Just so there is no confusion about the historic severity of the weather — century-old records were being broken every day across the state for the “lowest” high and low temperatures for the date. No one in Texas ever lived through a cold snap like that before. This raises the rhetorical question of whether the state should have planned ahead for something that had never happened before. //

To avoid issues of federal regulation, the Texas power grid is entirely localized within the state of Texas and is controlled by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). All transmission and production facilities are found within the physical borders of Texas so there is no interstate transmission of power. Municipalities and energy cooperatives are the retailers who buy power from the generators and sell it to the consumers in their areas. //

There is always water vapor present in natural gas flowing through a pipeline. When that temperature inside the pipe drops below freezing, the water vapor will begin to form ice on the inside of the pipeline, and this ice will continue to build up until the pipeline becomes choked or blocked completely, cutting off the flow of gas to boil the water that spins the steam turbines. //

the last “weather” related phenomenon which impacted the Texas energy system was the sustained drought in 2011, which left many generation facilities with inadequate water supplies to run the generation plants. That summer there were 100 days of weather across the state when daytime temperatures went over 100 degrees, and the lack of water created limitations on generating capacity.

Investment by network participants to prevent power shortages during the last decade focused on that problem — hence the increased investment in wind and solar generating capacity which do not rely on available supplies of water.

No outage would have occurred if a fraction of the total Texas wind capacity had instead been a combination of properly winterized natural gas turbines and nuclear plants. //

Eventually, forensics rather than finger-pointing will likely confirm what we know now: the Texas grid almost collapsed because of a domino of events. It began with a near-total loss of output from that state’s mighty wind farms. At the center of the debate about how to prevent a next time — with natural disasters, there is always a next time – we find a simple truism: For critical infrastructures, the hallmark of reserve capabilities is “available when needed.” //

for decades now, policy discussions and spending allocations for electric grids have been framed in terms of producing more green kilowatt-hours rather than more reliability and resiliency. //

Indeed, if nuclear fission were just now discovered, it would be hailed as the magical solution for producing electricity using a trivial amount of land and material. One pound of nuclear fuel matches 60,000 pounds of oil, 100,000 pounds of coal, or 1 million pounds of Tesla batteries. Consequently, nuclear machines can run day and night with refueling needed once every couple of years. //

So, here we are, with barely 10 percent of the world’s electricity derived from splitting atoms on this 65th anniversary of Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear plant, inaugurated in 1956 by Queen Elizabeth II. Instead of a massive push to find cheaper solutions for inherently reliable nuclear technology, we see a monomaniacal preoccupation with deploying inherently unreliable wind (and solar) technologies.

Yes, we know some Texas nuclear capacity was tripped offline during the Great Blackout. There was a failure to include cold-weather protection for “feedwater.” Weatherizing is an avoidable glitch, one that’s far easier to fix than the vicissitudes of wind and sunlight.

To fix green unreliability, proponents are pushing grid-scale batteries. For perspective, however, consider what would be required for the Texas grid to handle predictable occurrences of several days without wind or sunlight. The quantity of batteries needed equals a decade’s worth of the entire world’s production, at a cost well north of $400 billion, an amount of money that could build enough nuclear plants to power the entire Texas grid for the next century, not just a few days.

On a normal February day, Texans need about 54,000 megawatts of electricity at peak demand. Early on that Monday morning we needed over 70,000 megawatts as heating our homes required more energy. //

So, what should Texas do? ERCOT and the PUC can only act in ways permitted by the Texas Legislature. They do not have the authority to compel electric generators to winterize their plants. They can only suggest it.

Gov. Greg Abbott has proposed legislation to give the PUC authority to require winterization. The Legislature should act immediately to give the PUC the tools it needs so that Texans do not suffer another week in the cold and dark. //

David Sibley is a former Republican Texas senator who co-authored Senate Bill 7 in 1999, which deregulated the Texas electric market. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

One chart presented at the meeting shows Texas was less than five minutes away from a blackout that might have crippled the power system for weeks or months.

