Vintage work crew photos

[schuylergrace]

Ercop dropped the ball last winter due to the high reliance on wind and solar, for each megawatt of wind or solar there is supposed to be an equally sized Natural gas generator as back up or standby. Natural gas generators are the only thing that can be powered up and brought online on demand. due to the nationwide scamdemic many natural gas intensifying stations were left short staffed or in many cases taken off line completely, the high demand for gas to heat homes and run other things reduced the quanity and pressures required to run the generators,many of the generators were not even maintained to be brought online at all so there was power outages.

In fact, a study done by the state showed that wind and solar played a large part in propping up the grid. The problems were twofold: 1.) The natural gas production facilities supplying the generating stations were never properly winterized, so they were going offline as they froze up, and 2.) After ERCOT ordered all the utilities to start cutting power to keep the grid from completely going down and suffering major damage, some cut power to the natural gas suppliers and distributors, which made the problem even worse. However, even though folks early on blamed renewable energy producers as the problem, they were online with all their normal production facilities and actually saved the day (along with nuclear and coal, to be fair). Interestingly enough, the Texas legislature took relatively quick action to "ensure" this doesn't happen, again, but with one major shortcoming--they didn't require the gas producers to take steps to properly winterize their facilities, which was the cause of all this mess.

But I do agree that distributed generation is going to be the wave of the future, if the big utilities don't get their way. In nearly every state, they are trying to push through laws that will restrict implementation of independent home/business solar systems and stop states from forcing them to purchase excess power that's generated. It only makes sense to take the physical grid out of the equation in large part, both to cut electrical losses, as well as reduce construction and maintenance costs. Of course, you'd still need the grid to dump excess power onto, to support homes and businesses that don't have solar (or wind or water), and to provide power when the local source is down for whatever reason. But it wouldn't need to be nearly the grid we have today, especially the huge, long distance transmission lines.