Energy

Why wind turbines in New York keep working in bitter cold weather unlike the ones in Texas

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Why wind turbines in New York keep working in bitter cold weather unlike the ones in Texas

I had no idea that they had de-icing equipment on wind turbines in New York. I just thought they shut them down when they iced up like they do when wind conditions are too fast or slow. But instead what they do in colder climates were icing is common, is they stop the blades, de-ice them then restart them. Makes sense as it would otherwise lead to a lot of a loss of a lot of operating hours in the winter. 

I think folks are reading too much into the hullabaloo about the cold outbreak down south

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I think folks are reading too much into the hullabaloo about the cold outbreak down south.

  • Sometimes it gets very cold in the winter, even in places where you might not think it would get get very cold.
  • Engineered systems, such as power plants and the electric grid work under certain parameters, and when you exceed them, they fail.
  • The extreme electricity demands of resistance heating and air-source heat pumps pre-heaters, overloaded the grid to the point it couldn’t keep up.
  • It doesn’t mean the grid is defective or bad, it’s just that it’s a rare, outlaying case, when parameters were exceeded and an engineered design failed
  • While maybe the it wouldn’t have been an issue in cold weather areas, where the temperature regularly gets that cold, they don’t have the natural gas and fuel oil burners down south to take energy demand off the grid.
  • I think it’s foolish to blame politicians, power plant operators or electric companies for a once in a lifetime disaster that is exceedingly rare, and overwhelmed their infrastructure.

I wonder how much of the spike in demand and electricity shortage down south is due the common air-source heat pumps having to kick on their electric pre-heaters due to extreme cold conditions (at least for the south)

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I wonder how much of the spike in demand and electricity shortage down south is due the common air-source heat pumps having to kick on their electric pre-heaters due to extreme cold conditions (at least for the south). In the south with warmer temperatures being the norm, they rely on heat pumps to pump heat out of buildings in the winter (air conditioning), and pump heat into buildings during the winter. Many large buildings, especially down south, use air conditioners with reversing valves, that allows them to pump heat into buildings, by compressing the heat in outdoors air.

Such systems work well, and are very energy efficient in moderate temperatures. You can typically compress enough heat out of 35 or 40 degree air to keep a building a comfortable 70 or 75 degrees. But the problem is when the air temperature drops below 35 degrees — there is simply not enough heat in air for compressor to work. Such air-source heat pumps then contain electrical resistance pre-heaters, similar to electric space heaters that a lot of people have. The pre-heaters are activated to heat the air when it’s cold to compress it out of outdoors air. While resistance heaters release all of the heat in electricity, power plants are lossy and 55-70% of all heat in fuel is discarded and not turned into energy. So when they fire up the electric heat, it’s quite lossy.

Cold Deepens Natural Gas Shortage – The New York Times

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Cold Deepens Natural Gas Shortage – The New York Times

The extreme shortage of natural gas that has idled thousands of workers across the eastern United States worsened yesterday, although some factories reopened by switching to alternative fuels.

The National Fuel Gas Corporation in Buffalo, which had previously escaped cutbacks, announced that following new curtailments by its suppliers it was eliminating service to, schools and industrial customers. HoweVer, the company said later that it would permit industrial customers to resume use of natural gas today, but at reduced volume.

The nation's four major automobile manufacturers, which had furloughed 56,000 employees on Monday, reduced the cuts to 20,000 by late yesterday afternoon.

And as the record cold of Monday eased, electric companies in Ohio and Michigan as well as across the Southeast were able to restart frozen generators and end rotating blackouts.

A lot of people are talking about the power shortage down south. But in January 1977, Buffalo through Detroit had a shortage of both electricity and natural gas due an extended period of cold that shuttered factories and lead to mandated cuts to building heat to 55 degrees.

Smokers Are Cancer Denialists

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Smoking causes lung cancer. Nobody disputes that fact. Yet, 1 out of every 5 Americans still lights up at least occassionally. Smoking feels really good, it’s really relaxing and awesome. Cigerettes with a glass of whiskey and coke, full of ice is so wonderful. That intense sensation from nicotine is out of this world. And by the way — it’s awful deadly.

Flames Char the Wood

There was a time when industry spokespersons downplayed the danger from smoking, and there were some doctors and other professionals that questioned the scientific consesus that smoking wasn’t bad for you. Those claims, while never particularly crediable, did give cover to some people who wanted to dig their heads into the sand, and continue to smoke because it felt so increadibly good.

Tobacco companies never forced anyone to smoke. People want their products because they are so damn pleasurable. Anybody is free to quit smoking at any time, but most don’t. There is no real function to smoking, justifying it rationally is very hard to do.

Sitting at a Campfire

Fossil fuels are the exactly like cigerettes.
It’s so damn pleasurable to burn them.

I often ride my bicycle around town or catch the bus to work and shopping. It gets me where I need to go around town. But nothing is as fun as when Friday evening rolls around, I hop in my truck, slap it into gear, and I’m off to buy some beer or head up into the mountains. Hell, even the sound of the engine makes as it clunks into gear statisifies one’s ears. The feel of effortless 315 HP, as slap my foot on gas pedle (leaving rubber on the road if I so choose), and off we go. You can even push the accelerator harder, and it will speed up effortless — even going up hill!

When you drive, you can take any road you want to. You can drive out into the countryside, up into the mountains. It can take you to the wilderness, to a mountain lake, a farm, or some other remote place, at a rate of roughly 45-75 miles per hour. Cars are elegently styled, you are free to choose your music taste, they can provide solitude and a carefully controlled climate to your choice of temperature, such as 72 degrees, and they take you exactly to your destination. Cars are such wonderful things.

Driving Down Truck Trail in Heavy Fog

Let’s be honest, the sensation one gets driving is so awesome … even we all conceed its so deadly. Automobiles kill roughly 40,000 people nationwide in a year, and roughly 1,500 New Yorkers. It’s the most common cause of death for people under Age 40. It’s also warming the planet, and putting us rapidly on a course for a time when there will be no mankind, or certainly no mankind living in a world like today.

There will probably no action on climate change, until the damage is serious enough that it can no longer be ignored. A far higher percentage of Americans drive automobiles then ever smoked, and we are all quite happy denying climate change as we push our ways towards the cliff. Until it becomes so obvious that we are all in a sucide pact, Americans have started dying in mass, and their has been clear and unrefutable evidence on climate change, don’t expect a lot of action…

Truck 2

I sure like my truck. And hell, smoking cigerettes sure is a lot of fun. I guess we are all going to die one of these days at any rate.