Magness expressed frustration at the meeting about how long it took to bring some power plants back online. The graphs shared Wednesday showed for days many were not able to re-start and that's what turned this into such a devastating crisis with lives lost and homes damaged.

One board member criticized Magness, saying he did not do enough to warn the board of the possibility of a crisis before the storm hit. //

As NBC 5 Investigates first reported, ERCOT’s audio recordings show Magness spent less than one minute discussing the impending storm at the last board meeting just five days before the storm arrived //

A fifth ERCOT board member resigned Wednesday, joining four others who announced their resignations Tuesday saying they wanted to avoid controversy over the fact that they live in other states.

Economist James K. Galbraith said policymakers failed Texas during the state's recent power outage.
Texas' deregulated electrical system incentivized the cheapest production without accounting for resilient machinery.
Galbraith says the only way to fix the system is to turn it into a public utility.

The bottom line is that Texas has experienced this type of problem multiple times in the past. Unfortunately, the government never took action to ensure that this would not happen again, and more people have died as a result.

The Left wants to use the threat of climate change as a license to remake the entire economy and government along its preferred lines — energy policy, yes, but also everything from transportation to architecture, and from labor law to foreign relations and trade. The argument for replacing natural-gas electricity with wind and solar is that reducing our use of fossil fuels could, if the practice were widespread enough, help to mitigate the effects of climate change already underway.

But there is another way to look at the question. If the predictions are correct and we are set to experience more extreme weather events, including unusually powerful winter storms, then it may be more advisable to invest in adaptation than in the much more uncertain project of severely limiting greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, a global effort that would require the willing and honest cooperation of countries such as India and China, which are unlikely to comply. //

Of course, we could add a great deal of electricity capacity at a very low carbon cost, if we were so inclined: That means more nuclear power — which, unlike wind and solar, provides a reliable baseline of generation. The new flexible reactors being developed by Bill Gates’ TerraPower could be a game-changer — and the challenges to nuclear power are more a matter of finance and regulation than of science and engineering. Making it easier to bring nuclear power online is something that can be fixed by policy.

Climate change is not, in spite of the insistence of some of my conservative friends, a hoax. But conceding the reality of it is not the same as conceding the Left’s far-reaching schemes, up to and including the so-called Green New Deal. Instead, we should be looking at making intelligent, economical decisions that maximize the use of the desirable resources we already have at our command, balancing environmental concerns with other pressing questions, such as being able to keep Americans’ houses heated and their lights on when a little snow falls in San Antonio.

Cleaner air and a less polluted environment are what those on the left are trying to sell with green energy, but the reality is rolling blackouts, stressed power grids and pollution created by disposing of equipment like wind turbines.

Sustainability is a buzzword politicians use to describe these faulty forms of energy creation because the wind and the sun are thought of as infinite sources of energy.

However, the reality is that the technology used to harness that energy is anything but sustainable — and that matters to the people relying on them hoping not to freeze to death.

The blackouts, which have left as many as 4 million Texans trapped in the cold, show the numerous chilling consequences of putting too many eggs in the renewable basket.Yet these operational errors overshadow the decades of policy blunders that made these blackouts inevitable. Thanks to market-distorting policies that favor and subsidize wind and solar energy, Texas has added more than 20,000 megawatts (MW) of those intermittent resources since 2015 while barely adding any natural gas and retiring significant coal generation.

On the whole, Texas is losing reliable generation and counting solely on wind and solar to keep up with its growing electricity demand. I wrote last summer about how ERCOT was failing to account for the increasing likelihood that an event combining record demand with low wind and solar generation would lead to blackouts. The only surprise was that such a situation occurred during a rare winter freeze and not during the predictable Texas summer heat waves.

Yet ERCOT still should not have been surprised by this event, as its own long-term forecasts indicated it was possible, even in the winter. Although many wind turbines did freeze and total wind generation was at 2 percent of installed capacity Monday night, overall wind production at the time the blackouts began was roughly in line with ERCOT forecasts from the previous week.

