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In Houston Texas, people are queuing for propane
Photo: Brett Coomer / AP
After a violent winter storm in parts of the United States, millions of people continue to endure freezing temperatures without electricity.
At least 20 people died as a result of the cold.
The failure now calls, of all people, critics of renewable energies on the scene.
Wind and sun could not reliably supply electricity in extreme weather conditions.
Texas is now "completely dependent on wind farms," claimed Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson.
Texas Commissioner for Agriculture, Sid Miller, wrote on Facebook.
"We shouldn't build any more wind turbines in Texas." The experiment with wind power had failed.
An article in the "Wall Street Journal" also stated that the electricity supply would become more unreliable with increasing dependence on wind and sun, because they could not supply electricity seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Most of the failures in gas, coal and nuclear power
However, the calculation has a crucial flaw: According to the Texan network operator Ercot, almost two thirds of the failures were due to the energy sources gas, coal and nuclear power.
Wind turbines were also frozen, according to a press conference on Tuesday.
According to Ercot, wind energy only accounts for a quarter of the electricity supply in Texas.
The criticism of renewable energies is further fueled in social networks.
Among other things, there is a picture of a supposedly frozen Texan wind turbine that is de-iced by helicopter - allegedly with toxic chemicals.
However, the picture does not come from Texas at all, but from Sweden and is already years old, reports the Guardian.
No chemicals are sprayed, but hot water.
It is no surprise that there were power outages in Texas in particular.
According to energy economist Ed Hirs from the University of Houston, a lack of investment in the Texas power grid is a problem.
Unlike the continental states of the USA, Texas has its own power grid and is not connected to the major eastern and western connection networks, which can compensate for fluctuations if necessary, even across national borders.
Frozen derricks
In Texas, the electricity demand had risen so much because of the cold that parts of the network had to be disconnected from the supply again and again so that the supply did not completely collapse.
It is expected that there will be further power outages on Wednesday.
According to Ercot, 45,000 megawatts of power generation failed on Tuesday alone.
30,000 of them in gas, coal and nuclear power plants.
The biggest problem are frozen natural gas rigs.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Republican, called for an investigation into the causes of the blackouts.
According to Philipp Litz from the Agora Energiewende think tank, gas power plants in particular suffered from failures.
There alone the output dropped by 27,000 megawatts.
"That corresponds to around a third of the available conventional power," he wrote on Twitter.
"In Germany that would be roughly comparable to if all gas-fired power plants were to fail at once." But the bottom line is that this is an exceptional situation, for which other electricity markets are usually not designed.
Because of the power outages, many people in Texas cannot heat enough.
This leads to accidents time and again.
The southern state's health department warned against using electric generators, grills, camping stoves, and other outdoor equipment indoors.
In the most populous district of Texas, Harris County, more than 300 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning have been reported since Monday, reported the Houston Chronicle.
Mother and child die of carbon monoxide poisoning
In southern Texas, the hardest hit by the cold snap, a woman and girl who tried to warm up in their car were suffocated, according to NBC News.
In the city of Houston, two homeless people froze to death, as the sheriff's office in Harris County announced.
In addition, at least four Torandos swept across the United States these days, according to the website Weather.com, including one in North Carolina, killing at least three people and injuring ten others.
The storm damaged power lines and at least 50 homes, Brunswick District rescue workers said.
From a weather perspective, there was initially no all-clear: According to the authorities, another winter storm should bring heavy snowfalls and ice to the region again by Thursday.
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