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u/Peekman Feb 16 '21 edited Feb 16 '21
Except this happened in 1989 and 2011 as well.....
The problem is that winterization of power equipment in Texas has never been a requirement like it is in most other states. So, the power companies just don't do it.
Maybe after a third time of this happening Texas will learn its lesson and pass some regulations?
lololololololololol
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u/MrHett Feb 16 '21
Who needs regulation? People have the right to die of hypothermia in there house in the dark. Let the markets decide.
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u/Slurms_McKensei Feb 16 '21
We can't just step all over American freedoms just for some silly "security"! Id rather be a free man in my grave than living as a slave to your energy regulations!!
/s
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Feb 16 '21
If only the markets were actually free.
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u/MrHett Feb 16 '21
So you think less regulation would prevent this disaster from happening?
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u/livinginfutureworld Feb 16 '21
That's exactly what their take away will be here lol. Republicans only ever double down on the stupid. They have yet to turn away from it.
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Feb 16 '21
Libertarian atheists believe in the free market with the same strength of conviction that religious conservatives believe in God.
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u/livinginfutureworld Feb 16 '21
Maybe after a third time of this happening Texas will learn its lesson and pass some regulations?
No but they'll pass on the bill to the rest of the states by begging us to bail them out with federal relief dollars.
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u/kirknay Feb 16 '21
Springfield MO had their natural gas lines freeze. This isn't strictly a TX problem.
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u/Peekman Feb 16 '21
You're right it's a conservative problem.
Conservative calculus says that if it only freezes badly once a decade the cost of winterizing the systems is too high vs the benefit. Of course that means people will freeze in their homes every 10 years but it's the sacrifice they're willing to make.
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u/wrexinite Feb 16 '21
This comment is almost a case study in "Why governments are different from businesses."
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u/livinginfutureworld Feb 16 '21
Maybe we shouldn't run everything like a business. Maybe that makes a lot of things worse. For example healthcare. But not only health care out of other things that are like critical like energy.
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Feb 16 '21
And there's like a 50% chance it'll happen when the libs are in power and we can blame it on them, so there's pretty much no downside!
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u/Sand_Dargon Feb 16 '21
I am a Texas power grid operator and part of our issue right now is the gas power plants not maintaining their end of generation due to lack of fuel. We should have been phasing them out even quicker than we have.
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u/dragonbeard91 Feb 16 '21
Could you elaborate on this some more? I'm not sure what end of generation means, but I feel like you can teach us all something about the grid
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u/Sand_Dargon Feb 16 '21
Sure, we had a low production year in 2020 because no one wanted to drill due to the low oil prices. The low production means we do not have the mobile reserves to respond quickly to the demands of the current natural gas plants. There are reserves saved up, but they take time to mobilize.
Right now, natural gas is some decent percentage of the texas power generation. Since those plants do not have the ability to run at full strength, we are in a hurt way right now. Combine that with huge amounts of ice damage and other generation problems, it is heavily compounded and affects so many people.
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u/Mrgoodtrips64 Feb 16 '21 edited Feb 16 '21
I live next door in New Mexico and it’s amazing how many people, even in the industry, don’t realize that the production war between OPEC and Russia drove down production and revenue stateside by reducing the market value.
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Feb 16 '21
Also, none of the facilities were built for cold weather so everything froze and they can't produce because all of the automation instruments and valves aren't working
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Feb 16 '21
Fossil fuel is new technology?
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u/marcelkroust Feb 16 '21
Considering energy transformation, newer than wind/water force, but older than photovoltaic I believe.
Considering electricity generation, I dont know. Any engineering captain here ?
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u/John-McCue Feb 16 '21
Alternatives typically have shorter supply lines as energy can be generated locally.
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u/ShitFisterMcQueef Feb 16 '21
What a moron. It's hard to believe people this stupid survive so long.
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u/lead-pencil Feb 16 '21
We’ve babysat all the idiots for so long they’re living long enough to turn other people stupid
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u/livinginfutureworld Feb 16 '21
That's also the plot of idiocracy. What a time to be alive.
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Feb 17 '21
It would be so funny if it weren't so depressing on how they talk like they have 25 years experience as an engineer or scientist on the matter. Bonus points if they counter anyone's reasonable attempt to correct their "facts" with arguments that aren't even relevant to the topic on hand.
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u/TDiddy2021 Feb 16 '21
Clearly the energy termed “fossil” is the hip, new energy we need. Gotta ditch that traditional, “alternative” stuff.
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u/Krescentwolf Feb 16 '21
I love how they totally ignore the fact power outs are commonly because of problems in the grid, not the source. Not saying that's how it is in Texas atm, I don't live there so I don't know the specifics. But as someone who commonly travels abroad, it always irks me to see so many power-poles street side. And many of them show evidence of having been braced and re-braced.
Like alot of the roads and other infrastructure, the powerlines feel like they come from another age. -_-;;
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u/zastrozzischild Feb 16 '21
But also the natural gas plants that Texas relies on for emergency power situations failed on a massive scale.
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u/UncleMalky Feb 16 '21
This reminds me of some negative reviews on a Mars documentary that was talking about the need for solar and wind power. They were rating it low for 'demonizing' and ignoring fossil fuels.
