Our cities are more fragile than we imagine
During the winter storm called “Elliott” last Christmas, gas pipes came close to freezing in New York. The gas shortages are not just deadly themselves in cold weather, but more of the electrical network is dependent on gas now rather than coal, and therein lies double jeopardy. As the gas crisis escalated, so did the electrical one: at its worst there were “90,500 megawatts of coincident unplanned generation unit outages, derates and failures… “. This was on top of 37,000 megawatts of generation that was already out of service, so 127 gigawatts in toto*. Some 18% of the normal resources of the Eastern Interconnection was missing.
At 4:25am on Christmas Eve in North Eastern USA the grid frequency fell to 59.936 Hz, just below the trigger point of 59.95 Hz.
If the gas had stopped flowing completely during the big freeze that lasted five days, water pipes would have frozen, and not only would the water stop flowing out of taps, and toilets stop flushing, but pipes would have burst — rendering thousands of apartment blocks and offices unusable, and possibly water damaged too.
Somehow, like a disaster movie script — 8.5 million people in New York City would need to be evacuated in the midst of this frozen crisis. They’d need to live somewhere else, while the slow tedious work of repairing and rebuilding the system would take months. Gas networks are far slower to restore than electrical blackouts. Robert Boyce tells how in one gas crisis in Washington State, 35,000 customers lost gas and the gas-company had to send someone out to every customer, firstly to turn off the gas meters, and then later when the line was fixed, they had to send someone out to light the pilot lights on every property. Even with more than 1,000 people working on the problem it still took nearly a week to restore gas services.
In New York, Con Edison, the company that nearly lost the gas system, has 1.1 million customers.
Via SmallDeadAnimals
Bone-Chilling
Last Christmas, the U.S. narrowly averted an energy disaster that would have decimated New York City and killed thousands
By Robert Bryce
In bone-dry language, the report “Inquiry into Bulk-Power System Operations During December 2022 Winter Storm Elliott,” explains how the gas pipeline network in New York nearly failed last Christmas when temperatures plummeted during the bomb cyclone. Freeze-related production declines, combined with soaring demand from power plants, homes, and businesses, led to shortages of gas throughout the Northeast. The lack of gas, as well as mechanical and electrical issues, resulted in an “unprecedented” loss of electric generation capacity totaling some 90,000 megawatts. While the lack of electricity was dangerous, the possibility of a loss of pressure in the natural gas network should send a bone-chilling shiver through the sacroiliac of every politician and bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., New York and the Northeast.
The report explains that if the gas pipeline system had failed, the recovery process in New York City would have taken “months.”
Hold your breath, this is not a freak rare event. The FERC report states this was the fifth in the last 11 years in which cold weather outages “jeopardized grid reliability”.
The US has become very dependent on natural gas, but there are risks…
Over the last few decades the US energy networks have been transformed with cheap shale gas. But as Robert Boyce explains, gas is a “just in time” fuel, unlike coal which can be stored on site in quantities large enough to survive a short crisis, or uranium, which can run for a couple of years.
It appears policymakers have been numbed into complacency about large generation outages and near-catastrophic misses over the past decade that include events like Winter Storms Uri and Elliott. But this latest near-catastrophe must be put into context. As mentioned above, NERC and FERC have repeatedly warned that the electric grid has become too dependent on natural gas. I love natural gas. And the increased use of gas (at the expense of coal) in the power sector has helped the U.S. cut its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country in the world. But unlike coal — and the enriched uranium that fuels a nuclear power plant— gas is a just-in-time fuel. That makes it vulnerable to disruptions in service. And if gas supplies run short, so will electricity supplies.
The Billionaire SuperClass is working to make everything worse:
In all, [Michael] Bloomberg has committed more than $1 billion to a group of radical NGOs — including the League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Earthjustice, all of which have operating budgets of more than $100 million per year — who are aiming to undermine the integrity, affordability, and resilience of our electric grid.
The punchline here is obvious: America’s critical energy networks are nearing catastrophic breaking points due to underinvestment in reliable sources of fuel and generation, and by that, I mean pipelines, nuclear plants, and coal- and gas-fired power plants.
The Eastern Interconnection is huge, and outages were rife:
Figure 2: Location and Fuel Type of Unplanned Generation Outages and Derates During the Event (Bubble Size by MW for each Outage), as of December 24, 202
h/t AnotherIan
*Was (doh) megawatts typo. Apologies.
Image by ThankYouFantasyPictures
This is a lesson in how fast a civilisation can be destroyed by hostile enemy agents within the Government.
Under President Trump the USA became energy independent and a net exporter of energy for the first time in decades and in under four years the White House resident and those who are his puppet masters have destroyed all that.
