Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

[nwdiver]

What is GWh?
Gas causes global warming when it escapes as methane in the air and when it is burned.
Stupid to build gas generators. Better to invest the money in renewables and storage.
You can build as much renewable and storage as you need.

GWh is energy. My point is that if you have 100GW of gas generators that never produce a GWh there is no emissions. Even if Texas built wind, solar and storage at full tilt for ~20 years they still won't have the capacity to keep the lights on with renewables and storage alone if 2/21 repeats.

Makes a lot more sense to spend $10B on gas turbines then invest $190B those gas turbines saved you during a cold snap in more wind, solar and storage. The lights have to stay on and that's not the job of wind or solar.

 

[AndreP]

woah, since we did you become a proponent of NG? It's 100% renewables going forward using future capital. That's it. No excuses. NG is not a bridge fuel. Use what we have now and build out renewables at a faster pace.

Extremism vs Reality

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

What is GWh?
Gas causes global warming when it escapes as methane in the air and when it is burned.
Stupid to build gas generators. Better to invest the money in renewables and storage.
You can build as much renewable and storage as you need.

Between now and whenever there's enough renewables and storage to satisfy all the customer's electricity needs in all weather conditions (after 2030 at best), what do you propose the utilities do? curtail power?

 

[iPlug]

When I titled this thread I didn't mention gas for a reason.

GWh causes emissions not GW.

...Even if Texas built wind, solar and storage at full tilt for ~20 years they still won't have the capacity to keep the lights on with renewables and storage alone if 2/21 repeats...The lights have to stay on and that's not the job of wind or solar.

Looking at actual events, grid data, models, and economics, came to a similar conclusion a few years ago.

Edge cases will happen and even if its once every 5-10 years, the population will not tolerate those power outages. Small price to pay while we fight more impactful climate battles.

 

[eevee-fan]

Looking at actual events, grid data, models, and economics, came to a similar conclusion a few years ago.

Edge cases will happen and even if its once every 5-10 years, the population will not tolerate those power outages. Small price to pay while we fight more impactful climate battles.

Actually, it may be just fine in a electrified Texas, as in people with trucks that support V2G/V2H. There was an article talking about if all houses have rooftop solar, the outage would only be 2 days instead and no one would have died. Now imagine 100% rooftop solar + two V2G trucks in the garage. Maybe just 12 hours of outage.

Of course, the obvious fix would be to interconnect with one (or both) of the national grid. But in TX, losing 300 lives and billions in damaged infrastructure are totally reasonable in order to 'own the libs'.

 

[ggies07]

Makes a lot more sense to spend $10B on gas turbines then invest $190B those gas turbines saved you during a cold snap in more wind, solar and storage. The lights have to stay on and that's not the job of wind or solar.

Having it for backup is different than spending future capital on NEW gas plants, just keep the old ones for backup.

And if we are talking about the future, every home should have their own battery storage, so no one should be without power. Future NG plants is BS. Can't believe this talk in here.

 

[iPlug]

Having it for backup is different than spending future capital on NEW gas plants, just keep the old ones for backup.

Mostly agree.

I'm not commenting specifically about installing any new NG capacity. If sufficient capacity already exists to handle renewable grid edge cases, don't retire any more NG than to handle those edge cases nor build more. But there may be some grid regions where retiring coal and nuclear may leave some edge case holes that need NG to cover a renewable grid. Doubt that would be very common but as noted, not a big GWh fossil fuel game changer either way.

And if we are talking about the future, every home should have their own battery storage, so no one should be without power.

From a theoretical model, sure. From an economic model, currently no - but possibly in the future.

 

[nwdiver]

Having it for backup is different than spending future capital on NEW gas plants, just keep the old ones for backup.

And if we are talking about the future, every home should have their own battery storage, so no one should be without power. Future NG plants is BS. Can't believe this talk in here.

There's still a lot of coal and nuclear retirements to come. Wind and solar can easily displace the GWh but not so much the GW.

Even if every home had its own battery. 2/21 lasted 4 days. Should every home have ~200kWh of storage?

It's just math. What reduces CO2 fastest per $? That's why I'm not a fan of nuclear. Until we have enough surplus solar and wind the smarter choice is gas turbines over batteries for reliable capacity. If a GW of coal or nuclear was retired today an investment in storage to replace that GW would INCREASE emissions.... there just isn't enough surplus renewables to charge the battery. Should we just keep the coal or nuclear plant online? Even with nuclear it's going to make more sense to add 1GW of gas AND then use the annual savings to build more wind and solar.

