.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

4 hours ago, NickW said:

It got 12.4% today from wind  in sub zero, anti cyclonic conditions which is not bad for a national thats primarily hydro and nuclear. 

electricityMap | Live CO₂ emissions of electricity consumption

The temp is not the issue. The plane I fly goes to 28,000 feet, and roughly every thousand feet elevation the temp is 3.2 degrees cooler. In metric the rule of thumb is easier 9.8C per kilometer. I don't even worry about icing, even though I'm routinely flying at -40C (coincidentally -40F also). It's not the cold, it's the moisture. If there's high moisture content then it's known icing conditions and my plane has the tech while a lot of very expensive jets don't. 

At the beginning of this fiasco, they were talking about the incredibly high moisture content of the storm front that came thru. This in a place that gets less than 8 inches of precipitation per year. It's not just the cold it's the ice that messed everything up. Furthermore a lot of utility workers were unable to drive to work because of bad road conditions, no snow plows etc. Bottom line, they didn't worry about extremely cold weather because everyone has been lying to them about global warming! Pretending otherwise at this late stage is pretense not reality. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

17 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

The temp is not the issue. The plane I fly goes to 28,000 feet, and roughly every thousand feet elevation the temp is 3.2 degrees cooler. In metric the rule of thumb is easier 9.8C per kilometer. I don't even worry about icing, even though I'm routinely flying at -40C (coincidentally -40F also). It's not the cold, it's the moisture. If there's high moisture content then it's known icing conditions and my plane has the tech while a lot of very expensive jets don't. 

At the beginning of this fiasco, they were talking about the incredibly high moisture content of the storm front that came thru. This in a place that gets less than 8 inches of precipitation per year. It's not just the cold it's the ice that messed everything up. Furthermore a lot of utility workers were unable to drive to work because of bad road conditions, no snow plows etc. Bottom line, they didn't worry about extremely cold weather because everyone has been lying to them about global warming! Pretending otherwise at this late stage is pretense not reality. 

Ward is correct.  The right combination of moisture and temperature are required for ice formation.  And there are different types of icing as well, some much more detrimental than others.

And, local road conditions certainly impact personnel availability. 

In my past experience, you were expected to show up on time, no matter what the weather, no matter what the job function.  If you were delayed, you called to notify someone.  Other personnel would be required to stay until relieved.  That applies to manned generating stations, and may not work with unmanned substations, particularly in parts of older distribution networks, where switching must be performed manually rather than remotely.

That said, there is no doubt in my tiny little head that "things seem to be changing".

Edited February 21, 2021 by turbguy

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

11 hours ago, Tom Nolan said:

The folly of chasing renewable energy as a means of mitigating “climate change” is making itself abundantly clear today in Texas.

When will politicians wake up and realize that renewable energy almost always equates to unreliable energy?

Answer:  never.  Sorry.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

10 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

If Texas wishes to use a market-driven model, that's fine with me, but Texans need to understand what it is they really wish to purchase in that market. They have been purchasing electricity. That almost all of them really want is reliable electricity, and if that is what they want, then they must figure out a way to structure the market so the can pay for it. There are customers who are willing to buy less-reliable electricity for a lower cost ("interruptable" power). but not the average consumer.

Then the obvious solution to that is to set up the structure of each house to be able to run independent for a week.  And that is really not that expensive to do  (as long as you are prepared to cut a few corners, of course) 🙄

A smallish 6 KW diesel generator will set you back about $1,600 new.  I bought one, built in China of course, it is single-cylinder with electric start.  You attach the unit to your house electrics with a length of 8-gauge cord and a power plug on both ends.  One end you put into the 220-v outlet on the generator, the other end you plug into the dryer feed in the basement.  If you want to get fancy, you can install a permanent line and separate 50-amp breaker in the panel and run the line to a special plug box outside, then run a short flexible length to wherever you roll that little generator outside to.  I put mine out in the driveway, makes it easy enough. 

Now you pull OFF the main breaker from the outside service to the panel and leave it off, so that you cannot back-feed into the grid.   Fire up that generator and you have enough juice to run your house, except for the oven and the clothes dryer (😁).  As long as you keep enough diesel around, say 50 gallons, you should be just fine. 