We knew solar would not produce anything during the night, when demand was peaking. Intermittency is not a technical problem but a fundamental reality when trying to generate electricity from wind and solar. This is a known and predictable problem, but Texas regulators fooled themselves into thinking that the risk of such low wind and solar production at the time it was needed most was not significant.

Yes, some coal plants closed because of freezing temperatures and some natural gas pipelines froze. But as Jason Isaac of the Texas Public Policy Foundation explains in our pages today, the main problem with the Texas power grid isn’t that renewables failed or that fossil fuels failed. It’s that the grid itself has been made unstable by state and federal subsidies that distort the energy market and prevent the buildup of reliable power generation.

Subsidies for renewables and fossil fuels have been around for a long time in Texas, supported by both Democrats and Republicans. For as much as Texas has a reputation as a deep-red oil and gas state, it was under Republican Gov. Rick Perry that billions were spent on wind turbines and transmission lines in West Texas, spurred on by massive tax credits for wind producers. The same thing happened at the federal level when George W. Bush was governor of the state.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/18/texass-blackouts-are-the-result-of-unreliable-green-energy/

Texas is now entering its third day of widespread power outages and, although supplies of electricity are improving, they remain well short of demand. For now, the state's power authority suggests that, rather than restoring power, grid operators will try to shift from complete blackouts to rolling ones. Meanwhile, the state's cold weather is expected to continue for at least another day. How did this happen?

Texas produces more electricity than it consumes and maintains a buffer referred to as the “state’s reserve margin.” This margin ensures that we should never have to suffer from rolling blackouts like California.

Then why are so millions of Texans without power right now? Why are we dealing with rolling blackouts?

The answer is all-too-familiar: our relationship with the federal government.

In anticipation of this unprecedented power demand, Texas could have maxed out power generation. However, we couldn’t. Like a lowly beggar, Texas had to first ask for permission from the federal government to generate enough power to keep our people warm. Why? Because cranking up our power plants to full production might violate federal pollution limits.

There is a clear metaphor here. Texans were powerless because our elected officials ceded authority to a slow-moving, uncaring gaggle of federal bureaucrats. //

UPDATE Click here to download the actual order from the federal Department of Energy which specifies ERCOT’s reasons for asking permission including that “…ERCOT has been alerted that numerous generation units will be unable to operate at full capacity without violating federal air quality or other permit limitations.”

The Department of Energy issued an emergency order allowing several Texas power plants to produce as much electricity as possible, a move expected to violate anti-pollution rules that comes amid a deepening electricity crisis in the state that has cut power to millions of homes.

The Energy Department order, requested by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, authorizes power plants throughout the state to run a maximum output levels, even as such a move is anticipated to result in a violation of limits of pollution.

it turns out some of those problems may have been because ERCOT had not winterized its system properly (but more on that in a minute). The Wall Street Journal spells it out:

Between 12 a.m. on Feb. 8 and Feb. 16, wind power plunged 93% while coal increased 47% and gas 450%, according to the EIA. Yet the renewable industry and its media mouthpieces are tarring gas, coal and nuclear because they didn’t operate at 100% of their expected potential during the Arctic blast even though wind turbines failed nearly 100%.

The policy point here is that an electricity grid that depends increasingly on subsidized but unreliable wind and solar needs baseload power to weather surges in demand. Natural gas is crucial but it also isn’t as reliable as nuclear and coal power.

Politicians and regulators don’t want to admit this because they have been taking nuclear and coal plants offline to please the lords of climate change. But the public pays the price when blackouts occur because climate obeisance has made the grid too fragile. We’ve warned about this for years, and here we are.

But the best evidence that ERCOT should be investigated comes with a report indicating that the small fraction of Texas not serviced by ERCOT seems to have had few outages at all. And it would appear it’s because they took the time to weatherize their systems following a 2011 winter storm that hit the state.

in 1966, this same site was home to South Dakota’s first, last and only nuclear power plant. The plan for the plant was submitted to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and Northern States Power in August of 1959 by Allis Chalmers Manufacturing, which around here, most of us know as a tractor company. At that time Allis Chalmers had an Atomic Energy Division. //

In South Dakota just under half of our power comes from the hydro-electric plants along the Missouri River. Pathfinder might have gone on to power homes in South Dakota, however repeated failure in the steam separators caused the plant to shut down and eventually led to the decision to close the plant.

