A couple key points about the Texas power grid 'failure' and subsequent media fake news fallout that are well worth noting IMO. The Independent Texas Grid managed by ERCOT might appear on the surface to only have been another 'Texas Independence' move (as is often the case), but don't overlook that its longer-term implications also ensured a market for in-state fossil fuel-sourced energy long after the rest of the country might have converted to more robust distributed grid that was heavily supplied by Renewables and could potentially supply cheaper power. The end result of this protectionist move was that Texas 'protected' itself from surplus energy on the larger national national grid. The similarity of this protectionism short-sightedness to the ICE Industry desperately trying to protect itself from the inevitable paradigm shift to EV's can't be overlooked. Texas, like every ICE mfg desperately clinging to it failed methods of operations through protectionist lobbying efforts is now very visibly holding a bag filled with its own makings IMO.
Taking that a step further, what Texas lost by not being connected to the larger Grid isn't much different than what GM lost when it killed its own forward-looking EV program in the 90's. The sun never stops shining and the wind never stops blowing on most of the otherwise relatively worthless land in North and West Texas. In much of those portions of the state the land could be literally covered with solar and wind farms in locations where it would have very little effect on Carbon Sequestration because there wasn't anything growing there to begin with (unlike Florida Grid Operators cutting down lush forest growth where large scale Carbon Sequestration was occurring to install solar farms.....instead of facilitating opportunities for residential and commercial solar applications on existing buildings). Texas could have rapidly developed into the Saudi Arabia of Wind and Solar with it's excess SuperEnergy surplus for the rest of the US using its own coffers filled with fossil fuel monies to fund that transition. But instead of looking outward Texas withdrew inward like GM and VW, and this week it is also paying the price..........pretty sad, Millhouse.
Here is a short 2 minute video describing ERCOT and the independent grid:
Secondly, and perhaps more hurtful to the rest of the country is the massive amount of fake news claiming that Renewables (wind) was largely to blame for this. And subsequent efforts by Top Texans to further link that failure to other Renewables - particularly battery failures. The timing of this Machiavellian politics effort to smear wind instead of the larger natural gas failures, and to include batteries and solar in that red-herring message just before next week's vote on the stimulus package that would require a shift to these energy sources is becoming a bit too transparent now even for some of those that are trying to kill the stimulus vote. And some of these efforts are also getting fact checked pretty hard as the clock is running out:
US conservatives falsely blame renewables for Texas storm outages
"
While some wind turbines did freeze, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as renewables, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference on Tuesday.
Frozen instruments at gas, coal and even nuclear power stations were among the main problems, Ercot director Dan Woodfin said, according to Bloomberg.
Despite evidence to the contrary, a variety of misleading claims spread on social media about renewable energy, with wind turbines and the Green New Deal on the receiving end of much of the attention.
A viral photo of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine was shared with claims it showed a “chemical” solution being applied to one of the massive wind generators in Texas. But the photo was taken in Sweden years ago, not in the US."
And of course this choice note:
Side note - After living on and off the grid across Alaska for a couple decades - sometimes in places without road access, and some of those places containing an endless supply of lake-fed hydroelectric power that I operated and maintained, it pains me to watch immense opportunities squandered by less than average people acting in the interest of the corporations that helped elect them. Alaska is a Texas show on steroids - a state with all the opportunities Norway had that is now in a massive self-inflicted budget crisis of Biblical proportions for acting in a manner similar to Texas instead. There is an old saying in Alaska - that it is the last place that an average person can excel in politics and business. This week Texas proved they still have a strong claim on that saying as well IMO.