701
Why invest in capacity that might not be used? Shareholder boards would scuttle that quick smart. That’s how democratic market capitalism works.
in non democratic markets like China, extra capacity is built in, as profit is not the main goal
465
capacity that ‘might’ not be used??
considering renewables are inherently unreliable and we are unable to reliably predict their output, as well as the fact that no-one can accurately predict actual energy usage patterns from day to day, i would say having the extra capacity would be important…
don’t you?
or, based on your logic, once capacity is reached, that’s it. no-one else gets any energy.
sounds awesome.
also, seeing as how you are such a big fan of “democratic market capitalism”, let’s apply that to renewables, if you are game…
650
As regards overcapacity/contingency, in my main job it was reckoned that for every six employees, one would either be on holiday, sick, on a training course or at a company meeting. I.e. 7 weeks in the year. (That is ignoring Christmas, Bank Holidays etc.)
That gives a factor of just under 15%.
40
PF doesn’t understand the meaning of capacity. +10% or something was always factored in for every construction or engineering project, to allow for defects in supplies, on-site errors in the placement of bolts etc. Still applies in places where common-sense still exists. The systems he admires, eg the former USSR mandated that different agencies could make motor cycles, but they all had to use the same basic components. So if you were building 50,000 of a model and it used 10 of the same bolts, you got supplied exactly 500,000 of them. Required some very creative accounting and hopefully the protection of the local commissar.
340
??.. it sounds like you dont understand the meaning either !
What you describe is “contingency” ,…. not capacity. !
313
Wrong,
Martin Clark is replying to the word he used. If you don’t have the capacity you won’t have the contingency.
220
Contingency would be excess capacity or another power source on standby. Pretty obvious which is the better option where the extra capacity of all sources can cover a whole plant going offline.
70
I responded to the post about a shortage, you are saying that it is not possible. Please explain
214
The word you’re looking for is “ contingency “. Every decision from engineering to medical to financial takes contingencies into account. Often, even the allowed for contingencies are insufficient. Only fools would believe their net figures are accurate enough to ignore contingencies for the unknown total outcome!
30
Peter, why do you bring in “That’s how democratic market capitalism works” in a discussion about the harm caused by government regulation due to bollocks from unelected BS artists?
410
Because he doesn’t have the slightest clue about how markets work and likes to remind everyone of this fact.
It also happens to be a standard socialist schtick to blame their failures on a straw-man “Capitalism” which they reinvent as required.
390
Peter,
Wind is overbuilt by a factor of more than 3 and solar by more than 4 which is a big waste of resources. How can you complain about a small 20% or so overbuild with fossil fuel generation to ensure 100%reliable power.
430
PF
Example please of the success of communism.
How did the manufacture of pig iron in schools go?
Anyone with half a brain knows Democracies are not perfect and are doomed to fail when 51% of the voters decide to sit on their backsides and expect the other 49% to work harder to support them.
Time to get off yours and start to contribute in a meaningful way PF.
I was talking to a 21 year old covered in tatts and working hard to look after customers for her employer. She understands the way communities work together for a better future than can be decreed by a central bureaucracy. Why don’t you?
220
Peter, grid scale reliable and dispatchable generation usually has 20% overcapacity because of many reasons.
Scheduled maintenance, unexpected failures of components, topping capacity where large industrial loads exist, bridge units whilst an aged plant is being rebuilt or demolished or replaced.
In the US, there is approximately 1,200 GW of dispatchable thermal plants. At any given time, about 150-200 GW are offline for reasons stated above.
There is also fuel mix diversity. That is why a Public Utility will usually have some coal, gas, and/or nuclear plants. It provides a certain level of fuel flexibility. If the railroad tracks are out of service, a gas or nuclear unit will spin up. If the gas line is out of service, coal and nuclear units spin up. Relying on only one fuel source is rolling some pretty big dice.
Utility companies are governed by Rate Commissions. Utilities don’t get rate increases unless the oversight body allows it and sometimes not even after the utility has proven their cause for need. Their guaranteed rate of return in the US is 7%. This is because businesses require investors who demand a profit. Nobody rides for free.
Apparently you understand neither grid power, utility structures, operational reliability, fuel diversity, or economics.
But you are conspicuously silent on the solar and wind subsidy game, with unreliable, unstable, non dispatchable, massively overestimated capacity, inability to provide or absorb reactive power, etc . Whether that is driven by ignorance, ideology, malfeasance, or incompetence is anyone’s guess.
320
So why did the supply ‘almost’ fail?
121
Well, Peter, because of weather and environmental zealots.
