2658 replies to this topic

[baw1064]

 LFC, on 16 February 2021 - 08:31 PM, said:

Texas has its own power grid. Welcome to market pricing, gang. This is the kind of Republican governance they want to bring to the rest of the nation. Nooooo thank you.

Really a pity Enron isn't around to take advantage. They'd have made a killing.

[AnBr]

[LFC]

[LFC]

Shorter ERCOT: "Uuuuuhhhh, DERP!"

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Millions of people in Texas are still without power as a record-shattering and life-threatening winter storm blasts their state—and they’ve been told that there’s no fixed end in sight. Bill Magness, president of ERCOT, the nonprofit that oversees the state’s electric grid, appeared on NBC 5 on Tuesday to explain himself as he faces mounting criticism. While he said bringing people back online is his top priority, Magness admitted that he doesn’t have the info to tell people when they can expect to have their power back and be able to heat their homes, saying he cannot “tell you honestly that it’s going to be ‘X’ number of people on a certain date.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hit out at ERCOT, saying it had “been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” and adding: “They are not providing clear answers to me or to the public... And the public has a right to know.” Meanwhile, the Texas Tribune reported that parents in Texas are being forced to burn their belongings in fireplaces to keep their children warm.

[Traveler]

More on the totally fucked up regulatory structure.

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Texas lacks the long-term planning processes that other parts of the country employ. In the east, grid operators run capacity markets that act like insurance policies. Generators are paid to guarantee that their supplies will be available on the most extreme hot and cold days. If they don’t show up, they face stiff penalties. Texas has instead left it up to prevailing prices and industry.

That deregulated and competitive nature of the markets stands to exacerbate massive price run-ups. More than 100 electric suppliers compete for customers who churn power companies like credit cards. They take big risks to attract new customers, offering incredibly low rates and allowing unlimited power use on weekends. But when the wholesale markets backfire, they bail on them.

(just added this):
The state also refuses to connect its grid with neighbors in part out of fear that the system will fall under federal oversight and regulation. But its politicians are coming to realize that independence has a down side.

[andydp]

I guess if you screw with Texas and you're a Texas entity its OK.

Messing with Texas: The Lone Star state’s power grid is working exactly as designed

Only that’s not the problem. As Ars Technica pointed out on Monday, wind power in Texas is currently working at over 100% of its projected capacity. The real problem is that the Texas electrical grid is working exactly as designed, by people who created a system where the occasional failure is a virtue. Because the profits are better that way



Messing with Texas: The Lone Star state’s power grid is working exactly as designed (dailykos.com)

[LFC]

andydp, on 17 February 2021 - 04:04 PM, said:

Messing with Texas: The Lone Star state’s power grid is working exactly as designed (dailykos.com)

From the link...

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While some early reports indicated that frozen wind turbines were causing significant shortfalls, 30GW is roughly equal to the entire state's wind capacity if every turbine is producing all the power it's rated for. Since wind in Texas generally tends to produce less during winter, there's no way that the grid operators would have planned for getting 30GW from wind generation; in fact, a chart at ERCOT indicates that wind is producing significantly more than forecast.

That means that wind power has actually IMPROVED their situation from what it would have been if it had been operating normally. Oooooh, Republicans don't want to hear that.

[LFC]

Vox has a great explanation of the Arctic conditions making parts of the U.S. unusually cold and whether or not it's to be increasingly expected or if overall warming will dampen things. Research is ongoing. I remember this being hypothesized at least 20 years ago.

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Winter Storm Uri scattered bitter cold, snow, and ice this week across a huge swath of the United States, including places that rarely see such extreme low temperatures.

States like Texas with milder winters were caught off guard by the chill, which led to a massive spike in energy demand and a huge drop in available electricity as the infrastructure around natural gas, coal, nuclear, and wind energy froze up. Tuesday was the coldest day in North Texas in 72 years, with the Dallas-Fort Worth area reaching a record low temperature of minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit this week.

The cold weather has triggered a wave of blackouts across Texas, leaving millions of residents shivering in the dark. In some places, Texans have been without power for days.

Public officials and utility customers want to know why the Texas power grid wasn’t better prepared. And to get ahead of the next extreme event like this, it’s also important to ask what the chances are of something like this happening again.

With average temperatures rising around the world due to greenhouse gas emissions, there is more heat in the global climate system. That’s already having some predictable impacts, like an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves.

But it may be having some counterintuitive effects as well, especially during colder seasons. How climate change will reshape winters is, as scientists like to say, an area of active research.

There are a couple of competing ideas for how more warming will change the likelihood of extreme cold periods, like the frigid weather currently gripping much of the US. One group of researchers says that warming will make such events less likely, while another says that warming in the Arctic will increase the chances of frigid polar air spilling further south, leading to more periods of extreme cold in the near term.

