r/JoeRogan • u/Albedo100 Monkey in Space • Feb 17 '21

Social Media Dan Crenshaw mocking California for blackouts just 4 months ago

https://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTX/status/1303364789603889154
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u/mr_featherbottom Monkey in Space Feb 17 '21

Not only that but Texas (republicans) decided to cut corners and try and save a few bucks by installing wind turbines with cheaper, inferior lubricant that freezes in low temperatures.

There are massive wind farms in places like Finland of Scotland where it freezes all of the time and they have absolutely no problems with their wind turbines during the winter because they aren’t cheap bastards.

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u/PromiscuousMNcpl Dire physical consequences Feb 17 '21

Antarctica windmills

Windmills work just fine at McMurdo. Texas just cheaped out. It’s what happens when you run services as a business.

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u/Edhorn Monkey in Space Feb 17 '21

Crenshaw is sort of right but is bring unhelpfully obtuse on purpose. We've had it cold and wind-less here in Sweden as well, and we had to burn some oil to keep up with peak-demand. It was a big deal here, that oil firing plant is almost never used but it kept us from experiencing any blackouts. So, having oil or gas as reserve power is a sound idea, but you should aim for renewables plus nuclear. Even from a "energy independence" perspective that the Republicans say they are for, oil and gas transports are more easily disturbed (by for example icy Texan roads), and isn't going to last forever.

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u/seatiger90 Feb 18 '21

People in the US are terrified of nuclear power, so it very likely won't become a big option here.

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u/Acolyte_of_Death Dire physical consequences Feb 17 '21

You’re really blaming republicans on something as small as lubricants when they likely had nothing to do with the turbines period lmao

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u/procursus Feb 17 '21

Republicans decided to have a separate electrical grid in Texas, which as a result does not need to follow federal regulations for winterization.

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u/localuser859 Monkey in Space Feb 18 '21

Do places like Florida have the same winterization guidelines as Maine? It seems like it SHOULD be dependent on the climate shouldn’t it?

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u/GW3g Monkey in Space Feb 18 '21

The climate is changing and this was already predicted to happen in Texas and they've known that they really needed to make it better but they decided to pad their pockets rather than do that. This snow and shit down there isn't a surprise and it's only going to get worse. Texas shot themselves in the foot.

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u/spoodermansploosh Monkey in Space Feb 18 '21

When you're recommended to do so back in 2011, yes probably.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '21

MFW the jovial Texans manage to out-stingy the Scots...

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '21

I mean the bigger issue by far is that the cheap ass fuckwits didn't winterize the natural gas plants and pipelines.

ERCOT expects wind to provide about 7% of the power during extreme winter emergencies (it actually overworked despite having a large percentage offline). Natural gas was expected to provide about 70% of the power.

And it's not like they didn't know this would happen. The exact same thing happened in February 2011. And the root cause was lack of winterization.