Frozen wind turbines hamper Texas power output

A helicopter running on fossil fuel spraying a chemical made from fossil fuels onto a wind turbine made with fossils fuels during an ice storm is awesome.

View attachment 457666
except it wasn't so. that footage is from 2014 in Sweden. fake news from MSM yet again.


Everybody knew that helicopter shot was from 2014.

Texas problem was they failed to use antifreeze. Texans get less than 20% of their power from wind turbines. The Republicans are looking to blame someone other than themselves. The power grid is privatized by fat cats.
 
The irony of this event is oh so delicious


Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.

Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.


Where's the "irony"? :dunno:
Check Weatherman2020's post on this earlier. He illustrated with helicopter spraying petrichemical deicer on the wind turbines to get rid of the ice so they could make green energy. :auiqs.jpg:

But seriously, is this a matter of ice on the blades?

One of our local radio stations has had a shitty signal lately which I strongly suspect is the effect of de-icers on the antenna not working. Ice will fuck up things that need to be smooth as it changes the shape. Anyone who subscribes to satellite TV probably knows this too. And of course in the case of a propeller it changes the whole weight and balance.

Wind turbine blades should have de-icers on them, at least if they're in a climate where ice is likely. And maybe they do but not in Texas.
When Maine had the Mother of all ice storms in 1998, very few people had generators; even most gas stations didn't, which was causing the electric crews called in to help to run out of gas. 3" of ice encased the state; transmission lines fell like a row of dominoes, electric was down for a week and a half. Most people around here have wells, so along with the misery of no lights, no heat, no tv, and living on devilled ham sandwiches, most people also had no running water. We tried melting buckets of snow to flush the toilet, but it was too damned cold in the house for it to melt. After that storm, a lot of people started investing in pellet stoves or generators and most gas stations now have enough backup to at least pump gas (and hopefully make coffee). They're not expecting anything like it for a hundred years. Maybe Texas, too, will start planning for the unforeseen. It seems like defrosters on the turbines should be standard, at any rate.

Very cool, I'm jealous. I love natural disasters, well at least the ones that involve power outages.

I have the same issue here. When the power goes out the first thing that comes to mind is: "You get ONE flush, make it count". Actually if there's a power outage it usually means the creek just across the way is swollen with water, so I'll take a bucket over there to refill the toilet tank. For drinking and cooking I have backup stored water to tide me over until if need be I can drive up the road to a local spring. Wood stove and/or propane camping stove for cooking. If it's arctic weather and the reefer is off I can just store food out in the car. That's why I like power outages -- it makes ya get creative. And if you live in a lighted area (I don't any more) you get to see stars.
are you saying one can't see stars at night even with lights on? are you actually saying that? hahaahahaahahaha dude, you're indeed hilarious. stand up comic.
Another townie.
I'm sorry, I am unfamiliar with nonsense.
No one realizes it until you get someplace far from the lights of town, but there are actually so many stars in the sky it looks messy. We only see the brightest ones living in areas with street lights, business lights, that burn all night. It's amazing. I hope someday you get to see them.
Light pollution.

International Dark Sky Association
YES!!!
That's what I'm talkin about! I don't go wandering about in the wild after dark much anymore, but on the occasions I have been graced with the dark sky view, it was something I will never forget.
 
The irony of this event is oh so delicious


Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.

Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.


They should have thought of the worst case scenario and yet they never do because then how else can they have an excuse to let people have no power during a cold snap the might rival 1899 cold snap...

Every winter, in one part of the country, or another, the windmills freeze up and stop producing electricity. This is a regular occurance.

A couple years ago, 18% of Minnesota's grid went down. Windmills and and solar panels produce 18% of Minnesota's electrical output.
It's winter, right? Get your flashlights and thermal underwear out. The difference is, Tucker bitched about it on the teevee. Now all the anti-greenies are in an uproar.
I hate to break it to you, but failure of wind turbines was only 13% of the failures causing the blackouts in Texas, the bulk of it is due to frozen instruments at the natural gas installations. The head of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said the causes of the blackout:

First, some power plants may not have been operational due to routine maintenance, Cohan said. Peak demand typically occurs in the summer, so it's not unexpected for a coal or natural gas plant to be offline in an effort to tune up for the warmer months.

Second, some power plants may have failed to operate in the cold, Cohan said. "Plants are optimized to run under our typical and our extreme summer conditions but they aren't as well prepared and engineered for extreme cold," he said.

