… you buy power from Mexico:
Mexico’s state electricity company on Wednesday started supplying electricity to the US state of Texas, where demand shot up amid unusually cold temperatures and caused power outages.
Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission “was determined to support Texas with electrical energy faced with the problems the state is suffering due to climatological conditions,” a statement said.
An energy transfer of 280 megawatts began at midday (1800 GMT) via the north Mexican border cities of Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Piedras Negras, it added.
I guess someone forgot to tell them that for every electron of bird chopper power installed, you need an electron of conventional power on standby. Those Natural Gas power plants they didn’t build must be looking pretty good about now.
Does this mean the Superbowl will be brought to us by Mexico because Texas can’t engineer a power grid?
The Superbowl area has been exempted from the rolling blackouts. Hospitals, not so much.
But but windpower reduces the threat of terrorism as opposed to…I don’t know having a border?
Mexico: So, Gringos, we have joo ride where we wan choo.
Joo do ass we say or we cut off jour power, Jefe.
Buenos tardes!
That’s ‘buenas tardes’, Jose. But are we sure that the power generated in Mexico complies with the strict emission stadards in the US (ie. is it ‘ethical power’). If not, it should not be accepted and Texans should then be allowed to freeze in the dark whenever the wind is not blowing.
Not to interrupt the self congratulatory schadenfreude or anything but why exactly is this news? I mean, power plants asplode + unexpected demand spike = power imports?
That’s ‘buenas tardes’, Jose.
Well, my Mexican isn’t too good.
The biggest problem associated with importing Mexican power is that the frequency is measured there using the metric system and ours is in the just regular American system. They use radians per second while we use hertz. Now 60 radians per second is way different than 60 hertz. Consequently American clocks running on Mexican electricity run a lot slower. The Superbowl could go into the next day, great for sports bars but not so good for the athletes.
M: As you install more wind power there are more rolling blackouts unless a 100% replacement of power is available, on standby, on demand. This means that somebody else is producing excess using a source that can be “switched” on, or you have to have excess Nat. Gas or Hydro yourself, ready to switch on. Another problem is that the more wind you have, the more difficult it becomes to toggle between sources … unless economy crushing infrastructure changes are made.
“See Scottland, Germany, England, and Denmark for details.
>>Well, my Mexican isn’t too good.
Oz, Mexico is a Latin-American country. They speak Latin down there. 🙂
Germany
Scotland
England
Denmark
Cjunk
Well that’s true I know and yes Texas is pushing it’s renewables but in this case I think a couple pipelines burst and 280MW from Mexico is really a small amount considering their regular consumption is like what in the dozens of Gigawatts probably? I hardly think it’s a “LOLZ Theyre has no more powerrs” situation.
“Mexico supplies electricity to wintry Texas” or “Al Gore’s In Town For The Superbowl”
In somewhat related news:
U.S. administration in contempt over gulf drilling ban judge rules
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-03/u-s-administration-in-contempt-over-gulf-drill-ban-judge-rules.html
I still believe the ‘root cause’ is AGW panic causing the utilities to obsess about Bird Blenders instead of providing reliable electricity.
HOWEVER !
This started when pipes froze at a coal generation station, causing it to go off-line. When all the natural gas backups tried to pick up the slack they had problems due to low gas pressure. Made worse because the gas pipeline had problems due to the cold too. So the Bird Blenders were not a direct cause – but they didn’t really help much either.
Dear Mexico, thanks to you the rolling blackouts did not get to my house here in Austin. I stayed warm. Thank you !
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/7411539.html
Mexico has second thoughts – now what !?
If Big Al Gore causes Super Bowl cancelation, will the indifferent ones now also realize global warming is a scam?
The main inconvenient detail the fans of “renewables” avoid is that Pickens more or less stopped tilting windmills when it became definite that neither the state not the utilities would pay to construct the hundreds of miles of transmission line needed to move his wind power from the pan-handle to the markets.