To All The Green Energy Screamers ….

… may you be forced to live outdoors in -20F weather as just punishment for what you have imposed on others, and which you claimed would not result in us having what amounts to a third-world electrical system when under stress.

These idiots keep think the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to "special people."  Sorry, they apply to everyone, all the time, every time, and there is nothing you can do about it.

The facts are:

• In the winter the time of worst possible load for any electrical based heat system is before the sun contributes anything in the early morning and overnight hours. The lowest temperatures occur then and thus the highest heating load demand occurs then too, particularly when that "not yet helping" time overlaps when people are not sleeping.  When people are sleeping many like it cooler in their house but nobody does when trying to take a shower -- or a dump -- in the morning.
  
  
• Wind and solar are unreliable.  It is often very cold when there is neither available.  Further, high levels of wind are outside of the operating parameters of turbines too, so at a certain  point they must feather and shut down lest they be destroyed.  Winter always coincides the worst heating demand with no solar at all because [solar panels are covered with ice and snow and] the sun is not shining when the coldest temperatures occur, thus the solar benefit available to the grid in such circumstances is always zero and should be counted as zero in every single case when it comes to winter capacity during maximum load periods.  This in turn means solar can never form the backbone of an electrical grid in the winter months and anyone who does not take this into account has no business lecturing anyone about energy and should be ejected into said -10F temperatures in their underwear with the door bolted behind them so they can suffer what they intend to and do inflict on others.  When it is -10F out and blowing 40 knots you damn well need heat available as every crack the wind can find in your house is going to result in a firehose of insanely-cold air coming in.  Yes, you should fix those and the high power bill is an excellent incentive to do so but you're not going to be doing so with the ones you find while it is -10F out because you have to open said orifice to do it.
  
  
• Natural gas, nuclear and coal all do not care about how cold it is.  You might have to de-ice the augur on the coal plant to keep it operational but as long as those plants have fuel they make electricity and all three benefit from colder outside temperatures because the thermodynamic efficiency goes up; that, by the way, is defined as the difference between the high and low sides of a heat engine in Kelvin.  Obviously when the heat exchanger has colder air or water to work with the low side is helped and the heat of either combustion or that produced by the nuclear reactor does not change.  (Yes, nuke plants are hurt in terms of efficiency and maximum output in very high temperatures for the same reason; the cooling system has only warmer water available and thus overall efficiency goes down some.)
  
  
• Nobody with two nickels to rub together engineers anything without at least a 5 or 10% buffer on maximum delivered utilization.  TVA was whining that we were basically at the "historical high" and they were cutting people off on a rolling blackout basis.   That's crap; where was the engineering for the addition 5 or 10% of capacity?  TVA had it in the form of a crap-ton of coal-fired plants which they turned off intentionally because of all the greenie screamers.  Rather than keep them in reserve, manned and available they were cold, off, with no fuel or even worse bulldozed and destroyed without replacing said nameplate capacity with something that can and will deliver the energy when it is zero degrees and dark outside, as those plants were fully capable of doing.

This is not an accident or incident it was deliberate malfeasance served up by those who scream about "green energy" but will not account for the delivery of said energy under adverse conditions, nor account for the fact that the maximum demand on an electrical-based heating system is going to occur every single time when solar contribution is zero and wind may be zero too.

What's worse is that if you do "rolling blackouts" in an area full of heat pumps when they come back on, odds are high they will trip into the second stage and the strips will be energized where otherwise they might not.  When that happens on a heat pump system electrical load typically triples for a period of time which of course is exactly the opposite of what you were trying to do.  Therefore the "strategy" of rolling blackouts during the winter in places where heat pumps are plentiful rather than fuel-fed furnaces because your attempt at "load management" will make it worse rather than improve the situation.  Your only recourse in such a circumstance is to have the generating and delivery capacity available in the first place.

This cold snap was not "unprecedented" and neither was electrical demand.  Yes, it was high.  So what?  Weather happens and the reason you are given a monopoly on energy delivery and generation comes with the requirement to engineer to a high standard with a reasonable margin of performance beyond historical demand levels.  TVA and most other systems did not do that and as a result we now have all these rolling blackouts during an event where losing power can get you killed.

SOME places have gone even more-insane and are mandating that you not install and use fuel-based heating equipment and a couple are even mandating the end of fuel-fed vehicles which means if you get screwed you can't flee to somewhere that is warm because if there is no power you can neither charge nor maintain the charge in said vehicle, which must keep its battery above 32F or it cannot accept a charge at all.  If your house becomes uninhabitable you either can get somewhere safe or you die and a fuel-fed vehicle will start provided it has fuel and a battery in good condition to roll it over.  If not your neighbor can jump-start said car and once it's running you have heat.  Mandating people not have those options available to them is both nuts and premeditated murder because power lines do go down in ice storms and no reasonable personal generator can run an electric-based system under those conditions.  Natural gas and propane will not go down under the same conditions and while you need fan power for a forced-air furnace a small generator is enough power to run that.  Thus until and unless everyone involved can guarantee there will be no outages nor curtailment during serious weather events like this, which by the way is impossible every single power company executive and politician who urges or even worse mandates you not have and use fuel for heating should be summarily executed if and when such an event occurs and there is insufficient electricity as they conned or even mandated under law that you not use an extremely reliable alternative that, if you had done so, would not be inoperative at all.

I don't care if you are a personal adherent of the "global warming" religious cult.  Have at it if you wish.  You're stupid and wrong but you're entitled to be both in America.  Do be aware that such will mean your electric car is worthless as it will have very close to no range and if it runs out of power in below-freezing temperatures it will not accept a charge until it warms up which of course means a tow to somewhere it is warm -- and said tow truck will have to be powered by gas or diesel.  In addition there aren't enough of the necessary natural resources (e.g. lithium, cobalt, etc.) to replace all the gas and diesel cars with electric anyway as you could not possibly make enough batteries to do so and everyone making these cars including Tesla, GM and Ford knows this as the reserve amounts of said elements in the ground are known and thus that what you were told and sold, and perhaps have sold to others, is a physical impossibility.  Indeed to make just one electric car battery you must dig up 500,000lbs of earth and the machinery that does so is powered by diesel.

If you wish to impose on yourself and your family the fruits of being stupid have at it.

If you demand it of others that is unacceptable, it should not be tolerated, and the first time it gets cold and people can't heat their homes with your mandated "answer" your home should be sawz-alled to gain the firewood (and your clothing burned too) necessary for your neighbors to keep warm while you and your family get to live outdoors in your underwear with it being -10F out for as long as you might last.

ENOUGH!