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IN Everything you need to know about the tragic events in Texas this past week is clearly visible in this chart: Electricity Generation by Sources on the ERCOT (Electrical Reliability Council of Texas) grid, which covers approximately 85% of the state.
Key facts:
1. Wind farms cover a large part of the load in the days before the start of the cold wave. Nuclear power plants are operating normally, but they are few. Gas and coal complement each other and change according to the whims of the wind.
2. With the onset of the cold, the wind literally disappears from the picture: 30 GW of installed power systematically provides around 3-5 GW of energy, while the cold intensifies and everything freezes. Solar power plants hibernate anyway.
Three victims and millions without electricity due to a storm in the United States
3. The state relies almost exclusively on gas (more than 60%), coal and nuclear energy.
4. On 14-15.02 the big storm occurs and some of the gas power plants fail due to various reasons: lack of fuel, frozen infrastructure and other accidents. Drilling in most of Texas is frozen and yielding nothing. A unit in nuclear power plants falls over because a pipe (outdoors) is frozen! The connection with the rest of the United States (only 600 MW) does not supply electricity either. There are many accidents on the power lines, knocking some coal-fired power plants out of bills … And the unthinkable happens: a large part of America’s energy heartland is without power.
5. Right now, wind and solar power plants are sound asleep and awake and nobody trusts them because they don’t know when they will wake up and when they will snore: 33 GW of installed energy is absolutely unnecessary only when people need the most energy !!
6. On 18-19.02 the situation is already under control and the network is largely functioning normally, with the exception of the “classic” winter power cuts in some neighborhoods.
7. Coal power plants proved to be the most reliable during the crisis. Unlike gas, which has reserves for hours and depends on external supplies, coal typically has reserves for weeks (even months) of operation at full capacity.
8. Nuclear power is also, in principle, extremely reliable under all conditions. In this case, there is a desertion of a unit, because in Texas they had the imprudence to leave the turbines in the open air, not in a room … as is done in “white” countries like Bulgaria. [🙂]
9. The tragedy in Texas does not happen because of RES (sun and wind). All professionals in the field know that they cannot be relied upon under such conditions and therefore behind every installed watt of renewable energy in the system is kept the installed watt of conventional energy. Nobody trusted them.
10. The tragedy in Texas occurs mainly because a large part of the buildings are heated with electricity (air conditioners), whose efficiency drops drastically when cold. People simply have no alternative, such as direct heating with gas or solid fuel, which are much more efficient in the cold. Mass electrification carries great risk because it means heavy reliance on the grid and it simply cannot withstand the jump in consumption. The other reason is the lack of adequate connectivity of the Texas electrical grid with the rest of the states, but even the presence of such would be difficult to prevent the accident, because there is a shortage of electricity at the same time everywhere.
By the way, according to some comments in the media, the system was minutes and inches from a total collapse, which would leave the entire state without electricity for weeks. This would be a humanitarian catastrophe the United States has never seen in its modern history …
The conclusions for me are three:
1. The dreams and policies of mass electrification based on renewable energy technologies are a dangerous utopia that will give us a “wonderful new world” in which to periodically “enjoy” the vagaries of nature and natural selection … with all the catastrophic consequences for our health and life.
2. Energy security and independence must be an absolute priority for any national grid and must not be abandoned.
3. If we want to move towards decarbonisation, we need much more nuclear power and new technologies for alternative energy sources and energy storage. The available ones do not meet expectations and cannot solve the problem.
Texas is caught in a cold snap and the senator is in Cancun