In 2021, Texas experienced a near “once in a lifetime” cold spell. That caused freezing of gas well heads because there is moisture in well head gas, and because EPA required gas delivery companies to stop using natural gas to power their gas compressors, b/c climate change, and change to electric gas compressors. This caused an 85% loss of gas supply into the Henry Hub in Louisiana. The gas travels some 2500 Km from Texas to New York because the “environmentalists” in Pennsylvania and Massachusets, some 1500 Km closer to NY, will not allow a pipeline to be completed that would have supplied New York.
Environmentalists forced closure of coal fired power plants, forcing New York to change over to Natural Gas fired power plants and prevented any nuclear power plants from being constructed and prevented any new gas pipelines from being completed. This forced the entire Eastern United States to convert to Natural Gas fired power plants. This caused a massive demand upon the only remaining natural gas supply lines which run from Texas to Louisiana, to Georgia, then North through South Carolina to North Carolina to Virginia to Maryland, to Delaware, to New York.
When this gas pipeline marathon is under heavy demand, every state that is South of Virginia is compelled to restrict their usage of natural gas so that New York can obtain the gas they need for their power plants, because they can’t use coal and the alternate supply pipelines for gas from adjacent Pennsylvania have been shut down by Climate Change Fanatics who also disallow any nuclear power plants.
If the power goes out in New York City, probably 1,000 people per day will die because of cold, crime, traffic accidents, starvation, lack of water, fires, lack of medicine, etc, all of which are dependent upon electricity. In the meantime, millions of people South of NYC have had their lives disrupted and encumbered because they are not allowed to use natural gas so that whatever supplies remain are piped North to NYC and Massachusetts and whatever other Libtard clown states that prevented all other forms of energy and all other means of distributing the energy available.
So, to make it simple for you, Environmentalists have destroyed energy distribution so they can feel good about themselves, while taking zero responsibility for the costs, lives, families, industries, and futures that they have selfishly destroyed for absolutely zero benefit.
Is that clear enough for you?
490
Excellent summary Lance..
..but you did not even mention the total lack of input from wind and solar !
160
Yeah. Because there was no energy input from wind or solar. Zero. Nothing. A Complete Failure.
The only thing that kept the USA from a complete national blackout was Gas, Nuclear and Coal, power generation.
Without those energy sources, more than 2 million people would have died and more than 100 Billion USD would have been lost.
How strange that the Wind and Solar champions are so silent when their generation fails, absolutely, when it mattered the most. Kind of like hucksters when caught out, eh?
210
‘So why did the supply ‘almost’ fail?’
A bomb cyclone.
10
No, it was the failure to plan for such an event and have a grid that was resilient. And this failure resulted in over 200 deaths directly and another 300 from the closure of hospitals.
40
Apparently bomb cyclones are going to become more common with global warming, so that should be factored in.
01
Ah, Peter,
You failed to reply to “Red” at 2.4.
It’s a very important question.
Perhaps you failed to notice.
Why do you allow massive overbuilt for wind and solar,
but apparently zero overbuild for conventional,
fully dispatchable generation?
You have to answer the question, and to give
the correct answer, otherwise ridicule will follow.
BTW, Thanks, Jo.
Paul Miskelly
60
It will take a similar event here to wake the sleepy and the woke. It may even wake a politician or two although anything short of a sledgehammer would fail to wake Chris Bowen and Airbus. Blackouts that avoid widespread household shutdowns by cutting power to industry will not ram home the lesson. It has to be total so everyone suffers.
470
How stupid are our pollies, businesses, unions, MSM, elites etc.
We must only build BASE-LOAD energy from now on and stop WASTING TRILLIONS of $ on TOXIC, DANGEROUS W & S? FOREVER.
Our national security is now at extreme risk and yet our so called scientists lie and work against us and are handsomely rewarded for their treason.
A few weeks ago Dr Koonin told a Dutch audience that other so called scientists refuse to debate him now and we can only wonder why that’s the case?
420
Here’s Dr Koonin’s talk in Holland at the end of SEPT 2023.
This is sponsored by the Clintel Group of Scientists to try and spread the truth about the extremist’s so called crisis and stupid Biden’s EXISTENTIAL threat etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7wGfY7lZJE
190
The level of callous disregard for human life is becoming evident . Engineered shortages , resources wasted on war but not the human population . We are supposed to be rational beings but we are being manipulated by a bunch of cynical players who think this is a game (and they now use AI to run their game) . When you follow the money it becomes obvious . The insanely rich never seem to have enough money or power .
290
We need to start planning for big blackouts, just like we plan for big hurricanes.