According to Rai, if plants operate for too long in too extreme of conditions, it could be too costly to operate as well as cause damage to the equipment, which could further exacerbate the outages for longer periods of time.

Third, some natural gas plants may not have been able to get adequate supply of gas to be converted into electricity, Cohan said. Unlike a coal plant that has an ready stockpile, natural gas plants don't store as much on site, meaning any disruption at the supply source will lead to a disruption in turning on the lights.

Texas planning for Texans or the failure to do so, it the problem.
This is reminding me a little of the analysis after Katrina--they knew it could happen, but they kept crossing their fingers it wouldn't happen on their watch, and they didn't do the necessary work ahead of time.

I can understand the argument that this is record breaking, once in a century weather, and it's a valid question if we want to pay for something we may never use. Now that it's happened, maybe they'll be a little more careful about taking gas facilities off line at the same time, but since this probably won't happen again until our grandchildren are grandparents...

Like my post said, the anti-greens are jumping on this to make renewables look awful, when there are clearly a lot of factors at work.

I'm not anti-green. I'm pro science and engineering. Solar plants can be damaged or destroyed by hail or tornadoes. Even chronic windy conditions can shorten their 20 to 30 year life span due to etching by wind driven particles. They can be put out of commission by mere clouds or ice or snow.

Wind farms can be frozen up or face wind conditions too high where the blades need to be locked down. And they freeze up in ice storms. Or USUALLY they usually take 2 to 3 days and many nights a week OFF because -- DUH -- the wind isn't blowing

THESE ARE INHERENT VULNERABILITIES THAT PUBLIC NEVER HAS BEEN EDUCATED ABOUT...

There's NONE of this discussion goin on as the Left attempts to SUBSTITUTE these grid generators after they demolish, decommission, and kill off all of our STABLE AND RELIABLE grid generation methods. People WILL DIE if they succeed here.

As for the icing of the nat gas turbines in Texas, this is what happens when you are shutting down these stable and reliable sources by EDICT to take renewable first onto the grid. The maintenance issues INCREASE and the latent heat of operation is not available to PREVENT "freezing up".. So a storm blows in and the grid operators order the nat gas turbines to be shut down because the wind is going gang busters for a change.. But the temperature drops maybe 30 or 40 degrees in a matter of hours. Instead of idling these turbines at some low output -- they freeze also.. The private operators are not gonna pay for fuel when they can NOT sell their power. DUH!! White 6

Seems like you're expecting politicians with a CRITICAL EARTH SAVING mission to be aware of all this. Largely they are not.. They will screw this up as they've screwed up my washing machine, light bulbs, heat pumps/AC and toilets.
Read this.


But wind accounts for just 10 percent of the power in Texas generated during the winter. And the loss of power to the grid caused by shutdowns of thermal power plants, primarily those relying on natural gas, dwarfed the dent caused by frozen wind turbines, by a factor of five or six.

it's about $$$ Shocked?

Yet we constantly see super happy messaging as to how Texas ERCOT is powering the state with 35% or 40% renewables.. These are propaganda to give the impression that wind and solar STEADILY AND RELIABLY that much of the load. In fact, both technologies only achieve an annual AVERAGE of providing about 30% of full power load that was BOUGHT and rated on the equipment.

And -- As I posted above, the shutdowns of the privately owned nat gas plants is PARTLY
side effect of the laws and edicts that grid operators MUST TAKE "renewables" BEFORE any other power on the list of the generators. So private operators are not gonna "slow idle" those plants to keep the equipment UNFROZEN and ready to use -- If they are caught by surprise by rapid dropping temps and icing conditions -- the deaths and carnage are on the POLITICOS that made the edict to "shut down" the gas turbines in favor of wind/solar...

Also -- they are not gonna PAY personnel to babysit idled equipment..
 
The irony of this event is oh so delicious


Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.

Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.


They should have thought of the worst case scenario and yet they never do because then how else can they have an excuse to let people have no power during a cold snap the might rival 1899 cold snap...

Every winter, in one part of the country, or another, the windmills freeze up and stop producing electricity. This is a regular occurance.

A couple years ago, 18% of Minnesota's grid went down. Windmills and and solar panels produce 18% of Minnesota's electrical output.
It's winter, right? Get your flashlights and thermal underwear out. The difference is, Tucker bitched about it on the teevee. Now all the anti-greenies are in an uproar.
I hate to break it to you, but failure of wind turbines was only 13% of the failures causing the blackouts in Texas, the bulk of it is due to frozen instruments at the natural gas installations. The head of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said the causes of the blackout:

First, some power plants may not have been operational due to routine maintenance, Cohan said. Peak demand typically occurs in the summer, so it's not unexpected for a coal or natural gas plant to be offline in an effort to tune up for the warmer months.

