I just assumed most people in Texas have heat pumps- AC in the summer and minimal heating in the winter when needed. When the entire state gets a deep freeze, everybody is running those heat pumps non-stop, and the generation capacity simply wasn’t there. i.e. coal or natural gas plants have some turbines offline, etc.,. in the winter because historically power use is much much less. The odd thing is its been days now, those plants should be able to ramp back up to capacity - but clearly they haven’t. Blaming this on wind turbines is BS. In fact, if it weren’t for so many people in Texas with grid-tie solar systems, the situation would be even worse. 

And of course, the real issue is Texas’ closed grid - any other state could pull in more power from neighbors.

-John

On Feb 15, 2021, at 11:34 PM, Cory Sell via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:

Ercot has already released actual documentation of the outputs. Wind is NOT the biggest loss here. Even if wind was operating at 100% capacity, we’d be in the same boat due to gas and fossil fuel-related generation being decimated. Estimated 4GW lost for wind doesn’t make up for the 30GW+ estimated being lost from fossil fuels. 

I only interject because people are already pointing their fingers at renewables being the cause here and trying to pawn off the blame to wind/solar to further their agendas to reduce renewable energy R&D and adoption. Sure, wind isn’t perfect, but looks like solution relied on failed in a massive way.

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On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 10:17 PM, Robert Jacobs <rjacobs@pslightwave.com> wrote:
How about letting us Texans have more natural gas power plants or even let the gas be delivered to the plants we have so they can provide more power in an emergency. Did not help that 20% of our power is now wind which of course in an ice storm like we are having is shut off... Lots of issues and plenty of politics involved here..

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-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+rjacobs=pslightwave.com@nanog.org> On Behalf Of Mark Tinka
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2021 10:06 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Texas internet connectivity declining due to blackouts



On 2/16/21 04:14, Sean Donelan wrote:
>
> Poweroutage.us posted a terrific map, showing the jurisdictional
> borders of the Texas power outages versus the storm related power
> outages elsewhere in the country.
>
> https://twitter.com/PowerOutage_us/status/1361493394070118402
>
>
> Sometimes infrastructure planning failures are not due to "natural
> hazards."

I suppose having some kind of home backup solution wouldn't be too bad right now, even though you may still not get access to services. But at least, you can brew some coffee, and charge your pulse oximetre.

Mark.