Texas has been ravaged by a freezing storm. On Sunday night, while the storm raged on, the power grid took a beating leading to rolling blackouts across the state for around 4.3 million residents. As the power outages continue, they have set off a cascade of other problems, knocking some water treatment plants and cell phone networks offline.
Winter storms are just one more reason to prepare. Normally Texans don’t have to deal with storms of this magnitude as far south as they are, but there are always acceptions.
Due to a prolonged power outage at the water treatment plant, Pflugerville is under a boil water notice. We are working with Oncor to restore power, but until further notice, all city water customers must boil their water prior to consumption. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/alhpeSfyaN
— Pflugerville, TX (@PflugervilleTX) February 15, 2021
Officials in Abilene said the city has lost water service altogether, leaving 124,000 residents entirely without a reliable source of drinking water as of Monday night, according to a report by RT.
What To Do NOW To Prep For A Winter Power Outage
Cell phone service is starting to break down over the region as back up generators at towers are freezing or running out of fuel or both.
Increasing outages will be possible overnight.
— County Judge KP George (@JudgeKPGeorge) February 16, 2021
People at the Austin Fire Department are battling with the element that is usually on their side when they deal with blazes. Water pipes have been bursting by the hundreds throughout the city as it was gripped by extreme cold. Responding to them was a challenge since the AFD have their plate full with other emergencies, RT reported further.
The situation is quickly becoming dire for the many who have ailed to adequately prepare for a storm and the loss of the grid.
At 9:30 PM we are up to 582 Broken Water Pipe calls since midnight. Over 500 are since noon. We are attempting to respond to as many as we can amongst other priority calls. Dispatchers are almost continuously answering additional calls.
— Austin Fire Info (@AustinFireInfo) February 16, 2021
Governor Greg Abbott has been taking a lot of flak from Texans who are unhappy with how he has dealt with this crisis. He deployed the National Guard and allocated other resources to deal with the power outages, but people say the troops can’t help them make their homes warm again. Deploying the military when people need heat in their homes is about the most useless thing a politician has done since they shut down the economy in March of last year.
If you can help please do so. People in Texas are struggling and the solution seems to be to call in the military. Welcome to 2021. This is our dystopia. But we have a chance to prove we don’t need these tyrants by helping each other and doing the right thing.
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Amarillo by mornin’
Up from San Antone
Everything that I got
Is frozen to the bone
I ain’t got a dime
But what I got is mine
I ain’t rich and Lord I’m beat
Amarillo by mornin’
Amarillo’s where there’s heat.
This is what happens with unreliable green energy. The turbine blades ice up and get out of balance so they shut down. Also, gas line valves freeze up and don’t work and natgas supply suffers.
Texas shut down coal generation plants and now they don’t have enough backup generation to fill the turbine loss. It’s not the governor’s fault, it’s the greenies fault for hating fossil fuel.
Green energy needs a completely operational base load system to back it up for when the wind stops (or icing occurs) and the sun doesn’t shine on the pv. Alternative energy only works in a grid situation if it has storage, or backup, to overcome the inevitable gaps in it’s generation capability.
Wouldn’t want to pay those upcoming customer electric bills in Texas. They will be astronomical.
There is little doubt that just losing the wind turbine capacity which accounted for almost 1/4 of total by itself would cause a rolling blackout. Coal plants are inside and therefore have the least disruption potential from freeze ups. The gas turbine plants especially combined cycle (using turbine exhaust to make steam to power additional capacity) is quite vulnerable to freeze ups. I have seen a steam flow instrument freeze a half inch away from tracer steam that had a 2″ area uninsulated as they are incased side by side. This cascades into big time disruptions at the worst possible time. I’ve been witness to significant power plant issues over 26 years. The first real cold snap of 10 – 15 deg, even having prepared from previous years would create major issues.
Kevin2 speaks with the knowledge of experience. Listen up Americans. We should build on the expertise of the past, not some Nirvana-idea in our peabrains. After all, most of us are NOT snowflake cretins. I’ll add a little to the discussion with experience in the transportation fields.
