Snow was fun till power quit

[David Anderson]

So we get a once in 20 year snow event and I read that half of the west Texas wind turbines go down because of snow and we have no power in south Texas resulting in no heat in the house.
I turned on the Webasto and heated up the engine, pulled the coach out and my wife and I moved in.  We are toasty. 

Looks like our green energy isn't quite working as well as they promised

[luvrbus]

!9 degrees in Houston right now anyone up for ice skating lol

[dtcerrato]

Running the air conditioner in the bus barn while installing diesel air heater in the bus for stuff like happened to David - good move!

[freds]

I sure hope none of our troops at Ft Hood are out on maneuvers as they will be flashing back to Grafenwöhr Germany, shudder!!!!!

One of the true arm pits of the world, though I hear there are numerous sandy ash trays full of butts they have had to endure...

Cold war warrior here...

[luvrbus]

I sure hope none of our troops at Ft Hood are out on maneuvers as they will be flashing back to Grafenwöhr Germany, shudder!!!!!

One of the true arm pits of the world, though I hear there are numerous sandy ash trays full of butts they have had to endure...

Cold war warrior here...

Our daughter lives in Killeen says it 10 degrees there now

[Nova Eona]

Sounds like less of a 'green energy' problem and more of a 'failure to winterize' one; from what I've seen they're running at about a 30 gigawatt shortage, which is nearly three times what all of the wind turbines in the state are capable of producing at full bore.  Something doesn't add up.

[richard5933]

Read an interesting article yesterday about why Texas is experiencing the outages, and it seems like this has been a perfect storm of poor planning, not just of ice & snow. Looks like there were a few boxes left unticked in the state's winter preparation, almost as if no one ever asked the question "what if there's an enormous load put on the system in winter?"

Not trying to rag on Texas, but poor planning anywhere will result in pretty much the same results. It's happened here at times as well, and hopefully those in the decision-making chairs will take corrective action.

[chessie4905]

I heard many of the wind turbines are iced up and unavailable. Solar farms covered in ice and snow, thus no output.

[luvrbus]

Read an interesting article yesterday about why Texas is experiencing the outages, and it seems like this has been a perfect storm of poor planning, not just of ice & snow. Looks like there were a few boxes left unticked in the state's winter preparation, almost as if no one ever asked the question "what if there's an enormous load put on the system in winter?"

Not trying to rag on Texas, but poor planning anywhere will result in pretty much the same results. It's happened here at times as well, and hopefully those in the decision-making chairs will take corrective action.

Back in the late 70's Texas built coal fired power plants all over the state on sites where coal deposits were located so transportation was not needed federal politics forced the closer of those,they tired to build 3 nuclear and that was a no because of politics,wind power is not going to work in Texas neither is solar  the weather is too unpredictable.Texas has helicopters flying doing their best to de ice the turbines   

[chessie4905]

I've also read Europe has had to resort to coal and nat gas right now due to green failures.

[richard5933]

I read that two problems affected Texas this time around: lack of winter prep packages installed on the wind turbines and a lack of inter-connectivity with the national grid which would have permitted Texas to use the surplus power available elsewhere in the US.

If you think about how many wind turbines are installed across the north half of the US it's not hard to understand that they can be made to work in sub-zero conditions if installed with this in mind.

Perhaps the decision was made that for the few times it would be necessary to use the winter prep package it didn't make financial sense to install it, but then one has to wonder what their backup plan was.

Whether the natural gas and coal plants are being used in the EU as a planned backup or as a fall back plan is hard to know just yet - the news stories aren't complete and don't have all the needed information.

[luvrbus]

Texans will be ok winter only lasts a few days there, it will be back in the 70's in a week. The family that lives in Texas says it is more about the ice breaking power lines and poles with trees breaking taking out the grid 

[chessie4905]

Yeah, fortunately it is short lived. I was visiting my brother in Midland in the 90's. They had a major ice storm. Nobody could move for a couple of days, as they don't have trucks to deal with snow and ice which is usually non existent there. On the way home, passed through Arkansas. They had 1/2" or more ice. No power anywhere in the couple of towns we passed through.😲

[lostagain]

Ironic how it takes fossil fuel to run the helicopters to de-ice the wings of the wind turbines...

[Jim Blackwood]

We had a similar problem in Kentucky. After several years of no or very light snows the dim bulbs at Frankfort decided it was going to stay that way and sold all the state's snow removal equipment to trim the budget.

Of course that tickled Mom's sense of humor so she dropped a couple 11" snows on us just for laughs and you can guess how that one turned out. 10 years later we are still digging our way out of that particular hole.

I sympathize with Texas, but man up. You guys just aren't used to it is all. Frozen pipes, impassable roads, not all that big a deal really. All Y'all need to import snowmobiles and torpedo heaters and you'll be just fine. You got plenty of room to put them down there when you aren't using them and since everyone down there's a millionaire, just fly them in. Job done.

Jim

Jim