Llano Estacado

2A wasn’t ratified to protect citizens ability to keep and bear moderately sized/priced and adequate hunting weapons. Brown Bess, American long rifle, Colt revolvers, Winchester repeaters, 1903, 1911, M1 Garand, etc, etc. All effective “weapons of war” designed to repeatedly, accurately, and effectively send a projectile down range at a human target as quick as possible. That’s the point, as uncomfortable as it makes some people in 2021. My Grandpa wasn’t shooting rabbits or dillas with an AR platform because he didn’t know WTF the AR platform was. He was packing an M1 and 1911 in the woods, crazy old man! Why use a weapon of war to hunt when the 1903 Springfield is perfectly capable of bringing in a deer or punching paper?!? Lulz “and ugly glocks”. Those pistols were designed to kill people too! Did you know that?...okay? As opposed to a movie prop pistol, airsoft pistol, or track starting gun?

Agreed. If you’ve got better numbers post them. As mentioned, international stats are hard, Lankford and Lott have been going back and forth on how to bracket them since the 2015 talking point. “Mass shootings are uniquely American”. They aren’t. Do we lead the world in some statistical categories, yes. Are they significant statistical portion of US gun violence problem, no. So we’ll all retreat into our “confiscate and ban all guns” vs 2A “shall not be infringed” camps. And have these same discussions next time. Talking points will be spewed on social media. Meanwhile any action to actually reduce our gun violence problem won’t occur, because one side wrongfully fears threaded barrels and pistol grips and the other side will point to politicians clamoring for full confiscation from lawful owners, and won’t give an inch for that wrongful fear.

Show your work. Do we lead the world dependent on how you bracket the statistics, sometimes. But mass shootings aren’t uniquely American. Norway camp shooting and Christchurch mosque made international news, but school shootings occur fairly frequently in Brazil and old Soviet countries. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shootings-by-country

Finally! Eric Holder and Operation Fast & Furious time. Let’s do that talking point now! *Checks notes* Straw purchases are still illegal.

Think that “Need” brings up some due process concerns. Personal defense is a need. It’s a need for 3 times divorced inner city single mothers just as it is rich suburban gated-community diesel drivin MAGA truck folks. You know in TX all qualifications went away except .22lr as minimum caliber for the test, right? Revolver and Semi-autos treated the exact same under current TX license laws. And I don’t particularly want to be shot by a .22lr 5 shot revolver at 3 yards anymore or less than .50AE Desert Eagle with extended magazine. To Fattyflattie’s comments all firearms are deadly so the fact they we try and qualify good vs bad vs “weapon of war” on to acceptable and unacceptable lists at this point is pretty silly.

Agreed, just ensuring you think holds should be temporary and easy to flag, resolve, challenge the process. Been a while since I read up on them, when Connecticut’s was challenged in court and upheld. ExLEO gun nuttiest of uncles was all excited ACLU came out against one state or another’s sometime in the last couple years. Now convoluting the things for a National red-flag you have Oklahoma with their anti RF bill, 2A sanctuary bills in multiple locals, and what ever is being proposed in TX’s next session.

What’s your Law Dog take on red flag laws? To me; Prior restraint : 1st A :: Red Flag : 2nd A Not saying family and friends shouldn’t have a means to update or flag people to LEO or in the NICS check for mental health, drug dependency, etc. but even the most optimistic among us can admit it does open a due process nightmare. Citizen Doe reports Citizen Smith should have their rights infringed. Gets even more convoluted in domestic violence and restraining order situations.

Citizen must demonstrate need for a license granted by the federal govt for the right to keep arms? Think even the craziest 2A opposition would have a hard time squaring that circle.

In JPow we trust! Brrrrt!!!

