discussion. And right now his calcs mean a batter the size of my house will run a lamp.
Hydro is an entirely different issue - because it is proven as an effective solution since you can use a fraction of the power generated to "refill" the storage - but the other environmental impacts of water storage tend to get ignored when people do the models like what damming up rivers does to wildlife populations, the economics of land loss (to your point about size), the impact of increased evaporation and decreased water quality, etc.
Interesting that a newly elected Republican in Idaho is actually leading the charge to remove the dams on the lower Snake River. That would tell you that basically no one will support more hydro.
Someone needs to give Nuclear a new PR campaign if we are serious about trying to get off using fossil fuels for power generation - all the rest is just a side show to the discussion anyway because of weather, time of day and geographic issues.
TxFrog1999
The Man Behind The Curtain
You were fortunate. In 2011 we lost power during the summer for 2 days. Winter? Everything was good to go. From 2000–2003 prior to de-regulation we lost power during the summer multiple times, the worst was 2002 when our neighborhood was out of power for nearly a week.
Eight
Member
the other aspect that gets lost when i read and hear people talking about going green etc.... is the issue of moving goods long distance in this country.
two choices are either long haul truckers and everyone i know who works in and around that industry says they are a way off on batteries that power a semi from say port of houston to the metroplex let alone beyound or trains which means using the new diesels, but we aren't going electric anytime on the railways as well
two choices are either long haul truckers and everyone i know who works in and around that industry says they are a way off on batteries that power a semi from say port of houston to the metroplex let alone beyound or trains which means using the new diesels, but we aren't going electric anytime on the railways as well
flyfishingfrog
Active Member
but unless you lost power from generation failure that could not be replaced - thus a "brown out" - during the regulated days - the cause of your power failure is still regulated, which is the distribution lines in your area...
flyfishingfrog
Active Member
there is almost no legitimate reason to change anything about trains - their diesel consumption and carbon footprint is unmatchable by other means and there is not a lot of room for improvement with current technologies .
Diesel train engines get somewhere near 500 tons per mile in efficiency - short of floating cargo down a river on a raft, you aren't going to beat that. Its the distribution of shipped goods from yard to dock that might have a chance to reduce carbon footprint related to rail transport.
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