Grrl Power #1276 – Performance enhanced politics
Very select, eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a slight shift in the art on today’s page. (I’ll pause here for you to go reexamine it in case you missed it.) The important point being that if you noticed on your first perusal, you are a special butterfly.
Okay, seriously though. I’ve mentioned I have been going down to my parents’ house for a week at a time to help out with my mom, who is having some mobility issues. Actually, she’s gotten better… well, not better, but she’s improved a little. At this point I’m mostly helping out my dad with chores that pile up. He’s in good health be he is in his early 80’s, so I help out with the heavy lifting and just anything that is a two man job. Plus, they just like seeing me, because before all this went down, I was visiting like 2-3 times a year, cause, you know, life keeps you busy.
So anyway, I drove down last Sunday, (from Dallas to Houston) and if you watch the weather channel, you might be like “Doesn’t that mean you were driving toward hurricane Beryl?” Yes it does. For arcane reasons of scheduling that aren’t worth getting into, last week would have been the best week for me to visit, only when I got up that Monday, we had about an hour of power, and then, the terrible privatized power grid in Texas with a long history of extended failures, predictably, failed. So I hung out with my folks till about 5 pm, then decided I just couldn’t sit around not working on the comic, and I headed back up to Dallas. I felt a little bad leaving them without power, but they had a full pantry, fridge, plenty of flashlights (I think most people who live in Texas have a stockpile of flashlights at this point) and there was literally nothing I could do to help besides keep them company.
Anyway, they got power back mid-Wednesday and are fine, and I decided to make up the lost time by having fun with a stick-figure adjacent style, which… you know? I don’t hate? I’m not going to switch the comic over to this or anything, but it’s fun to experiment with a minimalist style, and it reminded me of art principles like “the fewer lines you use, the more important each one becomes” or… I don’t know, I think that’s a saying. It’s easy to lose sight of old lessons when you’re busy worrying about bounce light hues and the like.
As for the page itself? Yeah, Sciona’s stolen super body can make the good-good. Or more like the good-good-good-good.
The new vote incentive is up!
Oh no! Superheroines in a deathtrap! Well… a tickle trap. Okay, not trapped, trapped, but… look, three of the girls are getting tickled. Actually, in a way, seven girls are getting tickled since the other four Harems will feel this as well, but technically it’s only the three shown in the picture since Harem insists there’s only one of her – it’s just confusing since she can be in 5 places at once.
As you can probably imagine, Patreon shows what happens if they laugh, and also has a comic revealing who is behind this nefarious situation.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Oh good, for a second i thought i might have taken my meds and reality set it.
lol, who’s up for suggesting a stick figure style vote incentive?
*giggling*
Just hope you don’t see any muppets.
too late. that happened. in-universe even. and it was weird.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-436-muppetosis/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-437-i-hope-dabbler-gave-odds/
thank you.
np :)
Still more detail than OotS.
On first reading I thought Daughter of Crawling Guy and Emily Liu was gonna have opposite relationship with Daughter cawling for Lucy.
Simplified art is a style, and it takes practice to get good at it. OotS (or, for an even more extreme example, XKCD) has less detail but still manages to do a good job of having expressive art.
You are absolutely right and I love OotS. XKCD is a little too advanced in math, physics and programming for someone (me) with a BS in chemistry but the stuff I understand is very amusing and occasionally thought-provoking.
At first I assumed this was just a multi-panel version of the non-canon chibi jokes that used to be at the bottom of some pages, but then it got too plot-related.
Have you ever seen the episode of Fringe where they all take LSD and everything turns into a cartoon? This reminds me of that, a little.
Similarly to a crossover episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds “Those Old Scientists” Crossover with Lower Decks ending, at Captain Pike’s Birthday Party, Enterprise crew is animated, feeling two-dimensional (with huge eyes) … and wondering what exactly is in the Orion hurricanes they’re drinking.
Aww yeah, that’s a good episode! Boims and Mariner going back in time
And Red Dwarf when they were turned into claymation
Ohhh, it’s a stick figure strip! Feels like that old-school Sluggy Freelance “artist’s real life gets busy but the show must go on” style. At least it’s not an entire alternate dimension of nothing but stick-figures with their own storylines.
Glad to hear that everyone’s safe despite the hurricane & power issues.
The problem with the Texas power grid is that it’s sort of pseudo-privatized. They set up a “market” for buying power for the grid, but it’s mandated to buy whatever is cheapest at any given instant, without regards to trivial matters like reliability. They were forbidden to take anything but the price at that moment into account.
So everything can be chugging along just fine, you’re getting your power off a nuke plant with 98% availability and outages scheduled months in advance, and the sun comes out from behind a cloud or a wind gust hits a windmill, and suddenly you have to stop buying the nuke plant’s power, and buy the solar/wind instead. Never mind that you can’t shut off a nuke plat that fast, and they have to just throw away the power they’re producing.
Every cent you spend on making things more reliable under Texas’ fake market system makes your plant less competitive, so if you hardened your plant against storms, you went broke. While a solar plant didn’t get dinged even a little for going out every night, and whenever it was cloudy, it simply wasn’t allowed to matter that you couldn’t count on them being there when you needed them.
It was the stupidest way imaginable to set things up, unless of course your goal was just to make conventional baseline plants go broke, and hand lots of checks to people who put up bird cuisinarts. Which actually was the goal of the people promoting the plan.
That would all be no problem if the Texas Grid was actually connected with the national grid, but for that they would have to follow regulations and invest in increased reliability and weather proofing.
Having to buy the cheapest is basically the way the German power network works, it’s just big and varied enough to absorb the sun coming out or wind picking up and interconnected with the European Grid.
In the short run that solves Texas’ problems, in the long run it just spreads them around. According to utility grid projections I’ve seen, they’re expecting regular blackouts to start hitting at 2028 at the latest, due to the increasing penetration of renewable sources that go away when the sun goes down or the weather changes.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a backup generator in the next few years.
I don’t think you can blame the lack of reliability on renewables. California has a comparable amount of solar to Texas, and has come through the recent heat wave with very few problems. What Texas lacks that California has is power storage, so you can save up that solar for when demand is high.