 

[mspohr]

GWh is energy. My point is that if you have 100GW of gas generators that never produce a GWh there is no emissions. Even if Texas built wind, solar and storage at full tilt for ~20 years they still won't have the capacity to keep the lights on with renewables and storage alone if 2/21 repeats.

Makes a lot more sense to spend $10B on gas turbines then invest $190B those gas turbines saved you during a cold snap in more wind, solar and storage. The lights have to stay on and that's not the job of wind or solar.

The problem in Texas was that all of the gas plants froze up and failed.
I don't think more gas plants would have helped them.
Solar and wind plants kept operating.

 

[nwdiver]

The problem in Texas was that all of the gas plants froze up and failed.
I don't think more gas plants would have helped them.
Solar and wind plants kept operating.

Yeah... they need to invest in winterization of the gas supply. But the idea that we can go without gas turbines anytime soon OR not add GW of gas as GW of coal and nuclear come offline is ignoring reality. During 2/21 Coal provided 8GW. Wind was only 8GW briefly. Gas was 32GW and they needed another 10. So even if TX had ~10x more wind and solar that still would not have been enough. AND that's not accounting for the gas used directly for heating which ALSO needs to be electrified. Should TX have 10x more wind and solar? Absolutely. Are they going to have it by 2030? Probably not. Should they just accept $200B disasters until then?

 

[eevee-fan]

Yeah... they need to invest in winterization of the gas supply. But the idea that we can go without gas turbines anytime soon OR not add GW of gas as GW of coal and nuclear come offline is ignoring reality. During 2/21 Coal provided 8GW. Wind was only 8GW briefly. Gas was 32GW and they needed another 10. So even if TX had ~10x more wind and solar that still would not have been enough. AND that's not accounting for the gas used directly for heating which ALSO needs to be electrified. Should TX have 10x more wind and solar? Absolutely. Are they going to have it by 2030? Probably not. Should they just accept $200B disasters until then?

Too easy. Bigger systems are more stable. Stop being third world, fixed!

Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

What is GWh? Gas causes global warming when it escapes as methane in the air and when it is burned. Stupid to build gas generators. Better to invest the money in renewables and storage. You can build as much renewable and storage as you need. GWh is energy. My point is that if you have 100GW...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[nwdiver]

Too easy. Bigger systems are more stable. Stop being third world, fixed!

Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

What is GWh? Gas causes global warming when it escapes as methane in the air and when it is burned. Stupid to build gas generators. Better to invest the money in renewables and storage. You can build as much renewable and storage as you need. GWh is energy. My point is that if you have 100GW...

teslamotorsclub.com

Texas should connect to one of the larger regional grids. But they needed 70GW during 2/21. That 70GW had to come from somewhere and it's unlikely they could have fully met their demand without the assistance of gas turbines.

Each tool for its job...

Tool	Job
Renewables	Reduce CO2 emissions
Storage	Time-Shift surplus renewables
Gas Turbines	Keep the lights on

 

[mspohr]

Yeah... they need to invest in winterization of the gas supply. But the idea that we can go without gas turbines anytime soon OR not add GW of gas as GW of coal and nuclear come offline is ignoring reality. During 2/21 Coal provided 8GW. Wind was only 8GW briefly. Gas was 32GW and they needed another 10. So even if TX had ~10x more wind and solar that still would not have been enough. AND that's not accounting for the gas used directly for heating which ALSO needs to be electrified. Should TX have 10x more wind and solar? Absolutely. Are they going to have it by 2030? Probably not. Should they just accept $200B disasters until then?

Instead of building gas plants, they could build renewables and storage by 2030 and skip the whole stranded assets part

 

[mspohr]

Texas should connect to one of the larger regional grids. But they needed 70GW during 2/21. That 70GW had to come from somewhere and it's unlikely they could have fully met their demand without the assistance of gas turbines.

Each tool for its job...

Tool	Job
Renewables	Reduce CO2 emissions
Storage	Time-Shift surplus renewables
Gas Turbines	Keep the lights on

The reason the grid failed is that the gas plants failed. Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

 

[nwdiver]

Instead of building gas plants, they could build renewables and storage by 2030 and skip the whole stranded assets part

Winterization could be done in a year at a cost of ~$200M/yr in O&M. That would prevent a repeat of 2/21 or at least make it much less likely. For TX to weather another cold snap w/o gas they would need ~200GW of wind, 100GW of solar and ~2TWh of storage costing at least $500B. Should they do that? Sure. But how long is that going to take? Would it not be prudent to invest the $200M/yr in the meantime?

