F150 Lightning Road Trip & Ike Gauntlet Pull

Well now that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) neutered the EPA yesterday, I can't help but wonder if the push for EV vehicles will be the focus or not.

Lantley wrote:
Texas was a mess. The fact that the rest of the nation didn't suffer the same fait is indication to me that Texas was ill prepared.
I don't claim to be a grid expert but somewhere along the way some huge mistakes were made or huge gambles were taken.
Pointing the finger at the EPA is a cop out. The same EPA regulated the rest of the country.However the rest of the nation did not suffer the same outage nightmare. Some how the rest of the country survived the cold snap.

Simple fact, TX was hit far harder with snow and colder temps than similar latitude "southern" locations during that storm. Look it up. Don't have to be a grid expert, but since you're good at googling stuff to form an opinion of something that you didn't personally experience, looking up weather stats is pretty easy.

Yep. Their missteps included inadvertently shutting off power to the natural gas supply. :R Texas has a crazy quilt of providers."Regulated" by politicians and political appointees. All three members of the Public Utility Commission and six members of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas board of directors resigned. It's a credit to their political spin skills that they have been able to convince some folks to blame a guy who had been out of office for 4 years!:S

TX also failed to manage the lack of generation with failing to coordinate rolling blackouts to share the limited resources or provide power to critical needs such as hospitals and water treatment.

Texas was a mess. The fact that the rest of the nation didn't suffer the same fait is indication to me that Texas was ill prepared.
I don't claim to be a grid expert but somewhere along the way some huge mistakes were made or huge gambles were taken.
Pointing the finger at the EPA is a cop out. The same EPA regulated the rest of the country.However the rest of the nation did not suffer the same outage nightmare. Some how the rest of the country survived the cold snap.

ShinerBock wrote:

shelbyfv wrote:
Yeehaw, Texas! Short memories. Mismanage their own (independent!!:R) grid and now want to be turned loose on the rest of the country? Thanks but no thanks.

Not really mismanaged, but rather we spent money to secure our electricity production during heat waves (which is more common here than week long freak cold snaps) and forced to shut down coal plants due to expensive EPA regulations in favor of cheaper wind electricity. In the past 10 years, there have been more than 11 power plants shut down in Texas due to ever increasing EPA regulations making them more expensive to operate. One of them, the J.T. Deely plant near San Antonio, had enough capacity to supply power to over a half a million homes, but would have cost $3 billion to bring it up to the recently changed EPA standards under the Obama Administration. These plant shut downs don't get reported in the news when talking about the one week when we were without power.

So we had enough power for many years, but federal regulations played a huge role cutting that power and forcing us to rely on more wind and solar power which is highly susceptible to extreme cold weather conditions. We also placed our bets and money on hotter weather, like we normally get, effecting our grid, not colder weather.

This is why we don't have that many brown outs during the summer when it gets to 105 yet other places and grids like in California that had brownouts during the summer years ago. Can you really call a grid mismanaged when it prepares for the weather it gets 99.9% of the time and not being prepared for a freak week long cold snap that hasn't happened in decades versus California not protecting itself from weather it gets most of the time and having brown outs during the summer?

The South Texas Nuclear plant was shut down for preventative maintenance during the freeze. Once they got it back up and running the power supply issue was pretty much over.

"Don't forget that Lake Mead is running out of water, so that heat free power may be running out."

Drying up and silting up. Makes one wonder how high the silt/mud is behind the dam.

way2roll wrote:

Lantley wrote:
I don't know if its the cure for cancer. But zero external heat is why EV will take over.
We can debate the enviroment and batteries as though oil refining and coal have zero impact. We can debate battery technology and the grid but at the end of the day the EV gives impressive performance with minimal heat/energy wasted.
No exhaust heat and no radiators or fans trying to cool the engine.
That efficiency makes EV a game changer. Tesla has shown it can be done.
Now that we can propel something with zero/minmal heat loss the world is going to change.
Note all auto makers have proclaimed they will be converting to EV sometime in the near future. By All I mean: VW, Ford. Chevy , BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Honda.

EV batteries and power production produces a great deal of heat. All EV's have cooling systems to keep the batteries from overheating. Internal heat vs external, it's still heat production that requires cooling.

First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.

Don't forget that Lake Mead is running out of water, so that heat free power may be running out.

You can argue a power plant can implement better pollution control but actual heat...never heard that suggested as the primary reason for converting to EVs.

Grit dog wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:
Okay, I'm confused, is this about politics, or EV vs ICE up a hill? I mean I've seen thread drift, but this has gone waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond that.

Ha! I'm guilty as charged, but I traced it back to Fish and w2r! They started it! LOL

And then Fish boogied...chit stirrer!! LOL

Don't blame me... This is Putin's thread drift!

shelbyfv wrote:
Yeehaw, Texas! Short memories. Mismanage their own (independent!!:R) grid and now want to be turned loose on the rest of the country? Thanks but no thanks.

Not really mismanaged, but rather we spent money to secure our electricity production during heat waves (which is more common here than week long freak cold snaps) and forced to shut down coal plants due to expensive EPA regulations in favor of cheaper wind electricity. In the past 10 years, there have been more than 11 power plants shut down in Texas due to ever increasing EPA regulations making them more expensive to operate. One of them, the J.T. Deely plant near San Antonio, had enough capacity to supply power to over a half a million homes, but would have cost $3 billion to bring it up to the recently changed EPA standards under the Obama Administration. These plant shut downs don't get reported in the news when talking about the one week when we were without power.

So we had enough power for many years, but federal regulations played a huge role cutting that power and forcing us to rely on more wind and solar power which is highly susceptible to extreme cold weather conditions. We also placed our bets and money on hotter weather, like we normally get, effecting our grid, not colder weather.

This is why we don't have that many brown outs during the summer when it gets to 105 yet other places and grids like in California that had brownouts during the summer years ago. Can you really call a grid mismanaged when it prepares for the weather it gets 99.9% of the time and not being prepared for a freak week long cold snap that hasn't happened in decades versus California not protecting itself from weather it gets most of the time and having brown outs during the summer?