See my https://www.cfact.org/2023/11/14/pjm-fiddles-while-grid-sickens/
This might even wake people up.
151
I’ve noticed that Dr Pielke jnr, Dr Koonin, Dr Spencer etc are now using a slightly different life expectancy since the IND Revolution.
And now the OWI Data have joined them and have life expectancy as follows.
1770- 28.5 years.
1900 -32 years
1950 -46.5 years.
2021 -71 years.
In 2021 our Oceania is the highest L exp for continent or area –
79.4 years. Australia alone would be higher.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
151
What happened in Asia in 1960 to cause life expectancy to tumble?
Also all regions have shown a decline in life expectancy since 2021!
40
Peter C the worst famine in recorded history occurred in China from 1958 to 1961 and I think the Covid crisis may have caused some decline recently.
The previous Spanish flu crisis from about 1918 to 1920 caused the deaths of about 25 to 50 million as well.
And many kids died then and the global population was under 2 billion in 1920.
61
The Great Leap Forward socialist economic programs caused the famine. Entirely caused by government. Among Mao’s economic advisers were actually the same people who advised FDR’s New Deal. Now with WEF’s agenda, The Great Reset, Build Back Better, Green New Deal, Net Zero, idiocies being pushed, we better wake up, learn from history, and realize the dire danger we are in.
60
All the children (including those in government) are scared of the gulf stream slowing down and freezing New York unless we implement all these policies that are more likely to cause an actual freezing of New York.
Aren’t we lucky to have such brilliant minds to look after us.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/14/north-atlantic-nonsense/
180
While most of the world was concerned with other matters during the plandemic, the Left, the Chicomms and the mohammedan extremists were busy planning their final putsch to destroy Western Civilisation and we are now seeing the results of that.
190
“Elliot”? The storm should have been called Eliot – this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a wimper.
90
There is no explanation of “frozen gas lines” in this report. The boiling point of methane, the principal component of natural gas, is -162C. It does not freeze at any Earth temperature. The pumps that keep gas flowing through the system can freeze,
“Climate” regulations are the probable cause of the problems. Once upon a time natural gas pumping facilities were heated, when necessary, by burning some of the natural gas from the pipeline. Newer EPA regulations required an expensive changeover to electrical heating, to “reduce emissions”. That electricity comes from the grid.
This means it is dependent on a remote source. Also, the heating capacity of whatever electrical pump heating system is used is most likely considerably less than the older fashion natural gas heating system. This makes it harder to keep the pumps operating under adverse conditions and totally dependent on the grid under any conditions.
230
I think one of the problems is that at high pressures inside pipelines methane hydrates can start to precipitate in the pipeline so the gas has to be heated to above the critical temperature.
150
David,
On the money as usual . If the hydrates block the pipeline , releasing the pressure when the hydrates melt has caused a shockwave that has ruptured pipes in the past . A ruptured high pressure gas line in a city has disaster potential .
140
Thanks Andy, I thought the wording was vague and unsatisfying in the commentary and early part of the FERC report.
30
Actually, the reasons for cold weather effects on natural gas pipelines are well known. In transmission and distribution systems, it is usually frost heaving and thermal contraction that cause pipeline damages and moisture in control elements that lead to safety shutdowns.
https://www.pgjonline.com/magazine/2015/january-2015-vol-242-no-1/features/cold-weather-can-play-havoc-on-natural-gas-systems
In 2021, Texas ( a major gas producer for North America) lost 85% of gas production because the well-head gas lines froze due to unexpected cold temperatures and moisture in the well heads and gathering lines. That affected the entire US.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/weather/2021/02/17/texas-largely-relies-on-natural-gas-for-power-it-wasnt-ready-for-the-extreme-cold/
Another problem was that, in years past, gas pipeline compressor stations would “use” a small fraction of the flowing gas to power the compressor engines. US EPA forced the replacement of natural gas engines with electric motors for climate change reasons. So, when a grid blacked out, the natural gas compressor stations shut down, affecting more than half of the USA gas deliveries.
Methane freezing was not the issue. Piping failures, compressor station failures, and well head / gathering system freeze ups were the actual culprits.
220
Making the compressors electric can create a feedback cascade. A modest rolling blackout can shut down a pipeline that feeds a gas fired generator, further reducing the available capacity, so causing bigger rolling blackouts, that shut down more pipelines, and so it goes. Each blackout causes the next and they get bigger.
221
Sounds like a plan. Thanks David!
— Just Stop Oil
20
AGAIN just checked the UN projection for global life expectancy in 2100.
In 2100 global life expectancy is projected to be 81.88 years and by then the population would be about 10.4 billion.
