Politics US Edition (2021-vol 2)

[BruceVC]

22 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

To meet the China challenge, the US and Europe must look beyond the WTO (msn.com)

The Hill is now a terrible website that's conservative and neoliberal AS F**********. 

@BruceVC and @Gorth should love it.

Great article and accurate to, to quote from the EU in the link

The Chinese economic system, with its unique melding of public, private and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) resources to advance industrial policy objectives, is incompatible with the WTO norms of transparency, non-discrimination, reciprocity and market orientation. This hard truth needs to be recognized.

Very true 

 

 

[Hurlshort]

But guys, there was a picture of a frozen windmill, so clearly DP is correct.

[Darkpriest]

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

Haha. So "data" from market watch and financial types to counter official data from ERCOT (you know, the bunch ****ing running Texas' power grid) and the US Energy Information Administration? Much financial. Such informational, wow.

I mean, it's not just that some random financial douchebags are being misleading with those charts -- the ~50% wind drop figure is from feb 9, before the storm even started. You can clearly (to the extent the pictures allow) see that there are similar decreases before, storm or no storm -- this is why the nominal reliable capacity for wind is rated by ERCOT at less than 40%, while gas is supposed to be 100% reliable. Or at least I'm guessing those are the dates in the charts because they are so tiny that it's hard to tell. I'm sure that's not at all on purpose in an effort to obfuscate and mislead, no. It's just an unfortunate side effect from financial types these days not being able to afford more than 56k dial-up so clearer images are out of the question.

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/197379/CapacityDemandandReservesReport_Dec2020.pdf

No, "wind power failed to deliver it’s expected power – almost 40% of expected power" is ~false~ because a) only coastal wind energy production was rated at ~40% (with wind from the Panhandle and Other regions being rated substantially lower than that), and b) that figure is not a fraction of the total production but rather a fraction of the nominal total wind power generation in Texas. ERCOT has wind and solar classified as "intermittent renewable", because they are aware of the fact that they are not fully dependable. Which is why, on the other hand, gas is 100% -- not because Texas gets 100% of its power from gas, but because it's supposed to be 100% dependable and not fail when it's cold, cloudy, or not windy enough. 

So no, Texas' problems weren't related to wind farms failing in any way any non-financial type with excessive positions in fossils could possibly conceive. Sean Hannity was lying, Greg Abbott was lying, and you -- you are very much lying. What's funny is that Abbot at least attempted to clarify his comments to Hannity. But here you are, doubling down on the lies.

I like your confirmation bias. It's consistent and can be relied upon. 

In essence, we are saying the same. 

1) Wind power in Texas was unreliable, and could not produce sufficient auxiliary power to reduce strain on the natgas sources during the increased demand at the time of freezing weather

2) Nat gas failed to provide electricity within its technical capacity due to: a) spike in demand, b) insufficient support from renewables, c) failure of gas pumping infrustructure in cold weather. 

Both of which ultimately come to a point about grid infrustructure being vulnerable to cold weather due to lack of proper investment in "winterization" 

Technology wise, gas, oil and coal infrustructure should be more resistant to cold weather and you can see in other countries that renewables fail at certain negative temperature and increased snowfall levels due to their nature of producing power - they need unobscured space and minimum waste of energy in their production process. "winterization" had also its efficiency limits. 

 

[Azdeus]

4 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Out of curiosity, @Azdeus, would you know, what is the temperature, where the anti-icing tech is failing anyway? Is it temp and moisture, or exposure time, or both? 

I don't have specifics, no. But I do know this, most of our major windparks are in the far north of Sweden, and temperatures average -10C or thereabout, and the only failed windturbine that I've heard of was one that collapsed due to construction errors. You do get a loss of efficiency, but they've all been working.

2 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

@BruceVC even in Sweden they had to switch to non-green energy...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-19/why-even-pristine-sweden-struggles-with-green-energy-quicktake

Yes, but to be fair, that is also because almost all of our major green energy, dams and windfarms are in the north of Sweden, and we can't get that power down south. Moving power 1000 miles it's like getting hydro and windpower from North Dakota down to texas. It has little to do with temperatures itself, it's not like the windturbines failed because it was cold. They did fail a bit in that, down south, there weren't much wind to speak of at all.

 

What is going to be a real problem though is that industries like LKAB and SSAB want to move away from processes with loads of CO2 releases to more environmentally friendly alternatives based on electricity, and they are going to need about 30% of what is right now the total output of Sweden if I remember the article correctly.

Since I can't read the article because it's paywalled, I don't know what they really said there.

