The Texas Disaster Freezing Sacrifices At The Alter Of Wind And Solar Power
POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Sunday, September 14, 2025 08:00
VIEWED: 11410
PAGE 13 of 18
Snow falls as temperatures drop across North Texas
https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-snow-flurries-122222
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Con air Flight is cancelled
340K without power amid frigid temperatures in Texas; 2,300 flights canceled, at least 6 dead
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2023/02/01/ice-storm-texas
-arkansas-tennessee-wednesday-weather-updates/11150433002/
Legal status of Texas?
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LA Times energy writer: What if we accepted occasional blackouts to solve climate change?
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/07/21/la-times-energy-writer-what-if-
we-accepted-occasional-blackouts-to-solve-climate-change-n566286
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Quote:California rejects that kind of thinking as nonsense. Surrendering to a problem, such as either shutting down electricity to achieve zero CO2 or declaring "Climate Change Is A Chinese Hoax"-Trump, is the very opposite of solving a problem. The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), California’s grid operator, has aimed to upgrade its capacity to a standard it calls “1-in-10,” or no more than one capacity-related power outage every 10 years.
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
What if we accepted occasional blackouts to solve climate change?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/california-is-sweltering-
but-its-power-grid-is-strong-2-reasons-why/ar-AA1ebnK7
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Texas grid at risk of winter blackouts? ERCOT, Abbott can’t decide. (Editorial)
By Houston Chronicle Editorial Board | Dec 22, 2023
https://web.archive.org/web/20231222111640/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/editorials/article/ercot-winter-abbott-pablo-vegas-power-grid-18564135.php
In the two years since Winter Storm Uri plunged millions of Texas homes into darkness, Gov. Greg Abbott has leaned on a familiar refrain: legislative fixes have made the state’s power grid healthier than ever. Abbott spent serious political capital ramming these changes through the Legislature in 2021, then practically staked his entire reelection bid on avoiding a Uri repeat.
Then it was rather alarming to see Pablo Vegas, the man Abbott appointed to lead the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, take a wrecking ball recently to the narrative that Texas has plenty of power to weather the next winter storm.
Vegas, who took over ERCOT in October 2022, began this fall calling on owners of mothballed natural gas and coal plants to revive their dormant facilities to lower the likelihood of massive blackouts to less than 10%. Vegas made that desperate ask — which he later revoked when it failed to attract any interest — because ERCOT’s own projections, made public in November, showed an uncomfortably high 1-in-6 chance of a grid emergency if a major winter storm strikes Texas.
Then, at an event hosted by the U.S. Energy Association earlier this month, Vegas again warned that the state’s power grid is at a heightened risk of failing from extreme weather, citing the state’s lack of investment into developing transmission lines and natural gas pipelines to deliver energy to the grid when most needed.
“The reality is risk is increasing. We’re all seeing it,” Vegas told the audience. “If we do smart things with investments in resources, we can bring that risk down. But we need to make smart decisions.”
Yet several days later, speaking at a news conference alongside Abbott at the Houston headquarters for the power generation company Calpine, Vegas sang a markedly different tune. The event, a photo op unveiling the design of Calpine’s 425-megawatt natural gas plant — which the company had already announced in April — gave Vegas an opportunity to walk back his previous foreboding assessment, this time in the presence of his political benefactor.
“I want to … assure Texans that the power grid is as ready and reliable as it has ever been for the winter season,” he said. Abbott offered his own assurances, saying Calpine would not be opening a new plant in Texas if “they thought that the grid was not reliable.”
This dizzying spin is the last thing Texans want to hear as we approach what is typically our coldest stretch of the year. It reinforces the suspicion that our leaders are more concerned with self-preservation than leveling with Texans about our safety.
The result is such a deep level of mistrust that the winter solstice has become the new June 1 — a milestone date many Texans now have circled on their mental calendars as the unofficial starting point for weather-related anxiety. Except instead of breathlessly tracking tropical storm systems crossing the Atlantic, we now fret over “polar vortexes,” “bomb cyclones” and other apocalyptic terms meteorologists dream up to characterize hazardous cold weather.
It’s true, as the Chronicle’s business columnist Chris Tomlinson wrote recently, that this is not the same grid that failed two years ago. The Legislature passed weatherization requirements for gas plants, mapped out a critical supply chain and infrastructure network and required certain generators to have additional gas supply on site for emergencies. As long as crypto miners and industrial customers ramp down their considerable power usage when grid conditions get tight, we can hopefully avoid another disaster.
Yet it’s also clear that the state hasn’t done enough to account for the soaring power demand brought on by a population boom. Even the lowest-hanging fruit to improve grid reliability has
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I was wondering how that was going. Seems like progress, but not enough to gurarantee energy delivery during a severe storm.
Fingers crossed that doesn't happen, and that Texas will continue to weatherize.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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We Need Your Help to Conserve Energy!
Dear Customer,
Due to high demand and tight grid conditions, ERCOT has issued a Conservation Request for today, January 15th.
As a result, Shell Energy is asking that you voluntarily conserve energy, if safe to do so, today from 6AM-10AM CST.
Electric Supply Dashboard: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
We Need Your Help to Conserve Energy!
Dear Customer,
Due to high demand and tight grid conditions, ERCOT has issued a Conservation Request for today, January 15th.
As a result, Shell Energy is asking that you voluntarily conserve energy, if safe to do so, today from 6AM-10AM CST.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
That means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:It means the Republicans control the grid in order to make the maximum profit.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.
Shortages are good for profits.
Shortages mean prices skyrocket unless you've got a fixed-price contract.
See system-wide prices at https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
There is a bump in prices showing right now.
A more dramatic price graph of what is happening at this moment:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/energy/ercot-power-grid-trac
ker/?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vcHJvamVjdHMvZW5lcmd5L2VyY290LXBvd2VyLWdyaWQtdHJhY2tlci8=&time=MTcwNTMyNDUyODM3Mg==&rid=MmRmOGI5YmQtMGMyMS00MmNjLWE4NzEtYzdjOTViMDg3MWRi&sharecount=MQ==
Wholesale electricity prices
At 7:30 AM Jan 15th the price was $294.70
At 12:15 AM Jan 14th the price was $6.84
That is a nice profit differential.
Although the price skyrockets,
the cost to produce the electricity stays about the same at midnight compared to morning.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprices
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:It means the Republicans control the grid in order to make the maximum profit.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.
Okay.
It also means no charging your coal burning car between 6AM and 10AM today, dipshit.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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