Here’s the Macrotrends link using the UN data.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/life-expectancy
40
Also the world population is expected to top out at 10.482billion in 2086. That will be within the lifetime of my grandchildren.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-projections/
It could happen sooner than that if some of the things we are witnessing do not turn around.
50
I thought I had heard it all before. But no. Until I received an email from The Commonwealth Bank of Australia yesterday.
It stated “authorities have predicted a very hot summer and soaring temperatures could bring unpredictable weather events….maintain your home to keep you safe…and limit damage… Get your car serviced…..” And so it went on for more than 6 paragraphs.
Even my neighbors, my dentist, and my friendly shop assistant have warned me of the coming nightmare scenario!
240
Gotta keep the fear factor up and the education factor down!
250
Did they mention keeping a reserve of currency should their on-line payment systems stopped working?
230
Most present company excepted, I think most Australians, especially of the Green Left persuasion, have no clue just how cold it can get in northern North America or northern Europe and how critical a reliable and inexpensive source of energy is to staying alive. Wind and solar will never provide that.
In such places, if you get cold, it’s not about being miserable. You might die.
350
The Texas blackouts caused a reported 200+ deaths. At a minimum we need reliable capacity, with a good safety margin, to protect against deadly cold windless winter nights. I remember about 15 years ago it hit 30 below F in Pittsburgh PA. Plan for stuff like that.
211
Russia had minus 40℃ recently (late October). Not unusual except normally occurring late December or early January.
Also, lots of ski resorts in Europe started up early.
180
David, yes.
Worth remembering is that all of Great Britain is north of the centre of Winnipeg.
And that, of course, limits the efficacy of the solar that, still, is being pushed.
And being taken up by some, including local authorities in Scotland.
Auto
10
Gas can liquefied and stored as LNG or compressed and stored as CNG, or just stored in huge atmospheric pressure accumulators if metropolitan storage reserves are required. I can’t see any reason why cold weather would impact natural gas flow through pipes.
70
It may be that distribution pipes are subject to crushing or breaking or whatever from general damage to other services by water _ snow ice .
New York is very vulnerable in this area.
An interesting book by Edward Rutherferd, New York, goes over that city’s history and it’s amazing.
101
Accidental red thumb Keith .. apologies.
30
Hi Geoff, our trip to that Singleton meeting all those years ago doesn’t seem to have changed anything.
The country is still going downhill.
30
As I’m sure has been explained already … when Natural Gas comes out of the ground, it’s a mixture of various things including quite a high percentage of water. Freezing weather turns the water into ice which blocks the pipe.
What is sold to the consumer as “Natural” is typically methane and a much smaller percentage of water … the gas has gone through drying and purification processes, plus addition of a warning smell to make leaks easier to detect. It isn’t really in its natural form.
The risk of freezing depends on how close the drying plant is to the gas well, and also how dry they make the final product. You can install electric heaters for the pipes carrying wet gas but that costs extra and the cost/benefit depends on how often those heaters are used. Not really feasible to install heaters on every pipe everywhere.
110
I’ve even had to resort to pouring a hot kettle over my tall LPG cooking bottle on a -4ºC morning to get the gas to come out faster enough to boil a kettle. Only happens if the LPG has nearly run out and all the lighter fractions have already been burned off.
51
Your story sounds like a Catch-22.
– How do you get the first hot kettle?
10
Lucky, We used to warm water on our wood-fired slow combustion fire. It was so useful that we upgraded to an Essy oven which works well for all cooking in winter.
10
Desiccating natural gas to ppm levels of H2O is trivially easy using a simple freezer and a counterflow heat exchanger, particularly in a high pressure supply line or at well head. It’s not possible for water to freeze out of natural gas in pipes after that.
00
We used to have such storage tanks in Melbourne until fairly recently. They were called gasometers.
All gone now.
90
It’s cats vs. dogs.
Or innies vs. outties.
Conservatives are about problem solving.
Progressives, and the Western governments of which they have control …
are about political issue manufacture for the purpose of turmoil maintenance.
(Blatantly obvious in the ‘Pandemic’/’Public Health’ fiasco.)
An obstacle conquering real estate developer outsider, threatened the existential existence of the scheme.
We can only wait for the implosion.
Even then, it will be blamed on Trump.
210
All of our panic since 1988 is because our increased co2 emissions are supposed to be the driver of dangerous climate change.
But everything for humans has improved over the last 35 years, so this seems to be a stupid argument.
Anyway I repeat again that the data proves that 98% of the increased annual emissions have been emitted by the developing NON OECD countries and the developed OECD countries have barely increased their annual co2 emissions since 1988.
