The week
The power grid in Texas has mostly failed due to natural gas. Republicans blame wind turbines.
As Texas entered its third night on Tuesday with freezing temperatures and 3.3 million customers without electricity, the operator of the state’s unique power network, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), encouraged Texans who still have electricity to turn on lights. turn off. disconnect appliances and turn off the thermostat. People without power have found refuge elsewhere, if they could, or they sometimes use lethal means to generate heat. Texas government Greg Abbott (R) and state lawmakers have launched an investigation – and Abbott and other prominent GOP politicians have blamed frozen wind turbines and other renewable energy sources for the failures of the Texas power grid. Abbott, Texas’s governor, blames solar power and wind for the eclipses in his state, saying ‘this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States’ pic.twitter.com/YfVwa3YRZQ – Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) February 17, 2021 “Some turbines have indeed frozen – although Greenland and other northern outposts are able to keep them going through the winter,” reports The Washington Post. “But wind accounts for only 10 percent of the power generated in Texas during the winter,” and the losses associated with thermal plants mostly have “depending on natural gas a factor of five or six caused by frozen wind turbines.” According to ERCOT, the generation of wind power actually exceeds the projections. One nuclear reactor and several coal-fired plants are offline, but “Texas is a gas state,” Michael Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas, told The Texas Tribune. And ‘gas is currently missing in the most spectacular way.’ Instruments and other components at gas-fired power plants froze ice, and ‘according to some estimates, almost half of the state’s natural gas production came to a standstill due to extremely low temperatures’, as electric pumps lost power and uninsulated pipelines and gas wells frozen, reports the Tribune. After a winter storm in 2011 knocked out power to about 3 million Texans, a federal report warned Texas that the same network debacle would happen again if it did not adequately erode its power infrastructure and fuel reserves – reminding Texas that ‘many of those the same warnings were issued after similar disappearances 22 years earlier and were not heeded, “reports The Associated Press.” Upgrades were made after the 2011 winter storm, “notes The Texas Tribune, but” many generators from Texas have not yet more investments made to prevent equipment outages. “More stories from theweek.com More Republicans blame Biden for the Capitol riot than Trump’s fault. Texas electricity market architect says he works as planned Critics compare it to late Soviet Russia 7 funny funny cartoons about Republicans’ accused cowardice