Industries like power and health care that require excess capacity for infrequent periods of high demand (heat waves, epidemics) do not do well when privatized. Capital sees excess capacity as an inefficiency: you’ve got this capital investment that’s not earning anything most of the time, so let’s sell it off and give ourselves a big bonus instead.
Yeah, skip the “I want to blame this on renewables, so let’s reverse-reason to that point” argument. How about the PUC letting the distributor (who is actually at fault for this outage: the plants are running fine … this time) get away with building to a “50 MPH max wind speed” standard in a part of the world that regularly gets hurricanes? When 80 MPH standard parts are available, just more expensive. Or letting them “lease” a bunch of “mobile” (not really) 35 MW (yes megawatt) generators, for $800 million (they told us $200 million, at first) and charging the rate payers to recover all of it (plus 6.5% guaranteed profit). You really think Texas, with the reddest of red Republicans in charge of the state for 40 years, would pass any laws or regulations in favor of renewable power over good ol’ oil and gas?
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if they passed law like this just so they can say “see, it’s not working, we need to go back to oil and gas”.
However, also note that the law is good for oil and gas. You CAN switch off oil/gas power plant quickly. It’s nuclear which has problem with that.
Besides, is it that surprising that republicans can put aside their personal preference if they can get rich on it?
Given that there are huge swathes of wind energy farms up in the panhandle, yes. The difference is, the Dems want to KILL oil and gas, and are being marginally successful at strangling it, and the only way to protect them is to remain unconnected to the federal grid or else the federal Dems get to screw with in-state resources. It’s a substandard solution, but better in the long run than being completely subsumed by partisan federal politics. As energy storage tech improves, so will the results.
Please, oil will kill itself anyway if we can’t find a way to quickly and cheaply regenerate it, and gas will only get more expensive over time. It’s cheaper and more efficient in the long term to go renewable energy.
Yes and no. Renewable energy can be better in the long term but only once it becomes affordable en masse and has a good infrastructure. Also its something that only tends to happen with a profit motive in place for companies to truly invest in it.
I know that nuclear energy is probably the safest (surprisingly enough) and more renewable and most efficient form of power, although Im also partial to geothermic energy. In the short and mid term though, oil and natural gas are the best options we have. Im also very interested in hydrogen powered cars as a possible long term solution. Again once its affordable and reliable for the masses.
PS – I havent read this whole thread yet but not sure what this has to do with the comic :)
Which also means that the the Feds get to destroy your nonrenewable infrastructure whenever the Democrats get a wild hardon for anything.
The main problem that occurred recently was a freeze in 2021 for a length of time that had never happened since the 1800s. “The Hard Winter of 1880-1881”, specifically.
It’s a tradeoff.
DECADES ago, Neil Armstrong was being interviewed on the radio and the guy asked him how it felt when the rockets kicked in.
“How would you feel sitting on top of a million moving parts, each one let out to the lowest bidder?”
[probably sic]
Point the first: While Greg Abbott and his cronies were quick to blame solar and wind for, e.g., the 2021 grid failure, natural gas plants took a *way* bigger hit to production.
Point the second: Coal, gas, and oil plants are *way* more deadly to birds than wind turbines are.
Point the third: In order to avoid federal oversight and regulation, the Texas power grid is separated from the major North American interconnections. This keeps them from importing power from elsewhere in the US when there’s a statewide shortage.
Blaming Texas’s energy problems on wind power specifically is a chump’s game.
“Point the first: While Greg Abbott and his cronies were quick to blame solar and wind for, e.g., the 2021 grid failure, natural gas plants took a *way* bigger hit to production.”
The solar and wind took a 100% hit to their production, so no, it’s not possible for the others to take a “way bigger hit”.
“Point the second: Coal, gas, and oil plants are *way* more deadly to birds than wind turbines are.”
Have you been to any of the later generation coal plants? The only way to know they are coal is if they tell you – they capture EVERYTHING.
“Point the third: In order to avoid federal oversight and regulation, the Texas power grid is separated from the major North American interconnections. This keeps them from importing power from elsewhere in the US when there’s a statewide shortage.”
Compare to California. Tell me again how bad Texas is. :-/
“Blaming Texas’s energy problems on wind power specifically is a chump’s game.”
You’re right. It’s wind AND solar. OK, there’s at least a little bit else going on, but not much. Did you even both to read what you were responding to and where the problems with the non-solar/non-wind stuff is primarily coming from?
(And I only say “primarily” because there is ALWAYS just general human stupidity, selfishness, and shortsightedness available.)
The problem with wind and solar is lack of reliability. Unless we have some kind of revolutionary breakthrough in power storage, that isn’t going to change.
(Personally, I’m for storing it by converting it to gasoline, using air as the feedstock, as the military is doing with jet fuel right now. It’s inefficient, but gasoline is a **GREAT** storage medium for so so so many reasons. Solar at least seems likely to still be worth doing in that case, but without MUCH better turbines than the government decided to subsidize, wind isn’t. You don’t produce enough power over the life of the hardware to justify the expense of creating and installing it, much less proper disposal.)
Both of you clowns are off the mark with your comments. The problem with the TX energy grid is not with the generators, it’s with the delivery system from the generators to the users. According to multiple linemen that have been interviewed, the transmission system is falling apart. That’s what’s to blame this time and during previous long term outages here. Old, corroded, weak, worn-out wiring that comes down when strong winds blow or when a small tree branch falls on it. Here around Houston Centerpoint is responsible, and is infamous for their neglected maintenance and upgrade of the infrastructure. I don’t know about other parts of the state.
Oh, I don’t doubt that one bit.
But there’s always at least several places in the country where that’s true. I think and hope that it at least varies a bit which they are, but that kind of institutional rot is impossible to keep from at least starting here and there, and it gets to sit and get worse all too often.
But the problem is *ALSO* with the generation. Introducing unreliable power sources has been incredibly expensive in numerous ways, not all of which show in actual down time.
