The Energy Thread

[Green Monstah]

What do you mean by the natural gas plants not handling the cold weather? I'm also not sure what you mean by wind saving our bacon. If we didn't have the wind, we'd just build more plants.

When certain NG plants shut down or can't restart during cold winter months, wind generated electricity has been able to fill the gap to reduce the need for brownouts.

[Uncle Ted]

What do you mean by the natural gas plants not handling the cold weather? I'm also not sure what you mean by wind saving our bacon. If we didn't have the wind, we'd just build more plants.

http://www.powermag.com/prepare-your...er-operations/

Stupid freezing rain.

[Moliere]

What do you mean by the natural gas plants not handling the cold weather? I'm also not sure what you mean by wind saving our bacon. If we didn't have the wind, we'd just build more plants.

[Green Monstah]

I have a buddy who just defended his dissertation at Univ. of Texas. He helped develop a spray-on solar panel (for lack of a better term; I don't speak engineer). After working for five years as a production engineer for oil and gas companies, he went all-in for solar and started his doctoral work. He's now fairly convinced that we're several decades away (if not more) from solar being a viable source of the U.S.'s electricity, which is too bad. I don't mind all these windfarms in the God-forsaken parts of the flyover states, but when wind is needed most (summer), the wind doesn't blow like we need it. But when the natural gas plants can't handle the cold weather, wind often saves the grid's bacon (in Texas anyway).

[Uncle Ted]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...nst-renewables

What happened to Hydro between 2013 and 2015? Is that the California drought thing?