Texas situation in terms of an 18650

According to ercot, on Feb 15 they were down 34GW of generation (4 gig of which was frozen wind turbines.) of 82GW possible. To put a flashlight context to the situation…

Let’s say that an 18650 has 12.95 Wh of power. Texas has about 29,000,000 people. What would it take to replace the 34GW for one hour? It would take about 90 cells per person. That’s just what is down. That’s just one hour!

I am confused as to Why power companies are under capacity this badly.
Why are the non-green plants not at capacity ?

lpg production is down due to the new executive order making price go up,and even their lpg infrastructure was freezing.

and some numbers from a non-neutral 3rd party

my shitty political opinion: nuclear doesnt freeze

Nuclear is very eco-friendly as long as it’s managed correctly. I wouldn’t like to live near a plant managed by Mr. Burns and manned by Homer Simpson.

Sounds like they’re overdue for an infrastructure upgrade. Wouldn’t the emergency negate the executive order? You’d think by now a state of emergency would’ve countermanded that order. We got a pretty quick upgrade after hurricane sandy…new telephone poles! They even check them regularly to make sure they’re stable and don’t contain rot.
You’d think the fossil fuel capital of the USA would have been a step ahead of the game

The ones working are running at full.

Texas relies heavily on gas though and due to safety concerns, freezing gas wells and freezing pipelines many of the gas plants can’t get enough fuel or cannot operate.

Nuclear is not the holy solution to all though. They have the same problem really, some of the nuclear plants had to shut down already because the water pipes for cooling and energy generating are freezing.

Generally the Texas energy infrastructure is not prepared to handle the extreme cold weather. Gridlines and power distribution are as much affected as power generation. The state was just not ready for the freezing.

“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.”

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Power-tight-across-Texas-winter-storm-blackouts-15953686.php#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20two%20reactors,2%2C700%20megawatts%20of%20generating%20capacity.

If it makes you feel better to blame Biden have fun. Just don’t expect it to have any basis in reality. Perhaps in 5 or 10 years or so whatever actions he takes or doesn’t take will have some effect. He has nothing whatsoever to do with the current situation. Blaming him is as accurate as saying that nuclear doesn’t freeze when an actual nuclear plant is offline because it did freeze.

You may want to lookup ERCOT. Texas does not want the feds involved in their energy. They are unique in the US in that they have their own state power grid and are not interconnected nearly as much as every place else in the lower 48.

They don’t need batteries they need a wood stove.

Everyone should have a SHTF backup heat source no matter where they live. My brother is freezing his arse off in San Antonio.

Not a problem in Michigan. 22% of the power comes from nuclear plants. We have freezing weather roughly 5 months out of the year, and they never shut down from cold weather. They must do something different.

All of these power sources are available in states that are far colder. Lack of preparation, arrogance to not connect to n ational grid, and no regulation is what is happening in Texas.

The problem with “nuculer” power is that the only plants authorised for construction in the US are still using 1950s tek. “Tried and proven” is the name of the game. By the same logic, we should still be driving around in horse-drawn buggies, as they’ve been “tried and proven” forever…

IFR, Integral Fast Reactor. That’s the future. Could burn as fuel all the “waste” that’s being canned up and buried in salt mines. Know what happens when an IFR loses coolant? It just safely fizzles out on its own. No “China Syndrome”, no meltdown.

At least CANDU is a step in the right direction, but (afaicr) only Canada is dabbling with it.

Agreed. We need to look at SMRs ( small modular reactors) also.
I wonder what computers or medicine would be like without research and innovation. Stagnation doesn’t work.

I am going to speculate here because I dont have first hand knowledge, but I have a feeling the freezing temperatures are less of a culprit than the freezing rain knocking out power lines whitch in turn “take out” the power plant. (You cant shove electricity into downed lines untill theyve been repaired) Ive seen it in Arkansas. January 2008 and there was no power for hundreds of miles in radius. People freezing in their homes. My own apartment had no heat, had to stay in my boss’s rv which had propane thankfully.

Many of the lines were taken out by falling trees, but a lot were also brought down by just the shear weight of ice on the lines. Not much you can do about that.

Alot of times in the news, accuacy of actual events takes back seat to sensationalism. I feel this may be the case here, where nobody bothers to report on the real cause of the power outages because it doesnt fit the narrative.

Lots of reasons. Nuke plant was frozen water intake issues. Frozen sensors, low gas pressure, etc. If downed lines were part of it, I am surprised that they could forecast that. They were demanding people shed load due to supply disruptions. Downed lines is the opposite problem.

When the tree keeled over and took out the powerlines on my block, it was like a fireworx display of pretty orange and blue sparks, even through my blackout(!!) drapes. Insulation on the lines was melting and dripping off (got pix the next day). The cables didn’t just have to be spliced back together, but the entire length of cables restrung from one end of the block to the other.

When lines keel over and slap against one another or touch ground, they’ll heat up to red like a big honkin’ toaster. Hell, I’ve seen it.

So ironically, downed lines and cutting off power doesn’t save electricity, but crowbars it into almost a dead short.

Sounds too good to be true. BTW, what ever happened to “too cheap to even meter”? The decommissioning costs of the current plants are humongous. Three Mile Island passed them on to the tax payers recently which is part of the decaying infrastructure problem with our grid. Power companies are more worried about paying dividends and maintaining stock prices. Get out and clear the right of ways. Upgrade lines.

I wish I still had a rock I picked up while walking our downed power lines for repair assessment. When the line hit the sandy ground, the heat from the power flowing through it turned the sand int a glass tube and fuzed it to the rock. Pretty amazing stuff.

Thorium reactors ftw!

Yeh, IFRs can use U, Th, Pu, any radioactive garbage that other reactors would choke on.

Their claim to fame is using fast neutrons vs slow (thermal) neutrons.