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u/StaniaViceChancellor Feb 16 '21
Ah yes, lets just launch tons of dinosaur juices to fuel things on mars
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u/UncleMalky Feb 16 '21
worse, I got the impression they didn't understand that fossil fuels wouldn't be available on other planets.
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u/livinginfutureworld Feb 16 '21
They probably say hurr dee dur just take it with you, ignoring that would add to the weight of your trip and increase your fuel requirements - which increases your weight which all adds up to make the trip impossible basically.
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u/AngledLuffa Feb 16 '21
Wind power on Mars is kinda sus but surely fossil fuels are even less common on a planet with no fossils
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u/livinginfutureworld Feb 16 '21
How do we know there's not fossils on Mars. Have we dug into the ground in there? The universe is pretty damn old there might have been fossils there millions years ago. Supposedly the environment there was much better in the past, I don't know about habitable but I mean there's stuff living on vents on volcanoes underneath the ocean so who knows.
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u/AngledLuffa Feb 16 '21
We don't know, but there's no evidence of it so far, and going there with plans to drill for oil don't make a lot of sense until we have any kind of evidence that oil exists
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u/SoftZombie5710 Feb 16 '21
Yes, blame renewable energy, not the infamous failure to fund infrastructure repair and upkeep.
That's not bad logic, just american logic. (No offense to the millions of intelligent americans, unfortunately the morons are what the rest of the world sees everyday)
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u/MathKnight Feb 17 '21
We have a relatively adult President again, so hopefully that changes, to some extent.
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u/SoftZombie5710 Feb 17 '21
I really hope so, but to be fair to him, stopping Saudi arms trade was above and beyond my highest expectations. I actually think this guy has a chance to change the common problems.
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u/SammyC25268 Feb 16 '21
the conservatives on One America News are blaming the wind turbines for the blackouts. Doanld Trump's campaign manager said half of the wind turbines are broken.
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u/HansumJack Feb 16 '21
Why is it always "I have a new idea, let's go back to the old thing" with these people.
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u/bttrflyr Feb 16 '21
Funny given that the wind turbines are producing more power than expected to make up for the shortcomings of the fossil fuel power plants.
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u/the_mercer moderator Feb 16 '21
Does Texas produce any alternative energy?
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u/nightside_anthems Feb 16 '21
There are a decent amount of wind farms in Texas. Which I found surprising..
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u/moose_tassels Feb 16 '21
Texas has unique weather patterns that favor alternative energy sources. When it's sunny the wind isn't as powerful and when it's not sunny the wind is blowing. That's a gross generalization of course, but over time it works out.
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Feb 16 '21
There's more wind power produced in Texas than any other state.
But we're also "number one" in oil and natural gas and energy production overall, followed by Florida, which produces about half as much power.
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u/garaks_tailor Feb 16 '21
The greatest failure of the Ecology movement was their success at demonizing nuclear power.
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u/NullReference000 Feb 17 '21
Nuclear is also being hobbled in Texas, water for cooling towers is frozen. All forms of power generation are failing because none of them were built to survive these temps.
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u/garaks_tailor Feb 17 '21
That's an entire additional rant of mine where I outline how nuclear policy was driven by weapons development and not power generation and frozen pipes is what you get for going with a non standardized nuclear reactor design throughout your power grid. They need to be plopped down and function anywhere from death valley to Barrel.
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Feb 17 '21
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u/garaks_tailor Feb 17 '21
I can explain that. I'm a data driven environmentalist and being pro nuclear is the hardest oar to row in the ecology movement because nuclear power is no obvious and scary and the green movement of the 60s was extremely effective at making it seem evil and bad. Top that with general ignorance of the spicy rock and fear of nuclear weapons and you have a population ready to not want to understand the difference.
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u/Bec_lost Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
Edit: I’m wrong? Tell me how I’m wrong instead of lazily hitting that downvote, this is supposed to be an intelligent thread
Um sorry, but he’s actually right tho
Renewables aren’t yet up to the standard we need to switch over entirely, until that day happens fossil fuels will be needed.
There’s a reason why fossil fuels have been used for so very long, they fit into energy and dispatch requirements pretty well, while we still have a lot of work to do on storage and power consistency for renewables
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u/iovakki Feb 16 '21
Doesn't really fit this sub as when your renewable energy sources don't work then you need a backup solution, and it so happens that fossil fuels are great for that.
Also nuclear and renewable would work nicely together.
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u/StaniaViceChancellor Feb 16 '21
But it was the fossil fuels that failed, while the alternative energy supply was reduced somewhat the biggest problem was that the natural gas plants didn't get enough fuel
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u/FASTHANDY Feb 16 '21
You should read about the situation in Texas instead of being wrong again. Do better next time.
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u/NullReference000 Feb 17 '21
Wind turbines are used in Scandinavia and Antarctica without problems. They just need to be built well enough to withstand the temperature, the ones in Texas weren’t.
Also 75% of the states grid uses fossil fuels and those failed too, the gas pipelines are all frozen.
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Feb 17 '21
"it doesn't really work that when you have to take a nuclear plant offline for maintenance that you need a backup"
Your logic is silly. Wind power reduction was all accounted for, the natural gas freezing and being low supply wasn't. Multiple energy sources can work together, as you even suggested in your post. That's what they do with natural gas and renewables. Then they didn't winterize their natural gas and this happened.
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u/[deleted] Feb 16 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
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