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Hydroelectric turbines for green, decentralized, off-grid living.
We develop cost-effective hydropower plants for that can be installed in any river, canal or waterway that has a drop between 1.5 - 5 m. You can generate electricity using an individual turbine or a network of multiple turbines for higher energy demands, all designed for durability and low maintenance.
Much of the potential of the battolyser has been hiding in plain sight, ever since Thomas Edison first began experimenting with his nickel-iron battery at the turn of the 20th Century. He may have been wrong in believing his battery would supplant the other vehicles on the road. But the nickel-iron battery may yet play a role in replacing fossil fuels more broadly, by helping hasten the transition to renewables.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
Democrats love green energy but mostly because it allows them to put on the air that they’re somehow far more environmentally conscious than their opponents and thus if you’re concerned about the future of the planet and thus mankind, voting for them is the only way to save the world.
The truth is actually a lot more political. Democrats will do things that hurt the environment if it gives off the impression that they’re helping it. For instance, the claim that the Keystone XL Pipeline is damaging isn’t proven, and in fact, leaks from the pipeline are far less damaging and risky to the environment than the transportation of crude oil via truck or train. That’s not to mention the amount of CO2 that wouldn’t be pumped into the air through the vehicles transporting the oil from Canada into America.
But let’s take a look at the “environmentally safe” options Democrats keep saying are going to save our planet and see just how good for the environment they are.
The Paris Climate Agreement Won't Change the Climate
Bjorn Lomborg
Jan 16, 2017
The Paris Climate Agreement will cost at least $1 trillion per year, and climate activists say it will save the planet. The truth? It won't do anything for the planet, but it will make everyone poorer--except politicians and environmentalists. Bjorn Lomborg explains.
Why Are Utilities So Expensive?
Charles McConnell
Feb 01, 2021
The cost of producing electricity has dropped significantly in the last decade. So why haven’t we seen those price drops reflected in our electricity bills? Charles McConnell, former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration, answers this riddle.
As a whole, the US's utility-scale battery power is set to grow from 1.2 gigawatts in 2020 to nearly 7.5 gigawatts in 2025, according to Wood MacKenzie, a natural resources research and consulting firm. //
Globally, Gatti projects rapid growth in energy storage, reaching 1.2 terawatts (1,200 gigawatts) in the next decade. ///
We need ~ 100GW per year to combat climate change -- but this is only energy storage. Where does the energy come from?
Investors: We'd like to build zero-emissions, baseload power stations to provide affordable electricity to consumers.
Politician: There's no market for that in Australia. //
This article by James Fleay of DUNE – Down Under Nuclear Energy looks at investment in nuclear energy on the National Electricity Market.
Nuclear energy is clean, cheap, reliable and safe.
Like many advocates for nuclear energy in Australia, my colleagues and I believed that if the Federal Government would only repeal the ban on nuclear power, business or state governments would eagerly build nuclear power plants (NPPs) to rapidly cut emissions, reduce power prices and improve network reliability. In fact, this belief prompted the creation of DUNE a company formed to study the investment case and present the facts to politicians and power market participants.
After all, being thus informed, they would hasten to repeal said law…right? How wrong we were.
The federal ban is only the first challenge to deploying clean, cheap and reliable power in Australia. The second, and much bigger problem, is our liberalised, energy-only National Electricity Market (NEM) and the out-of-market subsidies that provide additional revenue to solar and wind generators. Dr Kerry Schott, the chief advisor the Energy Security Board (ESB) recently confirmed this in an article in The Australian. Among other things, she confirmed that the NEM was not functioning to attract much needed new investment in “always on” power generation. Despite high power prices and a need for investment in “always on” generation, our NEM market design will not support NPP investment[1].
Nuclear plants in the Netherlands require 570 times less land area than wind... and 370 times less land than solar. //
Nuclear plants in the UK require 2025 times less land than Wind... and 600 times less land than solar //
To power 16 lightbulbs per person in the UK, you would need either...
- 160 wind farms each of 100 square km
- 24 nuclear power plants of 2GW (1 sq km each)
- 3.5x Wales for biomass production (72,726 sq km)
- 8 solar plants of 2x greater London in the Sahara (plus power lines across Spain and France)
-- David McKay
Fossil fuel-supporting Chicken Littles have done their best to spread fear of renewable energy, warning that relying on wind, solar and storage would lead to blackouts and economic devastation.
For years, I have denounced the propaganda promulgated by lobbyists financed by the oil and gas industry. Now, the latest data proves that the New Year will mark the end of the beginning for clean energy, and the beginning of the end of our reliance on coal and natural gas for electricity. //
The tipping point was revealed in the latest capacity report from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the grid operator that delivers power to most of the state. After several years of thinning reserve generation capacity due to coal-fired plant retirements, solar facilities are adding cushion. //
ERCOT expects to add 3,039 megawatts of utility-scale solar resources, 1,765 megawatts of wind and 816 megawatts of natural gas-fired generation next year. The grid will have 86,842 megawatts of capacity to serve an expected peak demand of 77,244 megawatts in 2021, the council said.
In addition, ERCOT is working on adding large batteries that will provide even more capacity during the hour or so every August when demand peaks. The reserve capacity in 2021 will be 15.5 percent, well above the target of 13 percent, and will rise to 27 percent in 2022, ERCOT said. //
No new coal-powered plants are planned for the United States. New nuclear power technologies are a decade away from deployment. New natural gas plants struggle to compete on price with solar and wind, even after renewables lose the federal tax subsidies that are phasing out over the next few years.
For decades, investment tax credits have helped speed up solar and wind development by lowering costs. Now, they could do the same for another form of carbon-free energy that became eligible for a 30 percent tax credit for the first time ever. It’s called waste heat to power, or WHP.
In the U.S., about 67 percent of our energy is squandered. Various inefficiencies in power plants, vehicles, factories, homes, and countless other places mean the majority of the energy we have access to is lost, often as hot air, or “waste heat.” But you know what they say — one man’s waste heat is another man’s untapped source of clean energy. WHP systems take some of that squandered heat and turn it into electricity, which can either be used on site or sent back to the grid.
“It’s a really terrific source of energy because there are no new emissions that are produced as a result of using it,” said David Gardiner, executive director of the Combined Heat and Power Alliance, which lobbied for the new tax credit. “You’re simply capturing the waste and putting it to good use”
With today’s technology, the best sources of waste heat that can be turned into electricity are industrial processes that release heat that’s at least 450 degrees F. A 2015 market assessment prepared for Oak Ridge National Laboratory found 96 existing WHP systems that generate a total of 766 megawatts of power, similar to the capacity of a single gas-fired power plant. Most of these systems are installed at chemical plants, refineries, and steel mills. There are also several WHP systems at compressor stations along natural gas pipelines. Many states have encouraged the technology by allowing it to qualify as clean energy under policies that set minimum renewable energy mandates such as renewable portfolio standards.
There’s potential for much more: The report identified almost 3,000 additional facilities in the U.S. that could install WHP equipment and generate another 8,840 megawatts of electricity, or roughly half the average hourly demand in New York state.