Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Global Warming Threatening Texas Power Grid Again?

I hope y'all don't have the same, or anywhere near the same, trouble as last year.

The guy in charge swore to Guv Abbot that everything would be ok

Thanks Theo. Carmageddon should be the biggest issue. It always is.

I'm in DFW. Started as freezing rain, then sleet, now snow. Never lost power. Should be good for the rest of the storm.

I have observed trees and powerlines withstand a lot of weight gain due to freezing rain. Multiple failures then occurred when the wind came up and started moving things around while they still supported all of that weight.

I now root heavily for the sun to come out and get some melting going before the winds of the next front hit the area!

We've got freezing rain up here (all day) today, but that's kind of a 2-3 times a Winter sort of normality.

So Theo, you are South of the snow line for this storm? I'm barely at the N edge of it today. Might see 2"-4" more today after the 10+ yesterday.

The problem Texas had last time wasn't due to the ice but the temperature causing extremely high demand on the power system. I'm in the power utility business and one issue we struggle with renewables is the fact you can't control output. When the sun isn't shinning or the wind isn't blowing you aren't generating enough to cover the demand. You can control coal, natural gas, and nuclear by bringing them on and offline as needed. When it is coldest the sun isn't out. I won't get too much in the weeds but if you over burden the power system if becomes unstable and the entire thing collapses. Same thing happened in the midwest back in 2003.

I remember some people tried to blame the coal plants by saying the coal piles froze. Coal piles don't freeze when they are being used. They froze because they were offline. I am sure the power companies made sure to have their fossil fuel plants up and running before the freeze hit. Until we get better battery technology to store energy this will remain an issue.

No snow so far - we got about 1/8" of straight ice this A.M., with little ice pellets since then (now about 1" deep). Traction is actually not bad.

Should get snow tonight, I believe.

Good here in NE Texas. Now that I have a standby generator I don't need it.....I guess that is a good thing.

My business is in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), and we work for a lot of fossil power plants, big and small.

Any 'green' energy provider that wants to enter into a contract to provide electricity to a city or municipality via wind or solar is essentially required to have a 100% fossil plant back up so they can still provide electricity when the wind isn't blowing, or when the sun isn't shining.

First time I've heard you discussing when the sun don't shine.

Not so good around here. Power goes out quite often for hours at a time due to old equipment failures…. And it was fifty years of no maintenance on power line clearing….. aught to be-against the law

I hate that Pat. Seems like maintaining the power lines and equipment would benefit their workers as well. It has to be safer maintaining equipment when there's no ice on the roads, and the temps are tolerable.