It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Most of the comments in the video reveal things are no where as bad as the media portays.
“Letting non-professionals get involved in the power grid is like giving the keys to the family car and a bottle of whiskey to a 14 year old boy and his pals. If the renewables were viable, we’d adopt them by the train-load and build them so fast your head would spin.”
Rolling outages are systematic, temporary interruptions of electrical service. They are the last step in a progressive series of emergency procedures that ERCOT follows when it detects that there is a shortage of power generation within the Texas electric grid. ERCOT will direct electric transmission and distribution utilities, such as CenterPoint Energy, to begin controlled, rolling outages to bring the supply and demand for electricity back into balance.They generally last 15-45 minutes before being rotated to a different neighborhood to spread the effect of the outage among consumers, which would be the case whether outages are coordinated at the circuit level or individual meter level. Without this safety valve, power generating units could overload and begin shutting down and risk causing a domino effect of a statewide, lengthy outage. With smart meters, CenterPoint Energy is proposing to add a process prior to shutting down whole circuits to conduct a mass turn off of individual meters with 200 amps or less (i.e. residential and small commercial consumers) for 15 or 30 minutes, rotating consumers impacted during that outage as well as possible future outages.
There are several benefits to consumers of this proposed process. By isolating non-critical service accounts (“critical” accounts include hospitals, police stations, water treatment facilities etc.) and spreading “load shed” to a wider distribution, critical accounts that happen to share the same circuit with non-critical accounts will be less affected in the event of an emergency. Curtailment of other important public safety devices and services such as traffic signals, police and fire stations, and water pumps and sewer lifts may also be avoided....
Obama’s war on coal hits your electric bill
The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.... These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level.
captaintyinknots
reply to post by Riffrafter
I read that thread, and it was quite interesting.
That said, it doesnt give me any reason to believe this without some sort of corroborating evidence. "They may have leaked it first to get ahead of it" is not conclusive of anything, and does not lend anything to verifying the validity of the video.
....The rich actually need the common folk to keep their income flowing. And the rich control the US, what would they gain by starting a civil war with the masses?...
....The reality is that, so far, we have largely failed to articulate a clear and compelling vision of why a new global order matters — and where the world should be headed. Half a century ago, those who designed the post-war system — the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) — were deeply influenced by the shared lessons of history.
All had lived through the chaos of the 1930s — when turning inwards led to economic depression, nationalism and war. All, including the defeated powers, agreed that the road to peace lay with building a new international order — and an approach to international relations that questioned the Westphalian, sacrosanct principle of sovereignty.... www.theglobalist.com...
MrSpad
captaintyinknots
reply to post by Riffrafter
I read that thread, and it was quite interesting.
That said, it doesnt give me any reason to believe this without some sort of corroborating evidence. "They may have leaked it first to get ahead of it" is not conclusive of anything, and does not lend anything to verifying the validity of the video.
If you watch the video without the hyperbole its seems legit. It also reveals that an MP unit in the National Guard has no training or knowlege of how to deal with a disaster that would have the used to stop looting or a riot. As MP in the National Guard that would be a huge part of their mission in the past. Now the Guard has been so geared towards war overseas it has completely dropped the ball on its domestic mission. Clearly none of them have ever been trained or discussed how to handle a martial law situation in the face of natural disater or riot. What is truly scarey here is that it reveals not only is the US not planning on martial law it is completely and totaly unprepared if such a situation arrived even in a single city. I have heard for years that this was problem with the NG and in being no longer prepared for its domestic missions. Next big disaster somebody could be in some real trouble.
MrSpad
If you watch the video without the hyperbole its seems legit.
MrSpad
It also reveals that an MP unit in the National Guard has no training or knowlege of how to deal with a disaster that would have the used to stop looting or a riot. **-snip-** Now the Guard has been so geared towards war overseas it has completely dropped the ball on its domestic mission. Clearly none of them have ever been trained or discussed how to handle a martial law situation in the face of natural disater or riot.
MrSpad
What is truly scarey here is that it reveals not only is the US not planning on martial law it is completely and totaly unprepared if such a situation arrived even in a single city. I have heard for years that this was problem with the NG and in being no longer prepared for its domestic missions.
Lil Drummerboy
reply to post by MysterX
Yeah,
but like I stated,. something large would need to occur, the rich and even the military and local PD still dont add up to enough to quell the masses. specially here in the US though we have some against guns because they have been brainwashed to believe that way,. people will band together when the qualities of their lives are thoroughly threatened. In my location alone, this entire neighborhood is cops, ex-military and pro-NRA and simple good ole boys and women that believe in life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and simply wouldnt stand for a gun confiscation in any form. Also fun to mention a neighborhood of preppers, in all pay brackets as their are million dollar homes everywhere.
I guess I still will find it hard to believe a nation wide Martial law will result in gun confiscation nationally. But I have listened to enough people already say they will join in saying "From my dead cold hands"
Further, when production is so low, it means that many windfarms were probably drawing energy from the grid just to keep the windmills from mechanical failure (heating oil, keeping the rotors turning, or yaw mechanisms working etc, to stop it from freezing up)
This only highlights the lack of common sense and vision in this sector, not a failure of green energy itself....