I knew a guy who works for the power company, and one of the most “hidden but egregious” kind of things he pointed out was that many of the fossil fuel generators (which are still the backup for the unreliable “green” crap, and will be for the foreseeable future unless we go nuclear) are designed to be ON for the vast majority of the time. What are supposed to be 20-year generators burn out in as little as a year from being cycled on and off so much. Not theoretical – explicit examples of it actually happening.
” and will be for the foreseeable future unless we go nuclear) are designed to be ON for the vast majority of the time.”
Diverting excess of grid demand power from a Nuclear Powerplant to production of “Pink Hydrogen” seems like a good approach to Electrolysis of water, without production of additional greenhouse gasses.
Hydrogen usable for vehicles that burn with oxygen to form water and heat.
According to Department of Energy 3 Nuclear Power Plants are currently gearing up to demonstration of “Pink Hydrogen viability.”
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Station (Oswego, NY) – Started Hydrogen production in 2023
separate project to power a fuel cell at the facility and will start providing additional power to the grid in 2025.
Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station (Oak Harbor, OH) – Single Reactor producing Hydrogen for sale.
Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant (Red Wing, MN) – Testing High Temperature Electrolysis, then scaling up. Expected production 2024
“Diverting excess of grid demand power from a Nuclear Powerplant to production of “Pink Hydrogen” seems like a good approach to Electrolysis of water, without production of additional greenhouse gasses.”
I’ve been looking at hydrogen as a fuel source since the early 90s. It’s positives are SO SO SO tempting… but it’s negatives just don’t go away.
It takes up too much space as a gas and is *incredibly* difficult to contain without leaks. OR you can compress it, and it takes up too much weight (and still a lot of space) from the equipment required to do that. Among other things, but those are just the basic impossibles. It simply doesn’t have the energy density we need for anything but stationary applications (well, maybe in space… maybe).
But you can get *EXACTLY* the same benefit (no additional greenhouse gases) by making gasoline from air with that energy, because when you burn it, you are just putting back the greenhouse gases that that you took out to make the fuel. Net zero, inherently and unavoidably.
And that would probably be fixed if they abided by the regulations the rest of the country uses.
Bonus points: It would let them connect to the rest of the nation’s power grid, which would let them handle load spikes/production dips better.
Most regualtions are written in blood.
Right, because no other place in the nation EVER has large power outages…….
Hmm, what’s going on with California again? For just the most obvious.
Do other places have large power outages due to en masse generator failure, rather than transmission line failure (which Texas also gets)?
California does. So has New York in the past once or twice (where I live).
California (in certain parts of Cali) has been much worse though with more regularity.
And let the Dems arbitrarily impose destructive policies? SNERK.
5x as much natural gas capacity was lost as wind capacity was lost, because of lack of winterization. Some generators were knocked out directly by the cold, while others were starved of fuel after compressors that pumped natural gas through pipelines failed due to lack of power thanks to the generators that failed, and no on-site storage to use as a backup.
Yes, it is true that a lot of the wind capacity was lost, but it lost a far higher percentage of its wind capacity than the rest of the country did due to lack of winterization (you mainly just need a heater to make sure it doesn’t freeze). It also lost far more of its natural gas capacity than anywhere else did, also because of a lack of winterization. Both of these can be tied directly to Texas running their own separate power grid to avoid federal regulations that the others have to follow, because in those federally-regulated ones they had the winterization needed to not fail.
Yes, the 2021 event was a level and duration of freeze that hadn’t happened since about 1880*, so it hadn’t had a reason to be prepared for at that point. We get snow in Dallas that stays on the ground for a day or two about once a decade. That (2021) was a hard freeze, in Dallas, for over a week. (It first hit freezing on Feb 9, inched down until it was staying below freezing and eventually got to 4 degrees on Feb 16, then back above freezing on Feb 19.)
Now, that’s in NORTH Texas, the worst winter in a long time. If you’re anywhere up north, the concept of a week below freezing doesn’t sound like anything at all, but we normally get only a couple days at a time due to warmer weather coming up from the gulf. Those generation plants down south are CLOSER to the gulf. They seldom get even as much freeze as we do.
* There’s reference to a cold winter in 1989, but I can’t find specifics. It had below-freezing weather for three days from Dec 21-24 or so, although it was cold from mid-December to early January.
Practically the same thing happened just barely over 10 years prior, February 1-5 2011, just a lesser severity. More than 75% of the state had rolling blackouts on February 2, causes were the same story of some generators failing due to lack of winterization, supply getting disrupted, natural gas well heads freezing…
California did just fine this past heat wave. Almost no blackouts, certainly nothing on the scale that Texas suffered. Drawing that comparison in an attempt to defend Texas’s horribly mismanaged power grid is a little perpelxing.
> The solar and wind took a 100% hit to their production, so no, it’s not possible for the others to take a “way bigger hit”.
Found the math drop-out, or else someone who just blatantly lies using statistics. First, they didn’t lose 100% of wind, and the expected contribution from solar was near zero for that time of year anyway, so the loss didn’t do anything at all to the grid.
Since wind and solar account for a fraction of the power generation created by other sources, losing a higher percentage still results in lower numbers. They lost 5 times as much gas generation as wind. So yes, it totally is possible for the others to “take a way bigger hit”.
> Have you been to any of the later generation coal plants? The only way to know they are coal is if they tell you – they capture EVERYTHING.
No, they don’t (carbon dioxide), and older plants don’t even come close. Rising global temperatures have already caused the extinction of multiple bird and plant species.
> “Blaming Texas’s energy problems on wind power specifically is a chump’s game.”
> You’re right. It’s wind AND solar. OK, there’s at least a little bit else going on, but not much.
> Did you even both to read what you were responding to and where the problems with the
> non-solar/non-wind stuff is primarily coming from?
The loss in everything, both wind/solar and gas and coal was due to lack of winterization. So everything traces back to privatization and executive bonuses. I didn’t say it originally, but I’ll repeat it: “Blaming Texas’s energy problems on wind power specifically is a chump’s game”
Right, because disagreeing with you means a math error? Ha ha.