[Zoraptor]

38 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

In essence, we are saying the same. 

1) Wind power in Texas was unreliable, and could not produce sufficient auxiliary power to reduce strain on the natgas sources during the increased demand at the time of freezing weather

2) Nat gas failed to provide electricity within its technical capacity due to: a) spike in demand, b) insufficient support from renewables, c) failure of gas pumping infrustructure in cold weather.

You're not saying the same thing.

1) 'Strain' on natgas supply was not the problem, it physically freezing and reducing supply was. Even if wind power had been at 100% nominal power- which no one should be relying on- it would not and could not make up that difference. Wind power only reduced first, it had no influence on natgas power dropping. They wouldn't have had Scotty shouting down the lines about not being able to give it more or his natgas plant'll blow cap'n, they'd know it can produce x MW of power- and you cannot run the turbines out of spec.

2) a,b are conflation, at best. You can make the exact reverse argument- renewables only 'failed' because the natgas electricity that was meant to balance loads failed to materialise- to blame natgas instead. Indeed, since it's well known that supply from wind and solar especially are intermittent natgas and other spot energies are fundamentally intended to smooth out and increase/ decrease (maintain) supply as renewables come on/offline; ie such an argument actually shows that it was natgas that failed. (c) is the ultimate reason for natgas electricity failing.

Quote

Both of which ultimately come to a point about grid infrustructure being vulnerable to cold weather due to lack of proper investment in "winterization"

They aren't grid infrastructure technically, the grid infrastructure isn't energy production but the lines and transformers that move the energy*. I'd suspect rather a lot of that failed too due to ice on lines and possibly even transformers freezing**. But that had nothing to do with renewables, since natgas was also effected, and it was the one that was meant to be able to step up output for balancing purposes. If natgas power had been maintained or risen the shortage could probably have been largely mitigated to relatively short lived rolling black outs, in general, and probably more general blackouts in rural areas as lines physically failed.

*eg we have a ~600MW hydro power plant here that is unconnected to the grid as it produces power exclusively for an aluminium smelter. Which is great, since Comalco loves to threaten to shut down that smelter immediately before elections as an attempt to gouge better prices from its supplier.

**which shouldn't happen if they have current since transforming generates a decent amount of heat (indeed, failure to remove the heat is a frequent cause of failure), but does happen if they're not supplied with power.

[213374U]

Zor beat me to the punch. Thank the flying spaghetti monster for real-time notifications.

I like that you're name dropping behavioral science and confirmation bias and ****. Makes you look real smart-like. But the real kicker is that you're doing it while showing your own confirmation bias by parroting some ZH nonsense when data from an org that can spell shows that, in this case, renewables weren't the problem and they couldn't have been because they weren't relied on to pick up the slack -- gas was.

It's really great because I'm not even a huge fan of wind myself and have spoken against excessive enthusiasm about renewables here in the past. "Confirmation bias"... heh.

[Guard Dog]

I've been reading articles about the five figure power bills some folks are getting. I felt sorry for them until I read the circumstances. They are buying into a wholesale electric co-op where the price per kWh is tied to the energy production price. Most of the time it's a pretty good deal but when the capacity is over extended due to shortage those customers got a straight up bent over the table f-----g. Worst part is the wholesalers warrened them it was coming. Plus it's spelled out in the contract. Why on earth would anyone sign a contract to buy a widget when the costs of that widget are not fixed by the contract? It's like buying a variable rate mortgage. It's madness. You have no clue what price you are going to pay and no way to NOT pay it once it's used. I have to say that does lessen my sympathy for them because, as we said in the Marines, USMC = U Signed the Motherf-----g Contract. 

[Raithe]

 

[ComradeYellow]

Nearly HALF of Republicans would ditch their party for Trump and only 27% would remain GOP-loyal, poll finds — RT USA News

Oh God that would be the sweetest thing ever for a 3rd party movement, Trump splitting the right with his own party would hand the election to the progressives handedly.  The Orange Mango would be the most accidental hero in American history if he did that.  Do it Trump, DO IT!

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, Guard Dog said:

I've been reading articles about the five figure power bills some folks are getting. I felt sorry for them until I read the circumstances. They are buying into a wholesale electric co-op where the price per kWh is tied to the energy production price. Most of the time it's a pretty good deal but when the capacity is over extended due to shortage those customers got a straight up bent over the table f-----g. Worst part is the wholesalers warrened them it was coming. Plus it's spelled out in the contract. Why on earth would anyone sign a contract to buy a widget when the costs of that widget are not fixed by the contract? It's like buying a variable rate mortgage. It's madness. You have no clue what price you are going to pay and no way to NOT pay it once it's used. I have to say that does lessen my sympathy for them because, as we said in the Marines, USMC = U Signed the Motherf-----g Contract. 

