mjzee

There's another interesting editorial in tomorrow's Wall St Journal, which seems to address some of the comments made here: "Texas Spins Into the Wind: An electricity grid that relies on renewables also needs nuclear or coal power": While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin. Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures. Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday ("The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage") that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity. Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57 MW. Regulators build slack into the system. Texas has about 30,000 MW of wind capacity, but winds aren’t constant or predictable. Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants. Wind turbines at times this month have generated more than half of the Texas power generation, though this is only about a quarter of the system’s power capacity. Last week wind generation plunged as demand surged. Fossil-fuel generation increased and covered the supply gap. Thus between the mornings of Feb. 7 and Feb. 11, wind as a share of the state’s electricity fell to 8% from 42%, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Gas-fired plants produced 43,800 MW of power Sunday night and coal plants chipped in 10,800 MW—about two to three times what they usually generate at their peak on any given winter day—after wind power had largely vanished. In other words, gas and coal plants held up in the frosty conditions far better than wind turbines did. It wasn’t until temperatures plunged into the single digits early Monday morning that some conventional power plants including nuclear started to have problems, which was the same time that demand surged for heating. Gas plants also ran low on fuel as pipelines froze and more was diverted for heating. “It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Electric Reliability Council of Texas senior director Dan Woodfin said Tuesday. The wind industry and its friends are citing this statement as exoneration. But note he used the word “today.” Most wind power had already dropped offline last week. Gas generation fell by about one-third between late Sunday night and Tuesday, but even then was running two to three times higher than usual before the Arctic blast. Gas power nearly made up for the shortfall in wind, though it wasn’t enough to cover surging demand. Between 12 a.m. on Feb. 8 and Feb. 16, wind power plunged 93% while coal increased 47% and gas 450%, according to the EIA. Yet the renewable industry and its media mouthpieces are tarring gas, coal and nuclear because they didn’t operate at 100% of their expected potential during the Arctic blast even though wind turbines failed nearly 100%. The policy point here is that an electricity grid that depends increasingly on subsidized but unreliable wind and solar needs baseload power to weather surges in demand. Natural gas is crucial but it also isn’t as reliable as nuclear and coal power. Politicians and regulators don’t want to admit this because they have been taking nuclear and coal plants offline to please the lords of climate change. But the public pays the price when blackouts occur because climate obeisance has made the grid too fragile. We’ve warned about this for years, and here we are.

There's an interesting editorial in today's Wall St Journal titled "The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage: How bad energy policy led to rolling blackouts in the freezing Lone Star State": Why are millions of Americans in the nation’s most energy-rich state without power and heat for days amid extreme winter weather? “The people who have fallen short with regard to the power are the private power generation companies,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott explained. Ah, yes, blame private power companies . . . that are regulated by government. The Republican sounds like California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who lambasted private utilities for rolling blackouts during a heat wave last summer. Power grids should be able to withstand extreme weather. But in both these bellwether states, state and federal energy policies have created market distortions and reduced grid reliability. Mr. Abbott blamed his state’s extensive power outages on generators freezing early Monday morning, noting “this includes the natural gas & coal generators.” But frigid temperatures and icy conditions have descended on most of the country. Why couldn’t Texas handle them while other states did? The problem is Texas’s overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%. Power prices in the wholesale market spiked, and grid regulators on Friday warned of rolling blackouts. Natural gas and coal generators ramped up to cover the supply gap but couldn’t meet the surging demand for electricity—which half of households rely on for heating—even as many families powered up their gas furnaces. Then some gas wells and pipelines froze. In short, there wasn’t sufficient baseload power from coal and nuclear to support the grid. Baseload power is needed to stabilize grid frequency amid changes in demand and supply. When there’s not enough baseload power, the grid gets unbalanced and power sources can fail. The more the grid relies on intermittent renewables like wind and solar, the more baseload power is needed to back them up. But politicians don’t care about grid reliability until the power goes out. And for three decades politicians from both parties have pushed subsidies for renewables that have made the grid less stable. Start with the 1992 Energy Policy Act signed by George H.W. Bush, which created a production tax credit to boost the infant wind industry. Generators collect up to $25 per megawatt hour of power they produce regardless of market demand. The credit was supposed to expire in 1999, but nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program, as Ronald Reagan once quipped. The renewables lobby found GOP allies in windy states like Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa. Former Enron CEO Ken Lay, who had made a big bet on wind, begged then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1998 to lobby Congress to extend the credit for five years. Congress has since extended it more than a dozen times, most recently in December. Wind producers persuaded former Gov. Rick Perry to back a $5 billion network of transmission lines to connect turbines in western Texas to cities. This enabled them to build more turbines—and collect more tax credits. Because the Texas grid is often oversupplied, wind producers sometimes pay to off-load their power, though they still turn a profit with the tax credits. Coal and nuclear are more strictly regulated and can’t compete, and many coal plants have shut down in Texas and elsewhere. Over the last decade about 100 gigawatts of coal power nationwide has been retired—enough to power 60 million homes. Many nuclear plants are scheduled to shut down, including large reactors in New York and Illinois this year. Renewables and natural gas are expected to substitute, but Texas is showing their limitations. In the Lone Star State, bad weather has constrained the supply of gas, but government policies do the same in other states. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy have blocked pipelines to deliver shale gas from Pennsylvania to the Northeast. Their pipeline blockade has driven up the cost of electricity. The average retail price of power is about 50% higher in New Jersey and New York than in Pennsylvania. They and other governors have also poured subsidies into wind and solar, though neither can provide reliable power in frosty weather. Many states also have renewable mandates that will force more fossil-fuel generators to shut down. New York has required that renewables account for 70% of state power by 2030. Then layer on Democratic policies at the federal level that limit fossil-fuel production and distribution. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is supposed to ensure grid reliability, but under Barack Obama it promoted renewables over reliability. Democrats opposed efforts by Trump appointees to mitigate market distortions caused by state renewable subsidies and mandates that jeopardized the grid. On present trend, this week’s Texas fiasco is coming soon to a cold winter or hot summer near you.