The real problem is in heating.  My guess is that those Texas houses use electric resistance baseboard heating systems because you don't anticipate needing much heat down there, and electric resistance units are cheap to buy and cheap to install, you eliminate the boiler and the control valves and the plumbing, plus the low-pressure cut-off will stop the boiler from running if the water pressure fails (as it did across Texas).  So the solution there is either a pellet stove  (but pricey to install) or a propane furnace.  Those need little power, a deep-draw battery and inverter will run the control panel, and hooked up to your own propane tank (my 120-gal unit cost me $600) and you are independent for a month.   The more money you throw at your own independent systems, the more comfortable you will be when "outside" falls apart.  People in northern New England have figured that one out a long time ago!

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

2 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

Batteries are very nice and all, but they will not carry you through the freeze-up of 40% of your generating capacity. Therefore, your priority need to be winterization. "shifting back to NG" will not solve the problem. You cannot depend on wind, so you need alternate capacity, which can be turbines burning NG or hydrogen, for instance. However, when the wind is blowing, you can avoid burning that NG or hydrogen and sell it elsewhere.

Dan, the great state of Texas just had a storm the likes of which most of you will never experience. At about forty degrees it started drizzling. As the temperature fell, it kept on drizzling. That moisture entered every nook and cranny, every valve on every Christmas tree. Then it got to about thirty and the rain turned to sleet. At ten degrees it turned to snow. It just kept on getting more miserable.  

Texas was not well prepared for this--my dog could tell you that. And the windmill blades froze up. And then the methane formed hydrates with water condensates. Every form of energy production failed to some degree. Natural gas saved the day until it couldn't. And then Texas froze and the whole world piled on, as if payback because someone didn't put them in the movie Giant.  

Texas will fix this. It will do so by reverting to the thing the state was blessed with: natural gas. They will winterize everything. Even if this doesn't happen again until 2050, they'll be ready every winter. 

Texas also has a wind corridor--a real beaut. They will probably add some more windmills; many more are on the drawing board. They're just not likely to be used in the energy grid of Texas. That wind electricity will be shipped to Florida: they like it, have used it for years, and they'll buy it all day long as their population grows.

Elon Musk moved to Texas. I have no doubt that Texas will do some deals with him. I have no earthly idea what those are. Elon may not like Texas, and they may not like him, but they'll try to use his batteries because he's now a Texan. 

ERCOT answers to the Texas Utility Commission. That commission is made up mostly of Governor Gregg Abbott's appointees. Governor Abbott is fed up with wind. He'd like to be governor until he goes to heaven. Wind energy in the Texas grid is as dead as a doornail.

At least until they change governors. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

And so it starts...

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/ERCOT-Entergy-Texas-sued-by-family-of-Conroe-boy-15966408.php

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

28 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

Texas also has a wind corridor--a real beaut. They will probably add some more windmills; many more are on the drawing board. They're just not likely to be used in the energy grid of Texas. That wind electricity will be shipped to Florida: they like it, have used it for years, and they'll buy it all day long as their population grows.

I don't think this makes economic sense. Instead, when the wind power is available, use it to avoid burning NG, and ship the NG to Florida or anywhere else in the world. When the wind stops, burn the NG in Texas. When have so much wind power available that no NG is being burned, use the excess wind power to make hydrogen or ammonia or even methane.

[nsdp + 449]

On 2/15/2021 at 2:40 PM, Eyes Wide Open said:

Now just of a second here...i do believe underground pipelines are buried at a depth far below the frost line, actually it would take weeks of subzero temps to freeze any liquid buried 14" below the surface. OK i will ask what am i missing here? 

Yes,  Wolkenkuckucksheim who has never spent a day in the oil fields.  Well heads are all above ground. 10 parts of water are produced  for every part of NG. Processing plants remove H2S, CO2, water, and propane and natural gas liquids which will freeze valves with the pressure drop and shut down production.  It is called a freeze off. Pipeline Safety Act requires 6' of cover for main lines. 3' of cover for gathering lines. 14" is an expensive safety violation.

