Why Texans are freezing their asses off

ok , didn't look any of this up

but just like solyndra, charter schools, or just the plain ole public school system, cash for clunkers, obama phones or just about any other government plan for misdirecting the economy

the windmill and solar panel industries must have all manner of government benefits involved in its expansion

for years ive received unsolicited flyers, printed materials, mailings etc all about fantastic lease payments i could receive if i would only lease my land for solar panels or for windmills

there's got to be gubmint money behind all that

That still doesn't change the fact that you don't have wind energy when the wind's not blowing,.... Originally Posted by Tiny

But as the Kennedys whined up in the Massachusetts area ...

.... they look ugly and disturb the wind flow when sailing!!!

Masks do also: When our "decision-makers" get their hair done or got out for a $2,000 dinner!

Texans are "freezing their asses off," because they aren't at home keeping warm and staying out of the cold spell...

... some people drown in hurricanes, too!

Who got a $16,000 electric bill?

Well, we did have one of the nuclear units shut down for a day or two. And some compressors would have gone down anyway, like they do whenever there's severely cold weather in Texas. However, please note that demand surged with record cold temperatures. People, institutions and businesses who were using gas for heating needed more. That includes hospitals and assisted living facilities. The demand for electricity increased too because many people use electric heating. Yes

Anyway, what I'm getting at, winterizing wouldn't have prevented the spike in demand, for both natural gas and electricity, so that rationing and blackouts may have been required anyway. True. What it hopefully would have prevented is the domino effect, that spike in demand caused. Namely , once a unit goes off line....its inability to start right back up.

A couple of safeguards that industry and government undoubtedly will be considering going forward. Adavs28 brought up the first. ERCOT needs more interconnection capacity, with other grids, ideally without becoming heavily regulated by the FERC (the Feds). This would help Texas if this happens again. I don't think it will, because I think we'll be better prepared. But still, when other states get into a similar fix we'd be in a position to help, as the largest energy producing state in the nation, by a long shot. Perry said Texas would rather shut down for three days before consider that.

Second, we need more gas storage fields in Texas, and we need to make damn sure the compressors and other infrastructure to get the gas from the fields to the gas fired plants is protected from the cold. This is called winterization This would help with summer surges too. You are probably saying that more gas storage fields would help in the summer. I doubt you meant winterization. Let me address that. Storing LPG in great amounts requires salt domes. You can not build a big enough storage facility. Originally Posted by Tiny

I think that friend is me, and yes, I do masturbate daily, usually while thinking about my one true love, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. lustylad is going to be so jealous of AOC I posted here that I was driving through the "wind belt", from Abilene to Lubbock, and the windmills weren't turning and the wind wasn't blowing. However the turbines don’t typically operate at full capacity in winter, MRT noted, adding that strong winds from the state’s “unfrozen coastal turbines at a higher rate than expected, helping to offset some of the power generation losses because of the icy conditions”.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...SCC=1611586187

That still doesn't change the fact that you don't have wind energy when the wind's not blowing, so you must have enough infrastructure with gas, coal and nuclear fired power plants to take up the slack. This is all true...we have already agreed about this fact. The portions of Texas that were not tied to the Texas grid....that were tied to the western half of the grid , Lubbock, El Paso had very little trouble.

Kind of getting off the subject, I attended a presentation by ERCOT some years ago, when the federal government was paying big subsidies to wind generators. The lady engineer posted a graph that showed how much the wind generators PAID ERCOT on some days to produce electricity. That's right, they were paying $.01 or $.02 per kilowatt hour to put electricity into the grid, at periods when the grid was over-supplied. The reason wasn't operational. If there were no tax considerations, the wind owners would have shut down their windmills to prevent the wear and tear on the equipment. But, pulling a number out of the air, since they were getting a $.03 per kilowatt subsidy from the federal government, it was a paying proposition to keep them going. Yes subsidies play a factor in anything it touches....A new International Monetary Fund (IMF) study shows that USD$5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. The equivalent of over 6.5% of global GDP of that year, it also represented a half-trillion dollar increase since 2015 when China ($1.4 trillion), the United States ($649 billion) and Russia ($551 billion) were the largest subsidizers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesel...h=af7729e44735
Originally Posted by Tiny

Please blow lustylad a kiss....I never realized how much of a man crush he had on you!

Please blow lustylad a kiss....I never realized how much of a man crush he had on you! Originally Posted by WTF

More homosexual rhetoric. Cant go more than a few posts without mentioning that imagery

.

Interesting Twitter thread on what happened:

https://twitter.com/arvindpawan1/sta...54754374262794

Note the numerous replies; some of them fairly interesting. Arvind Ravikumar is a professor of energy engineering at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen

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Interesting Twitter thread on what happened:
Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Is it more interesting than this thread? Twitter screens now.