Listening to disc 2 now. Fun, prime Sonny. Great booklet, photos, and research, too. The sound quality on the Arnhem performance is lacking, though - I hear very little bass. Zev Feldman acknowledges such in his essay: "And we worked hard to optimize the audio and overall listening experience on the Arnhem performances, which, unfortunately, were not audiophile-quality recordings. All I can say is that we're aware of the audio limitations and we believe they're as good-sounding now as they can be; certainly, they sound better than they have before." Don't let that stop you from picking it up. (And I did not notice the speed/pitch issues.)

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/crenshaw-texas-wind-oil-energy-california

I was curious, so I did searches on the three people quoted for insight in the article (Bordoff, Jenkins, and Cohan). All seem to be invested, from their academic/governmental positions, in promoting wind power and shifting from fossil fuels. ERCOT appears to be a large part of the problem, and it'll be interesting to see what emerges from investigations. See: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/16/texas-gov-abbott-calls-ercot-reform-emergency-item-amid-blackouts/6765855002/ and https://dailynewshouston.com/politics/gov-abbott-orders-investigation-into-texas-energy-company-amid-blackouts-freezing-temperatures/ Finally, this shows what a terrible decision Biden made in shutting the Keystone Pipeline. Talk about not making realistic plans about future energy needs!

https://abc13.com/weather/cypress-area-waffle-house-remains-open-despite-severe-weather/10341068/

I listened to this last night: Was this the first recording of the tune "Return To Forever"? Personnel is pretty intense on this track: Hubert Laws, Joe Farrell, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Ron Carter, Airto and Flora Purim.

I just got scheduled for first dose on February 24.

R.I.P.

Still waiting to hear about availability of vaccine shots in Houston. Wasn't Biden supposed to fix everything that the big, bad Trump did wrong?

Interesting collection. Thanks for the tip.

Great! Thanks for posting this.

Art Pepper Quartet Art Pepper, alto sax; Tommy Gumina, polychord; Fred Atwood, bass; Jimmie Smith, drums. "Foothill College", Los Angeles, CA, February 14, 1975 Foothill Blues Trio (J) PAP-25041 I'll Remember April - Here's That Rainy Day - Cherokee - * Trio (J) PAP-25041 Art Pepper Memorial Collection, Vol. 3 - I'll Remember April = Storyville (D) SLP 4130, STCD 4130 Art Pepper - I'll Remember April

Luckily, you can explore to your heart's content for not a lot of money: the complete box "Art Pepper - The Complete Galaxy Recordings" on legal download for $56.49. 16 full discs worth, in excellent sound quality: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Galaxy-Recordings-Art-Pepper/dp/B008FZ8TXM/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=art+pepper+complete+galaxy&qid=1612641604&s=dmusic&sr=1-1

In general with 45s, there's a secondary reference number usually under the catalog number, and that reference number is different on the two sides. If they're sequential, the lower number is the A side. There's also sometimes an indication etched into the deadwax that might say A or B. I usually consult Discogs or Wikipedia if I'm unsure. Don't forget that sometimes the intended A side was not the hit. For example, the Everly Brothers' "Ebony Eyes" was released as the A side, but the B side, "Walk Right Back," was the one that clicked with listeners and became the hit.

Why not just use Apple AirPlay?

Thanks!

I read his prior book, The People And The Books, and enjoyed it.

I think Universal actually manufactured the Mosaic discs and shipped them to Mosaic for boxing. They're just reusing the masters which they retained.

If you look at their catalog listed on their website, you'll see titles licensed from WEA, Sony, and Universal. Interesting.

I find the small credits on the back interesting. "Music On CD" has licensed this from Sony Music. www.musiconcd.eu. I wonder who they are.

Release date February 26: The Columbia Albums 1976-1982 anthologizes the Jaco Pastorius era of Weather Report. Black Market (1976), Heavy Weather (1977), Mr. Gone (1978), 8:30 (1979), Night Passage (1980), and Weather Report (1982) are packaged in Clamshell Box with wallets. Each disc features reproduced front and back artwork. As detailed by liner notes author Richard Seidel, the box contains 12 bonus tracks, including all the cuts from the 2002 compilation Live and Unreleased that feature Pastorius, as well as material from the 1979 Havana Jam. The 20-page booklet also features full track-by-track credits and session data.

Release date April 15:

Release date March 26: On this night the good doctor took the stage with an expanded line-up featuring Jonathan Kreisberg on guitar, Johnathan Blake on drums, John Ellis on tenor saxophone, Jason Marshall on baritone saxophone, Sean Jones on trumpet, and Robin Eubanks on trombone with special guest vocalist Alicia Olatuja on "Pilgrimage." Two additional studio tracks open and close the album, presenting the unique collaboration between Doc & Iggy Pop including a sublime cover of Donovan's 1966 hit "Sunshine Superman."

If he were appearing on Anderson Cooper's show, I presume he'd write "Excited to talk to Anderson Cooper."