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Manufacturing: Samsung Semiconductor Fabs in Texas Shut Down Following State-wide Power Shortages

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Too much reliance on "green energy", Texas shut down at least 30% of its coal and gas power and in its stead put up windmills, which about 15% of them froze up during the cold temperatures these past weeks.

They shut down about 30% gas and coal and put up windmills at about 30% power, but it turns out the windmills average power was much smaller than their max power production, so they ended up only replacing about 25% of the power they shut down and like we are seeing now in these very cold weeks the windmills just froze up completely!
Interesting. I never heard of windmills freezing up here in Canada. Maybe we got the ‘winter’ grade?
 

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Those are pics of gas lines covered in ice going into a building. That's no reason for those lines to freeze. Again gas can go through uninsulated lines without a problem in subzero temps which I highly doubt Texas had. There's more to this story than what's being reported.

All it takes is a few instruments to freeze for the whole pipeline network to shut in due to safety concerns.

As for gas production, its regular practice for to inject MEG to fight hydrates forming here (ambient temps of 20-30C), I can imagine that there will be wells which will be unable to flow due to the low temps. Source: I work in E&P (aka oil/gas production).
 
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So some "blonde" posts pics of machinery and water lines with ice on it as an explanation as to why gas lines are frozen?

Correct or not, what does the poster's physical appearance have to do with anything?
 
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Correct or not, what does the poster's physical appearance have to do with anything?
Nothing, just like her unqualified postings online.
She may as well have posted pictures of clouds and blamed them, or her cat maybe.
 
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Nothing, just like her unqualified postings online.
She may as well have posted pictures of clouds and blamed them, or her cat maybe.

Then address her position. Calling her out based on being "blonde" just makes you look like a dick.
 
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So some "blonde" posts pics of machinery and water lines with ice on it as an explanation as to why gas lines are frozen?

As an explanation why Texas lost 30GWs of nuclear, gas, and coal power.

It turns out that those thermal power-plants need water to create steam, and steam to spin their generators. So yes: frozen above-grade uninsulated water pipes are a perfectly adequate explanation to the phenomenon that occurred this past week.
 
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Hi,
Yeah bottom line nothing was winterized but the blame game continues
 
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All it takes is a few instruments to freeze for the whole pipeline network to shut in due to safety concerns.

As for gas production, its regular practice for to inject MEG to fight hydrates forming here (ambient temps of 20-30C), I can imagine that there will be wells which will be unable to flow due to the low temps. Source: I work in E&P (aka oil/gas production).
If Alaska wells don't have a problem pushing up gas & oil at -50 I'm not sure why the wells in Texas can't do the same in temps that didn't hit below zero. Source: I spent nearly two decades working in the oil patch up on Alaska's north slope.

Shlumberger cleaning well heads in -30 temps. The rest of those well houses were online and pumping like they always do.

 
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I'm having a hard time figuring out what there truly is to argue about here. Stuff worked before. Then some of it stopped working when it got cold. That means something was under-designed for cold weather operation (probably multiple somethings), or cold-sensitive critical components/systems weren't maintained properly, or both. Said stuff works in other places when cold, so we can pretty confidently land on under-preparedness of some sort being the problem.

One could draw yet another analogy to cars. In a deep cold snap, a certain number will fall prey to one or more of: weak coolant, old battery, un-winterized fuel (for diesels), water (now ice) in fuel lines, and other issues I'm not thinking of. Power generation has it's own temperature-related risks, which the rest of the US has very clearly managed. Texas seems to be a slow learner in that regard.

On the subject of regulation (since it keeps getting brought up), it's not a bad thing in and of itself, but can be over-used like anything else. One of the neat aspects of the US is how much room the states have to govern themselves. That's a valuable and somewhat fragile thing; I feel we should be wary of how often blanket federal law is applied. If Texas wants to structure their power grid to avoid federal standards, bully for them (I haven't corroborated this claim from earlier in the thread). But then it's up to Texas to set and enforce its own standards and regs to avoid flusterclucks like this.
 
