Look there's enough blame to go around for everyone to have some. The Texas legislature under multiple GOP majorities set the market structure we have today where wind/solar have first crack at getting dispatched. The legislature also debated a sort of hybrid market structure for about 6 gigawatts of natural gas plants paid on a capacity basis in 2021 right after the winter freeze. They ultimately decided against this. Meanwhile, the federal production tax credits for renewable energy resulted in financing that flooded into the wind sector. So here we are.

Rattler12 said:

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Wind turbines don't produce when there is no wind .....who'da thunk it......

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Dumbs***-o-crats think this.....like a magic wind turbine unicorn that makes them turn. A lot these morons reside at the highest levels of government.

Rationing power in texas. Brought to you by democrat environmental ist.

I don't understand why they don't build new natural gas powered electric plants. In the areas where more electricity is needed. Instead a bunch of new solar farms are being built.

What will happen in 5 years with 5 percent more electric demand? 10 years?

CyclingAg82 said:

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Rattler12 said:

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Wind turbines don't produce when there is no wind .....who'da thunk it......

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Dumbs***-o-crats think this.....like a magic wind turbine unicorn that makes them turn. A lot these morons reside at the highest levels of government.

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Still need lots of oil to build them and make them functional also. They don't talk about that a lot.

Mas89 said:

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I don't understand why they don't build new natural gas powered electric plants. In the areas where more electricity is needed. Instead a bunch of new solar farms are being built.

What will happen in 5 years with 5 percent more electric demand? 10 years?

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Do you even climate change bro?

I wrote a thread on this a week or so ago / it explained everything. I'm going to bed now but I can bring it back to the top again

CaptTex said:

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Hawg, like others have mentioned it is deviancy from 60HZ. A little up or down isn't bad, say 59.9 or 60.1 is even manageable, but when you start talking about 59.6 or 59.5 it's no longer stable and load must be shed because a catastrophic failure will occur.

60HZ is 3600RPM on a generator, a cycle is from the generator and back once every 60th of a second, thus we get 60 HZ (60X60=3600). We have to maintain this because load on a generator is basically a big invisible hand, attempting to grip and stop this massive steel machine from rotating (throttles are helpful here) we can't spin too fast and we can't spin too slow, it has to be just about right. This effects time, the electrical system and thus every day life.

**** Joe Biden.

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Reading through your post and trying to understand. Got to the very last line and it became crystal clear! Blue star for you sir!

Anyone else notice, the windmills look like rusted up garbage now?

samurai_science said:

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If we still had Sandow, Big Brown, Monticello, and Gibbons Creek online, we wouldn't have this problem. Obama and his war on coal caused this. I hope anyone that voted for him loses power

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Forget those closings. If the left hadn't squashed nuclear power in the '70s, your energy bill would be about $25 a month now and electric cars might actually make sense because everyone would be tripping over free charging stations.

I don't want to get too conspiratorial, but is there any other industry that is as corruption oriented as energy? Everything from Enron to the "clean" energy scam. If nuke plants were online there wouldn't be anything to regulate other than maybe the safety of the plants themselves. Energy would be so cheap, cost increases would be infrequent and inexpensive.

There's literally 4 more days of extreme heat. Get your **** together ERCOT!

yea, and we all going to get higher electric bills because of this.
Expect massive rate increases to cover the $5000 MWHR for several hours.

An L of an Ag said:

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Just one more week and nightly lows drop into the 60s.

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damn yankee got my hopes up

wxmanX said:

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yea, and we all going to get higher electric bills because of this.
Expect massive rate increases to cover the $5000 MWHR for several hours.

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Good! You are all in on climate change and this is the result. Renewable energy garbage. You deserve this and so much more!

Wait until the EV charging starts kicking in.

Mas89 said:

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I don't understand why they don't build new natural gas powered electric plants. In the areas where more electricity is needed. Instead a bunch of new solar farms are being built.

What will happen in 5 years with 5 percent more electric demand? 10 years?

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Bc they prefer to steal more money from tax payers over actual solutions

Why u attacking me?

I had nothing to do with this grid, nothing.

If we didn't have solar, the grid would be far worse, the 13 GW is actually saving it. When solar comes off and there is no wind is when we have problems, but most of the time, wind ramps back up in the evening.

If it wasn't for leftists like you (don't claim you're not, your posting history says you are), we would not have shut down numerous thermal plants which would give us constant base load.

Instead we're stuck with wind and solar which are not base load and is unreliable.

i'm not a f leftist.

Go looking at my voting record.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

wxmanX said:

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Why u attacking me?

I had nothing to do with this grid, nothing.

If we didn't have solar, the grid would be far worse, the 13 GW is actually saving it. When solar comes off and there is no wind is when we have problems, but most of the time, wind ramps back up in the evening.

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Your argument is that If we spent the money that we have on wind or solar on natural gas instead, we would still be having these issues?

Nat gas doesn't work well during deep freezes anyway...go look at the history of ercot. Nat gas production freezes up in low temps.

I've always been a proponent of nuclear power, renewables and NAT GAS.

we should have a ton more nukes in this country, but we don't.

Furthermore, if we added a ton more solar to this grid, we would have no problems during daytime, only when solar comes off.

We aren't discussing deep freezes, we are discussing right now when it's 105. Regardless, wind and solar don't work then either.

Answer the question please.

Bubblez said:

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The other national grids have the same set of federal regulations but aren't having these problems.

This is unique to the Texas grid entirely due to the conservative led government in Austin. They flat out failed.

Conservatives can't even run a driver's license office. They've been closed for days

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-06/california-warns-of-possible-summer-blackouts-as-power-runs-low

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-07/most-californians-arent-ready-for-a-blackout-heres-how-to-keep-the-lights-on

https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2023/09/05/california-power-outage-hours-increase-trend-upward

Oops