need pushback on the "Texas blackout caused by wind turbines" meme

[greenman3610]

here's some

Governor Greg Abbott explains that Houston Blackout caused by
failure of South Texas Nuclear plant

Power magazine:

https://www.powermag.com/texas-gov-declares-ercot-reform-emergency/

ERCOT said it lost about 34 GW of power supply as the cold temperatures forced both coal-fired and natural gas-fired plants offline. The cold also reduced the supply of natural gas to power plants, and caused wind turbines to freeze. Wind supplies the second-most amount of power to Texas customers, behind natural gas, and the turbines in Texas are not equipped with cold weather packages that would enable them to operate in extreme cold.

[demtenjeep]

1. I drove by 50+ wind turbines yesterday and today. They were ALL whirling near Okla border

they were all working just fine

[msongs]

2. they chose wind turbines not rated for xtra cold weather. probably saved a bit of $$ nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. There are wind turbines in Minnesota. The weather here is much colder than in TX

for longer periods of time, every year, but the wind turbines keep working. They will work fine if they are properly winterized and maintained. If TX chose not to do that (or didn't think they needed to), that doesn't mean there's something wrong with the technology itself.

[Generic Brad]

4. Their natural gas pipelines have frozen

That's a bigger problem than a few wind turbines.

[Hassler]

5. Blame free market capitalism, Texas' ERCOT system and

also the way Texas does everything--on the cheap and cutting corners.

[Hoyt]

6. Sounds like inadequately equipped wind turbines were PART of the problem.

Anyone who says, or believes, it’s the only cause is a fool.

It’s encouraging 23% or so of Texas’ power is from wind.

[Mariana]

10. But they weren't, not really.

The remaining wind turbines that did work generated more power than the predicted output for all of them.

[Hoyt]

13. Seems to me if half of them are incapacitated, it has an impact of 10% or so.

[Celerity]

16. 'is a fool.'

100 million American ReQMAGA and the penumbra just raised their hands

[struggle4progress]

7. "And by wind turbines, of course, what I mean is that we're not connected

to the national grid, so there's no back-up when the good old boy network screws up. And by wind turbines, I also mean we're cutting off electricity to homes so we can keep empty office buildings fully lit. And by wind turbines, what I mostly mean is that I think you poor freezing people are all stupid suckers who can go fuck yourselves"

[PurgedVoter]

8. Backup data from the Houston Chronicle

"One of the two reactors of the South Texas Nuclear Power Station in Matagorda County shut down, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity. On Monday, Unit 1 went offline cold weather-related issues in the plant’s feedwater system, said Vicki Rowland, lead of internal communications at STP Nuclear Operating Co."

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Power-tight-across-Texas-winter-storm-blackouts-15953686.php

If you read between the lines detailed in the article, there is a free market for power in Texas and a failure in market communications made the blackouts inevitable. Profit, of course was the ruling factor, not demand or need.

Countries that get a lot colder than Texas have no issue with wind turbines. Or issue was a lack of regulation and corporate greed ignoring long term issues.

So lots of things in Texas failed because they were run like businesses. Since corporations are created to protect the rich from liability and to make the rich richer, it is easy to see why someone without need and ruled only by greed would want to run government like a business. While the rich and greedy love the thought, those of us who cannot relocate on a whim and desire to leave a better world behind, running important things like a business is clearly wrong.

The idea of nuclear power is great, but in practice, I am not a fan of nuclear power. It is not cost effective and is no safer than the corporations and governments involved make it. There is no consistent end plan for the waste. It has a history of putting multi generational safety issues in the hands of individuals who look first at their bottom line and only think of the environment and the long term consequences when they are producing advertising. The history of cover up and clean up show no pattern of remorse or responsibility. As long as we have wealthy Republicans or their equivalent by any other name, nuclear power cannot be considered safe in the long term. Since nuclear plants can only get insurance from governments, smart minds looking at long term risks, agree with me entirely.

I love the idea of fusion and other alternative technology but we already have the solutions we need. At our current level of technology, with a proper infrastructure, simple energy storage, batteries, solar and wind can provide the power needed for a very nice future. As energy efficiency and technology improve, there will be less and less need for long term hazardous systems.

[Nevilledog]

9. "It is just a lie that wind turbines, 'green energy' are the root causes of the problems in Texas...

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
All In with Chris Hayes
@allinwithchris
"It is just a lie that wind turbines, 'green energy' are the root causes of the problems in Texas right now,” says @chrislhayes discussing the right wing attempt to turn power outages into a culture war.

“A lie pumped into millions of people's brains as they watch TV.”

[Mariana]

11. By now, anyone who says that is lying on purpose. nt.

[bullwinkle428]

12. Iowa is the #2 state in the U.S. for wind energy production. Want to know how cold it gets

in Iowa? I live here. Highs have been in the single digits, with a couple of days with highs below zero, for the last 10 days. No power issues anywhere within the state.

[dalton99a]

14. Abbott lies like Trump.

[Progressive Jones]

15. The GOP B.S. factory is working overtime again. nt