[nsdp + 449]

Sorry this problem is 100% fossil and nuclear in origin. Wind was delivering 2 mwh MORE than predicted total of 6 GW. solar delver 3 GW day time.  Snp froze cooling water lines cooling tower and had delivering pipelines freeze at the meters. Fossil and Nuclear delivered 42 GW and failed to deliver 45 G W out of total rated capacity.  Total system load was 44 GW so blame lies 100% on fossil fuels.

Edited February 21, 2021 by nsdp
spelling

[nsdp + 449]

1 hour ago, Jan van Eck said:

Then the obvious solution to that is to set up the structure of each house to be able to run independent for a week.  And that is really not that expensive to do  (as long as you are prepared to cut a few corners, of course) 🙄

A smallish 6 KW diesel generator will set you back about $1,600 new.  I bought one, built in China of course, it is single-cylinder with electric start.  You attach the unit to your house electrics with a length of 8-gauge cord and a power plug on both ends.  One end you put into the 220-v outlet on the generator, the other end you plug into the dryer feed in the basement.  If you want to get fancy, you can install a permanent line and separate 50-amp breaker in the panel and run the line to a special plug box outside, then run a short flexible length to wherever you roll that little generator outside to.  I put mine out in the driveway, makes it easy enough. 

Now you pull OFF the main breaker from the outside service to the panel and leave it off, so that you cannot back-feed into the grid.   Fire up that generator and you have enough juice to run your house, except for the oven and the clothes dryer (😁).  As long as you keep enough diesel around, say 50 gallons, you should be just fine. 

The real problem is in heating.  My guess is that those Texas houses use electric resistance baseboard heating systems because you don't anticipate needing much heat down there, and electric resistance units are cheap to buy and cheap to install, you eliminate the boiler and the control valves and the plumbing, plus the low-pressure cut-off will stop the boiler from running if the water pressure fails (as it did across Texas).  So the solution there is either a pellet stove  (but pricey to install) or a propane furnace.  Those need little power, a deep-draw battery and inverter will run the control panel, and hooked up to your own propane tank (my 120-gal unit cost me $600) and you are independent for a month.   The more money you throw at your own independent systems, the more comfortable you will be when "outside" falls apart.  People in northern New England have figured that one out a long time ago!

How are you going to fuel a 5kw generator at every house. NG lines froze.   Oil tank that size requires an EPA permit .  no we don't use baseboard heaters. Mostly heat pumps.   I distinctly remember diverting 1 BCF/day natural gas to Transco and Tennessee Gas pipelines at the Katy gas plant in 1977,83 and 89 to keep the Yankee bastards from freezing in the dark.  No they don't have it figured out  better  than Texas does.  They are now in better shape for NG since Texas developed fracking.

[nsdp + 449]

1 hour ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

Dan, the great state of Texas just had a storm the likes of which most of you will never experience. At about forty degrees it started drizzling. As the temperature fell, it kept on drizzling. That moisture entered every nook and cranny, every valve on every Christmas tree. Then it got to about thirty and the rain turned to sleet. At ten degrees it turned to snow. It just kept on getting more miserable.  

Texas was not well prepared for this--my dog could tell you that. And the windmill blades froze up. And then the methane formed hydrates with water condensates. Every form of energy production failed to some degree. Natural gas saved the day until it couldn't. And then Texas froze and the whole world piled on, as if payback because someone didn't put them in the movie Giant.  

Texas will fix this. It will do so by reverting to the thing the state was blessed with: natural gas. They will winterize everything. Even if this doesn't happen again until 2050, they'll be ready every winter. 

Texas also has a wind corridor--a real beaut. They will probably add some more windmills; many more are on the drawing board. They're just not likely to be used in the energy grid of Texas. That wind electricity will be shipped to Florida: they like it, have used it for years, and they'll buy it all day long as their population grows.

Elon Musk moved to Texas. I have no doubt that Texas will do some deals with him. I have no earthly idea what those are. Elon may not like Texas, and they may not like him, but they'll try to use his batteries because he's now a Texan. 

ERCOT answers to the Texas Utility Commission. That commission is made up mostly of Governor Gregg Abbott's appointees. Governor Abbott is fed up with wind. He'd like to be governor until he goes to heaven. Wind energy in the Texas grid is as dead as a doornail.