“I think we would classify Pathfinder as a research project. You know it began construction in the late ’50s, went online in 64, and then operated for 3 years, intermittently for testing purposes, for research purposes,” said Wilcox. //

“The reactor itself was removed in 1991,” said Wilcox.

The rest of Pathfinder was taken down and moved in the early 2000s.

“And the piping and all the other equipment which was at a level low enough to be handled by people physically without any protective gear,” Wilcox added.

The Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA) and Partnership for Global Security (PGS), two US think tanks, today released a joint report defining a comprehensive strategy for the USA to become the global leader in advanced nuclear power. They said the strategy outlines the domestic and international activities that will be required to ensure the USA can lead in the development and deployment of next generation nuclear technologies through collaboration between government, industry, civil society, and other nations.

A series of winter storms and a blast of Arctic air has put most of the United States into a short term energy supply challenge.

Texas has been the epicenter of the winter event. Its electric power grid has been under an Emergency Energy Alert Stage 3 since the early morning hours of February 15. At that stage, reserve margins are so tight that the grid operator has issued orders to transmission companies to reduce loads on the system.

The transmission companies have few remaining tools available to keep the grid in balance and prevent widespread collapse. They have reached the response stage where they need to implement rotating outages. In some cases, the margin between reserve generating capacity and demand has been so tight that the rotating outages have been substantially longer than the typical planned duration of 15-45 minutes.

There are numerous contributing factors, including fuel-related outages at natural gas fired power stations, a lack of wind as the cold air settles in, freezing at some wind turbine generators, and challenges at coal plants.

Approximately 35 GWe of installed thermal generating capacity was not producing electricity for a significant portion of the day on Feb 15. As of this moment, 8:15 PM central time, there is no solar electricity being provided in Texas and its 30,000 MWe of installed wind turbines is generating just 800 MWe.//

On Monday, Feb. 15, 2021, at 0537, an automatic reactor trip occurred at South Texas Project in Unit 1. The trip resulted from a loss of feedwater attributed to a cold weather-related failure of a pressure sensing lines to the feedwater pumps, causing a false signal, which in turn, caused the feedwater pump to trip. This event occurred in the secondary side of the plant (non-nuclear part of the unit). The reactor trip was a result of the feedwater pump trips. The primary side of the plant (nuclear side) is safe and secured.

People are dying in a state where oil and gas are in abundance. Texas shouldn’t be having a power problem, but it is, and that’s mostly due to the fact that around a quarter of the state’s power comes from green energy.

Carlson pointed this out on his show on Monday night and made it clear that when it comes to green energy, it’s far from reliable, and moreover, the people who push for it don’t even seem to want it themselves.

Keith Malinak (last fan standing)
@KeithMalinak
Seriously. That's the dirty little secret as to why power is out while it's 0° or lower in North Texas right now.

Frozen wind turbines..@GregAbbott_TX.

https://statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/14/historic-winter-storm-freezes-texas-wind-turbines-hampering-electric-generation/4483230001/

Chad Prather
@WatchChad
Everyone’s power is out in Texas but we have our masks to keep us warm. I sure am glad we invested in wind turbines. //

Amethyst Heels
@amethyst_heels
·
Feb 15, 2021
It is -11 and we are without power...

What the .... is wrong with the infrastructure in this country?! 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️❄️❄️❄️

Quentin Blacklock
@qblacklock
Over-reliance on renewables. Wind turbines frozen, solar panels covered in snow. Not enough coal | ng | nuke generation in TX available for when demand is great. Regional grid operator not able to buy enough outside power to compensate.

German utility seeks funding for non-nuclear prototype reactor
Sweden needs new power capacity to meet electrification demand