Second, some power plants may have failed to operate in the cold, Cohan said. "Plants are optimized to run under our typical and our extreme summer conditions but they aren't as well prepared and engineered for extreme cold," he said.

According to Rai, if plants operate for too long in too extreme of conditions, it could be too costly to operate as well as cause damage to the equipment, which could further exacerbate the outages for longer periods of time.

Third, some natural gas plants may not have been able to get adequate supply of gas to be converted into electricity, Cohan said. Unlike a coal plant that has an ready stockpile, natural gas plants don't store as much on site, meaning any disruption at the supply source will lead to a disruption in turning on the lights.

Texas planning for Texans or the failure to do so, it the problem.
This is reminding me a little of the analysis after Katrina--they knew it could happen, but they kept crossing their fingers it wouldn't happen on their watch, and they didn't do the necessary work ahead of time.

I can understand the argument that this is record breaking, once in a century weather, and it's a valid question if we want to pay for something we may never use. Now that it's happened, maybe they'll be a little more careful about taking gas facilities off line at the same time, but since this probably won't happen again until our grandchildren are grandparents...

Like my post said, the anti-greens are jumping on this to make renewables look awful, when there are clearly a lot of factors at work.

I'm not anti-green. I'm pro science and engineering. Solar plants can be damaged or destroyed by hail or tornadoes. Even chronic windy conditions can shorten their 20 to 30 year life span due to etching by wind driven particles. They can be put out of commission by mere clouds or ice or snow.

Wind farms can be frozen up or face wind conditions too high where the blades need to be locked down. And they freeze up in ice storms. Or USUALLY they usually take 2 to 3 days and many nights a week OFF because -- DUH -- the wind isn't blowing

THESE ARE INHERENT VULNERABILITIES THAT PUBLIC NEVER HAS BEEN EDUCATED ABOUT...

There's NONE of this discussion goin on as the Left attempts to SUBSTITUTE these grid generators after they demolish, decommission, and kill off all of our STABLE AND RELIABLE grid generation methods. People WILL DIE if they succeed here.

As for the icing of the nat gas turbines in Texas, this is what happens when you are shutting down these stable and reliable sources by EDICT to take renewable first onto the grid. The maintenance issues INCREASE and the latent heat of operation is not available to PREVENT "freezing up".. So a storm blows in and the grid operators order the nat gas turbines to be shut down because the wind is going gang busters for a change.. But the temperature drops maybe 30 or 40 degrees in a matter of hours. Instead of idling these turbines at some low output -- they freeze also.. The private operators are not gonna pay for fuel when they can NOT sell their power. DUH!! White 6

Seems like you're expecting politicians with a CRITICAL EARTH SAVING mission to be aware of all this. Largely they are not.. They will screw this up as they've screwed up my washing machine, light bulbs, heat pumps/AC and toilets.
Read this.


But wind accounts for just 10 percent of the power in Texas generated during the winter. And the loss of power to the grid caused by shutdowns of thermal power plants, primarily those relying on natural gas, dwarfed the dent caused by frozen wind turbines, by a factor of five or six.

it's about $$$ Shocked?

It;s ALL about dollars and "Worst Case Engineering Design".. In fact, for every MWATT of wind or solar you put on the grid above what you need to neutralize daytime demand peaks -- SOMEONE HAS TO PAY for some other RELIABLE generator to back up that entire circus of folly. So SOMEONE is gonna pay for TWO POWER PLANTS -- when you'd only need ONE reliable one..

And if investors can't make money with plants that get shut down under orders from "Big Green", then YOU are gonna pay for the "reserved" idle plants that COULD have been the reliable primary generators by their lonesomes.
 
This just shows how worthless these stupid Environmental Wacko projects are.

Even when there is no weather catastrophe the damn things only are operational a third of the time.
 
This just shows how worthless these stupid Environmental Wacko projects are.

Even when there is no weather catastrophe the damn things only are operational a third of the time.
Then how do you explain the loss of natural gas to the point Texass Gov. Abbott banned all sales of NG over the border because of the weather?
 
Truth be told I am so sick of the finger pointing and just will say shit need to change but alas it will never change because the government is loving the chaos and if everything ran smoothly then those in power would be voted as usual...