Yes, the wind energy output in the state was very low (not literally zero, but there’s wind generation farther south than the storm hit which was unaffected – wind generation in the affected areas was essentially zero). Many of the turbines were frozen, and many more were turned off due to high winds, etc.
“Since wind and solar account for a fraction of the power generation created by other sources, losing a higher percentage still results in lower numbers. They lost 5 times as much gas generation as wind. So yes, it totally is possible for the others to “take a way bigger hit”. ”
Only if you’re being dishonest. *pointed stare at Einnseanaire*. It’s like pointing out that the police kill more white people than black people every single year (which is factually true) without doing the comparison PER CAPITA.
Fossil fuel produces 9 times as much power as “green” power (90% to 10%), approximately. Even if your number of 5 times as much was accurate, *that is still larger percentage drop* in the “green” sources of energy.
Understanding numbers is hard for some people, apparently, and some of them project their own inability onto others.
“No, they don’t (carbon dioxide), and older plants don’t even come close.”
OK, yes, not the CO2, though there are some plants that have experimented with that, but if you’re talking about “killing birds” (which is what I was responding to), then you’re not talking about CO2 but the other chemical by-products, and yes, they capture ALL of that.
Old plants being old is a problem, yes. They should be decommissioned and replaced. New coal plants would be fine.
“The loss in everything, both wind/solar and gas and coal was due to lack of winterization. ”
No, only the loss of gas and coal was due to lack of winterization (and it was in an area farther south than such was usually necessary).
The solar just plain doesn’t produce much then (*as you yourself pointed out in the same post*, for goodness sake), and the wind turbines the government selected for subsidizing (or there wouldn’t be almost any of them up, because they don’t produce enough power in their expected lifetime to pay for their production and installation) SUCK for that – the reasons they fail in winter are largely inherent to the design. Maybe the government shouldn’t be subsidizing stupid stuff?
Except the Republican lawmakers were blaming solar and wind for the failure, but the failure is caused by the aggregate amount lost. Since gas lost by far the largest total amount of capacity during the crisis, that means that the gas industry is primarily responsible for it, regardless of percentage.
And no, it wasn’t 90%/10% in Texas in 2021, wind was 27% of the capacity alone, and that’s the green energy without considering solar, hydro, and nuclear.
No, the loss of wind was in significant part due to lack of winterization, because turbines freeze in the cold when you don’t put a heater in them.
Wind turbines are fine in the winter, as long as you actually winterize. How else do you think Sweden has the largest wind farm in Europe at 1 degree south of the Arctic Circle?
“How else do you think Sweden has the largest wind farm in Europe at 1 degree south of the Arctic Circle?”
By using a design that isn’t crap on a large stick like the ones subsidized here. They had several problems besides “the turbine froze”.
Of course, there’s also the question of using power to heat the turbine in conditions where you aren’t going to be getting just a lot of power from the turbine in return…
“And no, it wasn’t 90%/10% in Texas in 2021, wind was 27% of the capacity alone”
You know it’s actually very easy to check this stuff, right? And to see that you are either lying or badly misinformed.
Yes, wind CAN produce a lot of power. But reliably, it *doesn’t*. It you look at power generation before the storm, wind was barely at 1/6 (16%) of total power generation at during PEAK hours, but was generally around half of that. Solar made it to about 10% for a few hours, some days.
Solar produced much less, of course. Wind dropped by much more than half.
But if you want to use your numbers, sure, that’s fine. 27%? *Even from what it was before the storm*, it dropped by half, and solar went to ZERO. From 27% (if that’s the BS number you want to use), it was down MUCH more.
Coal dropped by much less than half. Natural gas dropped by much less than half. It the Texas grid had been all solar and wind, the problem would have been MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH worse.
This is not hard to check. The math is not hard to do.
Here, a visual to help you understand: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Texas_power_crisis.png
Look at the 15th on that graphic (where the arrow is). Look at high TINY the blue portion gets. Look at how very little the yellow portion is of the day.
Imagine what that would have looked like with a lot less fossil fuel and a lot more dependence on wind.
Total power generation fell off by a bit over 25%. Wind power fell by a MUCH larger percentage than that. The math on that is very, very, very easy.
You have been fed lies.
Yes, it is very easy to check this stuff. Such as by going to ercot.com/gridinfo/generation and downloading a spreadsheet with fuel mixtures for 2021. According to that, in 2021, 24.3% (I accidentally wrote 27%, but that’s much closer than 10%) of all electrical power generated in Texas was wind power. In February, it was 20.7% (it was lower in total than January or March, when that isn’t the case in 2020 and 2022, so probably not a seasonal thing).
in any case you are most certainly wrong about the fuel mix.
Yes, let’s look at that graph. Observe how, from 1-2:30 am, the coal + gas + gas-cc fell off by a larger amount than the totality of what wind was producing. The so-called “reliable” sources fell off a cliff, and were by far the largest contributor to the crisis, yet the blame is placed on the wind power.
According to the raw data from that spreadsheet, from 1:15 – 2:30 am, coal lost 500 (MWH per 15 minutes I think is the unit?), gas lost 450, and gas-cc lost 1900, compared to the 70 that wind lost in the same period (and was producing in the range of 1337-1261 in that time).
So if literally 100% of the wind power was lost, and none of the fossil fuels, Texas would’ve been better off, because the fossil fuels dropped the ball so hard.
A crucial part of the problem that you aren’t mentioning is that, while wind is locally unreliable, increasing the geographic area of the grid and the wind production substantially reduces the unreliability since weather problems are localized, but because most of Texas is on its own grid instead of one of the two that span the rest of the lower 48 and most of habitable Canada minus Quebec, it’s much more vulnerable to localized weather events. Also, if they were federally regulated, maybe they wouldn’t have subsidized the crappy turbines instead of good ones.
“Yes, let’s look at that graph. Observe how, from 1-2:30 am, the coal + gas + gas-cc fell off by a larger amount than the totality of what wind was producing. The so-called “reliable” sources fell off a cliff, and were by far the largest contributor to the crisis, yet the blame is placed on the wind power.”
And yet, if you look at the whole day, you see wind fall to NEARLY NOTHING just a few hours later.
