re: If Texas's central grid only relied on solar & wind energy, would anyone have electricity?

quote:

---

I’m blaming the entire system for being unprepared.

---

No. You just said that this had nothing to do with renewable energy despite the obvious near complete collapse in output from wind turbines.

The system falling has nothing to do with renewables vs NG. That is not the root cause here. Once a formal RCA is performed and CAPAs are put in place they will have nothing to do with renewables and all to do with weather proofing the entire system and maybe even adding some regulations that ensures the integrity of the system

Bingo! Wind went from big supplier (because of windy weather) to tiny supplier! It is unreliable! That is just a fact.

So, we perversely incentivized wind and solar, while we disadvantaged nuclear, oil and gas. When the chips are down, we had to go get the gas (some of which was off line because the solar and wind sources were “preferred” and some was offline due to COVID demand implications). It took a little while, but gas rallied.

We had really cold weather in Texas 30, 40, 50 years ago, and didn’t have this kind of debacle. You cannot make wind reliable - it won’t make power when the wind doesn’t blow AND it won’t make power when the wind blows too hard. Also, if it freezes up apparently.

quote:

---

Texas shutting down had nothing to do with renewables

---

Oh and we are back to having our head in the sand.

Wind energy lost nearly all output. Nothing else fell off by 90+%. Just wind and solar. NG output fell also, but the above stance is completely inaccurate. It’s the stance of a political activist. Not a logical person.

Omg jackass—-everything shut down. Wind, solar, nuclear, NG! What about this don’t you understand. It all froze— nothing was working. How hard is that to comprehend?

quote:

---

Bingo! Wind went from big supplier (because of windy weather) to tiny supplier! It is unreliable! That is just a fact.

---

It’s not appropriate for base load generation. At least not how it’s set up in Texas.

And it definitely contributed to the major problems with the energy grid right now.

quote:

---

Omg jackass—-everything shite down. Wind, solar, nuclear, NG! What about this don’t you understand.

---

False. Natural gas is the bulk of the energy output in Texas. Even during the worst of the crisis, it never fell off like wind and solar.

And wind and solar make up like 20% of the gird. Again it does not matter. They all shite the bed. The issue you guys are focusing on is not the root cause

quote:

---

Based on that graphic, it looks like it's still on top of all others...and always has been.

---

Nope

quote:

---

Then again, I don't like that graph, so maybe I'm reading it incorrectly.

---

You are. The color is each items contribution. If there is a sliver of color it is less of the total.

For example on Feb 8 wind was the largest supplier, on the 11th it was almost at 0.

On the 8th of Feb total supply was ~40,000 megawatt hours which was supplying all everyone needed (the storm hadn't hit yet).

On the 15th of Feb total supply was ~70,000 megawatt hours and there were a lot of people without power.

Total supply went UP 30,000 megawatt hours with Nat Gas doing most of it, but because of the crazy cold temps it wasn't enough.

They are designed to handle these types of situations. There are massive facilities in ND, Alberta, etc. that run in these conditions yearly. The problem is with the deregulation in Texas, owners were not required to winterize their systems. This meant that companies who were bankrolling the projects decided that they didn't need to splurge for winterization...just another corner to be cut to save money in the deregulated market.