Over a 10 year period proper winterization is < 0.5% of the investment required in renewables. Isn't 0.5% worth it to prevent another 2/21 costing $200B in damages and 700 deaths?

Weather is fickle and it's only getting more fickle as CO2 levels rise. What happens when you get 6" of snow that kills 98% of solar and a low pressure system gets stuck over you (~no wind) for 10 days because of a wonky jet stream? How many TWh of batteries do you want to have to avoid having 70GW of gas turbine insurance? That's why I love gas turbines. They're cheap and they can sit around for years without complaining. 70GW of gas turbines would cost ~$70B and ~$1B/yr in O&M. Even if 2/21 happens once in 30 years it's worth it. Eventually they can even use green H2 for fuel.

 

[mspohr]

Winterization could be done in a year at a cost of ~$200M/yr in O&M. That would prevent a repeat of 2/21 or at least make it much less likely. For TX to weather another cold snap w/o gas they would need ~200GW of wind, 100GW of solar and ~2TWh of storage costing at least $500B. Should they do that? Sure. But how long is that going to take? Would it not be prudent to invest the $200M/yr in the meantime?

Over a 10 year period proper winterization is < 0.5% of the investment required in renewables. Isn't 0.5% worth it to prevent another 2/21 costing $200B in damages and 700 deaths?

It's already happening.

Texas led the country in new renewable energy projects last year

Republicans for decades have overseen the energy sector in Texas, which still ranks 10th in the country for fossil fuel consumption.

www.cnbc.com

Texas installed 7,352 megawatts of new wind, solar and energy installation projects in 2021, significantly outpacing California, which installed 2,697 megawatts of storage projects. Oklahoma, Florida and New Mexico were the other top producing states.

Texas also surpassed other states in the amount of storage it has under construction or in advanced development, reaching nearly 20,000 megawatts, followed by California at nearly 14,000 megawatt

Cumulative wind, solar and energy storage capacity hit 200,000 megawatts, which is equivalent to 200 gigawatts. Solar power was also up 19%, energy storage was up 196% and wind was down 25% compared to the previous year.

 

[nwdiver]

It's already happening.

Texas led the country in new renewable energy projects last year

Republicans for decades have overseen the energy sector in Texas, which still ranks 10th in the country for fossil fuel consumption.

www.cnbc.com

Texas installed 7,352 megawatts of new wind, solar and energy installation projects in 2021, significantly outpacing California, which installed 2,697 megawatts of storage projects. Oklahoma, Florida and New Mexico were the other top producing states.

Texas also surpassed other states in the amount of storage it has under construction or in advanced development, reaching nearly 20,000 megawatts, followed by California at nearly 14,000 megawatt

Cumulative wind, solar and energy storage capacity hit 200,000 megawatts, which is equivalent to 200 gigawatts. Solar power was also up 19%, energy storage was up 196% and wind was down 25% compared to the previous year.

2% of the way there By 2070 TX can EASILY handle a 2/21 type event with no gas reserves. What do they do between now and then? Even if they accelerate and can get there by 2030 should they just roll the dice for 8 years? Or spend a few billion to ensure GW are there when GW are needed?

 

[eevee-fan]

The reason the grid failed is that the gas plants failed. Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

And they did that for this year. Fortunately, the freeze was not as cold nor as long, basically got lucky.

BTW, argument for renewable is playing out, problem is supply.

CNBC: Texas led the country in new renewable energy projects last year.

Texas led the country in new renewable energy projects last year

Republicans for decades have overseen the energy sector in Texas, which still ranks 10th in the country for fossil fuel consumption.

www.cnbc.com

 

[eevee-fan]

Texas should connect to one of the larger regional grids. But they needed 70GW during 2/21. That 70GW had to come from somewhere and it's unlikely they could have fully met their demand without the assistance of gas turbines.

Each tool for its job...

Tool	Job
Renewables	Reduce CO2 emissions
Storage	Time-Shift surplus renewables
Gas Turbines	Keep the lights on

The biggest issue is people dying. That would have been averted, even with short periods of outages. The cold is regional, not the whole US. Plus, wind turbine up north are winterized, so no drop to 0.

 

[nwdiver]

The biggest issue is people dying. That would have been averted, even with short periods of outages. The cold is regional, not the whole US. Plus, wind turbine up north are winterized, so no drop to 0.

The flexible capacity needs to be there. It's like insurance. 1GW of gas turbines costs ~$15M/yr to keep operational IIRC. That's nothing compared to the cost of needing 1GW and not having it available. And yeah... obviously the fuel supply needs to be just as available.