Good stuff. Don’t think either of us is writing policy so we can continue to disagree. Not exactly, “wait for the Wolf, who should be coming directly” but definitely good stuff. To my point from that article: “Citing a June 2019 National Renewable Energy Laboratory study, Will McNamara, Sandia Grid Energy Storage policy analyst, noted about 150 GW of the nation’s 261-GW peaking fleet “is likely to retire over the next 20 years, creating the potential for about 28 GW of 4-hour battery storage that could serve as peaking capacity.” ...so 150 GW peaking generation offline over next 20yrs to be replaced by 28 GW for 4hr. This arithmetic is my concern dude. Can’t recall which poster had questions on it, but that article also references the Australian Origin Energy battery projects I had remembered, at 1.2 GW and total site capabilities of 2.8 GW storage. So there are several projects around the world shooting for 1000MW+ storage goals over the next 2-5yrs.

SitRep: FUBAR If you find something with details please share it here or Oil Baron thread, but I’ve been looking for a few days and doubt we ever get conclusive specific reporting. Too many specific things went wrong in too many locals. Gas followed ideal gas law and hydrates formed. Shit we need powered lost power. Shit that should have been winterized for a 10yr or 100yr storm wasn’t winterized. Maybe it’s a pressure control valve at substation XYZ. Maybe it’s the 3 best producing wells for field XYZ. Maybe it’s gauge 123XYZ that caused interlock and emergency shutdown.

This. Should have caught up on thread before commenting.

I’ve worked exclusively Gulf and International offshore my whole career, but some close to shore shallow water facilities saw freeze ups of their dry-tree (above waterline) wellheads. Without downhole chemical treatment of methanol or LDHI you’re going to see freezing of wellhead at single deg F temps (dependent on individual formation chemistry obviously). I’ve still yet to see anything in writing or word of mouth from peers documenting “gathering pipelines freezing” and find that hard to believe. Wellheads and well choke valves freezing, yes. Compressors and generators that run on untreated, “wet”, or unheated field gas, yes. Compressors and pumping stations that are powered by ERCOT that got blacked out affecting pipeline flow rates, sure. But until I see something different, I’m of the opinion that “gathering and transmission pipelines lines freezing solid” is a quick way for the press and RRC to summarize the problem for layman and wasn’t an actuality even in above ground northern panhandle fields.

I conflated your response with someone else, Sorry. You confused my response to him as a comment to you. Sorry, I don’t feel it’s worthwhile to go back pages and 3 or 4 quote strings to figure it out. I don’t know why you have red-ass about titled, labeled, stacked line graphs, that all include “source US EIA” at the bottom. I have several long posts in this thread that explain and give context to the charts and what I’m utilizing them to show. That is, Our electric grid, the existing and future policies governing the grid, and our current rough plan to carbon-free power generation all rely increasingly on Natural Gas Combined Cycle plants to fill two roles. I believe (due to our current policies and the market places) on peak demand days this plan will lead to more rolling blackouts, more economic impact, and possibly more deaths that all could be avoided by policy makers. All I wanna hear from anyone in this thread’s ass is, "You ain't got no problem, Llano. We’re on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill them fellas out and wait for the cavalry, which should be coming directly." But I haven’t, and I don’t think the Wolf is coming. I think this Bonnie situation is explosive and we’re in for a rough decade, both in terms of direct energy costs to consumers and dependability.

Good sir, the Mesa de Caimán is not JUST some rock formation.

Did you get to see its medulla oblongata?

Yes sir. Upper Trinity, Brazos, Navasota, Neches, Sabine and Red rivers all have gators. SE Oklahoma and all the way to NC, as well. Do a video or image search for “alligator snorkeling”. During cold snaps like last weeks, they have the same hypothermic sleep state as sea turtles, but they instinctively snorkel their snouts should ice form on the surface.

Agreed never contended that they don’t. Fair enough and makes sense to me, well outside my field there. Always made sense to me that while more wind turbines increase volatility in the grid it is also a form of diversification if the turbines are in different arrays from Perryton to Pearsall to Padre. No doubt I have some ingrained bias and talking points I heard from my father and his father long before I entered O&G myself and hear it from peers. Electrification is only increasing, population of TX is only increasing, and we’ve had more frequent misses in our forecasting to meet demand. IMO we need something; a larger baseline, more reserve peaking capacity, or an immediate step change in storage to get us into the next decade and beyond. I’ll leave it there, and let this thread get back to the subject at hand.