Here’s the OWI Data graph for the World, NON OECD and OECD co2 emissions and you can check the data since 1988 for yourselves.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=OWID_WRL~Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29
140
D. Attenborough in Life on our Planet explains: 445 Million years ago CO2 concentration suddenly dropped by 60%, the ocean froze and 85% of life on Earth became extincnt.
200k years later CO2 came back, causing temperature rise and life to return back.
Seems like a failed experiment to me, with an adult returning home in the evening and fixing things up.
100
The late Ordovician was very cold, worse than the recent ice age, with CO2 about 3,000 p.p.m. (Down from 7,500 in the later Cambrian).
About 140-150 million years later the Permian was very cold and the CO2 about 360 p.p.m.
About 140-150 million years later the end of the Jurassic was colder (but warmer than now) and the CO2 about 2700 p.p.m
And by a coincidence 140-150 million years later we are in another ice age.
If CO2 was causing this then we need to release more CO2 not the less.
140
David Attenborough fell into the same trap as Al Gore. CO2 did not “come back” and cause temperatures to rise, but the other way around, as all on this blog are fully aware. Rising CO2 levels always follow rising temperatures, the latter being caused by chaotic agencies still not fully understood.
140
During the Texas blackouts ( maybe the same weather system?) there was a further problem with gas. Not only were there shortages of supply as more people turned to gas for heating, the pressure of supply diminished significantly. Apparently, there were pressurisers in the gas supply system that ran off wind / solar power. When the wind turbines all iced up and the system went black so did those pressurisers.
130
They are called compressor stations. About every 50 miles for liquid fuels and every 150 miles for gas fuels, there is a booster station. They used to burn a little bit of the natural gas to power the engines that drove the compressors. Then the EPA disallowed that b/c of climate change and forced conversion to electric compressors. These are 3,000 KW motors. When the grid faults, the compressors stop, and the gas flow stops, then the power plants stop, then the cities go black.
200
Thanks Lance. Great explanation for my comment and at 11.2. I have a feeling I probably read about those compressor stations on this blog, so apologies for the repeat of a well known fact.
60
No apologies. Thank you for keeping knowledge alive.
I grew up in Energy Central USA. TX, OK, etc. Worked as a pipeline worker, welder, while attending university, and later a Chartered Engineer. Honest work and worn hands are paramount. Nonsense doesn’t put food on the table or satisfy debts or real issues. I don’t subscribe to imaginary things nor political fantasies. Reality has the final vote.
You Go On, Ross. Live your best life. Take no guff and bear no wimps.
90
The winter storms in Western Europe are quite severe right now. These are pulling water off the Mediterranean, which remains anomalously warm.
Anyone relying on electricity or gas for life sustaining heat in the present woke world is at risk.
My son in the UK has just had an offer accepted to buy a new detached house. He is presently renting a small flat and their style of thrift over the years in the UK has been impressive so they have sufficient savings to buy the house without need for a loan. They have snow forecast this week and I was interested to know what they have the thermostat set on. He did not actually look but said they usually have it set between 15C to 17C. I expect most Australians would consider that chilly for indoors. They are totally reliant on electricity for heating but England is generally moderated by the proximity to the ocean so temperature probably never low enough to be life threatening for healthy people.
English Channel currently 13C. So not real cold but cold enough to get persistently low cloud and fog. It will bottom around 8C in mid Feb.
By mid January, I expect there will be heaps more new snow records. You cannot have warmer northern ocean surface without getting more snow. It is a risky time for people dependent on energy sources that they have no control over.
Think of the chaos when there is only electricity as the energy source and weather dependent generators with energy stored in batteries. “Vulnerable” understates the risk. If it gets really cold, you may not be able to get any of the energy out of your battery. There are lots of people now living in regions that were covered with ice mountains 20,000 years ago.
Australia is in the other hemisphere. The climate is moderating; cooling from south to north. Peak daily solar in Melbourne of 516.3W/m^2 occurred 1600 years ago. For Brisbane, the peak of 505.4W/m^2 was 1400 years ago and Darwin peaked at 459.1W/m^2 1000 years ago. The entire Southern Hemisphere south of 40S has a cooling trend. Climate is a matter of following the sun. Burning fossil fuels remains the only way of carrying 7bn people on this rock that is on the verge of storing a lot more of the solid water on land.
200
The city of Melbourne, Vic., Australia lost it’s natural gas supply for many days, a few years ago. Caused by failure of a processing plant at the 200km away source gas field. It was quite disruptive. Manufacturing plants shut, domestic life for millions disrupted. Lesson, do not be single source dependent. Question, who pays for security? Most natural gas users adopt it because it is cheaper.
