Your statement of "none" is incorrect. Many solar/wind installations have battery storage. It isn't enough of them or enough kWh to be nearly as reliable as NatGas, and battery tech has a long way to go before it is fully practical, but this storage does in fact exist.
To be clear, Biden did not specifically refuse to allow Texas power plants to operate at 100% capacity. The EO he issued only spoke to allowing ERCOT to bring enough power online to ensure grid reliability, and nothing beyond that. However ERCOT defines what those parameters are, not the feds, so that means Biden actually authorized ERCOT to do whatever it took to keep the grid going, even if that meant some of the power sources were not as clean as many would like.
Hence Biden literally did the OPPOSITE of what many are wrongly saying he did. I hate BidenHarris as much as the rest of you, but ERCOT is to blame here, not the feds.
I can't speak to the disaster declaration request though.
Intentional in terms of sabotaging the grid? No. Perhaps intentional in terms of placating the Greens, which in turn has grid-sabotaging outcomes.
These people are stupid, not evil.
Many charge you just based on your profiled usage, not even your actual usage. This is one of the reasons for the move to smart meters.
I'm an exec in an energy services company. In a discussion among our leadership the other day, our ERCOT expert filled us in on a number of things that came out of last week...the following are related to water safety:
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Most of Central and South Texas have open water treatment plants with a lot of exposed equipment. Within normal temps, this is not an issue, but now everything is frozen/broken.
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There are 153 water district with limited or no water pressure - this is over 50% of the state
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Many water treatment plants in the state were inexplicably not specified to be on "critical circuits" and they were included in the rolling blackouts
This is pure incompetence on numerous levels. There is a near-zero chance that NERC and/or FERC do not step in here.
I haven't heard that one, although you could easily be correct. If true, it IS something that we can blame the Feds for, unlike many on here who thinks Biden controls the weather and this was all revenge for Texas talking about secession.
Either way, your point is worth investigating more. Do you have any links handy where you read that?
Yes I've seen that article posted here and elsewhere online. My entire point is that articles like this are not accurate. They are fundamentally misunderstanding the text of the order.
No problem on the comment. I am an exec in an energy services company, and I am seeing WAY too much disinformation and/or uneducated opinions out there right now on this subject. There's literally people that think Biden controls the weather and this is revenge for Texas seceding. I mean, come on!
In support of your point on "cheap", one of our other execs said the other day that ERCOT's strategy was to perceive risk on a normal distribution curve, where no system or process can survive truly outlier events regardless of how much money you put into them. Obviously when something like this happens it is bad optics and a political problem, but the perfect solution is ALSO a political problem. It boils down to you generally getting the reliability that you pay for, and that no one really wants to pay what it would take to survive unprecedented events like this. I am not quite as forgiving as my colleague is, as infrastructure weatherproofing is done extensively elsewhere in the country and it is not all that expensive compared to the cost of not doing it.
Also to your point on the high bills, I would be shocked if these weren't variable rate programs where they bought in at cheap rates and either didn't read the fine print or rolled the dice thinking they would always get cheap rates. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.
I'm an exec in the energy field, and you are right -- ERCOT screwed this up, not the BidenHarris admin (as many others are trying to say). ERCOT basically took a cost/benefit analysis of whether or not they should freeze-proof their infrastructure, and decided not to do it. In addition they over-relied on unreliable Renewables, shut down too many coal plants, and failed to secure enough NatGas supply.
Its one thing to have your pool pipes freeze...its an entirely more severe and irresponsible thing to have your state's NatGas pipes and wind turbines freeze. All in all, a complete clusterf*ck by ERCOT management.
Here's the link to the EO itself:
From that, this is most likely the sentence that is confusing people:
"To minimize adverse environmental impacts, this Order limits operation of dispatched units to the times and within the parameters determined by ERCOT for reliability purposes."
The key is to understand what "for reliability purposes" means. In essence, Biden is saying "do whatever it takes to keep the grid up and running, but no more than that". This includes authorization to use power generation methods that are harsher on the environment than the preferred wind/solar, but don't keep them going once the crisis is over. And that is exactly what ERCOT should have done, but was unable to do. They couldn't fire up the NatGas peaker plants because the NatGas either wasn't available, or was frozen in the pipes. None of the coal plants could come online fast enough. They hand't planned for this so they didn't buy enough NatGas nor did they install weatherproofed infrastructure that could withstand cold temps like this.
As much as I hate BidenHarris, the ERCOT situation was 100% ERCOT's fault, not theirs. The EO gave them all authority they needed to maintain grid reliability.
**EVERYONE -- 17nights is the only one on here with the correct analysis. **
I detest the BidenHarris admin like everyone else here, but this is not their doing. The EO absolutely gave ERCOT all authority to do what they needed to do. The problem was due to poor planning on ERCOT's part, a lack of infrastructure weatherproofing, the lack of available NatGas regardless of price, an over-reliance on unreliable renewables, and a historically bad weather event.
Hanlon's razor is in full display here, along with some bad luck. Not some cockamamie government conspiracy.
Yes I had forgotten about that. I am now recalling that at the time my hunch is that it was just an editing issue. It was definitely worthy of questioning though, that's for sure. FWIW, this article has another angle that shows him not disappear: https://heavy.com/news/2020/04/pope-disappearing-hologram-video/
We've had the tech in the first link for quite a long time now...its called a television screen.
You're right, although they still have a way to go before they can effectively gatekeep. None of those four Obamas looked real even on a cursory glance.
It's a figure of speech. I'm not literally advocating for Satan.
For Pete's sake...
I would counter that the "most people" you are talking about are the ones that are already redpilled and on our side. The "most people" that I'm talking about are the ones that aren't hardcore Lefty or evil but just haven't been awakened yet. For these folks, style matters as much or if not more than substance. You and I care more about substance, which is why we've already been redpilled and why we supported Trump.
I'm not saying not to fight back with honesty and the truth...that's really the only thing we SHOULD fight back with in terms of content of the argument. Pointing out when the Left isn't using honesty and truth is key. But considering that we're in the persuasion part of the Great Awakening, style does matter as much as truth in order to bring more folks into the light.
When all of this is over, this will be the most significant impact on our country -- the division of families due to hyper-politicization of thing thing that normal reasonably people usually just have mild debates over.
The culprits MUST be held accountable for this very clear attack on the very fabric of our society.
The fact that Kathleen Kennedy still has a job means that they don't get it
Let me play a bit of devil's advocate here. I actually don't think he handled himself that well. The gaslighting media whore talking head deserved a huge beatdown, but what he did in response to her was too full of emotion. The key right now is to redpill normies with a digestable set of facts that support the pro-Trump narrative, not to get everyone on here (or any of the other various pro-Trump sites) fired up with a single mic drop moment. I'm sure of course that he's upset at his home being attacked...on top of all the BS that we all see in our country today...but we need tactically calm and heavy-hitting leadership right now, not raw emotion. I don't know that this behavior is what the normies need to see to get them on our side.
Ah yes, swimming trips to Laurel and Fuller lakes as a kid...educational trips to King's Gap mansion...maybe even a trip or two in college to parties in the woods outside Mont Alto campus. Great memories!
"Tell me how the grass tastes little man!"
I grew up just over the mountain from you in Carlisle. Unfortunately in Philly now for my job. Love Adams County...beautiful area, great people, awesome cider.
And many crayons were eaten that day.
i kid, i kid...
Yes, this x100. See my comment elsewhere in the thread. It's ERCOT's fault, not Biden's.