I can’t be because the Chron article I found doesn’t list project names or a source, and I found the total power numbers and timeline very lofty. Solar, I agree it is predictable (see Cali model). Wind I disagree. Look at the EIA #s I’ve posted in this thread. The variability of wind in our grid is 50% some times. That’s GWs and GWs of power that lack predictability on the day to day. I disagree fully, that’s my whole point. In name and function NG are peaker plants. GTs can fire up in hours (if ready operationally and logistically, see TX this week) to meet peak demand. That’s inefficient until the steam generation kicks and and you get CC Rankine cycle efficient from heat recovery. New England uses hydroelectric for peaking to some extent, but show me an American (exception of some small percentage hydro, as noted) grid that is using a fuel source other than NG as a peaking. NG has been our fuel source of choice for peaking for at least the past 20s and I was taking Thermodynamics. I think policy makers are missing it, just as you are in a “static or declining energy market”. You want more NGCC for a baseline, fine it can be cheap efficient baseline. We take coal plants offline (which is good) Dahobbs cheers. Reserve capacity of our NGCC which were intended to be peaking plants, goes down. We “electrify” our world more and more, climate change cause more extreme peak demand curves. Reserve capacity goes down further. We’re asking NGCC to fill two roles with its existing capacity and then bitching when it fails and injecting more variability into then system via wind which in turn further strains our peaking plants. If we aren’t dependent on NGCC for peaking, which resource would you cite in the below past 30 days of ERCOT as filling that role? I haven’t referenced Hutlzer, Koch brothers or any institutions or think tanks anywhere in this thread. If that PowerMag article referenced something by them, I wasn’t aware, I found it googling other failures and emergency responses by ERCOT in TX brown out situations. The American model to get to cheap reliable carbon-free power is the dual curves method utilizing NG as the lesser of two evils. We’re getting there, but we aren’t there yet and a couple of stop gaps solutions seem clear as day to me. 2011 TX fucked it up. 2019 TX came within 60MWs of fucking it up. 2020 CA fucked it up. 2021 TX fucked it up again, the same week Iowa almost fucked it up. I’ll be very surprised if when the half-ass investigations, finger pointing, and dust settles we make 2025/2030 without a few more colossal fuck-ups along the way.

Both size and duration. Webberville is 30MWs not gigas, you need ~2000 of them in 2-3yrs. Hundreds of thousands of surface acres owned or under lease. Not a subject matter expert, but the only 1 GW battery project I’ve heard of was announced this year in Australia, it is 3-4x bigger project than anything that exists currently. Texas would need 8 of them. Tech is improving fast but engineering takes time, project development takes time, surface rights in a state that’s 95+% privately owned take a lot of time.

1)It isn’t bad in and of itself, but it doesn’t leave enough reserve capacity for worse case days 2)I’m aware. Here’s some slightly newer data through 2018. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39012 3) Now we’re getting somewhere. What’s your definition of “peaker plants”? 4) Maybe we aren’t building NGCCs near fast enough. 68 GWs solar, 30GW wind, and 8 GW Battery to just 6GW NG by 2023 (chron article doesn’t reference source, but I have a hard time believing those numbers are achievable for Solar and Battery) https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Texas-to-build-more-solar-wind-batteries-than-15062905.php Here’s another example where ERCOT needed 60MW from Mexico, a tiny fraction of total grid demand, because we didn’t have reserve capacity. https://www.powermag.com/texas-impending-reliability-issues-with-wind-power/ As mentioned in my long post, California missed reserve capacity by less than 0.5GW, and 1.3% IIRC and caused days of crippling their economy and jeopardizing the safety of their citizens. That’s a THIN margin for something so critical. edit:chron link didn’t paste properly, then clipped the end of the post.