At least until they change governors. 

Once every 14 years.

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

3 hours ago, surrept33 said:

Wait, what? https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/la-niña-has-developed

She seemed to in effect overfit (very easy to do) an incorrect model (see comments here: https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2020/01/13/zharkova-et-al-an-update/ - basically, her earth/sun distance didn't normalize to 1.0 AU. if her paper's model was right, a lot of stuff would break, from what we assume is correct about a lot of quantum physics to basic newtonian gravity on earth)

Anyways, the development, conceptually, of modern day atmospheric physics (which includes a mixture of a lot of other basic physics and followed the development of a lot of sensor and computational methods) is something like:

Fourier - 1827 - studied heat extensively, especially as it related to equilibrium systems like atmospheres. Herschel had already discovered IR, but it was like Dark Energy is now, very mysterious. Came up with links between energy, net IR emissions (and thus showed why it was necessary to show how any realistic model of an atmosphere necessitates determining the sources and sinks of a planet's energy balance)

Tyndall - 1861 - Improved technology to calculate basic physics of how gas molecules and IR ("radiant heat") work. Realized that changes in concentrations of trace gasses like water vapor and CO2 could change the climate. In a lab, he realized that things like O2, H2, N2 are IR transparent (but he didn't know why - it's because of their electronic symmetries relative to a EM field. The electric dipole that would produce light). 

Arrhenius - 1896 - created first model (by a lot of tedious hand calculations) taking into account the radiative energy exchanges between the atmosphere and space, between the atmosphere and the ground, and between the ground and space (owing to transmission of IR through the atmosphere, which we can measure many different ways now). Gridded the Earth just like modern models, calculated a CO2 sensitivity relative to doubling it, but also predicted that it would take 1000 years for man to actually do it (but as we all know, we ended up burning a lot of coal). 

Plass - 1956 - first modern day CO2 radiative transfer models with modern day infrared spectroscopy and electronic computers of that era, He could do multilevel/multiband radiative transfer calculations which was important to figure how radiative forcings varied with things like pressure

Manabe - 1967 - calculated first computations of pure radiative equilibrium with modern day water vapor spectroscopy and convection. discovered how changes in CO2 and water vapor interplayed.

Budyko/Sellers - 1968 - showed the destabilizing effect of ice/albedo, determined the multiple equilibria (bifurcations in dynamical systems jargon) possible which seem to match paleogeology

Manabe - 1975 - first general circulation models, still used today, except they are much more data enriched and the grids are much smaller with modern supercomputers - instead of a single column (vertical heat exchange by radiation/convection) computed the first 3d solns (with thousands of columns) with fluid dynamics and thermodynamics. In general a lot of heat transfers, moisture, momentum around the globe need to be computed because rainfall changes (flooding, drought, changes in ice levels) matter as much as temperature, so the hydrological cycle (which has a primary effect on water vapor levels) need to be computed. Reverified polar amplification (generally the arctic warms up way faster than lower latitudes, which Arrhenius had postulated)

 

The article was not retracted for anything related to data fit or astrophysical theory, but because of a side issue which did not affect the model itself.

Again you miss the point. If the basic astrophysics used by these solar based scientists is fundamentally wrong, the model would not be able to explain the data. The model would not coordinate with the historical data (which it does). Check on Figure 4 which I linked above. Her fit is no better than other scientists who have used the same approach, including one from Finland who used a similar model and had similar success. So it is the lack of solar variables in the standard Global Warming models which give those models inferior results. This new model predicted the onset of a cooling phase in 2020...and what do we see? A cooling trend. The GW models are helpless to predict anything.

That is how science works, the test is empirical. Models which fail to predict the results are rendered obsolete. Those which make accurate predictions succeed. 

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Ecocharger

[NickW + 2,714]

7 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

The temp is not the issue. The plane I fly goes to 28,000 feet, and roughly every thousand feet elevation the temp is 3.2 degrees cooler. In metric the rule of thumb is easier 9.8C per kilometer. I don't even worry about icing, even though I'm routinely flying at -40C (coincidentally -40F also). It's not the cold, it's the moisture. If there's high moisture content then it's known icing conditions and my plane has the tech while a lot of very expensive jets don't. 

