Our wind turbines keep on going through much more intense cold, whether with storming or clear conditions. During the week Texas was having so much trouble we had sub-zero temperatures every day, a good 10-20 or more degrees colder than Texas and we had the north end of that storm sweep over us. Lots of snow and ice on the streets but our wind turbines kept on turning… because they were winterized.
The technology is out there and its proven.
Heck, there are functioning wind turbines in Antarctica, which makes winter in Indiana look semi-tropical.
If some jackass down in Texas claims their turbines stopped because there was somehow no wind they are lying.
The other factor, which has been mentioned upthread, is that Texas has its own power grid. This means that they won’t send excess power to other states, nor can they receive power from other states when they need it. Given the massive outage earlier this month, I don’t know if the ability to draw power from out-of-state would have made a huge difference, but it certainly would have helped. And it’s worth noting that El Paso is not on the Texas power grid; they did not experience a power outage. Beaumont, on the eastern side of the state, is also not on the Texas power grid; they experienced only rolling power outages.
Right but winterization and temperature are a seperate issue to having wind. Texas could have winterized to the extreme but if it were Antarctic temperatures and there was no wind , it still would not have helped.
Given the conditions of a storm front moving through followed by being sat under a big ass low of really low temperatures for the region not having wind would not be unsurprising , and wind turbines falloff pretty quickly below 15mph, and if some one jumped to that conclusion it wouldn’t be the worst assumption anyone has made.
But like always if someone is making assumption based assertions about wind not working , it always best to go to the data, and yeah it looks like it was windy , as so yeah winteristaion was the issue.
I am.wondering how solar efficiency fares with cold temperatures, it certainly was bluebird clear skies in Houston some of the time, not sure how the cold would have impacted output.
From a high level view it seems that neither texas or california have the better system. They fail in different ways but they still fail. Claiming that liberal policies would have saved texas while liberal states have equal problems feels like a bias worthy of Fox.
My limited understanding is that with solar the problem is the panels being covered over with snow more than the temperature. A light dusting of snow will cut back on production but not stop it. At a certain point, of course, it will entirely block the light. This is mitigated in part by panels being at an angle, although the primary reason for that angle is to follow the sun, not shed snow. Not sure what else is involved with winterizing solar panels.
Nice example of whataboutism.
California’s system typically fails due to wildfire - either fire destroying infrastructure or needing to shut it down to prevent additional fire - which is relatively local in nature and fixed as soon as the emergency is over. They also affect an order of magnitude fewer people even at the worst.
The Texas grid failed because a bunch of rich people wanted to save a buck and didn’t give a fuck if it would hurt people, because either they didn’t live in Texas anyway, or the could jet away to Cancun until things warmed up again. It failed because those same assholes ignored proven technology that would keep their grid up and running. If failed because they ignored warnings ten years ago that this could happen and failed to winterize their production of energy
Your claim that it’s “liberal policies” is bullshit. The recent Texas disaster was preventable. It did NOT have to happen, and it shouldn’t have happened.
Fuck that noise. Give me “liberal policies” any day over freezing to death in the dark while miserable from thirst. No, wait - give me a government that actually gives a fuck about the people it supposedly represents. Given me government regulation that requires companies like utilities to be responsible and accountable, to take steps pretty much everyone else does to protect not only their systems but human life.
It’s a stupid train of thought that somehow equates “not Texas” with “liberal policies”. It shows the inherent bias of the person making the comparison rather than of the “liberal” policies they think they’re evaluating.
And yet somehow, it’s more often conservatives who do this. Case in point - Rep McCaul of Texas thanked AOC and Beto O’Rourke for “crossing party lines”. Somehow in his mind, helping people during emergencies regardless of whether they live in a red state or blue state, is “crossing party lines” instead of “basic human decency”. That says much more about McCaul than it does about AOC or Beto, though I’m sure he doesn’t realize it.
Semiconductors work better in cold - that’s why those big data centers need big A/Cs.
Rather than cold temperatures, it’s the relative lack of sunlight in winter that makes more of a difference. In fact, efficiency decreases in high temperatures. This is typically offset by more sunlight during hot summers. The ideal would be long sunny days at low temperatures.
I did a bit of googling and turns out that solar panels work better in the cold and lose efficiency when they get hot, so yeah other than snow cover they should work pretty well on cold clear days, and may even benefit from reflected sunlight off snow , depending how they are mounted ,
I then figured well of course they work in the cold, they use them on satellites, but it turns out satalite solar arrays get pretty warm and suffer a drop off in efficiency.
Just so many ways to be wrong
In the UK there is a wide choice of energy companies that we can contract with for power and gas, separately or dual. They are all in competition, both on price and service but regulated to stop any excesses.
I am with Ovo for both and they neither generate electricity, nor pipe gas, neither do they own the infrastructure that delivers it to my home. What they do is buy wholesale and sell retail, just like any retailer.