I never said large baseload was the only way to more reliability. Agreed, I’m saying American system is almost all overlapping power curves with different ratios of renewables to thermal at this time, with CA leading in renewables and ISO New England being the laggard. My argument is we’re under investing and there is not a market lever for the NG as a stepping stone path we’re walking. We’re adding volatility and increasingly relying on 20-30yr old NG-CC for both base and demand capacity, which isn’t reliable. EIA numbers: Average capacity factor for NG-CC increased from 43% in 2011, to 56% in 2016, to 67.4% in 2019 (the last year listed) with 72.4% in august. We’re increasingly utilizing our grids peaking plants not for their reserve capacity as intended, but as part of the base

Apologies to all for derailing this thread a little with what isn’t the root cause failure, but a point I think our energy policy makers miss yelling past each other about their preferred energy source. I’m not blaming wind. All sources failed. Root cause until proven otherwise is failure of Abbot, TXLeg, PUC/ERCOT/RRC to have out grid properly winterized. Period. Full stop. Secondary cause is ERCOTs silly Energy-only 5 min spot pricing market which does nothing to incentivize dependability and reliability, which I’m obviously concerned about. I’m attempting (maybe poorly) to utilize actual US Energy Information Admin hourly grid generation numbers by source type via their web tool. See below for 1 last attempt. Fully agreed. I think our push for renewables, while a good thing is causing grid instability and policy makers aren’t addressing it quite literally leaving customers/citizens in the dark. Your questions in the first post posited that wind turbines were intentionally turned off by unnamed sources to increase demand for oil and gas, and profits. That is ludicrous. Im not manipulating or omitting anything. I’m pulling screen grabs from the EIA.gov web tool. If you think their graphs lack pertinent detail or are shitty maybe write their web team an email or something. Agreed. Our peaking plants, almost all of which are CCGTs failed us, but again I’ll try to point out a stable grid must have dependable baseline and peaking production, and we don’t, and market forces intended or not are making it worse. Okay, EIA.gov graphs of generation by source for last week’s failure by ERCOT and SWPP that didn’t see wide spread outages. Looking at the SWPP graph we see wind source power (green) fluctuate from 10GWs at the beginning to less than 1GW in the middle and then approx 15GWs at the end. The ERCOT grid, as we’d expect, shows similar fluctuations across the whole period from ~20GW to 0GW. The top curve of the graph is total generation based on grid demand, this fluctuates as we’d expect with temperature and daily end-user cyclical demand. In the middle is NG (tan) combined cycle gas turbines peaking and scaling down, the yeoman of the American grid. Wind MWs are going to be purchased first in nearly all of our grids, because A)storage tech of the capacity we need isn’t available. it’s use it or lose it. B)Wind is variable, always will be. C)we have NG in the middle which is great at scaling, and if supply is way out of whack with demand in an electrical system, we burn up lines, blow transformers, and generally bad shit happens to all our infrastructure. (Which is why ERCOT Pres Bill Magness’ comments days after the fact that “we were minutes away” from catastrophic months long blackouts is happy horseshit cover for himself. We’re always minutes away from zapping ourselves into oblivion that’s why we have a Public Utility Council and “reliability” council) D)The Production Tax Credit I believe all the above puts intended and unintended market pressure on NG generation. On the ERCOT chart we see across the week NG goes from maybe 1GW to 20GW back down approaching 0 then shooting up to over 40GW as units and fuel got back online. That’s ~50% to ~5% to ~66% of total grid generation in the span of a week. The SWPP shows similar, but less extreme volatility as we’d expect as they didn’t have 100% of their grid under winter advisory. My position is that is an insane way to manage “reliability” in your grid. Gas turbines are efficient scalers, they can be ramped up, ramped down, coupled or uncoupled form waste heat generation. But 20GWs or fucking 40GWs isn’t a few peaking units going from 80% to 100% capacity. That is dozens of plants being kicked on and off. It’s one thing to have that kind of scaling based on seasonal demand, but quite another to be a regular fixture of your grid. (Caveat; this week was abnormal Black Swan-esque for Texas). I’m not an industry expert but that has to be a nightmare for scheduling (standard operations and maintenance and downtime), forecasting fuel needs, budgeting, and logistics. As part of my day job I’m not responsible for the reliability of 6x 20 year old 4.25MW gas turbines, but he’s on our team. As a mechanical engineer I’m a firm believer that Newton’s 1st law also applies to plants/facilities/rotating equipment and reliability. 2nd example. California black/brown outs. https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/california-has-first-rolling-blackouts-in-19-years-and-everyone-faces-blame-1309757 Not knowing exactly which day the worst rolling blackouts occurred, I can’t get exact data from EIA, but look at the worst demand days for August 2020, and the CISO grid saw avg total demand of ~35GW, and NG as a source saw peak demand of ~25GWs. A single gas plant, 470MWs, 1.3% of total capacity, 1.8% of fuel source capacity went offline and it crippled one of the world’s largest economies for days, because they happened to be seasonally warm and still. And I don’t buy wild fires as a “black swan” Cali has wild fires. Per ElFenix’s article up thread Iowa/MISO grid had a similar “near miss” last week. Summarization: By slowly increasing renewables were slowly increasing volatility in all grids (both because renewables are variable in nature and because we remove legacy thermal as new renewables are brought online) which increases need for additional demand capacity from our peaking combined cycle gas turbines while also slowly decreasing their ROI versus the renewables. We’re squeezing the shit out of our yeoman-like middle man then acting shocked and pointing fingers when he fails. Solutions: ERCOT ties into the larger federal grid, allowing for additional demand capacity when needed. Works, but as noted almost all grids are seeing similar build in volatility. Increase baseline generation from thermals other than NG, to reduce NGs baseline and act as our middle man with plenty of reserve capacity. My preference would be the French model for a nuclear base. Incentivize new NG-CCGTs as either baseline or new reliable demand generation instead of life extending old facilities and not offering a market level for preventative maintenance above the bare minimum Incentivize/ subsidies storage tech like crazy and hope Elon or someone else pulls a rabbit out of their hat and wind and storage can be utilized as dependable baseline.

