Texas

Sucks to be in Texas. Their windmills froze, and worse still, the offline battery banks where they stored the power the windmills made on those days when they worked (because, let's face it, these are Rube Goldberg devices), quit outputting power once it got cold. The BBC, right on cue, is running a disinformation campaign about how multiple systems failed from the cold, not just the windmills, which, like all well-crafted propaganda, is true so far as it goes, but...

The natural gas lines failed because they weren't isulated. That was a bad decision on Texas' part*, but it can be fixed, and probably will be ASAP. In future cold snaps, I'm willing to bet that the gas will operate flawlessly. The windmills, however, are simply not fit for purpose. They're novelties that produce overpriced and intermittent power at the best of times. The winning tactic would be to blow the things up, and recycle the metal into something useful.

I hope that other states will learn from this. We have vast reserves of coal and gas, both of which produce cheap, reliable electricity. We should use them.

*The whole distribution system could probably be very nicely insulated for a fraction of what was wasted on the windmills.

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And, my package that I ordered? It's been sitting in Pflugerville, TX, for the last few days, probably in the cold and the dark. Fortunately, it's a software DVD, and shouldn't actually be harmed by the cold.

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