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Batteries for Large Stores of Power Just Don’t Work
I am just going to say it:
Batteries are one of the most inferior ways to store large amounts of energy that we have. The best stores of energy are hydrocarbons. A gallon of gas is lighter than batteries for the power it holds. It is easier to transport than batteries are. It is less toxic to the environment when burned than to dispose of Lithium batteries. It is far easier to “Recharge” a car with this store of energy. And finally, the energy for batteries almost all comes from transfer of hydrocarbon energy into the battery, which means it is even more energy intensive to move around.
Granted, you can transmit power through existing infrastructure and gas has to be put in a truck, and that truck burns hydrocarbons to move hydrocarbons. But, batteries won’t give you power when off the grid, and trying to use solar to give you adequate power in most cases is not going to work. Hydrocarbons bring you power on the spot, anywhere, anytime.
Batteries for large stores of power just don’t work.
Published in General
EDIT
Public service announcement. Keeping a box of handwarmers in reserve for such a thing is insanely *inexpensive. One box will go a long way and not being miserable for a long time.
Also get a Patagonia NanoPuff pullover.
Or just keep it running in the first place. They had problems because they were trying to cold start a bunch of equipment covered in an inch of ice.
The wind went to hell under the ice conditions or whatever and the greenies still blame the conservatives for something, like they didn’t have enough green power. I don’t know.
Just in the last week I have become more convinced that going down the road of this green communist stuff is worse than I’ve ever thought. National suicide.
GA uses Natural Gas for heating in so many places and never. never, have our pipes frozen.
Here’s another thing. Given all of the inflation, debt, and all the other problems we have, you can’t tell me clean coal isn’t something we should consider. I think if you threw out all of the CO2 nonsense, it would net out really good right now. We make decisions like this all of the time.
Same in Ohio, and it’s so reliable that people have auto-start emergency generators that are gas powered.
The pipes don’t need to be buried. Natural gas does not freeze like water. The problem is that the required pumping stations were converted from natural gas powered to grid powered to appease the eco-commies. So rather than have a nat. gas distribution system that is self-powered, it was reliant on wind and solar. Thanks Obama!
My understanding was the pipes pumps and well heads were to have back up heaters (like they do in the northern states), but at some point in the review process they decided that the “very small”likely hood of using them was not worth the expense (not an uncommon trade off in real world engineering).
Well it is like the realization that a statistical 500 year flood actually can occur a few years after your project was completed after you decided that designing to the 100 year was sufficient given the order of magnitude cost increase for the 500 year would possibly sink your project.
What was/is the emergency/backup system to power the pumping stations?
Power should be built to never fail. We should spend whatever it costs, including hardening against an EMP. The money is there, just spend less on social crap.
The freezing temperature of methane is -295° F. The freezing temperature of methane hydrates (a component of natural gas) can be above 32° F. That won’t affect the pipe part of the pipeline, but can freeze up pumps, particularly the pumps at the wellheads themselves. Those froze up in Texas, and once that happened, no gas.
There would have been no power outage at all, except some jug-earred knucklehead declared war on coal and tried to replace it with wind, solar, and unicorn farts. Unfortunately, the wind turbines froze too, the sun didn’t shine, and there are no unicorns.
Shh, there are people involved in this who are feeling some feelings.
~springs into action with a ten-year environmental impact study regarding unicorn habitations~
The input of natural gas into the pipeline system tends to vary, which means available natural gas varies, since storage is difficult. Much natural gas is a byproduct of oil extraction.
Coal and nuclear do have a big reliability advantage in the ability to store fuel on-site. The downside to nuclear that took out one of the Texas nuclear plants during the big freeze was the freezing of the intake for cooling water.
Molten salt reactors solve that problem.
And they come with that cute little yellow umbrella…so adorbs.
Maybe the piping should have heat tracing installed . . .
Are Morton salt reactors a real thing?
I really think Germany will be a good example in the coming years of what life will be like under the Climatists’ rules. Cold, hard and miserable — much like the Middle Ages.
Kosher ones, yes . . .
… But needing a more comprehensive fart estimate, so getting federal funding for a further five years for fostering fart forensics.🙄
There is another system issue with Texas power. The hottest days and the coldest days occur when a high pressure system stalls over the state and provides near windless conditions. Thus, the wind power will always be lowest on the days when demand is highest.