Posted on 02/03/2011 6:28:53 AM PST by detective
OK, OK. I take it all back. I hope no one else has to suffer during this latest Algore blizzard. But please don’t try and convince me that someone is going to die from exposure indoors when it is 28 outside. Outside, possibly.
5 more nuclear reactors would probab ly have nipped all this crap in the bud. Use air compressors and wind trubines and you would also have a nice, if inefficient way to STORE the excess grid capacity.
A rolling blackout is defined as a power outage lasting around fifteen minutes. What you had was a power outage. Same thing the people are experiencing who got iced power lines in the Midwest. My apologies for your lost time and income yesterday. I just find the stuff; I don’t transmit it or burn it.
In addition to the other replies: Texas' grid is self-contained and mostly independent of the Eastern and Western US grids.
Everyone is jumping all over the windmills but they only supply 7.8% of electricity in Texas. Most comes from natural gas and coal from the Rockies.
Yep.
Our current way of life is but a blip on the radar of history. We live in a golden age, and it can be taken from us in a heartbeat.
We don’t know how to live with nature like our forefathers did, for millenia.
We are so technology-dependent that our way of life is unsustainable without it.
Terrifying but true.
Thank you; that’s better.
Now, I want you to ponder the following:
Suppose you run a machine shop. Your numerical controlled machine tools are in the middle of complex machining operations and the power goes down for ANY reason for ANY length of time, even fifteen minutes.
What do you suppose happens to production?
Even fifteen minutes’ outage causes THOUSANDS of dollars of lost production and, in the worst case, scrap and tool damage.
Yes, it happens occasionally anyway — hopefully very rarely. But the fact that it’s happening NOT because of a technical failure or “act of God”, but because rolling blackouts have been ordered by an NGO essentially set up to pray at the alter of green energy, and it’s mighty frustrating and expensive for a businessman. Especially one who is paying an electric company through the nose for AFFORDABLE, CONTINUOUS electricity so he can run his damn business.
And since I bet you’ll ask: no, “failover” backup power is not an economically viable option.
Multiply this one example by — what? — a hundred thousand workplaces all over the state, all experiencing SOME degree of lost productivity. The costs are ASTRONOMICAL.
Or should the businessman send all his employees home, knowing that today we’ll have rolling blackouts, thereby shifting the cost of the energy companies’ political correctness to the “little guy”? Non-starter, plus the guy taking the risks loses ANYWAY in this condition.
And again — not for a good technical reason, but SOLELY because of greenies and their political influence.
Do you see where I’m coming from? It’s not a matter of “inconvenience”. It’s a matter of LIVELIHOOD. Very important to anyone who works for a living.
And all that “back to the little house on the prairie” crap? Feh. People worked like the devil to get us PAST that stage. It’s not idyllic. And we don’t HAVE to be there. Why do we WANT to be there? To help Al Gore pay for another mansion?
What’s amazing is that I even have to explain this stuff on a conservative forum to people who are supposedly conservative.
Why? If the results of a unplanned outage are so costly as in your machine shop example, wouldn't it be only prudent to invest in a UPS?
Every building I have worked in for the past 40 years has had backup generators to at the minimum keep critical functions operating, if not the entire facility. Where I work now, that system kicks in on average probably a dozen times a year and keeps us going with the important stuff till utility power is restored. I'm sure it's more than paid for itself.
Understood.
I apologize for my rudeness and disrespect, then.
FRegards
Someone admits they were wrong on FR?
The world is coming to an end!!
I used to work in a seven-story office building. Next to the loading dock was a diesel generator to power the elevators and some of the lights in the event of an outage. Every Friday morning, the building management would fire it up for a few minutes to test it. For a computer controlled machine shop, you’d also need a reliable UPS to keep stuff up until the generator turns on (fifteen seconds or so).
I have been convicted of my shortsidedness. I also have developed a longing to watch Rachel Maddow tonight, followed by Anderson Cooper 360.
Your offer of help is very kind. I just talked to my daughter and she asked me to thank you.
It warmed up enough that her car finally started so she is heading to the base to get some groceries and bottled water. Her pipes are still frozen, but she is hoping to find another space heater. I told her about this thread so she is going to put on her ‘Laura Ingles Wilder’ personna and deal with it. She has the kids in their coats wrapped in blankets in the front room sitting in front of the space heater ‘camping’. She has nailed blankets over the windows and door openings to make a snug area in the front room.
If things don’t improve by tomorrow, she said she would chop down the pecan tree in the back yard and roast up a couple of squirrels. ;-)
Ha!!
If she has a gas stove, they make a handy space heater. Crank the oven to 450, light all the burners and it’ll heat the house just fine.
But don’t make it an opportunity for the five kids to find out “the burned hand teaches best”, or what fire extinguishers are for.
>> Why?
In business, it ALWAYS comes down to economics. The cost of an outage is significant, but the cost (fixed and continuous) of uninterruptable power of the class required is even higher.
If we’d built coal and gas powered plants, and not pissed away our money on “green” crap like the clowns in the article are pimping, they wouldn’t have “helped”, they would have ELIMINATED any blackouts.
Let the “Wind Energy Association” suck wind.
Only in a third world country would people accept rolling blackouts as a way of life.
Too many eggs are being put into the windmill basket. Today the interruption is Oprah, someday it will be more serious.
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