The following is excerpted from Paul Homewood’s weekly roundup of the climate doomsters. Homewood shows how Texas is facing power shortages thanks to a heatwave and low wind speeds. –CCD Ed.
Just over a year ago, the Texas electricity system was on the verge of a catastrophic total collapse. [bold, links added]
As it was, millions of Texans went without power for days after a winter storm knocked out much of the state’s wind farms. Hundreds died as a result.
Naturally, the renewable lobby tried to shift the blame onto gas power plants, some of which tripped out as the grid became unstable.
But without the immediate backup provided by those gas plants, the grid would have totally collapsed and the whole state would have been without power for weeks.
Fast forward, and Texas is again facing a shortage of power, as a heatwave this week has led to near-record levels of demand for air conditioning.
Facing another crisis, ERCOT, the body which is responsible for running the Texas grid, has been begging customers to cut their consumption of electricity.
‘We’re asking Texans to conserve power when they can by setting their thermostats to 78 degrees or above and avoiding the usage of large appliances (such as dishwashers, washers, and dryers) during peak hours between 3 pm and 8 pm through the weekend,’ pleaded the CEO Brad Jones.
I don’t know about Texans, but 78°F sounds to me like heating, not air conditioning!
Naturally, the media has rushed to blame the crisis on a ‘record heatwave caused by climate change.’ This is, you will not be surprised to know, fraudulent nonsense.
Temperatures peaked at 98°F in San Antonio and 94°F in Houston, but neither of these temperatures is unusual for May in these cities:
No, the real problem is the closure of reliable coal power plants in recent years and their replacement by unreliable wind power.
Since 2010, 4GW of coal capacity has been lost, a cut of a fifth, while no new gas capacity has been added in net terms.
Worse, demand for electricity has increased by 15 percent, as the Texas population and economy continue to surge.
Texas is therefore effectively short of 20GW of dispatchable power capacity.
And it does not take a genius to work out that wind power is low during anti-cyclonic heatwaves.
Given that we are still only in May, heaven help the Texans when they get a real heatwave!
Read the full post at Conservative Woman
Our Nations biggist problem is named Joe Biden