Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency.

I have plagiarized the idea for this thread from David Walters over at another website.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/28/1303/48225

The link for the news story is reproduced here: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2749http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2749522920080228



I am now going to be besieged by dopes calling me out and saying that "NNadir hates wind."

Bullshit.

The little "wind and solar will save us" cult is like any other fundamentalist faith: It demands total and constant chanting with enthusiasm.

If you must know, I don't hate Jesus. I simply couldn't care less about Jesus, because I regard Jesus as a trivial and unimportant matter.

I don't "hate wind," although I do, in fact, despise the Foxnewsian dipshits who feel that I have to fall on my knees and worship every fucking dumbass "world's largest" wind or solar thread - replete with a series of sockpuppets - of the type that have been produced here for going on 8 years without either form of energy ever producing a single exajoule in a single year.

But, if you must know, I do sometimes link information from a website where they do hate wind: www.windwatch.org. In linking them, I am merely noting a dissident position that notes what is immediately obvious, wind power is not, even by a long stretch, risk free. It is not, necessarily even risk minimized.

Of course, none of these remarks are directed at your aunt's neighbor's best friend's cousin's former wive's boyfriend's barber's sister's lover's dog groomer's postman's aunt's friend who lives off grid.

:evilgrin:

Sorry, couldn't resist.

wind will be fine, when done right. reserves need to be kept, and the ability to route energy better and faster through the country is needed. don't knock wind for a shit infrastructure.

:rofl:

:thumbsup:

I only hope we can build enough wind & solar while we still have capital to do so.

Basically these forms of energy are rather like biofuels. They sound great until you actually try them out.

You are always shooting off your mouth without a single word of substance ever being uttered.

So come on, big shot, lay it out, one objection at a time. No rants no bullshit.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

You CLAIM you've "written many thousands of detailed analysis, surveying the scientific literature in considerable detail", however you gross ignorance on the topics discussed shows that you must have a severe reading comprehension problem. As to your age, I guess if you've been "reading Environ. Sci. Tech before <I was> old enough to have pimples" that would make you about 80 years old. It would also explain your anger.

I understand increasing you daily intake of fiber can do wonders for that. It might even "move you" to stop lying so frequently.

Or perhaps the answer is that you took your own advice. Did you "fucking believe that <nuclear> power <was> the answer, sell everything you own and invest in <nuclear> plants"?


Ouch. That must have hurt.

So after 8 years all your thousands of detailed analyses are still wrong wrong wrong...

QED!!!1111

:nuke: :evilgrin: :nuke:

That's not nice...

getting at here.

It's been "tried out"...

by resource deficient former superpowers is going to happen.

No blood for uranium!

Power goes out here frequently during storms (and sometimes none) for hours. Wind pollutes less than nuclear power. It's not considered an emergency here unless it is out so long that the food spoils, etc.in the freezer...refrigerator.

They can't find a place for their nuclear waste so it is buried near the lake. Not a good idea.

I have long thought it would save money to bury power lines (loss during storms costly) and punish those who don't bother to know where the cables are when digging. We can go to the Moon but can't afford to bury our power lines? In the MW some people go for two weeks without power from storms(in the heat and cold). That is just not acceptable.

A local food store had a black out. A cable was cut by construction people. They took more than a day to get back on line. They didn't completely remove the bad food. A month later I bought ice cream that had gone bad. Needless to say...the Safeway store is going under.

I don't know if a generator could have saved them. Hospitals use them.

People just didn't trust the new ownership (Safeway) to do what was right for our community either. It was owned by a family. They had a local chain of stores. The father died and the children "wanted theirs" so it was sold to Safeway. Safeway laid off the old employees and hired new ones (made people angry). The inventory was bad and shelves left empty. No special products like the last owners and sometime only one choice...Safeway. The fresh products expensive and not "fresh" but wilted.

I experienced a really bad worker (Hispanic new one) who talked for ages with a girl she knew. When I asked for help (me an obvious Anglo appearance) she ignored me. I thought it very rude but did not complain.

Wait up. There are bigots on both sides. Our community is diverse with new Hispanics arriving for jobs everyday in our town of 20,000. It's not like I go after any of them. It's hard to tell who is legal and who is illegal.

All I wanted was some unsalted, dried nuts. Finding them in the new set up was not easy. I think the office saw it and sent another worker to help me. I have not seen her since. I may not have been the only problem.

Some of the new employees didn't practice good food handling and bagging. they are not trained well. For a short time after the black out twenty or so managers arrived to monitor the store. That didn't help.

The corporate food stores sometimes have no idea what the community wants or likes when taking over. It is a corporate decision from somewhere else. I have no idea what the employee benefits are but I bet not good. Some of the new employees look dirt poor.

Another subject: I'd like to discuss "self space purchasing" by companies in corporate food stores. They load the shelves with their band and then carry maybe one other. Whole vast areas are set aside for beverages yet it's hard to get a choice of say...no salt soups. There is little diversity. Self space purchasing should be illegal. I'd rather have more choices from small companies who do natural foods and pay more. Most corporate made foods have so much salt and preservatives.

Whether it's wind power or food corporations are screwing up. We don't get better quality or service. We get the cheapest and oldest products sent to market. If they can't sell a million of anything in their stores they don't handle it.