140
1998 that was. More than a few years ago. when Jeff Kennett was Premier. He told us all to harden up and have cold showers. Oh, for the good old days, none of this climate alarmism stuff when the threat of an El Nino summer puts everyone in a tiz.
80
I was trying to get a couple of 20T steel casting made in a Melbourne foundry at the time. It was being done with bottled LPG requiring different burners. The first one failed because the heating was marginal. The second one was good enough and went into service in 1999. The mill it went into was decommissioned in 2016 after processing 85Mt of ore. So stood the test of time as well.
At home, showers were limited by a single jug of hot water into a bucket and then hand washer. Fortunately it was September so not real chilly.
At the time, I thought about making a simple electric heater for a few dollars based on a 200l drum filled with water and a pressurised copper coil to extract heat. I have since tested this and it works well.
60
It was amazing how many people installed those in-line electric hot water heaters which were quite expensive. The plumbers/sparkies were run off their feet for weeks after the gas outage. So much so , that there was a black market for stolen heaters. People had them installed one day and then stolen the next.
60
A brothel in Richmond paid for a big illuminated sign over Hoddle Street:
“FREE SEX!!”
And in much smaller print:
“and $150 for a hot shower”
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In the olden days, when I was young, we used to have massive gas storage tanks around towns. The gas they stored was ‘town’ gas. Everything was then converted to ‘natural’ gas. Those enormous tanks seem largely to have disappeared.
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Annie,
That was in the days of “Coal Gas” and it was stored in “Gasometers”. Much more dangerous than natural gas (contains carbon monoxide).
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Yes, I remember that but somehow we used to call it town gas, dunno why. Gasometers, funny name really.
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Ah yes, Annie. I remember them well! Where we lived in central Scotland we had a coal gas producing plant a few miles away from us. Coal was heated up in huge retorts, driving off the vapour fraction as gas. We used to buy the resulting “coke” to fire up our Raeburn gas stove once we got it hot enough by burning coal. Burnt hot and slowly, warmed the house, produced all out hot water and cost peanuts – those were the days!
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I remember my father lighting the coke boiler in the kitchen early each morning. It was very cosy and much missed after the Servowarm gas central heating went in.
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OWI Data provides a time line of discovery and the real shift starts at the enlightenment and really shifted up a gear after the UK started the Industrial Revolution.
Count the ways + events by following the time line after 1800 until today and then as we head towards 2100 and beyond.
Amazing that a young person could’ve watched the Wright brother’s first powered flight in 1903 and then watched Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon in 1969.
Unbelievable but true. We all owe a great debt to the Western world’s technologies and discoveries since the enlightenment.
https://ourworldindata.org/technology-long-run
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Dr Will Happer appeared on Sky News recently and told us they are lying about co2 and we are experiencing a co2 famine and more co2 would be a good thing for our world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQyvUJ1k9_M
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Saving the world from climate change is as silly as saving the world from earthquakes.
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Mr. Lover: What??!! We’re NOT saving the world from earthquakes? Doomed, I tells ya.
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The obvious take-away of the NYC story is anyone that can – ought to leave.
Years ago, the temperature where I live went to -26°C every night for almost 2 weeks. The daytime high never got above freezing. (Zero on the C scale)
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And the climate tards will cheer when old-as-fossils fuels are no more and solar/wind rule.
Sitting there in a communal gubermint surveilled house, in the dark, everything they had in their lives gone, wasting away on anti-nutrient rations, wondering where they went wrong.
But that is the ONLY way they will learn.
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Johnny Rotten
Nov 28, 2023 3:10 PM
Alberta Invokes Sovereignty Act Against Trudeau
What a shame that Australian States cannot do this. Too far Left, all of them, in any case
https://youtu.be/iSqFxWiB_iY
“The forecasts of Global Warming have been unfounded for decades. In 2001, they claimed water would be rationed. This is not about Climate, it is about the usurpation of our sovereignty and the imposition of Schwab & Soros’s dream of a one-world government to dictate everything about our lives. Al Gore’s documentary was challenged in court and ruled against Gore.”
Explainer: What is Alberta’s Sovereignty Act?
Nov 27 (Reuters) – Alberta’s conservative Premier Danielle Smith put the Canadian province’s Sovereignty Act into motion on Monday to challenge the federal government’s requirement for a net-zero electricity grid by 2035.
Smith’s United Conservative Party government introduced a resolution in the provincial legislature, marking the first use of one of her signature laws enacted last year.
The Sovereignty Act is an effort to give the oil-rich province a legislative framework to defy federal laws it deems unconstitutional and is another front in Smith’s battle against Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate plans.