The yes-actually reliable source having amoment where it drops 25% is so rare and strange that it made national news. Wind power falling off 75% is Tuesday.
How is this hard for you to understand?
Also, “how much in the year” means nothing. yay, it made a lot of power on certain days, certain times of year. What was the media production? What was the actually reliable minimum production?
Because the “actually reliable minimum” is near zero. It is sporadic.
“A crucial part of the problem that you aren’t mentioning is that, while wind is locally unreliable, increasing the geographic area of the grid and the wind production substantially reduces the unreliability since weather problems are localized”
When we have a revolutionary breakthrough in power storage and/or transmission, that will actually matter. Until then, it does not.
“According to the raw data from that spreadsheet, from 1:15 – 2:30 am”
So, if you cherry pick THAT EXACT HOUR (and 15 minutes), wind power looks nice. Yet, if you look at even as much as that 12 hours (half a day), wind falls off over 75%.
Cherry pick harder! That will make the power storage issues that keep “green” power from actually working better!
Seriously, this is the largest existing “oh, look at how bad fossil fuels are!” example in decades, and wind power is literally worse on literally the same day. What kind of dishonest person spins it as fossil fuels being the problem?
As I have repeatedly stated, the problem with wind and solar is *lack of reliability*. Until we have some kind of revolutionary breakthrough in STORAGE of power, they will continue to suck.
Yes, it made national news, and it also made national news that the governor and other high-ranking people in the government blamed renewables for the problem, when it was the fossil fuels that dropped the ball. As I said, if literally 100% of the wind power was lost and the coal and gas plants didn’t fail, they would have been better off.
No, when I pick the hour where the system came within only a few minutes of collapsing, the time when the crisis occurred, you plainly see that the instigator of the crisis was the loss of fossil fuels and not the loss of wind.
The grid was literally less than 5 minutes from collapse at one point in there because the AC frequency fell too low due to the much higher demand than supply. If it stayed that low for too long, it would prompt automatic generator shutoffs (hence how we know how close it was, since it’s based on a timer) to prevent the generators from destroying themselves, which obviously cascades since that makes the supply vs demand problem worse.
Imagine if, instead of having wind and solar for the other portions of power generation in the state, there had instead been more fossil fuel generation.
Solar was producing nothing at the time. Wind, which according to you produces about 1/4 of the power in the state, was producing less than 1/8th of the power being produced at the time.
Wind power started off at under half production AT THE TIME YOU CLAIM TO CARE ABOUT. And it doesn’t even enter your math at all. It gets a complete pass. That is dishonest, just like almost everything that attempts to support wind and solar.
And then it drops to nearly zero later the same day.
“As I said, if literally 100% of the wind power was lost and the coal and gas plants didn’t fail, they would have been better off.”
That’s like saying you’d be better off to lose your left pinky toe than your entire hand. Duh?
OF COURSE they would have been better off! The fossil fuel production is actually depended on AND produces the overwhelming lion’s share of the power.
That doesn’t change the fact that wind production was ALSO down by a LARGER percentage (and solar was at literally 0%). How is this hard to understand? Wind is down by more than 50%, solar is down by 100%, fossil fuels are down by 25%, and fossil fuels are the problem?
WTF? And that’s without even talking about how much worse wind got later that same day. If the wind generation you are so proud of was replaced with fossil fuel generation instead, and it ALSO fell by 25%, the total power output at the time would have been HIGHER.
When did I ever say that replacing everything with wind/solar is the solution?
I never said that. I said that the cause of the 2021 power failure in Texas was the failure of fossil fuel plants. Which it was, because over the course of an hour and 15 minutes the plants that were supposed to cover what wind+solar+nuclear could not failed due to a lack of winterization, and lack of on-site storage combined with failures of pipeline compressors starving plants of fuel.
Wind is unreliable. No duh. Everyone knows this. The role of wind is to provide a cheap and clean substitution for fossil fuels whenever the environment allows it, but it needs to have more reliable options available for when the environment isn’t cooperating. But those reliable options failed Texas on February 15 2021. They failed, not due to insufficient capacity to cover the needs, but because capacity was lost due to mismanagement and/or bad incentives, and no one forcing the companies to prepare for a crisis instead of slashing everything possible in the name of maximum profit.
Yes, it’s like losing a pinky rather than losing a hand. But then politicians blame the loss of the pinky for you losing your grip and falling off a cliff instead of the hand that you also lost.
“When did I ever say that replacing everything with wind/solar is the solution?”
YOU didn’t, no.
But “Fossil fuels bad, switch to more renewables” was the explicit drumbeat from a sizable portion of people in response to that event.
If your claim is really limited, as you said, without the further implications, then yes, I can agree with that. It’s very hard to get those kinds of claims free and clear from the further implications people like to lump onto them.
State officials, including Republican governor Greg Abbott,[13] initially blamed[14] the outages on frozen wind turbines and solar panels. Data showed that failure to winterize power sources, principally natural gas infrastructure but also to a lesser extent wind turbines, had caused the grid failure,[15][16] with a drop in power production from natural gas more than five times greater than that from wind turbines. Texas’s power grid has long been separate from the two major national grids to avoid federal oversight, though it is still connected to the other national grids and Mexico’s;[17] the limited number of ties made it difficult for the state to import electricity from other states during the crisis.[18] Deregulation of its electricity market beginning in the 1990s resulted in competition in wholesale electricity prices, but also cost cutting for contingency preparation.[18]
never understood why the were disconnected. it just cant be the “we are Texas and don’t need anyone’s help with anything” mind set, even the uber right wing nut jobs we have in charge of Texas cant be that stupid right?
especially when being disconnected keeps them from selling any surplus they have.
They’re disconnected because with the grid being entirely inside of Texas, the federal government (or, more specifically, FERC) doesn’t have the authority to regulate it under the Interstate Commerce Clause (since it’s not interstate).
Also it’s not true that they’re TOTALLY disconnected, there are a few ties that allow transfer of electricity between the Texas Interconnection and the other grids, but their capacity is quite limited.
“Every cent you spend on making things more reliable under Texas’ fake market system makes your plant less competitive, so if you hardened your plant against storms, you went broke.”