Those are actual EIA numbers. Wind production went down because either the wind wasn’t blowing or the turbine had a failure of some sort, you’d have to ask the generator. By nature we can’t stockpile fuel for green/renewables, that’s why they are variable/unreliable for baseline power generation until we’re capable of efficiently storing GWs of green energy. Sounds like a conspiracy nonsense. Going to have to show your work on that one. A vast networked group of oil barons is powering down wind turbines to sell more carbon fuels to peaking NG plants, was that T Boone Picken’s Plan?

...so a circumstantial ad hominem? The author’s arguments (about the failure of the grid) lack merit because a belief they hold about a different tissue, climate change. Got it. Fair enough. Exxon Co’s historic knowledge of carbon emissions impact on the planet versus American/ERCOT’s development of storage, while completely unrelated topics, isn’t an ad hominem. Apologies, its been ~20years since my 3hrs of philosophy studies. Source or citation on renewables being cheaper with subsidies removed? Cheaper how; to generate per delivered KWs, EROI, NET to consumers? Absolutely agreed, there was/is no incentive to winterize. But that extends the argument from the blog post and peers, that I tend to believe - There is less and less incentive for “reliability” in ERCOT or most of our grids anymore. Take away all subsidies and PTC. What market force is there to build new thermal baseline or peaking generation? Renewables by nature are variable, their power gets purchased first adding ever increasing volatility to the grid. We need reliable peak demand capabilities and something to compensate for that volatility as our population and energy consumption grows. ROI for an investor is quick on a wind turbine, it can be built quickly without much red tape and by default its electrons are always purchased first, slam dunk. We build more wind turbines increasing the generation volatility of our grid. Existing combined cycle coal/gas plants generate less power day to day as more wind is added as a base and they become unprofitable for investors (or in a COOP/public utility model they’re mothballed, under utilized/staffed, or not properly maintained). When we need 20% of peaking power +20% of baseline, because it is a windless day, life extended combined cycle plants are unable to ramp up due to asset integrity failures further decreasing grid reliability. On top of that pressure, you have the external force that the world’s largest investment banks and >50% politicians do not want any association with major carbon projects in 2021. Grid volatility increases and thermal source peaking capability decreases. Consumers suffer rolling blackouts. We add more renewables in response increasing baseline volatility...