I recall, back in the Good Ole Days, when I moved into my first unfurnished flat, that electricity and all electrical appliances came from The Electricity Board and Gas from the Gas Board. Prices were okay, but service was abysmal. Our gas fire broke so I spent two hours on the phone to call an engineer. A guy turned up a few days later and diagnosed the fault. A few days later the part was delivered. A few days more and a fitter arrived to fit the part but found it did not cure the problem, so condemned the heater.
A new heater arrived and was eventually installed by a fitter who could not take the faulty one away, that was someone else’s job. Finally, about a month after the initial fault, an inspector arrived to check that the work had been carried out correctly. He wouldn’t take the faulty one away either, so we left it outside.
Oh, that’s fucking ridiculous. Corporations are never merely disinterested observers to the process by which regulations affecting them come about. They are always doing their damnedest to get the government to regulate them as minimally as they can get away with. Whether it’s merely contributing to state legislators’ campaigns and lobbying them like crazy, or actually being in the room when the laws and regulations are written, or (hi ALEC!) bringing the draft laws and regs with them, the notion that the corporations had nothing to do with the weakness of the regulations is total and complete bullshit.
To the extent that they got the level of regulation they wanted, they are damn sure morally responsible if those regulations proved insufficient.
Fuckin A. It’s just like the pandemic response. Democratic Governors like mine gave frequent, thorough press conferences featuring advice and information about the state of things rearding the pandemic. They encouraged and demonstrated safety measures like mask wearing.
Republicans? We know how that went. At some point Republicans really need to realize when being devoted to a political party is also making a bad decision. Sure not going to hold my breath.
The point I’m making is that in a capitalist system we cannot allow anything to depend upon the goodwill of corporations. If a market is poorly regulated, where there is no regulatory obligation upon corporations to act within a framework that takes into account the broader interests of society, then “bad” corporations will be more profitable and will outcompete “good” corporations.
Of course it’s a moral virtue for a corporation to try to act well. But in a capitalist system corporations that prioritize anything other than making money will be at a survival disadvantage. So the broader interests of society must be achieved by sensible and effective government regulation. Nothing that’s important to us as a society should ultimately depend on corporations being good, only on them following the law.
True, in an even slightly more perfect world than this one. But… Texas has it’s own specific problems. One of my close family friends (close enough to do Christmas dinner with when we lived in same state) works in the DA’s office in Austin. And, fundamentally, the deck is so stacked in Texas that it is an endless battle for few victories as it currently stands.
As others have pointed out, the corporations are moral failures for refusing to do more than the minimum required by law, laws that they have a strong hand in writing. But even then, they frequently break those laws as well . . . for the simple reason that the profit outweighs the loss. So, in one case that was reported for me, a business was exceeding by over 300% the allowed toxicity of the wastewater they were putting back into the local water.
The result? They just paid the fines, which were around $500 per day. The extra profit was much, much more than that. Sure, for a smaller business, such fines could be crippling, but not for a big one. And there was really nothing more that the DA could do. Now, I seriously doubt such issues are unique to Texas, but such problems are just as ‘Texas-sized’ as many other features of the state, and until voters are willing to let go of their wedge issues and focus on good governance the existing voter suppression and gerrymandering is more than enough to keep the existing regime in power for decades yet.
Yep, Google “regulatory capture.” Corporations have a strong and specific interest in shaping regulations to most benefit their bottom line. (And not always just to avoid regulations — incumbents in an industry often lobby for MORE regulations that will advantage them and shut out potential competitors). They have the resources and the incentive to target politicians and agencies to push their preferences.
The public also obviously has an interest in regulations that promote health and safety, or ensure genuine competition in a market. But that interest is general and competes with everything else your average voter is paying attention to. It generally falls to a few interest groups to try to wave the flag to try to draw any attention to the matter.
Until shit hits the fan. And then you get what we’re experiencing right now in Texas — politicians beating their chests in outrage, regulators deflecting blame, a few token resignations, and the corporations just waiting this out knowing that the outrage will blow over and they can get to work rolling back or blunting any new requirements that get put in place. And so it goes. . .
If you recall, I was talking about how corporations get in there and often have way too big a hand in writing those regulations.
Now the regulations apply not only to a given corporation, but to its competitors as well. While there may be particular situations where a reg affects one competitor more than others, in general regulation doesn’t put a given corporation at a competitive disadvantage to its rivals. Being good or bad in the way I’m talking about has very little to do with survival advantage or disadvantage.
Part of the problem is that when gathering evidence for a regulatory proposal experts will be employed to assess the evidence.
Very often the experts are themselves consultants in the field, might well be directly employed in the industry and having lots of qualifications and experience in the field their views will be given great creedance.
Not hard to see how this can be corrupted - and the fact is that in every industry there is an industrial culture that is not apparent to the consumer.
In some fields the only consultant grade experts are those working in the field, there is literally no other pool of knowledge to draw from.