…except that had nothing to do with the recent outages due to hurricane Beryl, or most other recent storms. It was a factor in the big winter storm of 2021, yeah, but that was an outlier, pretty much a one-off, not the norm.
In both major 2024 Texas storms (the derecho in May and Beryl in July), power generation was fine, the problem was downed transmission lines — there was plenty of power available but it could no longer get to a lot of customers due to tens of thousands of broken connection points (thanks to fallen trees taking out local grids, blown transformers, high winds knocking over towers, etc.)
This of course also occurs whenever a hurricane or other major storm hits any other Gulf state (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida), it’s not unique to Texas’s “pseudo-privatized” power generation market.
Due to customer dissatisfaction over having their power knocked out for days twice within a few months lately, there’s currently debate in Texas about whether the *distribution* grid (and/or outage repair capacity) needs to be upgraded so as to help minimize storm outages, but that’s another topic entirely. CenterPoint (the TDU responsible for power distribution in the upper Gulf Coast area including Houston and Beaumont) claims they had requested $100 million for storm-hardening upgrades last year but were turned down, whereas regulators are saying that CenterPoint should have been doing better with their current resources. Lots of folks are pushing for investigations into root causes and what’s needed going forward. But in any case, finding the proper balance between potential risks vs the costs of prevention and/or fixing things as they occur is an eternal task in most industries and human endeavors. Resources are always limited and how best to allocate them is seldom clear lacking a crystal ball to view the future before it arrives.
Yellow card – speaking facts and sense on the internet. One more such infraction and you will be ejected from the web.
Going to risk joining the political debate by saying it sounds like the problem is the politicians and probably the lobbyists.
yes, which leaves us with the some-odd stupid amount dollar question. how in the name of puns everywhere do these guys keep getting reelected? note- this is a rhetorical question. please answer in pun form.
“the problem is the politicians and probably the lobbyists.”
Calling it “the” problem is a bit much. It is ALWAYS “a” problem, everywhere, all the time.
Yes, how well that problem is mitigated varies (I sure hope we’re at the zenith of that problem at the Federal level, because I have a hard time imagining it getting worse…), but it’s always available and never truly gone.
At the time of the founding of the US, this problem was mitigated by making the government weak, so it simply didn’t matter as much and there wasn’t as much money to be mismanaged (or stolen). The problem people who become crooked politicians largely went into other things (private business, where they largely fought each other for market share, for instance).
While we have gotten too big for that solution to be as useful as it once was, there’s no excuse for the ridiculously bloated government we have today, which exacerbates the problem tremendously.
Sciona REALLY wants that dungeon farm. I expect she needs components.
It’s like a building manager sim type sex farm game. Hell I’d play that in a heartbeat. lol
look on steam there are at least three brothel management programs. last I checked most were not that good.
what? I have to earn my Dirty Old Man status somehow….
please note I avoid park benches. especially since i live in the same city as Pander. also, Texas has very few park benches.
… I’ve had people telling me I was a dirty old man since I was 12 years old.
you have to start young.
Being a dirty old man is a young man’s game…
Have you ever watched “Steptoe and Son”, until you can grin like Steptoe, you can’t be called a DOM :P
Bonus points if you have the same teeth :)
Honestly? I think the “new” art style is quite a fit for the current scene.
The new art style reminds me of the old Keychain of Creation webcomic.
Man, I haven’t thought about that comic in ages…
You didn’t missed that many updates, probably …
The last time I looked, it had been several years since it had last updated.
…And I last looked over seven years ago.
I absolutely do NOT begrudge taking the easy way out with todays post… lord knows he’s given up wheelbarrels full of cake and eye-candy… and besides.. sexiness would have distracted from the context & exposition…. and stuff
Oh, look: Sciona made a friend / apprentice.
She’s sure to earn her Darth title any day now, with priorities like those. :rolleyes:
Dom, dom, DOMME!
Sconia in a black leather dom outfit….
ok, I’ll admit- that’s a nice image, terrifying, but nice.
But seriously, folks. It seems Sciona … likes this one.
I mean, she must: she hasn’t enslaved her and isn’t browbeating her.
Then again, she might have some gruesome fate in store for her later.
If that’s the case, she’s just buttering her up.
For a moment there I thought we were seeing that scene play out in Sydney’s mind, for some reason.
Perhaps because of the time the rest of the team tricked her with hand puppets, and Sydney thought she’d forgotten to take her medication?
Same here, thought it may have been one of Sydney’s Scenarios
I knew there was something different about today’s comic!
I knew if I stuck with it I’d figure it out eventually.
Ya know what? I genuinely like the art style for this scene. I wouldn’t want it for the entire comic, but it really works with this particular scene.
I’ve just heard about Hurricane Beryl, and all I can think of is Queen Beryl from Sailor Moon, :p
this should become the official april fools art style every year
I could get behind that idea.
National dapper your data day is also fitting.
I think Robert Jordan said it best:
“There is a different beauty in simplicity, in a single line placed just so, a single flower among the rocks. The harshness of the stone makes the flower more precious.”
This style have a charm of its own. And of course you got other priorities than this. Take care.
Unnamed Lady should be glad Sciona is in a good mood, and didn’t just hook her on toe glitter too.
It amuses me that even as a stick figure Sciona’s cleavage is apparently mandatory.
She is known to be a bit…concerned about it. IIRC she embiggened her bust at one point in the story.
Yep. First thing she did immediately after recovering her original Alari body. And the first thing she noticed after getting her current super body is it came with nice tits (thanks, Superion field!). For all her many flaws, Sciona is a woman of taste.
Yeah. That magic dagger she used to get her own body back uses life energy drained from people killed with it, and she used it for a magic boobjob. =_= Showing she’s not just vile beyond belief, but also shallow as folk.
She used the dagger and killed those people to get her body back. The boobjob was lagniappe at that point. I doubt it cost any extra lives to do.
I think there are very few people who wouldn’t change anything at all about their body if it was instant and “free” (I put that in quotes because Sciona is not one to count killing people and draining their life force as a cost).
