The "Grid" Did Not Hold For Everyone -- The Poster Child For Wind Energy, Xcel, Threw In The Towel -- Forced To Shut Off Natural Gas To Some -- January 31, 2019

Wind utility forced to resort to space heaters. In America. In the 21st century. This wasn't supposed to happen. I do not ever recall seeing this before we started talking about global warming. But I am very biased. Generally by facts.

 

And I tried so hard to be optimistic about the grid. LOL. 

A reader wrote me after I said the "grid" held:

Headline: Xcel says demand forced shut-off of natural gas to dozens of homes. Link here:

•  https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/01/31/xcel-energy-cuts-natural-gas-dozens-homes-princeton

From the link: 

Xcel Energy moved dozens of customers east of St. Cloud to hotels as natural gas was shut off in response to unanticipated demand. The utility also asked all Minnesotans who use its natural gas to conserve and turn down the heat. [Minnesota public radio failed to mention that Xcel asked all customers to turn the thermostat down to 55 degrees.]

Jon Audet, one of the customers whose gas was cut off, and his son Mathias took advantage of the change in routine.

"I promised my 4-year-old here, if he came with me one last time to check the heaters we could get into the pool," Audet said.

Audet lost the heat at his house in Blue Hill Township, just west of Princeton. He spent most of Wednesday driving between the hotel and his house, double checking space heaters set up to keep pipes from freezing. 

"It's colder than we anticipated. There is more draw, more demand on the system than we could accommodate," Xcel spokesperson Mark Osendorf said. "We made the decision to isolate, to impact as few as possible, and unfortunately 150 or so customers are without gas."

Sounds like Xcel spent too much time lobbying legislators on wind energy and not preparing for the polar vortex -- which, like, happens, like, every, a, four or five years. 

Poster child for wind energy? Fake news? I don't know. Let's do a google search. Result: 903,000 hits:

To put the number of hits (903,000) in perspective, the number of hits for Bakken oil January 2019 was only 515,000 hits.