Will try to sleep but reading Center Point website the electric will be out at least one whole day and it make me ask should I invest in a gerbil and wheel to start powering my own home...

You're right about all that til you invoked GOVERNMENT as the solution.. Government FORCES solutions.. They dont design them.. And something like a Reliable power grid or total energy infrastructure is WAAAAY beyond the ability of the folks voting to MANDATE SHIT that they have no prayer of understanding.

THose mental midgets have told you that all OUR PLANNING should be for a rapidly warming world. And events like this will become increasingly rare. You do not fuck with energy infrastructure design on hopes and folly... UNLESS you're a powerful mental midget with the POWER to dictate dream scenarios..

Borrow a couple of neighbor dogs. This is what a Three Dog Night is all about. Except my dog can't even get down off our hill to walk. And I can no longer scale the glacier that is my backyard.
 
The irony of this event is oh so delicious


Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.

Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.


They should have thought of the worst case scenario and yet they never do because then how else can they have an excuse to let people have no power during a cold snap the might rival 1899 cold snap...

Every winter, in one part of the country, or another, the windmills freeze up and stop producing electricity. This is a regular occurance.

A couple years ago, 18% of Minnesota's grid went down. Windmills and and solar panels produce 18% of Minnesota's electrical output.
It's winter, right? Get your flashlights and thermal underwear out. The difference is, Tucker bitched about it on the teevee. Now all the anti-greenies are in an uproar.
I hate to break it to you, but failure of wind turbines was only 13% of the failures causing the blackouts in Texas, the bulk of it is due to frozen instruments at the natural gas installations. The head of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said the causes of the blackout:

First, some power plants may not have been operational due to routine maintenance, Cohan said. Peak demand typically occurs in the summer, so it's not unexpected for a coal or natural gas plant to be offline in an effort to tune up for the warmer months.

Second, some power plants may have failed to operate in the cold, Cohan said. "Plants are optimized to run under our typical and our extreme summer conditions but they aren't as well prepared and engineered for extreme cold," he said.

According to Rai, if plants operate for too long in too extreme of conditions, it could be too costly to operate as well as cause damage to the equipment, which could further exacerbate the outages for longer periods of time.

Third, some natural gas plants may not have been able to get adequate supply of gas to be converted into electricity, Cohan said. Unlike a coal plant that has an ready stockpile, natural gas plants don't store as much on site, meaning any disruption at the supply source will lead to a disruption in turning on the lights.

Texas planning for Texans or the failure to do so, it the problem.
This is reminding me a little of the analysis after Katrina--they knew it could happen, but they kept crossing their fingers it wouldn't happen on their watch, and they didn't do the necessary work ahead of time.

I can understand the argument that this is record breaking, once in a century weather, and it's a valid question if we want to pay for something we may never use. Now that it's happened, maybe they'll be a little more careful about taking gas facilities off line at the same time, but since this probably won't happen again until our grandchildren are grandparents...

Like my post said, the anti-greens are jumping on this to make renewables look awful, when there are clearly a lot of factors at work.

I'm not anti-green. I'm pro science and engineering. Solar plants can be damaged or destroyed by hail or tornadoes. Even chronic windy conditions can shorten their 20 to 30 year life span due to etching by wind driven particles. They can be put out of commission by mere clouds or ice or snow.

Wind farms can be frozen up or face wind conditions too high where the blades need to be locked down. And they freeze up in ice storms. Or USUALLY they usually take 2 to 3 days and many nights a week OFF because -- DUH -- the wind isn't blowing

THESE ARE INHERENT VULNERABILITIES THAT PUBLIC NEVER HAS BEEN EDUCATED ABOUT...

There's NONE of this discussion goin on as the Left attempts to SUBSTITUTE these grid generators after they demolish, decommission, and kill off all of our STABLE AND RELIABLE grid generation methods. People WILL DIE if they succeed here.

As for the icing of the nat gas turbines in Texas, this is what happens when you are shutting down these stable and reliable sources by EDICT to take renewable first onto the grid. The maintenance issues INCREASE and the latent heat of operation is not available to PREVENT "freezing up".. So a storm blows in and the grid operators order the nat gas turbines to be shut down because the wind is going gang busters for a change.. But the temperature drops maybe 30 or 40 degrees in a matter of hours. Instead of idling these turbines at some low output -- they freeze also.. The private operators are not gonna pay for fuel when they can NOT sell their power. DUH!! White 6

Seems like you're expecting politicians with a CRITICAL EARTH SAVING mission to be aware of all this. Largely they are not.. They will screw this up as they've screwed up my washing machine, light bulbs, heat pumps/AC and toilets.
Read this.