*Shallow* would be using the dagger (killing 100 people etc.) for the purpose of getting a boob job.
We have no proof that Sciona killed anyone with that dagger.
She used it on herself as soon as she got her hands on it.
Dagger acquired: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-569-gore-tunnel-loop-hole/
Dagger used: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-571-transmogrification/
It’s possible she was the one to charge it before it ended up in the vault, but I say ‘prove it’.
Bother. I had forgotten that she used it right away, so it had been stored fully charged. You are correct about that.
However, her behavior since then certainly makes her less than a reliable ally, to say the least.
Does the power actually make people more submissive or do these people just like the effect THAT much? ‘Cause I can’t imagine going through that more than once… aren’t they nauseous after all that? Not. Worth. It. Eejits…
Have a look at some of the things people will do/put up with to get drugs
Yeah, but this is like if heroin met fentanyl from the sounds of it, it sounds high enough to actually flip over into what should be unpleasant once you process it. I feel like I’d be good for a decade after this,not a day or whatever.
Can say the same thing about caffeine, and people chug that crap down all day!
You might be reacting to caffeine way too much if that’s its effect on you. It’s not THAT strong!
There is a subset of people who are MUCH more susceptible to addiction to drugs. They are willing to put up with HORRIBLE side effects for their hit. For only the lowest-level example, see “people who get blackout drunk every weekend”. Yay hangovers? Ick.
More powerful drugs make worse side effects “worth it” to such vulnerable people, and possibly even to makes more people “vulnerable”. Without doing direct human experimentation, making stronger statements is difficult.
I worked in the drug rehab business for a big chunk of my career, mostly with teens. A fair proportion of them setled down once they were seperated from whatever toxic element was going on in their world. The other end of the spectrum is what Deoxy describes. Most people just don’t consider tomorrows hangover. If they do, they probably aren’t an alcoholic. People drink or do drugs to change the way the feel right now. I worked with a physician who was a recovering alcoholic. For her, it was all over after the first drink. She was going to drink until she passed out or there was no more alcohol. With a lot of substances, one develops a tolerance and the person requires a dose just to push back withdrawal. That dose increases overtime with predicable results. As for the question of what makes a person vulnerable? My experience is that there are multiple factors. Genetics is certainly one, paricularly with alcohol. Envirionment and culture play their part. Underlying mental illness can increase vulnerability but isn’t necessarily causal. Sadly a lot of people self-treat with various substances. Distinuishing vulnerability is the tough part. Many, if not most people can drink just a beer or two or smoke a little pot on the weekend. The catch with vulnerable people is that you usually don’t know they are vulnerable until it is too late. Circling back to Christyflare’s comment there are peopble who are susceptable to power. If you are ever around a group of people with a large defined hierarchical structure you will see it in action.
It very much differs from person to person. Myself, I didn’t drink at all until my first wife divorced me, then I decided that drinking myself to death seemed like a good idea.
Gave up on the notion after the first hangover. Apparently I’m not destined to be an alcoholic.
I understand that Trump has an alcoholic relative, and as a consequence does not drink at all, didn’t think the risk of taking that first drink and finding out he was one, too, was worth taking.
My brother and I have had a similar conversation about our father. We didn’t have alcohol in the house and neither of us ever saw him drink more than a single beer. Grandpa was an actual cowboy in the Indian Territories and had a reputation as a bit of an outlaw. He had a still on the Red River during Prohibition. During the 1930’s the family would come into town on Saturday to do the weeks shopping. When it was time to go home, Dad was the one who got sent into the saloon to drag Grandpa away from the poker game. We have always thought that contributed to his dislike of alcohol.
Basically everybody can be addicted if the high is high enough, and hits quickly enough. But it does generally require repeated exposure, operant conditioning doesn’t work very efficiently with one hit.
I guess prolonged exposure would substitute for repeated.
Magic plus chemistry plus biology no doubt.
Sciona is labelled as a “blood mage”. Which likely means the effects are transmitted via blood (possibly other body fluids as an advanced topic), and the spells would generally relate to blood and other biological things.
She might be limited somewhat by having to learn human biology (as opposed to Alar), though it might not be all that different considering gross anatomy of each. She also lived for quite a while as the top of her head jammed onto the rest of the corpse of some other species, so she’s probably got a library of different species’ biologies anyway.
Intimate knowledge of a species biology plus magic probably makes it pretty easy to concoct a drug that has super pleasurable effects, plus probably something to make it more addictive. She could probably even make it person-specific with some knowledge of the person.
I’m not sure if the whole ‘sell it in baggies’ thing would be a something she’d even want. She could after all fall into the hands of someone who could force her to make the drugs. Yes, she’s billy bad*ss, but there’s always a bigger fish.
Keeping this something she has to administer personally means a) it’s small scale, so it’s designed for this sort of influence operation, b) each person who she’s influencing is unlikely to share the knowledge with anyone else, thus making it less likely she’s discovered.
She is still running undercover from ARCHON after all. Selling superdrugs in baggies on the street is the sort of thing that gets you attention. ARCHON won’t go after most drug dealers (too many, they’re not set up for it, all sorts of laws against it), but magic plus superdrugs? It would probably be a joint operation with the Council, even before they find out it’s Sciona.
This seems to be a function of the body rather than something Sciona’s doing with her magic abilities
I have a hunch it’s a combination of Sciona’s possession of the body. She is an alien and a blood mage, so who can say?
The body is that of an (AFAIK) unnamed woman who was being tortured by drug dealers to give up information (I think it was the location of some money). I don’t remember her being a super of any sort.
The torturers had killed her at just the right time for Sciona’s possession of the body.
It’s possible that the unnamed woman had been a super with that power, but it seems unlikely. I think OGH would have let us know in the setup for that scene if it were the case.
My kingdom for an edit button.
I just realized that the woman whose corpse Sciona is using *has* been named.
Easy mistake to make :)
Believe the only one to actually use her name was the store worker?
Not unnamed, her name is Escorpia (it’s mentioned in Sciorpia’s Mug Shot panel)
The shop keeper where Sci went to straight after recognized the body and knew what she can do
It’s beside the point, but I still wonder whether somewhere out there is an orc whose head is joined to the body of a lilac-complected swimsuit model with wings.