At the beginning of this fiasco, they were talking about the incredibly high moisture content of the storm front that came thru. This in a place that gets less than 8 inches of precipitation per year. It's not just the cold it's the ice that messed everything up. Furthermore a lot of utility workers were unable to drive to work because of bad road conditions, no snow plows etc. Bottom line, they didn't worry about extremely cold weather because everyone has been lying to them about global warming! Pretending otherwise at this late stage is pretense not reality. 

Of course temperature is an issue in the scenario you present - demand for power is very much driven by low temperatures in Sweden

An anti cyclone brings low wind speeds

Despite this its wind fleet delivers 12.4% of the countries electricity needs on that day. 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

18 hours ago, surrept33 said:

Keep in mind that editorial (in a physiology journal of all things) has been cited one time, by another article in the same journal saying why they published it: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23328940.2020.1818914

She more or less cited her own previous work in a much more major journal, which was pointed out by peers to be flawed (and one of her coauthors, her own son, subsequently agreed, which led to a retraction):

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-paper-that-blames-the-sun-for-climate-change-has-been-retracted 

and

 https://pubpeer.com/publications/3418816F1BA55AFB7A2E6A44847C24

I think it's fine to publish it, but her [history of such] claims are pretty provocative and don't match all the direct and indirect evidence (the IPCC literally cities thousands of papers!) we have about the greenhouse gas effect itself as it relates to anthropogenic climate change.

18 hours ago, surrept33 said:

(the IPCC literally cities thousands of papers!)

The IPCC is compromised to the extreme.  Anyone who researches this well understands this fact.  But it is a personal discovery...either a person researches it well or not.  Many don't, and thus they believe the deceptions.  I first started investigating this "Global Warming" bunk in 2005, and have over a 1,000 hours of personal research behind me delving into the sham..and this is my degree line of "Environmental Sciences".     IPCC is a sham.    The IPCC is part of the "The Great Reset", a plan by Elitists to bring about a Technocratic New World Order.  They control information sources and spew deceptive lies.  If anyone thinks that they will discover the facts from mainstream type news outlets or controlled platforms, they already are in the deep dark.  Even Scientific Journals have been compromised.  Elsevier and others are part of the cabal.

Here is the Wikipedis statement of who the IPCC is (and they are not doing this for the benefit of mankind)...

"The (IPCC) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations that is dedicated to providing the world with objective, scientific information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of the risk of human-induced climate change, its natural, political, and economic impacts and risks, and possible response options."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Exposing a Decade of Climategate Lies – December 2019

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1500-marc-morano-debunks-a-decade-of-climategate-lies/

EXCERPTS FROM...

https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/11/18/dont-let-media-whitewash-climategate-read-chapter-excerpt-revealing-the-truth-behind-scandal-10-years-later/

...The UN IPCC reports are often used to claim the science is “settled.” New Scientist magazine once dubbed the IPCC “the gold standard of consensus on climate change science.” Well, if there was any doubt before, Climategate exposed the IPCC to be fool’s gold.

But even before Climategate, there was good reason to realize that the UN IPCC was more political than scientific. On July 23, 2008, more than a year before the Climategate emails were leaked, John Brignell, an engineering professor emeritus at the University of Southampton who had held the chair in Industrial Instrumentation, accused the UN of censorship. “The creation of the UN IPCC was a cataclysmic event in the history of science. Here was a purely political body posing as a scientific institution. Through the power of patronage it rapidly attracted acolytes. ‘Peer review’ soon rapidly evolved from the old style
refereeing to a much more sinister imposition of The Censorship,” wrote

Brignell. “As [the] Wegman [report] demonstrated, new circles of like minded propagandists formed, acting as judge and jury for each other. Above all, they acted in concert to keep out alien and hostile opinion. ‘Peer review’ developed into a mantra that was picked up by political activists who clearly had no idea of the procedures of science or its learned societies. It became an imprimatur of political acceptability, whose absence was equivalent to placement on the proscribed list.”

In 2007, Australian climate data analyst John McLean did research into the IPCC’s peer-review process. McLean’s study found that very few scientists are actively involved in the UN’s peer-review process, which he called “an illusion.”