But wind accounts for just 10 percent of the power in Texas generated during the winter. And the loss of power to the grid caused by shutdowns of thermal power plants, primarily those relying on natural gas, dwarfed the dent caused by frozen wind turbines, by a factor of five or six.

it's about $$$ Shocked?

It;s ALL about dollars and "Worst Case Engineering Design".. In fact, for every MWATT of wind or solar you put on the grid above what you need to neutralize daytime demand peaks -- SOMEONE HAS TO PAY for some other RELIABLE generator to back up that entire circus of folly. So SOMEONE is gonna pay for TWO POWER PLANTS -- when you'd only need ONE reliable one..

And if investors can't make money with plants that get shut down under orders from "Big Green", then YOU are gonna pay for the "reserved" idle plants that COULD have been the reliable primary generators by their lonesomes.
Perhaps you didn't read my post on Maine's experience with renewables (post 221). How do you explaIn us getting along fine with 17% Natural Gas and 1% petroleum? I've been waiting expectantly for you to come back on tonight and explain.
 
These lame excuses for the failure of traditional electric sources will not support your dumping on green energy. Colorado uses green energy and has bad winters all winter unlike Texass and they don't have a problem..
 
This just shows how worthless these stupid Environmental Wacko projects are.

Even when there is no weather catastrophe the damn things only are operational a third of the time.
Then how do you explain the loss of natural gas to the point Texass Gov. Abbott banned all sales of NG over the border because of the weather?

Higher demand due to loss of ANY wind/solar and bad investments in wind/solar bells and whistles like the "grid scale battery storage" projects and dollars INTO "green" -- when the investment should have been to MAINTAIN AND EXPAND the PRIMARY RELIABLE means of generation..

And of course Texas is gonna can "over the border" gas exports at times like these.
 
This just shows how worthless these stupid Environmental Wacko projects are.

Even when there is no weather catastrophe the damn things only are operational a third of the time.
Then how do you explain the loss of natural gas to the point Texass Gov. Abbott banned all sales of NG over the border because of the weather?

Higher demand due to loss of ANY wind/solar and bad investments in wind/solar bells and whistles like the "grid scale battery storage" projects and dollars INTO "green" -- when the investment should have been to MAINTAIN AND EXPAND the PRIMARY RELIABLE means of generation..

And of course Texas is gonna can "over the border" gas exports at times like these.
They are doing rolling blackouts around here and all they use is traditional power production.
 
Oil and gas can't be extracted when frozen so the prices are gonna get higher but you can just blame Biden or the green energy sector.
if everything that happened then was trumps fault then everything that happens now is bidens fault,,

thats equity for ya,,,
 
Oil and gas can't be extracted when frozen so the prices are gonna get higher but you can just blame Biden or the green energy sector.
if everything that happened then was trumps fault then everything that happens now is bidens fault,,

thats equity for ya,,,
I don't remember chiding Trump once over gas prices since I know they fluctuate because they just do..
 
Oil and gas can't be extracted when frozen so the prices are gonna get higher but you can just blame Biden or the green energy sector.
if everything that happened then was trumps fault then everything that happens now is bidens fault,,

thats equity for ya,,,
I don't remember chiding Trump once over gas prices since I know they fluctuate because they just do..
since when is it all about you???
 
Oil and gas can't be extracted when frozen so the prices are gonna get higher but you can just blame Biden or the green energy sector.
if everything that happened then was trumps fault then everything that happens now is bidens fault,,

thats equity for ya,,,
I don't remember chiding Trump once over gas prices since I know they fluctuate because they just do..
since when is it all about you???
It is every damn day.
 
Super Arrogance Alert!!!!
Rick Perry says Texans would choose to be without power for longer ‘to keep government out of their business’


Former Texas Governor Rick Perry said that Texans would rather continue to freeze in their homes without electricity than to allow the federal government more involvement in the state's energy grid.

“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Mr Perry said on a blog on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's website.


Just think: they can tell that at the eulogies of those that died from the cold weather.
 
Oil and gas can't be extracted when frozen so the prices are gonna get higher but you can just blame Biden or the green energy sector.
if everything that happened then was trumps fault then everything that happens now is bidens fault,,

thats equity for ya,,,
I don't remember chiding Trump once over gas prices since I know they fluctuate because they just do..
since when is it all about you???
It is every damn day.


thats funny,, other than talking with you here, youre irrelevant in my world,,,
 

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