The Keystone pipeline upon completion could carry more than 800,000 barrels or 33.6 million gallons of oil through the pipeline per day. With no harmful emissions. A Barrel of Oil is 42 gallons, not to be confused with a Drum which is 55 gallons. Because a gallon of oil weighs between 7.5 and 7.8 lbs per gallon, most trucks can only carry 130 barrels of oil at a time without violating our department of transportation laws of 80,000 lbs. on our roadways. That’s truck and cargo weight. It would take 6,154 more trucks going just from Canada to the Gulf Coast for that same oil and that’s every single day. Now a rail car holds approx. 30,000 gallons or 700 barrels. It would take trains every day pulling 1,143 more rail cars per day. just pulling the oil from that pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Trains and Trucks emitting more emissions and burning more fuel which would be eliminated by the pipeline. So when they tell you this is about the environment, they deny the hard-won knowledge of the past.
There are 5615 coal-fired plants existing, and more planned in the world. China has 2363, with another 1171 planned. The U.S. has 15, with none planned. China presently produces 2x the carbon to atmosphere as the US and its growing. Presently they are putting on line three new coal fired plants per month. These facilities are designed to last 35 years before a major overhaul and you can bet China will get at least that out of them. There is no intent to cut carbon. We’re not talking about “Fluid Bed” ultra low emission plants where coal is mixed with powered limestone (looks like lava) that captures sulfur and others at the point of combustion with the waste product being gypsum. China is using the far cheaper old 1950 technology powered coal and blowers. All that is being accomplished is for the developed world to use less carbon so more is available, at a lower price for global development. A highly regulated US facility is shut down and two (or more) are built in the third world which has no regulations. The globalist business interests, desiring to capitalize on cheap labor and no regulations are financing the environmental movement who are, “useful idiots” as it’s trendy to be “green”. One question to pose is if sea levels are going to dramatically rise in the next few decades because of the ice caps melting why are the wealthy and powerful owning homes on the coast line?
cranerigger
My knowledge is power generation within an oil refinery which dove tail fits this thread. Bakken crude oil, fracked, is so sweet and light it requires minimal refining to make it into fuels. Its sulfur content is extremely low. It’s likely the most environmentally friendly oil but it largely moved by rail car because of having no pipeline. It’s literally so light that it’s mixed with a more viscus (thick) crude because it tends to flash into vapor, butane, propane, ethane when refined. The refineries that remained after the 1990s refining purge were designed for the cheaper viscus sour crude. These were de-bottlenecked, increased in capacity to make up for retiring the small 100K / bbl day sweet crude refineries because of their undesirability of economy of scale with the then upgraded environmental regulations. In the end the cheapest and safest way to move petroleum / natural gas is by pipeline and the best crude is US fracked. This is the way it is.
Thanks for the article.Found a website you guys may like
geoengineeringwatch.org
A little off topic but some positive news: Court orders Dutch government to scrap coronavirus curfew effective immediately.?
“Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity”
Origin of the late saying, ‘drain the swamp’ —
youtube.com/watch?v=gEPdOZbyzbw
You are the swamp.
Refrigeration and sanitation are a couple of the major innovations, that separate mankind from Medieval living conditions, their stunted growth, and premature aging.
They did brownouts in my state and spoiled the food. Fined people for brown landscaping and also for water use. The water in the sky and under your feet are presumably state or global property.
In other states, random code-inspector types evicted people, ticketed them for storm damage, and would later condemn the properties for resale that never happened. Familiar homeless would disappear in periodic roundups.
These systems can no longer be regarded as reliable, under present leadership; a lot of this stuff was just willfully turned-off and abandoned, not even broken. Also, the businesses and houses, beside the utilities.
If you’re still willing to just let someone else fix it, you are not a responsible, mental adult and lack the basic will to live. Always be practicing your workarounds, until you’re very handy, making-do.
Calling in the military is about martial law. The military doesn’t have enough generators to power the grid.