You'll love this... some Texan Republican from Raithe's post:

Adding insult to injury, many residents also received historically high energy bills as a result of the extreme weather — which McCaul said federal funds will help reimburse customers for.

Damn commie Texans.

[Guard Dog]

2 hours ago, Gorth said:

You'll love this... some Texan Republican from Raithe's post:

Adding insult to injury, many residents also received historically high energy bills as a result of the extreme weather — which McCaul said federal funds will help reimburse customers for.

Damn commie Texans.

That small government go-it-alone attitude is hard to keep up when they start handing other people’s money out isn’t it?

speaking of which I do believe I’m eligible for unemployment in two weeks!

[Hurlshort]

3 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

I've been reading articles about the five figure power bills some folks are getting. I felt sorry for them until I read the circumstances. They are buying into a wholesale electric co-op where the price per kWh is tied to the energy production price. Most of the time it's a pretty good deal but when the capacity is over extended due to shortage those customers got a straight up bent over the table f-----g. Worst part is the wholesalers warrened them it was coming. Plus it's spelled out in the contract. Why on earth would anyone sign a contract to buy a widget when the costs of that widget are not fixed by the contract? It's like buying a variable rate mortgage. It's madness. You have no clue what price you are going to pay and no way to NOT pay it once it's used. I have to say that does lessen my sympathy for them because, as we said in the Marines, USMC = U Signed the Motherf-----g Contract. 

Do they have options on this stuff? I know trying to read my pg&e bill is way above my paygrade. They recently changed my plan to a different tier automatically. I had to sign stuff to get it back to what it was before. The point is most typical consumers are not experts in this, and they really shouldnt need to be. There should be reasonable limits on the way a utitliy comapny can fleece you, given it is something we all rely on.

[Gorth]

But that wouldn't be in the spirit of a free and unregulated market economy

 

Edit: I know it doesn't apply to you Hurlshot, but there are (non US) people here on these forums who seems very keen on that kind of thing

[Guard Dog]

2 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

Do they have options on this stuff? I know trying to read my pg&e bill is way above my paygrade. They recently changed my plan to a different tier automatically. I had to sign stuff to get it back to what it was before. The point is most typical consumers are not experts in this, and they really shouldnt need to be. There should be reasonable limits on the way a utitliy comapny can fleece you, given it is something we all rely on.

Don't know. But speaking for myself I have nine real estate lease contracts including one that is a limited partnership between three land owners and another in a small business and you better believe I have a real estate lawyer going over every clause before I agree to any of it. Even the ones I control. I figure I'd rather pay her a few hundred bucks now to keep me out of trouble than a few thousand later to get me out a jam because I didn't have an expert read the contract. 

At the end of the day it's all about contracts. You only get what you agreed to buy and pay for what you agreed to pay for. When you buy a car you sign a contract with the lien holder. You agree on the payment, interest and term as well as extras and default provisions, insurance responsibility, etc. It's all in there and they can't decide to jack up the interest later unless that is in the contract. This deal is nuts. They are agreeing to a variable price per kWh that can actually go up AFTER you have use it. That's like Outback calling you the next day and saying the price of the steak you had last night has gone up since you left the restaurant, please remit! Maybe this kind of service should not be allowed. But it is and I wonder why anyone would take that deal.

But I also wonder why people buy timeshares for much the same reason. 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Guard Dog

[BruceVC]

7 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

I've been reading articles about the five figure power bills some folks are getting. I felt sorry for them until I read the circumstances. They are buying into a wholesale electric co-op where the price per kWh is tied to the energy production price. Most of the time it's a pretty good deal but when the capacity is over extended due to shortage those customers got a straight up bent over the table f-----g. Worst part is the wholesalers warrened them it was coming. Plus it's spelled out in the contract. Why on earth would anyone sign a contract to buy a widget when the costs of that widget are not fixed by the contract? It's like buying a variable rate mortgage. It's madness. You have no clue what price you are going to pay and no way to NOT pay it once it's used. I have to say that does lessen my sympathy for them because, as we said in the Marines, USMC = U Signed the Motherf-----g Contract. 

