Cascend: Data Shows Wind-Power Was Chief Culprit Of Texas Grid Collapse

[Paladin]

Interesting breakdown of the electric shortage:

Cascend: Data Shows Wind-Power Was Chief Culprit Of Texas Grid Collapse

The simple 5-step solution according to Cascend:

Winterize equipment

Require power reserve

Connect the Texas grid better

Add solar with storage (storage is key)

And add more natural gas

My personal thought is to go solar. That way I can be sure nobody is going to #1 cut ALL my power or #2 rip me off on my power bill.

They say solar is still 10-25% effective on overcast days. Solar production on the grid was way down for 5 days... but with the thousands of dollars lots of people got charged for a few days of electric solar would pay for itself.

[mrvmax]

Yes but the solar lifespan does not make it worthwhile. I think their lifespan claims are pretty optimistic.

[Greybeard]

Another good article; https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/casce ... d-collapse

[clarionite]

I've been eyeing putting in a solar system when we buy a house later this year. I want my office to be entirely solar. Those LiFePo4 batteries are pretty impressive, both in their capabilities and in their price.

[puma guy]

No! No! No! That can't be right. Bill Gates, the "every body eat yogurt meat" and lets get rid of people because the world's population is to big (he's helping with his deadly polio vaccine program in Africa) says it wasn't the failure of wind turbines. So we can rest assured it wasn't the fault of those big bird killers that froze solid.

[Deitz83]

Ercot posts the daily output on their website each day. I would like see how this data compares to their's.

[der Teufel]

Another good article; https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/casce ... d-collapse

Interesting. The article proposes (among other things)
- Winterizing equipment
- Adding more Natural Gas

Because, they say, wind power failed.
Wouldn't winterizing the wind generators solve most of this problem? I mean, they make wind power in Montana, Norway, etc.

[oohrah]

Wind power was not the cause of the grid collapse. It was poor planning and inept management.

[equin]

Now I’m not sure what to believe. The article OP posted is what I heard at the beginning of the outage, but then other news reports refuted it saying natural gas and coal plants failed more so than wind turbines. They also said natural gas wells shut down as did gas pipelines (maybe pumping stations were the cause of pipeline shutdowns?). I also read wind accounts for a much smaller percentage of TX power in the winter (about 10-20%?), and only about half of the turbines froze whereas more than half of gas, coal and nuclear plants closed.

Either way, I do agree that the lack of winterization was the main cause for the outages. Hopefully we do something about it this time, unlike those times after 1989 and 2011 when we still ignored the warnings.