The marginal economic value of PV and CSP without thermal storage is found to drop considerably (by more than $70/MWh) as the penetration of solar increases toward 30% on an energy basis. This is due primarily to a steep drop in capacity value followed by a decrease in energy value. In contrast, the value of CSP with thermal storage drops much less dramatically as penetration increases. As a result, at solar penetration levels above 10%, CSP with thermal storage is found to be considerably more valuable relative to PV and CSP without thermal storage. The marginal economic value of wind is found to be largely driven by energy value, and is lower than solar at low penetration.
An organization called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which has federal authority to enforce the reliability of the national electrical grid, put Texas on notice last week...
The Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) have been working for two years to remedy looming electricity shortfalls in the state. Insufficient generating capacity could cause rolling brownouts and blackouts across Texas. What’s more, if the power grid here becomes unreliable as peak demand outstrips generating capacity, it could affect the reliability of the whole country’s electrical system.
The CEO of the North American group, known as NERC, wrote last week that not enough has been done to fix the problem. It is “still unclear to us how ERCOT intends to mitigate” the potentially disastrous situation.... Texas Energy Foundation: Short on Electricity
...Texas has installed more wind generation than any other state and all but three other countries....
Texas leads the nation in renewable energy potential and has almost one-third of the nation’s total wind generation capacity,.. link
German born EU Commissioner for Energy, Günther Oettinger, has just warned in a Bild interview that Germany risks a backlash against high end-user electricity prices as a result of overly munificent subsidies to renewable energy producers, as costs will “run out of control” without a price cap on electricity prices for retail customers and industry.
Sudden fluctuations in Germany’s power grid, and the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe, are already causing major damage to the competitiveness of industrial companies – which are threatening to move production abroad if the government cannot guarantee a stable electricity grid, as Der Spiegel reports.
No wonder that solar power is being called the costliest mistake in the history of German energy policy: Berlin’s Technical University calculates that renewable subsidies will cost $377-billion up to 2030. Three middle-sized textile companies have filed lawsuits against the surcharge for renewable energy (EEG surcharge), claiming it is unconstitutional....
Of course, renewable energy was never going to be able to power a modern economy like Germany. Nor were wind and solar farms going to deliver continuous electricity compared with nuclear and gas-fired power plants. Realizing that renewables have taken them into an economic cul-de-sac some countries, like Canada, are unwinding their subsidized renewable industries.
Germany may not be far behind. Environment minister Peter Altmaier and economy minister Philipp Rösler, have cast doubt whether renewable energy targets are reachable and said their priority is to make sure that electricity prices don’t rise too much.
To keep the lights on, Germany is, for the time being, importing nuclear power from France and the Czech Republic, and building of twenty-three new coal-fired plants.
The U.S. is burning less and less coal each year, thanks to cheap natural gas and new pollution rules. From a climate perspective, that’s a huge deal — less coal means less carbon. But here’s the catch: if the U.S. just exports its unused coal abroad, the end result could actually be more Carbon Pollution
whywhynot
reply to post by seeker1963
I don't want my guns confiscated and I do worry about it some, but, When I put a little prospective on the situation regarding the governments realistic ability to actually do it I worry a lot less. I submit the following as a little prospective: Katrina, Sandy, Afghanistan, Iraq, nuclear development in Iran, Syria, Israel, 17 Trillion in debt and rising, and last but certainly anything but least, Obamacare. Lets face it folks the government just cannot get it done. These are a bunch of clowns who are too busy feathering their own pockets or growing their own empires to pay attention to any detail. Few of these jokers have managed anything successfully.
So as worried as I am that I can keep my guns I keep cool knowing that I'm safe with such an inept government.
That's a lot of facts and figures.
Unfortunately, it's also a load of crap, based upon ridiculously inefficient wind turbine designs and calculated using extreme lack of vision and foresight.
What's the one thing that most (not all, but most) homes have? A roof.
How many kWh's does the average UK home require? About 3-4. You think it's beyond reasonable to simply install 3 or 4 Kw's worth of PV panels onto every single home in the UK to supply our total energy requirements do you?.....
“The hope that the wind and the sun and geothermal can provide all of our energy is a nice idea but I find it unlikely that that’s possible....
Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
LINK
Wind turbines have an embarrassingly low Energy Returned On Energy Invested value of 0.29. The manufacture, installation and operation of wind power facilities will consume more than 3 times the energy they will ever produce.
…From an energy perspective, we must form a more complete picture of the technological picture. To date, we have only focused on operational energy but there can be extremely high embodied energy costs as well. Most technological solutions depend on advanced scientific materials that come out of research labs....
Semiconductors are notorious for the amount of energy required to produce them. The manufacturing process can take up to 400 steps, use highly toxic materials and a vast amount of energy. As we shall see below, one of the dirty secrets of Solar and Wind is the vast amounts of energy used to make them, use of exotic raw materials and toxic waste.
Embodied energy of semiconductors
Exotic raw materials – The Rare Earth Metals
Toxic ingredients and E-Waste...