“More than two-thirds of all authors of chapter 9 (‘Understanding and Attributing Climate Change’) of the IPCC’s 2007 climate-science assessment are part of a clique whose members have co-authored papers with each other,” McLean found. “Of the 44 contributing authors, more than half have co-authored papers with the lead authors or coordinating lead authors of chapter 9.”

According to McLean, “Governments have naively and unwisely accepted the claims of a human influence on global temperatures made by a close-knit clique of a few dozen scientists, many of them climate modellers, as if such claims were representative of the opinion of the wider scientific community.”
As McLean explained, “To sum up, the IPCC is a single-interest organisation, whose charter assumes a widespread human influence on climate,
rather than consideration of whether such influence may be negligible or missing altogether.

For example, the IPCC Summary had asserted that “it is very highly likely that greenhouse gas forcing has been the dominant cause of the observed
global warming over the last 50 years.” But as McLean discovered, “The IPCC leads us to believe that this statement is very much supported by the majority of reviewers. The reality is that there is surprisingly little explicit support for this key notion. Among the 23 independent reviewers just 4 explicitly endorsed the chapter with its hypothesis, and one other endorsed only a specific section. Moreover, only 62 of the IPCC’s 308 reviewers commented
on this chapter at all.”

Many UN scientists have publicly rejected the IPCC’s methods. (The following material on UN scientists who have turned on the UN has been adapted and updated from a speech I wrote for Senator Jim Inhofe in 2007, while working at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.)

• “I have found examples of a Summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said,” noted South African nuclear physicist and chemical engineer Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 refereed publications. “The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil…. I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science.”
• Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher, has claimed, “A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995
  U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact.”
• UN IPCC expert reviewer Madhav Khandekar, a retired Environment Canada scientist, lamented that many “seem to naively believe that the climate change science espoused in the [UN’s] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documents represents ‘scientific consensus.’” In fact, “Nothing could be further than the truth! As one of the invited expert reviewers for the 2007 IPCC documents, I have pointed out the flawed review process used by the IPCC scientists in one of my letters. I have also pointed out in my letter that an increasing number of scientists are now questioning the hypothesis of Greenhouse gas induced warming of the earth’s surface and suggesting a stronger impact of solar variability and large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns on the observed temperature increase than previously believed…. Unfortunately, the IPCC climate change documents do not provide an objective assessment of the earth’s temperature trends and associated climate change.”
• Hurricane scientist Christopher W. Landsea, formerly of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, was an author for the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 and the Third Assessment Report in 2001, but he resigned from the Fourth Assessment Report, accusing the IPCC of distorting hurricane science. “I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns,” Landsea wrote in a January 17, 2005, public letter. “I personally
  cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.” Landsea is currently with the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center.

The process in which UN IPCC documents are produced is simply not compatible with good science. The UN IPCC’s guidelines stipulate that the scientific reports have to be “change[d]” to “ensure consistency with” the media-hyped Summary for Policymakers....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1500-marc-morano-debunks-a-decade-of-climategate-lies/

SHOW NOTES
Climategate coverage on The Corbett Report

ClimateDepot.com

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change

Don’t Let Media Whitewash Climategate! Read Chapter excerpt revealing the truth behind scandal 10 years later

Information Commissioner: Climategate Scientists Broke The Law

YAD06 – the Most Influential Tree in the World

Climategate is Still the Issue

The HARRY_READ_ME.txt file

Polar bear numbers not declining despite media headlines suggesting otherwise

UN Military Action to Enforce Climate Agenda? It May Happen, Says Academic

 

[turbguy + 1,543]

Here is what I've been searching for.

It was NOT the wind turbines (although they certainly contributed).

It was fossil plants.  Most likely from interrupted fuel.

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by turbguy

[NickW + 2,714]

12 minutes ago, turbguy said:

Here is what I've been searching for.

It was NOT the wind turbines (although they certainly contributed).

It was fossil plants.  Most likely from interrupted fuel.

 

The later part of that wind reduction is probably down to the blackout and the turbines disconnecting. 

That drop in CCGT output on the 15th is like a sheer cliff face and definietly caused the nuke to trip. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

10 minutes ago, NickW said:

The later part of that wind reduction is probably down to the blackout and the turbines disconnecting. 