“I would say it’s still pretty controversial and it has been for quite a while,” said Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

But as Texas shows, failing to prepare for winter weather extremes can be devastating, so it’s critical to find out what scenarios could be in store and how often they’ll occur.

[AnBr]

[AnBr]

[AnBr]

[AnBr]

[AnBr]

Some times it is like shooting fish in a barrel.

[LFC]

AnBr, on 21 February 2021 - 08:33 PM, said:

Some times it is like shooting fish in a barrel.

And particularly dumb f***ing fish at that.

[andydp]

Came across this last week. Great comeback for those "renewables don't work memes".

More oil and gas companies leaning into renewable energy tech

A record two-thirds of senior oil and gas professionals report that their organization is actively adapting to a less carbon-intensive energy mix in 2021, up from just 44% in 2018. Some 57% plan to increase investment in renewables, up from 44% last year, about half expect to increase investment in green or decarbonized gas

More oil and gas companies leaning into renewable energy tech (worldoil.com)

Sadly, its science and fact based so its a "spawn of the devil".

[golden_valley]

andydp, on 22 February 2021 - 09:53 AM, said:

Came across this last week. Great comeback for those "renewabled don't work memes".

More oil and gas companies leaning into renewable energy tech

A record two-thirds of senior oil and gas professionals report that their organization is actively adapting to a less carbon-intensive energy mix in 2021, up from just 44% in 2018. Some 57% plan to increase investment in renewables, up from 44% last year, about half expect to increase investment in green or decarbonized gas

More oil and gas companies leaning into renewable energy tech (worldoil.com)

Sadly, its science and fact based so its a "spawn of the devil".

I suspect the companies are leaning in to renewable energy generators because there's money to be made there at a time when crude oil and natural gas prices are decreasing, not because they have become "green."

[LFC]

golden_valley, on 22 February 2021 - 10:59 AM, said:

I suspect the companies are leaning in to renewable energy generators because there's money to be made there at a time when crude oil and natural gas prices are decreasing, not because they have become "green."

All depends on the meaning of "green." They've been all about the green all along, so much so that they've been perfectly happy to destroy our planet, increase human death rates, property destruction, and misery, cause extinctions,...

[George Rowell]

“Contrary to some early hot takes, gas and coal were actually the biggest culprits in the crisis,” said Eric Fell, director of North America gas at Wood MacKenzie.

The blackout lie. https://www.theguard...s-could-be-next

[LFC]

Year-round ship traffic in the Arctic? Ugh. How much trash, sewage, and oil filled bilge water are they going to dump in a place where it won't break down? I expect them to f*** this region up just like every other place they go.

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The Arctic is now open for business year-round after a large commercial ship sailed the Northern Sea Route from Jiangsu, China, to a Russian gas plant on the Arctic coast, for the first time ever during the month of February, when winter temperatures normally make the icy waterway impassable.

The tanker, owned by Russian maritime shipping company Sovcomflot, was able to make the trip through the Arctic sea ice because it is no longer frozen all winter due to human-induced global warming.

The ability to make this trip 365 days a year opens up vast new possibilities for the shipping industry, which carries 80 percent of the world’s cargo by volume and 70 percent of global trade by value. But it also raises concerns about how the scramble to capitalize on the new route could upend geopolitics.

Here's part of the interview. The drop in importance of the Suez Canal is going to hit hard.

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Jariel Arvin
What exactly has changed with this news?

Juliette Kayyem
In the past, trade had to work in a north-to-south way, just because the Arctic had never been navigational. Now ships can go from Europe to China on an east-west route. It’s going to put more competition on the north-south passages to retain their commercial activity.
Eighty percent of the world’s goods by volume are shipped by cargo, so this is no joke. For 100 years, cargo has essentially followed the same pathway through the Suez Canal. So, with days cut off transit time, as well as [not having to pay] all the taxes and fees that align with being a port city or canal like the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal — that’s all going to change.

Jariel Arvin
How does this change, for example, how a Chinese cargo ship would have traveled?

Juliette Kayyem
To do Europe alone, China would have gone from the Netherlands through the Suez Canal — south of India, up to China to Dalian, which is their main area. Now if you look at the route, it’s cut off by half. Now, you can go the northern route, east down. It’s mind-boggling.

Jariel Arvin
So, Russia and China are obviously going to be interested in moving goods up through that Northern Sea Route. Which other countries will be vying for a stake?

Juliette Kayyem
Japan, Vietnam, Russia, pretty much every country. Australia is going to want to go through there. I mean, why wouldn’t they, since it’s so much shorter? Now there’s going to be pressure and competition. Now you’ve just [opened up]a huge, huge competitive market.