Below are some key aspects of the act:
WHAT IS THE ALBERTA SOVEREIGNTY ACT?
Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act was approved by the legislature in December 2022 after the initial bill was diluted to its current form. A provision that gave Smith’s cabinet the power to bypass the legislature and rewrite laws as it saw fit was deleted. The act affirmed that the Alberta legislature, not Smith’s cabinet, would have the last word on lawmaking.
[SNIP copyright]
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The green scam: How electric vehicles harm the environment that they’re supposed to save
In 2032, India will need a billion tonnes of coal, partly to charge EVs in urban areas via power generated by thermal plants
Five Indian cities, including the capital, New Delhi, consistently rank in the world’s top ten worst air-polluted cities. Vehicular emissions are significant contributors; Delhi alone has around four million cars – no wonder the government of India is promoting electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale. While India’s target is a 30% market share of EVs by 2030, the share is currently only 1.1%. Moreover, concerns exist about whether EVs are a green option if pollution is transferred from the cities to the countryside.
Around 27.4 million EVs were running on Indian roads as of July 2023, according to the ‘Vahan4’ portal of the Ministry of Road, Transport, and Highways. To achieve its goal of net zero by 2070 to cut down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, India is expanding its EV market. The hope in New Delhi, for example, is that a rise in the number of green-number plate vehicles will herald a day when its air will become breathable again.
However, India’s EVs depend on just the 8,738 Public Charging Stations (PCS) that are operational as of June 2023, as per the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Ministry of Power data. The number of PCS needs to increase to a minimum of 1.32 million, states the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on ‘Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles,’ to support the 30% market share target.
But will EVs really be emission-free?
For an EV to achieve maximum environmental benefit, the electricity used for charging must be generated from green or renewable sources.
However, much of India’s electricity is still dependent on coal-based thermal power plants, and the government is on a spree to auction more mines and make non-operational mines functional again. India’s total thermal installed capacity is 238.1 Gigawatts, and over 48.67% of thermal power (around 116 GW) is obtained from coal, and electricity demand is increasing by 4.7% annually. As per the National Electricity Plan (2022-32), the projected peak electricity demand for 2026-27 will be 277.2 GW, and for 2031-32, it will be 366.4 GW.
Despite efforts to generate electricity from renewable sources, according to NEP 2022-23, much of India’s electricity will still be derived from thermal plants running on coal by the early 2030s. The share of coal-based capacity in the total installed capacity for the year 2026-27 is likely to be 38.57% and 28.83% for the year 2031-32, which will be around 107 GW and 106 GW respectively, by 2026-27 and 2031-32 – little difference from the present scenario.
“All projections including those of IEA (International Energy Agency), anticipate that coal-based generation is likely to peak around the early 2030s following which the generation will fall and the generation from non-fossil-based sources will increase,” Swati D’Souza, an independent energy expert and former energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis told RT.
The ‘Transitioning India’s Road Transport Sector: Realising Climate and Air Quality Benefits’ report by the IEA, in collaboration with NITI Aayog, says that the transport sector contributes to 12% of the total GHG emissions in India. But as India seeks to satisfy the mobility needs of its growing, urbanizing, and rapidly developing population, energy demand and CO₂ emissions from the sector could double by 2050.
A billion tonnes within a decade
NEP projections indicate a substantial demand for coal, with an estimated 831.5 million tonnes in 2026-27 and 1018.2 million tonnes in 2031-32. Power plants relying on coal will likely import approximately 40 million tonnes to meet the growing demand.
But, V K Shrivastava, a former advisor for petroleum refineries, petrochemicals, and energy at BEE, told RT that the central government is launching several schemes and incentives to encourage the use of green energy for charging stations, which would go a long way in making EVs emissions-free, even indirectly.
He emphasized open access to renewable energy, a way of procuring green energy from renewable sources through the power grid; consumers choose their preferred source and pay only for what they consume without owning or operating a generation plant.
“The open access route 2022 is a noteworthy incentive for power distribution companies (DISCOMS) as it provides a 20% rebate on electricity prices when they provide green power to charging points in public spaces during the daytime. Additionally, the Open Access Transaction limit has been reduced from one MW to 100 kW to enable small consumers to purchase renewable power through open access,” he says.
– Will EVs just offset GHG emissions from urban to rural India?
– Optimism on renewables
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Forgive me if somebody has posted something similar in the comments.
How We Make Energy in New York
And currently, power source breakdown is:
NYSIO dashboard
At the time of posting: Nuclear 24%; Nat Gas & Duel Fuel (mostly nat gas plus some oil) 45%; Hydro 21% and Wind 9%.
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