That drop in CCGT output on the 15th is like a sheer cliff face and definietly caused the nuke to trip. 

I would not be that convinced about the cause of South Texas #1's trip yet, but that's possible, say, due to low system voltage conditions if the Rx feed pump that tripped wasn't being fed by the unit's aux transformer.    I'd wait a bit.

Edited February 21, 2021 by turbguy

[NickW + 2,714]

12 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

The temp is not the issue. The plane I fly goes to 28,000 feet, and roughly every thousand feet elevation the temp is 3.2 degrees cooler. In metric the rule of thumb is easier 9.8C per kilometer. I don't even worry about icing, even though I'm routinely flying at -40C (coincidentally -40F also). It's not the cold, it's the moisture. If there's high moisture content then it's known icing conditions and my plane has the tech while a lot of very expensive jets don't. 

At the beginning of this fiasco, they were talking about the incredibly high moisture content of the storm front that came thru. This in a place that gets less than 8 inches of precipitation per year. It's not just the cold it's the ice that messed everything up. Furthermore a lot of utility workers were unable to drive to work because of bad road conditions, no snow plows etc. Bottom line, they didn't worry about extremely cold weather because everyone has been lying to them about global warming! Pretending otherwise at this late stage is pretense not reality. 

Find me an example of a bonefide climate scientist who made great announcements that winter is cancelled? By that I don't mean Greta or Al Bore placards.

Most of the stuff I have seen predicted a greater frequency of extreme events which to me means hotter events and  colder events, more extreme rain events and  more droughts etc. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

36 minutes ago, turbguy said:

Here is what I've been searching for.

It was NOT the wind turbines (although they certainly contributed).

It was fossil plants.  Most likely from interrupted fuel.

 

Notice the Feb 15 drop off.  Wind took the same dive as nat gas, which I might add was operating at 450% of capacity trying to carry the full load of all that demand, until it couldn't. We'll likely never get to see the full reports, but I'm convinced that power to the gas gathering stations and compressors failed, which caused a cascade of failures. The "natural" winter production of natural gas in winter is around 30GW, which you'll see it barely dipped below. @nsdp wants to blame fossil for not being heroic enough. This equipment was running full tilt, imagine a car meant to drive 60 being pushed to 150 mph like it was LeMans 24 HR racing? And these aren't race cars but family sedans. The people blaming fossil fuel here are saying those cars shouldn't have broken down or crashed. Never mind that they were being pushed far beyond their optimal design ranges. 

Bottom line, there is so much wind energy being produced in Texas that it is getting accounted for as baseload instead of intermittent. Texas is big enough and disperse enough that wind is less intermittent there than other places, until it isn't. ERCOT reports clearly showed that wind was delivering 40% of the baseload power to the state, until it couldn't and then the "backup generators" ultimately failed. Had this been a transitory event, lasting a day or two we wouldn't have even known about it. It was the sustained catastrophe that made it news and underscored the danger of counting on intermittent power, period. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

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Edited February 21, 2021 by turbguy

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

10 hours ago, nsdp said:

How are you going to fuel a 5kw generator at every house. NG lines froze

It runs on diesel, about one quart an hour.  Get yourself some 5-gallon plastic fuel containers and fill them up down at the truck stop, you are all set.  You can also buy a smallish "day tank" that holds about 40 gallons, they are vended by diesel gen-set distributors for use with large installations.  I had one for a 1/2-MW genset for a plant I set up once  (you pump from the storage tank to the day tank).  Y9u can fill the day tank with cheap heating oil, works fine.  Keep the tank inside the garage so  that it does not get too cold, otherwise add some anti-gel to the mix.  

You could spend more and install a gen-set run on propane, but hey, that costs a lot more cash.  The idea is to do that on the cheap!

