Gas price rise watch

Well Im not sure I buy the grease thing, usually its a safety thing, if a customer purchases tropic turbines and tries to run them in artic temps it wont work so good and vice versa.
If they site them close to road ways in Texas then ice can destroy a car, I had a blade dump ce near me years ago and it was enough to bury 2 full size chevy pickups completely.
The turbines have no problem running in the winter, look at Minnesota been running fine for years in below zero every winter. Texas just isnt prepared and making a decision for winter operations they ran out of the ability to get natural gas moving . Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation —so things were freezing., So there is that too. If a state that knows pipe line better than anyone would insulate they wouldnt have a issue or not as large as the current one, our stuff runs in the cold out here.

 

It was explained to me, that it was not likely a grease issue, but more of a unbalanced condition of Ice & Snow on the Blades... I wonder if a “Wing deIcer System is or could be, incorporated in the Blades of the Northern tier of Wind Machines... In Texas, this type of weather is NOT common, but hardly unknown, either.. Bout once ever 10 years or so... But It shows very poor planning, to rely on Wind & Solar for base Load. generation, in a place where heavy Snow can disable 20%. of your base Loading capacity, with little or no chance of intertie connections. to other outside Grids, like Texas has... Oh well it is their issue and NOT mine...

 

Heh. The Kennedys and Heinzs will balk that. Even that twit Kerry will find it tough sledding against his in-laws.

 

There has to be more to the story, I've seen almost a foot thick ice and they don't stop, just don't build as much power like a plane wing, unless they had them off line before it hit for a PPA thing, the feds like to shut them off alot at times cause the grid is shit

https://www.vestas.com/~/media/vest...018_brochure_vestas_antiicingsystem_final.pdf

 

As always, there's more. Case extant, I somehow think, but cannot know, that the operator didn't buy the deicing systems for those units installed in a "warm" climate. Without deicing, I still say that the loss of lift will make the machines essentially useless when iced up and dangerously overload the bearings.
That ignores the safety issue. Never have seen it, but I can visualize a couple lumps of ice flying off and smushing something as well as taking the blades out of balance and simply shaking the whole tower. I know the rotors have brakes, but no idea how fast they can stop the rotation.

And, of course, there was no spinning reserve to bring up.

 

They will stop before one revolution of the rotor completes 360. On the balance of these if its off by a predetermined amount measured by the turbine it will auto shutdown due to edge wise vibration a safety feature.
I've never seen ice stop these, I've worked on them in 11 states and in the coldest of cold winters 07 in Minnesota 35-40 below it never happened. at Hermiston Oregon in the fog the ice gets really thick, they don't stop. there is more to the story in Texas, someone might be making a point, or someone shut them down right before the freeze hit and weighted the lower blade and couldn't take off... there is more to this story, 15 years daily 2 polar vortexes and many ice storms 5 northern states and never seen it. but who knows maybe there is a first time and i was asleep at the wheel

 

Thanks for that, Q.

That fast stop has it's own considerations (hazards) but the general rule for that would be design adequacy because it can be foreseen.

Anyway, $2.89\9 a gallon today.

 

Zumzing is rotten about this gas freezing in pipeline rumor. NG won't freeze until well below temps that have ever been experienced naturally on earth. Now, tell me that the moisture in the gas train froze in valves (or other appurtenances) and I'm on board with the operator's failure to do simple heat trace OR have a moisture removal side train at the wells and distribution points.

In truth, I'd a whole lot rather that the distribution is frozen up than have the low pressure distribution system freeze in the customer's buildings.

 

Yep, that Freezing in the Pipes, seemed very unlikely to these eyes as well... maybe the uneducated would believe it but not anyone who actually learned to critical think... PR Hogwash...

 

Yeesh. You mean your pig catchers aren't designed to stop a supersonic lump of ice? But yes, routine pigging is required with gas lines that just happen to have a lot of condensate that was left in, deliberately or otherwise. Every well in this area has dehydrators and condensate removal units on the pads, and with surface pressures in the 1k psi or above range, you can bet your bottom dime that those pipes are NOT 150 lb class. I have a 9 well pad gathering pipe slithering pass me at about 100 yards, so I was pretty sure to watch the pipe going in.