$16,000 electric bill with no electricity? That almost sounds like income redistribution by the Green Crowd! "Community Utilities"!

Who is "we"?

You spend too much bandwidth (not to mention time) attempting to impress others with your inciteful knowledge acquired from 3rd parties. Originally Posted by LexusLover

Sorry about that

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Interesting Twitter thread on what happened:

https://twitter.com/arvindpawan1/sta...54754374262794

Note the numerous replies; some of them fairly interesting. Arvind Ravikumar is a professor of energy engineering at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen

. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

That's a good summary. Trying to keep my posts shorter so LexusLover will approve.

Please blow lustylad a kiss....I never realized how much of a man crush he had on you! Originally Posted by WTF

I've learned a few things from Mnuchin. I'm an admirer. He knows economics as well as anyone on here.

About storage fields, you don't need salt domes, any abandoned field where you'll get back most of what you injected will do. And usually you're storing natural gas, not LPG. Gas fired power plants can run off fuel oil, and probably LPG (don't know much about that) if you invest some capital and are willing to store the alternate fuel on site. This is actually a good step to take to help prevent what just happened from occurring again. Lubbock does this, by switching from natural gas to fuel oil. I don't know if that's the reason why, but they came through this pretty unscathed. A third party source told me the local utility has to charge customers each an average of about $30 per year extra to have this capability.

That's a good summary. Trying to keep my posts shorter so LexusLover will approve. Originally Posted by Tiny

LL is part of that new Trump Republicanism where you can agree in principle on 99% of things but the 1% you disagree on means you're a socialist. commie, pinko

Here's an article confirming what happened.

You heard it from Tiny first!

Good news - it'll be 72 degrees tomorrow, at least in Dallas! But you already know that...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/giant...005229826.html Originally Posted by lustylad

Interesting. The power to some of the NatGas pipelines/producers were turned off so they couldn't pump gas to the powerplants so a death spiral occurred.

Driving around North Houston power was out but the car dealerships were lit up like Christmas.

Is it more interesting than this thread? Twitter screens now.

$16,000 electric bill with no electricity? That almost sounds like income redistribution by the Green Crowd! "Community Utilities"! Originally Posted by LexusLover

A $16,000 electric bill for no electricity would be okay. Because if you hadn't received any power you could challenge the bill and not owe anything.

No, the size of the bill is because the price per kwh isn't fixed and is tied to the fluctuating wholesale price in a largely unregulated energy market.
Co-ops have price caps (the vast majority) that prevent the huge spikes. The $16000 dollar bill came from a $9 per kwh instead of the $.10- .30 per kwh most people see.
This is exactly why certain regulations are needed.
This is pure capitalism.

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Interesting Twitter thread on what happened:

https://twitter.com/arvindpawan1/sta...54754374262794

Note the numerous replies; some of them fairly interesting. Arvind Ravikumar is a professor of energy engineering at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen

. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

That sums it up to a tee.

Instead of political flunkies they appoint to that Board, they probably should appoint folks that have actually experience in each leg of the journey.

I can guarentee none were in Cancun while this was going on.

But as the Kennedys whined up in the Massachusetts area ...

.... they look ugly and disturb the wind flow when sailing!!!

Masks do also: When our "decision-makers" get their hair done or got out for a $2,000 dinner!

Texans are "freezing their asses off," because they aren't at home keeping warm and staying out of the cold spell...

... some people drown in hurricanes, too!

Who got a $16,000 electric bill? Originally Posted by LexusLover

The women in my family were squabbling last night about "huge electric bills" on the way. They KNEW of someone in their neighborhood who got a $12,000 bill. It was matter of extreme urgency. They were in total freak out mode.

Got on my TXU account. The bill for the last 5 days, most of which the electricity was down, was $13. I showed them and they were totally disappointed that I wasn't joining the $13K club. I'm surprised they weren't going to give up their Suburbans, Tahoes and Land Rovers to help everyone out so they could join the misery.

This epitomizes the "Green New Deal." Elite woman with more money than time wanting to take money out of other peoples pockets to "save the planet."

A $16,000 electric bill for no electricity would be okay. Because if you hadn't received any power you could challenge the bill and not owe anything.

No, the size of the bill is because the price per kwh isn't fixed and is tied to the fluctuating wholesale price in a largely unregulated energy market.
Co-ops have price caps (the vast majority) that prevent the huge spikes. The $16000 dollar bill came from a $9 per kwh instead of the $.10- .30 per kwh most people see.
This is exactly why certain regulations are needed.
This is pure capitalism. Originally Posted by VerySkeptical

That analysis might be above LL pay grade.

He seems to have turned into an anti capitalist commie!