[turbguy + 1,543]

43 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Notice the Feb 15 drop off.  Wind took the same dive as nat gas, which I might add was operating at 450% of capacity trying to carry the full load of all that demand, until it couldn't. We'll likely never get to see the full reports, but I'm convinced that power to the gas gathering stations and compressors failed, which caused a cascade of failures. The "natural" winter production of natural gas in winter is around 30GW, which you'll see it barely dipped below. @nsdp wants to blame fossil for not being heroic enough. This equipment was running full tilt, imagine a car meant to drive 60 being pushed to 150 mph like it was LeMans 24 HR racing? And these aren't race cars but family sedans. The people blaming fossil fuel here are saying those cars shouldn't have broken down or crashed. Never mind that they were being pushed far beyond their optimal design ranges. 

Bottom line, there is so much wind energy being produced in Texas that it is getting accounted for as baseload instead of intermittent. Texas is big enough and disperse enough that wind is less intermittent there than other places, until it isn't. ERCOT reports clearly showed that wind was delivering 40% of the baseload power to the state, until it couldn't and then the "backup generators" ultimately failed. Had this been a transitory event, lasting a day or two we wouldn't have even known about it. It was the sustained catastrophe that made it news and underscored the danger of counting on intermittent power, period. 

Show me ONE power plant that has the capability to output 200% of nameplate when called upon to do so.  Maybe there is one. 

Yes, there's plenty of excess air flow in a Gas Turbine to add and combust a lot more fuel, until the firing temperature ("T3") causes the first stage nozzles and buckets/blades to liquefy. 

Yes you can cut out upper feedwater heaters in steam plants to get a little bit (5%) more. You can also go to overpressure operation (if you want to roll those dice with the pressure parts, risking a tube "pop" or a DMW failure) for another 5%.  If you can keep the generator cool and within it's capability curves.

It quite obvious to me from that graph that the earliest, largest, steepest reduction in generation was from Nat Gas fuel, and THAT is what aligns with the start of rotating outages, enacted to avoid a total grid collapse.

Bottom line

1. It got cold, REALLY cold.
2. Demand skyrocketed.  Both for electricity AND nat gas.
3. Nat Gas fueled units could not sustain supply for that demand (nor could other "sources", somewhat later in time).

WHY??

I suspect, loss of fuel.

If you see it otherwise, may the Lord be with you.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

17 minutes ago, turbguy said:

WHY??

I suspect, loss of fuel.

Of course it is (loss of fuel).  

But note that there is no local fuel surge tank to take up the slack when the line delivery fails.  And this is the big advantage of diesel fuel: it is energy dense, so a storage tank a lot smaller than some nat-gas tank is going to hold out for a lot longer.  When you absolutely need power, there is nothing like a diesel and a tank of diesel fuel. Great stuff!

[NickW + 2,714]

21 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

It runs on diesel, about one quart an hour.  Get yourself some 5-gallon plastic fuel containers and fill them up down at the truck stop, you are all set.  You can also buy a smallish "day tank" that holds about 40 gallons, they are vended by diesel gen-set distributors for use with large installations.  I had one for a 1/2-MW genset for a plant I set up once  (you pump from the storage tank to the day tank).  Y9u can fill the day tank with cheap heating oil, works fine.  Keep the tank inside the garage so  that it does not get too cold, otherwise add some anti-gel to the mix.  

You could spend more and install a gen-set run on propane, but hey, that costs a lot more cash.  The idea is to do that on the cheap!

A 5KW Diesel generator running on 1.2 litres of diesel an hour? 

Where can I buy one of these perpetual motion machines? 

[turbguy + 1,543]

12 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Of course it is (loss of fuel).  

But note that there is no local fuel surge tank to take up the slack when the line delivery fails.  And this is the big advantage of diesel fuel: it is energy dense, so a storage tank a lot smaller than some nat-gas tank is going to hold out for a lot longer.  When you absolutely need power, there is nothing like a diesel and a tank of diesel fuel. Great stuff!

Yes, a GT can do fine with distillates.

You just keep your fingers crossed (really hard) when you initiate the fuel transfer during operation.  A flame out and restart was not uncommon (in my experience).

A story.   A local friend was an early adopter of a small 5KW wind power machine (2 blades).

After many years of blade cracking, thrust bearing failures, generator burn-outs, and the like, I asked him what he would have done differently if he knew what would lie ahead.  His response:

"Buy a diesel generator and a 200 gallon tank".

Edited February 21, 2021 by turbguy