God bless Texas
The temperatures in Texas are on the rise and that’s an excellent thing. It’s been a very tough week in the Lone Star State, harrowing, really, and the fall-out from the winter storm isn’t over. It’s really only just beginning. There is plenty of blame to go around and lots of finger-pointing, as always happens in a crisis situation. Was the power outage caused by the state’s renewable energy sources? The traditional energy sources of natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy? It’s all of those sources. Everything failed at the same time. The very rare extreme winter storm caught Texas unable to keep up with energy demands. Factors of the mass failure include frozen wind turbines, limited gas supplies, low gas pressure, and frozen instrumentation.185 generating units have tripped offline.46,000 megawatts of potential power can’t be generated right now, according to the latest reports this morning as I write this. Here’s a breakdown of that power – 61% of thermal forces (natural gas, coal, nuclear) and 39% of renewable energy (solar and wind). A big problem is the lack of winterization of the equipment. You may have seen pictures of frozen wind turbines. Another problem is the lack of an energy reserve to handle the high demands of extreme temperatures. In 2011 the state experienced a devastating winter storm. After that, the state legislature decided to not hold hearings on some bills being presented for action to avoid problems in the future. A report was written of recommended measures to be taken but apparently, those were never acted on. Texas uses all forms of energy. It is the fifth-largest wind energy provider in the world. The state is highly diversified in energy. Texas is a leader in large states with renewable energy production. The argument now is whether or not it’s a capacity issue or if capacity was knocked out due to an extraordinary event. In other words, an argument can be made that Texas had plenty of energy available but due to a freakish (for Texas) storm, everything shut down at about the same time, like natural gas lines freezing. The wind turbines are mostly for summer production needs, to supply power for the demands of air-conditioning. Spare me the cries from the Green New Deal zealots. AOC decided to weigh in with her hot take on why Texas was suffering – if only the state went with more renewable energy. The truth is, though, as Lt. Gov. Patrick pointed out recently, Texas has power again today because of fossil fuels and clean-burning coal and nuclear power, not renewable energy. In winter, the wind doesn’t blow enough and the sun doesn’t shine enough for wind turbines and solar energy to provide enough energy for the state.