I also found this strange, I pay a fixed price per kWh and thats how I like it 

But what happened in Texas that has devastated people is someone who use to $900\month now was billed $16,000 and the debit can be  automatic so it literally wipes  out their savings because they were one of those Texans who had some electricity during the cold weather so they get billed automatically

This type of energy usage system was not designed for that type of egregious billing...irrespective of the reason because of the direct impact to customers 

[BruceVC]

3 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

Do they have options on this stuff? I know trying to read my pg&e bill is way above my paygrade. They recently changed my plan to a different tier automatically. I had to sign stuff to get it back to what it was before. The point is most typical consumers are not experts in this, and they really shouldnt need to be. There should be reasonable limits on the way a utitliy comapny can fleece you, given it is something we all rely on.

Not understanding a contract, signing  a contract and complaining later about the contract isnt really a justifiable reason to blame the outcome of the contract

Sorry Hurlshot....thats life 

[Darkpriest]

10 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

You're not saying the same thing.

1) 'Strain' on natgas supply was not the problem, it physically freezing and reducing supply was. Even if wind power had been at 100% nominal power- which no one should be relying on- it would not and could not make up that difference. Wind power only reduced first, it had no influence on natgas power dropping. They wouldn't have had Scotty shouting down the lines about not being able to give it more or his natgas plant'll blow cap'n, they'd know it can produce x MW of power- and you cannot run the turbines out of spec.

2) a,b are conflation, at best. You can make the exact reverse argument- renewables only 'failed' because the natgas electricity that was meant to balance loads failed to materialise- to blame natgas instead. Indeed, since it's well known that supply from wind and solar especially are intermittent natgas and other spot energies are fundamentally intended to smooth out and increase/ decrease (maintain) supply as renewables come on/offline; ie such an argument actually shows that it was natgas that failed. (c) is the ultimate reason for natgas electricity failing.

They aren't grid infrastructure technically, the grid infrastructure isn't energy production but the lines and transformers that move the energy*. I'd suspect rather a lot of that failed too due to ice on lines and possibly even transformers freezing**. But that had nothing to do with renewables, since natgas was also effected, and it was the one that was meant to be able to step up output for balancing purposes. If natgas power had been maintained or risen the shortage could probably have been largely mitigated to relatively short lived rolling black outs, in general, and probably more general blackouts in rural areas as lines physically failed.

*eg we have a ~600MW hydro power plant here that is unconnected to the grid as it produces power exclusively for an aluminium smelter. Which is great, since Comalco loves to threaten to shut down that smelter immediately before elections as an attempt to gouge better prices from its supplier.

**which shouldn't happen if they have current since transforming generates a decent amount of heat (indeed, failure to remove the heat is a frequent cause of failure), but does happen if they're not supplied with power.

On one hand, you could say that's the explanation, then however the question stands, why to invest i wind and alternatives at all if they cannot support the grid in harsh conditions, when another part is failing? 

 

To be more precise, why spend effort and resources on building something faulty, instead of putting the same resources to secure something less faulty? 

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Darkpriest

[BruceVC]

29 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

On one hand, you could say that's the explanation, then however the question stands, why to invest i wind and alternatives at all if they cannot support the grid in harsh conditions, when another part is failing? 

 

To be more precise, why spend effort and resources on building something faulty, instead of putting the same resources to secure something less faulty? 

 

Yes you raise a valid point, our societies shouldn't waste resources and money ever on investments that are inferior to others unless their are legitimate reasons like budgetary restraints 

But thats not what happened here, Texas decided years ago to not rely on the Federal energy grid. They are about 90 % off the national grid but they didnt " winterize", which means their energy infrastructure wasn't prepared for harsh cold, so when  this storm struck the local energy providers were found to be badly prepared on numerous levels 

So no one built something faulty, what they built wasn't  designed for this type of very rare arctic wind which dropped temperature  to levels unseen in living memory 

[Zoraptor]

53 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

On one hand, you could say that's the explanation, then however the question stands, why to invest i wind and alternatives at all if they cannot support the grid in harsh conditions, when another part is failing? 

To be more precise, why spend effort and resources on building something faulty, instead of putting the same resources to secure something less faulty?

You invest because there's zero input costs since wind and sun is free, with the knowledge that if you don't have wind or sun you need something else or some way to store the power excess from the renewables. Coal/ nuclear/ gas all cost ongoing money to supply and in nuclear's gas remove the fuel required.

Then you have the question of what is 'less faulty'. Everyone knows what the limitations of renewables are- solar needs sun, wind needs wind, hydro needs water and a gradient etc- and the 'reliable' back stop of natural gas option was itself unreliable in this case due to, well, needing natural gas. Coal needs coal and if you don't have a ready supply then is expensive when gas is right there, nuclear costs a massive amount for initial expense and tends to supply GW levels so if you don't have the habitual demand rapidly becomes a white elephant that can't make back its investment.