DaveB, I don’t need a picture to answer that question. I’m happy in blissful ignorance, if I can beat the urge to create my own CGI reply image.
No, do not resist the urge! Give in and create ART!!
sooooo…. how much faster was this page compared to normal ones? xD
You know, every comic can getaway once with a page where the lights went out, and everything goes black except for the text boxes. Once. bc of deadlines.
But id do hope some day dave will catch up with the vote incentives…
Did anyone else read that afterward joke and miss it entirely for the OTHER double entendre implied by the comic? Yes… ‘stick it’ to Emily…..
Is this going to go anywhere?
I’ve been reading for over ten years and yet somehow I’ve never made an account to comment. Well, this is the comic that changed that, because I NEED to make a suggestion.
I really, really hope that Dave makes just two small changes to this page when he gets time: add a normally-drawn version of the senator to the bottom of the first panel, tripping balls and looking at the other two, and then update him in the last page to be normally-drawn as well. Suddenly there’s a perfectly plausible and, indeed, funny reason for the sudden art shift: it’s from his point of view as he’s tripping out on Sciorpia’s phero-moans.
Here’s a rough mockup of what I’m imagining: https://imgur.com/a/EzIn3kk
Funny idea.
Why would she even be watching her dad in this situation? She’s got problems.
You good man… Keep an eye on your folks. You’ll miss them when they’re not so… Available any more…
Parents can be SOOOOOO embarrassing!
I can say with confidence that little children manage to be embarrassing and frustrating. this is the parents returning the favor. call it a generational debt. the only way out is to not have kids. which, oddly, lots of people are doing. that could be a problem soon. might want to get on that.
Idiocracy wasn’t intended to be a prophetic documentary.
in Idiocracy only stupid people have kids. that’s not what’s happening.
Close enough.
What about Demolition Man?
How long until there’s only Taco Bell? And someone needs to explain how to use the three seashells before it’s too late.
Got to move somewhere they make good ratburgers.
come to Texas, there are alot of burger joints down here, some of them are even good. others are in and out.
Nutrias are kind of like rats right?
the three seashells… Very carefully.
on taco bell- if some of the west coast studies are to be believed, we are more likely to have all Mooyahs or something like that (5 guys is funnier but I think they are going bankrupt)
If you charge $26 for a bag filled with mostly french fries then I wouldn’t be surprised :)
Taco Bell was not the original restaurant, they changed that later
What was the original restaurant that survived the restaurant wars in Demolition Man?
Actually, apparently it was Taco Bell, but changed to Pizza Hut for overseas versions:
https://youtu.be/j0H-izOoaVA
Right that’s what I thought. k :)
Damn, how are the faces still so expressive, even with stick figure art?
Because it’s stick figure art, not stick face art :)
You mean to say that this isn’t either what the guy on the ground is seeing in the power-induced haze, or a power use by someone other that Scion/the body she hijacked/stole?
I’m trying to figure out which party he’s with, the military asked for something so it should be easy to get funding for but it’s not actually going to procurement from the native military industrial complex so the MIC donors won’t make money for it.
Current congress has passed the lowest number of bills in US history so I’m just leaning towards him being Republican and worried the presumptive nominee will say mean things about him letting the Democrats achieve something thus harming him in the primary but it’s not clear whether this is still the Obama administration or possibly early Trump so I might be working with bad assumptions.
I look forward to having any mistakes due to my living in the UK politely corrected and everyone being respectful of each other’s political opinions when responding to this post.
“I look forward to having any mistakes due to my living in the UK politely corrected and everyone being respectful of each other’s political opinions when responding to this post.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAaaaaaaaaaa…
Man, that was the funniest thing I’ve read in a LONG LONG time! Thank you, needed that today!
Happy to improve your day.
If the bill is about the dungeon farm, then the holdups were likely:
– who gets to put what pork (unrelated expenditures) in the bill
– a fight over where the farm will be located (assumes there are in-district jobs or other expenditures related to the farm)
– who gets the praise if it goes well or blame if it goes poorly
– whose budget gets cut to fund the bill; likely to be resolved via that Oprah video of her saying “You get a car, and you get a car. Everyone gets a car!” I.e. the extra funding is just resolved via increasing the deficit.
This is true regardless of party. Control of one of the two chambers does give extra leverage in negotiations like this, but it certainly doesn’t guarantee passage.
Art change? I don’t know what you mean.
Daughters hair now covers one of her eyes.
I think an art style like this works just fine for such a dialogue-heavy page. I’d be ok seeing more of this in the future if you needed to prioritise other stuff again. The Texas power grid makes me nervous, personally. Not to ignite another powder keg but I think it’s only going to cause more problems as climate change gets worse.
The economy is hard on us all. We hafto save on gas, you hafto save on drawing talent.
I am laughing, and crying at this post.
Everyone needs a sidekick/mentorship in this day and age of superheroes and business. Maybe now it’s Sciona’s turn.
I feel for you, aging parents is hard. I keep forgetting you are in Dallas. It would be cool to meet you some time. Any upcoming events?
You know, I just had an edible start kicking in when I read this one. Damn good timing I say. I’m over in Austin so I know exactly what you mean about the power grid, it can barely keep up with the power usage of the A/C units in the summer. Of course it was gone when a full hurricane hit it. Glad your folks are ok!
For a moment, I thought I was reading Existential Comics (because of the layout).
Then the art made me go all Order of the Stick.
Then I bought a clue.
so is it colonel mustard in the computer room with Facebook?
(the game had to be updated)
I choose to believe that the next page will reveal this one to be the doodled fantasies of that girl, setting up the classic “What do you have there?” “NOTHING!” gag.
It’s really important to spend more time with your folks when they are getting old and frail. You won’t have them for nearly as long as you expect, and then suddenly they’ll be gone for the rest of your life. Too late, we realize that would we should have taken the trouble when we had the chance. Good on you.
Got that right! Never pass up parent time when they’re elderly, you’ll regret it afterwards if you do.