Here we go..HIGHER Utilities Coming?

[Sleepy]

Has nothing to do with being scared. 300 meters is a joke. That’s probably the impact zone when one fails. I occasionally stay on a farm with windmills over a mile away and the noise is bad. The owners are just outside the economic recover area and get nothing except excess noise and a bad view.

Without subsidies they are not economically viable and definitely not reliable. At best they are an experiment.

I have been in wind energy since 2008. I have overseen certain scopes of work on over 5000 turbines and millions of trench feet. What is sad is how truly misinformed the general public is on wind energy and its costs/production/subsidies. There is so much hear say about wind that is completely false and quite frankly, I find it a little funny. Majority of people just repeat what they hear or read, and it’s true you know, cause it’s on the internet. Lol

You can’t hear turbines spinning from a mile away. Sorry, there is no argument there. The only sound they make is the blade cutting the wind. Ain’t it’s not that loud.

Wind energy makes up less than 20% of the power grid so why wind is getting all the blame is quite funny.

Wind farms average a 5 year pay off.

Wind farms receive subsidies, just like any other fuel/generation source.

Wind farms are also profitable enough that they are relying less on government subsidies every year.

Wind farms are not going anywhere


Now I’m not just taking up for wind because it makes my paycheck every week. The fact is, it works and it’s very profitable. It also creates THOUSANDS of very well paying jobs with significantly less down turns than oil and gas. Do I think it is the be all end all? Hell no. We NEED oil and gas. But alternatives are not a negative either.

[BowhunterB]

Most wind turbines pay themselves off pretty quickly it's why they are going up, I think it's a ruse by oil guys to avoid competition. Sounds like some of you don't actually like open market capitalism unless it directly benefits you, seems kind of communistic to me.

Why is an open market so bad boys? I know you guys are going to say, but wind/solar has been subsidized! Guess what, so is oil/gas, and has been since 1915, mad someone else got on that gravy train?

I'm all for removing all subsidies from all energy personally, guess what happens if you do, the price goes up across the board.

If you put wind turbines in a horrible location -- sure they suck (which is where people get this talking point, they did a test on a very badly place wind farm) -- don't do that (they are a lot better now at testing an area first).

As far as I know wind has been contributing it's share of the energy pie since this issue happened, oil/gas HAS NOT, so no idea why wind/solar is getting hammered....except the oil guys are just attacking competition, why people choose to shut down so many of the plants, that was an economic call by some energy bosses so their bonus will be bigger at the end of the year. Problem there is with people, not with solar/wind/gas/oil.

I think there is tons of oil out there, and it's great. I don't think we are even close to running out of oil. Why focus on other industries then?

A) It's driving technology advances in batteries and solar big time.
B) It's a form of competition
C) While oil/gas may last for another 100, 1000, or even 10000 (I think its more like in this realm) years why not prepare for the future now, put some nuts away for winter, help out future generations, especially if it's driving technology advances

I understand your bosses might be ****** they are not going to get their million dollar bonuses every year (instead getting half million dollar bonuses) anymore so they pump you guys with negative vibes about competition, and point out every research paper that had anything bad to say about them.

Ultimately that is what wind/solar is....competition, I thought that is a good thing in an open market?!!

Why not love ALL of the energy sources? There are a lot of statements in these threads that seem like contradictions / baseless attacks and bringing up fake news facts.

That would be great if it was what was happening. but they are promoting wind and solar as a replacement to and at the expense of coal and gas. they are not anywhere near ready to be replacements. At this point they are small supplements. We still need to maintain focus on coal and gas - that is what got us to this level of advancement and what will keep us there for the time being.

[Leverhunter]

"You can’t hear turbines spinning from a mile away. Sorry, there is no argument there. The only sound they make is the blade cutting the wind. Ain’t it’s not that loud."

This is a lie. You can hear the whoosh of the blades over a mile away and it is very disrupting to what used to be a nice quiet farm.

Falling talked about a lawsuit. Where do you really think that is going with all the permits that have been approved to build them ?

The bottom line, until wind or solar can provided reliable energy 99% of the time they are a huge waste of resources. Until that time we still need to maintain reliable, fossil fuel and nuclear, generating plants. Everything else is nothing but a very expensive experiment.

[jnd1959]

Part of my career is a high portion of HV Transmission. I can tell you right now, there are multiple power companies who have quite a few outages on transmission lines for rebuild and tie ins to new substations. ERCOT won’t allow these outages from June to September due to the high demand for electricity in the summer months. That leaves a short amount of time to get a lot of work done in times where electricity needs in Texas are generally at its lowest. And re-energizing these lines isn’t as simple as running over and flipping a switch real quick before the storm hits. So you already have that as an existing outage. Now take into account for the lines that were damaged which are out de-energized. I have crews headed out for emergency restoration right now. There is a lot more to it than what the outside see’s. The bottom line is it’s a once in a century storm that our southern infrastructure wasn’t prepared for. No different than Oklahoma doesn’t prepare for hurricanes.

As usual, the most logical answers get ignored. We can have excess capacity, if people are willing to have a plant constructed in their back yard, which they're not. Been down that fight many times. So you either pay and plan for the 1% weather or you have scarcity when it happens. A quasi market works during the norms but not during the emergency. It's the old price gouging argument. You can either have market pricing and supply or you can hanve scarcity and fixed or semi fixed prices. You can't have both.

[Falling]

At this point they are small supplements. .

I'd argue they are a little more than small supplements but agree fully they are small piece of the pie.

Why that small piece of the pie is getting all the blame.....is baffling.

[Falling]

The bottom line, until wind or solar can provided reliable energy 99% of the time they are a huge waste of resources. Until that time we still need to maintain reliable, fossil fuel and nuclear, generating plants. Everything else is nothing but a very expensive experiment.