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That's a pic of a monitoring station .. all it does is monitor the gas so they know how much to charge (cubic ft.). The gas line going into my cabin goes 3/4 of the way around the outside of this place and none of its insulated. I've had -40 temps multiple times and have never had an issue.
In my experience, the critical things to protect are the diaphragm valves between the high pressure and low pressure parts of the system. My newly built apartment building had such a valve outside, at the base of the building, and the valve was not isolated properly. When the temperature outside went negative (in Celsius), the valve froze, and we remained without gas for a few days. After this incident, the entire thing was enveloped in glass wool, and we never had any more problems in the last 10 years.

Natural gas contains some amount of water vapor, and when the gas is converted from high pressure to low pressure, which happens at the level of the valve I talked about earlier, it cools down even further, which causes the water to freeze on the surfaces inside the valve. The higher the pressure difference, the more it cools when it passes through the valve. The gas being cold on the high pressure side exacerbates the problem. If the gas line you were talking about, going into your cabin, is low pressure, it's not a big deal if it's not isolated. But I bet the previous high pressure segment properly isolated, including the valve between it and the lower pressure segment.

You can read more about this here: https://welker.com/freeze-protectio...line-systems-and-measurement-instrumentation/
 
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Sexist. Though also still a dick.
Please tell me how noting the colour of her hair is sexist?
it may be leaning towards a generalization, but it's not sexist.

It turns out that those thermal power-plants need water to create steam, and steam to spin their generators. So yes: frozen above-grade uninsulated water pipes are a perfectly adequate explanation to the phenomenon that occurred this past week.
Ahh yes, if only they had some thermal means of heating those pipes and or their own water retention system.
It's not like water is used to cool power plants. :rolleyes:
 

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If Alaska wells don't have a problem pushing up gas & oil at -50 I'm not sure why the wells in Texas can't do the same in temps that didn't hit below zero. Source: I spent nearly two decades working in the oil patch up on Alaska's north slope.

Shlumberger cleaning well heads in -30 temps. The rest of those well houses were online and pumping like they always do.

North Slope wells are designed to produce under cold temps, I am pretty sure a lot of Texan ones are designed to curtail/defer during periods of bad weather. The same way how the DW gulf platforms are designed to shut in during hurricanes - its cheaper to shut in production than to install a weather proof piece of equipment which gets used once a decade.
 
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North Slope wells are designed to produce under cold temps, I am pretty sure a lot of Texan ones are designed to curtail/defer during periods of bad weather. The same way how the DW gulf platforms are designed to shut in during hurricanes - its cheaper to shut in production than to install a weather proof piece of equipment which gets used once a decade.
The only weather proof equipment in those well houses are the well houses themselves. They're made out of sheet metal and each corner along with the roof is connected via a piece of angle iron. Oil comes out of the ground at around 140F.
 
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Interesting. I never heard of windmills freezing up here in Canada. Maybe we got the ‘winter’ grade?
You probably have redundant energy, there are always issues in any system, so you want to generally be producing more than what the consumption is, plus that way you also future proof for bigger population down the road in 20-30 years. I think Texas doesn't even achieve full coverage with its own electricity, so they import electricity from other states, not by much, probably just 2-4% to supplement theirs, which in cases like these really hurts you.

Generally you want 10% higher output than consumption, just in case.
 
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It's even more amusing that some people put so much faith into windmill farms. Just ask the Germans who tout green energy yet are having the Russians build them a second gas line (Nordstream 2) but only after screwing the Hungarians for attempting to do the same (Southstream).


Funny that seeing how the Dutch are knee deep with the Germans when it comes to importing Russian natural gas. Natural gas is clean and easy hence the reason its the #1 source of energy for northern Europe, the US and Canada.


Those are pics of gas lines covered in ice going into a building. That's no reason for those lines to freeze. Again gas can go through uninsulated lines without a problem in subzero temps which I highly doubt Texas had. There's more to this story than what's being reported.

Its a definite choice of evils, but they all point to a singular problem: energy self sufficiency and the EU needs it much like its own production capacity.
 
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Please tell me how noting the colour of her hair is sexist?
it may be leaning towards a generalization, but it's not sexist.
It's entirely irrelevant to the conversation.
 
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