[Elerond]

Building phase is biggest risk in nuclear power.

Because nuclear power plants are complex to build and they are heavily regulated and fault tolerance is almost zero, which can cause massive delays in building them.

Like for example here they build new nuclear power plant that starts to operate this year finally (in February 2022 it will be able to produce its full capacity 1600 MW), originally it was scheduled to start operating in 2009, but because of multiple issues it has been delayed for 12 years (project started in 2000, so 21 years to start to finish) and it estimated building cost has increased from 3.2 billion euros to 8.5 billion euros and it delay has caused additional billions of euros lose in forms of needing to buy electricity and heath from alternative sources

During that 21 years that it has took to build that power plant they have also build wind power plants that produce 2548 MW with fraction of cost of that nuclear power plant (about 1.5 billion euros). Over 90% of those wind power plants have been build in past 5 years. And there are plans to build 18.5 GW more wind power plants to land and 3 GW to sea in next two decades.

So even though nuclear power is much more reliable than wind power, it is easy to out produce nuclear power with wind power and still make more profit from it as long as you are willing to live with the noise and landscape discomfort caused that wind power plants cause.

[BruceVC]

24 minutes ago, Elerond said:

Building phase is biggest risk in nuclear power.

Because nuclear power plants are complex to build and they are heavily regulated and fault tolerance is almost zero, which can cause massive delays in building them.

Like for example here they build new nuclear power plant that starts to operate this year finally (in February 2022 it will be able to produce its full capacity 1600 MW), originally it was scheduled to start operating in 2009, but because of multiple issues it has been delayed for 12 years (project started in 2000, so 21 years to start to finish) and it estimated building cost has increased from 3.2 billion euros to 8.5 billion euros and it delay has caused additional billions of euros lose in forms of needing to buy electricity and heath from alternative sources

During that 21 years that it has took to build that power plant they have also build wind power plants that produce 2548 MW with fraction of cost of that nuclear power plant (about 1.5 billion euros). Over 90% of those wind power plants have been build in past 5 years. And there are plans to build 18.5 GW more wind power plants to land and 3 GW to sea in next two decades.

So even though nuclear power is much more reliable than wind power, it is easy to out produce nuclear power with wind power and still make more profit from it as long as you are willing to live with the noise and landscape discomfort caused that wind power plants cause.

That is scary the cost of your nuclear station....and if a country like Finland ,which is considered very organized and has  relatively little corruption compared to many other countries , created such project cost creep I shudder to think what the cost and delays would be in SA where we battle with huge amounts of corruption mostly in the public sector which a nuclear station would more than likely be controlled by ...it really scares me 

[Elerond]

3 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

That is scary the cost of your nuclear station....and if a country like Finland ,which is considered very organized and has  relatively little corruption compared to many other countries , created such project cost creep I shudder to think what the cost and delays would be in SA where we battle with huge amounts of corruption mostly in the public sector which a nuclear station would more than likely be controlled by ...it really scares me 

It is build by French company using Polish workers

[BruceVC]

22 minutes ago, Elerond said:

It is build by French company using Polish workers

Yes but under the laws of Finland, so the French company had to adhere to Finnish regulations around not being corrupt and similar things 

[Elerond]

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Yes but under the laws of Finland, so the French company had to adhere to Finnish regulations around not being corrupt and similar things 

That is why it is 12 years late, they have failed to starting from mixing cement and welds adhere Finnish standards. Also Areva seem to though that 2009 deadline was more guideline and actual deadline, but they have had quite harsh lesson both Finnish standards and that deadlines in contracts are actual deadlines, as because of that delay all the extra building cost over that original 3.2 billion comes Areva's pocket. Meaning that Areva is paying over 5.3 billion euros from their own pocket to build that plant.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Elerond

[BruceVC]

4 minutes ago, Elerond said:

That is why it is 12 years late, they have failed to make starting from cement and welds adhere Finnish standards. Also Areva seem to though that 2009 deadline was more guideline and actual deadline, but they have had quite harsh lesson both Finnish standards and that deadlines in contracts are actual deadlines, as because of that delay all the extra building cost over that original 3.2 billion comes Areva's pocket. Meaning that Areva is paying over 5.3 billion euros from their own pocket to build that plant.

Thats good to know....that French company must be very unhappy with the Finnish authorities for getting them to pay for the delays ?

Elerond if I was you I would avoid going to France for the next 15-20 years...just lets things cool down for a while