It's called battery technology, which solar/wind investment is causing side effects of us doing more research into each year. We have made astounding battery advances in the last 10-15 years.

[Andrew Aguechee]

El General, you are correct. Wind and solar are both highly subsidized and only exist in US because of that fact. One can look at Germany, which has the reliance on wind/solar electricity generation. Average cost of electricity in Germany is $0.33/KWH where in US it averages $0.12/KWH.

[Leverhunter]

It's called battery technology, which solar/wind investment is causing side effects of us doing more research into each year. We have made astounding battery advances in the last 10-15 years.

We can do battery research without spending billions of dollars on an unreliable source of electricity. Are the batteries going to last 2 weeks ? What about the side effects of pollution from the batteries and manufacturing process ? We are way to far from a net gain on this to have invested so much in it. Just another green deal lie.

[Killer]

Energy is energy to me. A lot of coal/gas plants are down right now due to not being able to handle the cold weather as well, or were simply shut down in maintenance mode.

I blame everyone -- not just renewables, not just oil/gas/coal. It came down to decisions MEN made, not the energy types. I think we should have MORE of all of these types of energy.

So explain to me the logic here:

A) Renewables (normally around 20% of our energy : from what i've seen it's currently still providing 10-15 percent ) are not supplying their max output to the power grid. Mostly due to the fact they were not setup to handle cold weather.
--> Renewables SUCK!

B) Coal/Gas/Oil ( normally around 67% of our energy, i've not seen good numbers on this currently, will be very informative when we get them, what i do know is multiple plants have been shutoff, some have BURNED to the ground, and others were in maintance mode) is not supplying their max output to the power grid. Mostly due to the fact they were not setup to handle cold weather and the management decided to not prepare for a cold storm that was known a good week ahead of time.
--> Renewables SUCK!

I don't get the logic of holding (A) and (B).
It seems like if (A) is true, then (B) should also be held accountable.
Instead (B) team here is claiming (A) is at fault for everything!

Feels political to me.

Large Gas, Coal and Nuclear plants shouldn't be supplying 67%, they should be suppling 85 to 95% or more of the total baseload on the grid. With smaller gas/oil plants and/or solar and wind making up the rest. We have got to have a 15 to 20% reserve capacity over the peak baseload for times like this that happen every 5 to 10 years with a large cold or heat event.

The solar and wind can run all the time and produce cheaper electricity, you just can't depend on them to be there at the exact time when you need them them the most. If we do start to depend on them more this fiasco will become "NORMAL" I for one do not want that as someone that lives in the state.

This is close to how the grid was ran before deregulation. I don't think deregulation will go away to much water under the bridge. I don't think the politicians will ever admit they were wrong on this. But we have got to get more reliable generation that will be there on the 5 degree days and the 111 degree days when you need it the most because there will be a lot more of those days coming in the near future and I do not want to see this shiz show again.

[Dale Moser]

I have been in wind energy since 2008. I have overseen certain scopes of work on over 5000 turbines and millions of trench feet. What is sad is how truly misinformed the general public is on wind energy and its costs/production/subsidies. There is so much hear say about wind that is completely false and quite frankly, I find it a little funny. Majority of people just repeat what they hear or read, and it’s true you know, cause it’s on the internet. Lol

You can’t hear turbines spinning from a mile away. Sorry, there is no argument there. The only sound they make is the blade cutting the wind. Ain’t it’s not that loud.

Wind energy makes up less than 20% of the power grid so why wind is getting all the blame is quite funny.

Wind farms average a 5 year pay off.

Wind farms receive subsidies, just like any other fuel/generation source.

Wind farms are also profitable enough that they are relying less on government subsidies every year.

Wind farms are not going anywhere


Now I’m not just taking up for wind because it makes my paycheck every week. The fact is, it works and it’s very profitable. It also creates THOUSANDS of very well paying jobs with significantly less down turns than oil and gas. Do I think it is the be all end all? Hell no. We NEED oil and gas. But alternatives are not a negative either.

It also doesn’t work when it gets cold.


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[Sleepy]

It also doesn’t work when it gets cold.


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It absolutely does. When they engineer them to handle it. I’ve watched plenty up north never miss a beat in sub zero temps and heavy frozen precipitation.

The problem we are experiencing is not due to wind energy, which makes up less that 20% of the power grid. It’s the fact that all types of generating units tripped Sunday night due to the meteorological conditions. That includes wind, coal, nuclear, and natural gas. They all failed at some point.

[Smoore12]

It also doesn’t work when it gets cold.


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And now we know that. Install heaters in the hubs and heater strips on the blades.

[Falling]

An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.

<-- first info i've seen ....there you have it folks, wow gas/coal really dropping the ball here. Dropping 30 gigawatts due to cold weather. We need to abandon oil and coal boys!!!! If we are going to blame Wind for dropping gigawatts we gotta be fair here and blame gas/coal as well. Guess we gotta figure out some new power supply since gas/coal failed so hard here, obviously it sucks. /s (just same silly argument you guys are making about wind)

[Artos]

In 2004 it snowed on Christmas eve & it was colder than what we experienced on this event...the rgv had some power issues but nothing like what we are dealing with now. Nor do I recall a state wide problem.

Same with 89 which was WAY WORSE!! I don't know what is going on with the grid but something changed. I have a neighbor down the street who looses power at dusk every night since sunday.

Our windmills are fine down here...something smells.

[Dale Moser]

And now we know that. Install heaters in the hubs and heater strips on the blades.

More money!!

I passed 100 wind turbines Friday and Saturday, and not 1 was turning.


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