I go to Fresh Market sometimes just to get something different. It's all for profit and not for the "common good". There has to be a compromise.

And it will work better as technology improves. These sorts of temporary cuts in power happened before the advent of wind and solar power, too.

Who am I going to believe, some internet shill or T. Boone Pickens???? He's building a $10 Billion wind farm in Texas. Yea, he don't know shit does he. They make enough money that they can afford to pay this one rancher almost a MILLION a year just to put 154 windmills on his property. That's right, $500 a month for each of 78 now installed with 76 more to come. (500 x 154 x 12 = $924,000)

Follow this link for the story, neat picture of the rancher standing next to an oil well pump with windmills in the background.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/business/23wind.html

Obama is the only one I've heard that is addressing the grid issue. This village idiot in DC has been doing everything he can to thwart alternative energy instead of making the needed upgrades in the grid so that power can be shipped over greater distances and minimizing line loss and balance demand/supply. Bush and his cohorts are trying to create a false emergency so that the solution is a bunch of coal and nuclear plants (which would take 10 years to bring on-line).

In addition to wind, solar should be developed at the same time. When your mythical cold front comes in, it actually is accompanied by a LOT of wind and when it passes, the skies are clear. Upgrading the grid would allow wind/solar to take advantage of natural weather patterns.

Pickens pointed out that a wind corridor goes from Texas north to the Canadian border and a wind/solar corridor goes from Texas West to Calif. We should be taking advantage of our natural resources.

Why he's one of the noblest beings of all time, and would never dream of endorsing a fraud to make money off ridiculous expectations.

He and Sam Wyly were very, very, very, very wise, by the way, to invest in George W. Bush, an investment that has paid off handsomely.

But the fact that T. Boone Pickens owns a large share of the Bush administration has nothing at all to do with the question of whether the Texas grid can handle wind power.

Believe it or not, the question is determined by something called "physics."

You've really proved - for all time and under all circumstances - that the wind powered grid did not cause a reliability problem in Texas. That's right. It didn't happen, because T. Boone Pickens, senile old fart is investing the pocket change he picked up from his great GM investment.

He's also invested heavily in canned pureed Whooping Crane, thus establishing for all time that wind power is the greatest thing since, well, GM.

Are you trying to be a dumbbell, or is it spontaneous?

Florida Power and Light (FPL) is involved in a lawsuit where the local Texas utility was suing that FPL did not provide the power stipulated under contract. Unfortunatley, the trial proved the the utility loaded the lines up to prevent FPL from delivering the electricity available from their windmills (FPL has over 11 windfarms in Texas).

Probably why FPL has proposed the 'DFW Express' a 2,000 megawatt Direct Current power line from Abilene to the Dallas - Ft. Worth area. A high voltage DC line doesn't have as high a line loss as AC. In addition:

"The power flow is controllable – power is injected when needed;

Congestion of the existing West Texas 69 kV, 138 kV and 345 kV systems is bypassed;

More power will be delivered with fewer, less expensive lines utilizing a much narrower land corridor than a comparable alternating current structure carrying equivalent energy."

http://www.fplenergy.com/news/contents/2007/053107.shtml

As in my original post, any problem with the varibility can be addressed with grid improvement. The principle advantages of windmills is the fact that they can be installed quickly without impact to air or water quality. The Danes provide somewhere around 40% of their power with wind, some areas 200%. They don't seem to be having 'grid stability issues'.


BTW, no way I support all of Boone Pickens activities, just that he has made a lot of money over the years and if he's investing in wind farms, it's because he sees it as a viable investment and his profits are in the public view, are yours?

As long as there are turbines scattered about, there will always be electric generation. Now if the wind stops blowing, I think we've got bigger problems than not being able to turn on American Idol or Democratic Underground.

Constantly posting every problem that comes up re: wind electric generation doesn't make it stop being effective as part of the solution.

that wind reserves in Texas are diminishing rapidly and the price of wind is going through the ceiling.....

It would seem that even as a trivial source of energy, wind power doesn't work all that well.

by 2050......

Like most "renewables will save us" retards, the entire schtick of "2050 talk" depends on talk about a future you will not live in.

Wind is a failure now. It is a trivial form of energy and the fact that whiny brats spend so much time talking about it after decades of talking about it is a clear indicator that ignorance kills.

WADF. A brain as big as a planet and here you are sweeping out the stalls at DU. Hang in there, it'll only get worse.

Cars?

"Wind is a failure now. It is a trivial form of energy and the fact that whiny brats spend so much time talking about it after decades of talking about it is a clear indicator that ignorance kills."

Florida Power and Light has over 4,000 megawatts by Jan 2007. Wind farms are going up all over this country despite this administrations efforts to thwartt it's expansion.

How many lives have been lost\damaged by this administrations denial of a 'Priorty One' request by Marine Corps Maj. General Richard Zilmer of 187 portable solar PV and wind turbines for Iraq. His proposal points out that the diesel generators (that are cheaper initially) require a constant supply of JP-8 fuel trucked in from Turkey which exposes our troops to contant attack. It took politically appointed asswhipes 2 years to process Gen Zilmer's Priorty One request. They said the stations were not battlefield ready. Right, we have been sending probes into the furthest reaches of the universe based on solar panels. Once again, just like Rumsfeld denial of the MRAP for two years, agenda trumps facts with this admin.