OT: Nearly Half Of Texas’ Wind Turbines Frozen In Winter Storm, Limiting State’s
The overall power output of Texas has declined after nearly half of the state’s wind turbines were frozen in a winter storm over the weekend.
“Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend’s freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt,” the Austin American-Statesman reported. “As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas’ installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don’t typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year.”
Parts of Texas reportedly dipped down to 0F (-18C) over the weekend and the state continued to experience frigid temperatures on Monday morning. More than 2 million homes and businesses in the state have experienced power outages as a result. Officials have said that the strong winds from the storm have helped spin wind turbines at a faster rate in other parts of the state, helping to make up for some of the loss of power. Fox Business reported that the severe weather was also leading to a reduction in oil and gas production.
“Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of energy in Texas’ power grid. In 2015 winder power generation supplied 11% of Texas’ energy grid. Last year it supplied 23% and overtook coal as the system’s second-largest source of energy after natural gas,” the Austin American-Statesman added. “The frozen turbines come as low temperatures strain the state’s power grid and force operators to call for immediate statewide conservation efforts, like unplugging non-essential appliances, turning down residential heaters and minimize use of electric lighting.”
Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, called the situation a “unique winter storm that’s more widespread with lots of moisture in West Texas, where there’s a lot of times not a lot of moisture.”
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Comments
last commentWell damn! There goes green energy. Looks like that damn dirty coal is needed to supply electricity to all the green shot out there.
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It's called diversity and resilience in the power supply chain. That wouldn't be a bad thing regardless of people's ideas on whether investing in renewable energy is helpful.
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I know this is an unpopular idea to those green energy types, but this sheds light on the fact that wind and solar are useful - but they require a backup source as their energy can’t be stored.
There’s natural gas - and it’s definitely a useful option.
Coal was useful in the past, but natural gas is likely the best choice.
The irony of Texas using wind - and not oil - is amusing.
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If they pour hot marinara sauce on the windmills that will thaw them out.
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38% of all electricity is produced using natural gas.
Texas produces 24% of all the natural gas in the country.
www.eia.gov.
IT NOT A WINDMILL.... we're not making flour. It's a WIND TURBINE.
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If setbacks were the end of up and coming tech, we would have given up on air travel decades ago. Wind energy tech will learn, and adapt to this setback.
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I'm investing in cow fart back packs.
bigthink.com
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Modern Nuclear power is safe, clean, and affordable. It’s as green as it comes. Carbon free. And, unlike wind power, it doesn’t freeze in low temps or kill birds a flock at a time.
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What this shows us is that power generation capacity is greater than storage capacity so we need to improve storage capacity ( batteries)
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I concur that right now, nuclear is the only reliable, technologically advanced clean energy available. It's gets a bad rap because of a few mishaps. What 25 said is also true not to mention who owns the mineral rights to the materials that are needed for battery production:
Reserves of the raw materials for car batteries are highly concentrated in a few countries. Nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 58% of lithium reserves are in Chile, 80% of natural graphite reserves are in China, Brazil and Turkey, while 75% of manganese reserves are in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Ukraine.
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Too bad it looks like it wasn't really frozen wind turbines that caused the shortage.
"While some early reports indicated that frozen wind turbines were causing significant shortfalls, 30GW is roughly equal to the entire state's wind capacity if every turbine is producing all the power it's rated for. Since wind in Texas generally tends to produce less during winter, there's no way that the grid operators would have planned for getting 30GW from wind generation; in fact, a chart at ERCOT indicates that wind is producing significantly more than forecast."
see the chart: arstechnica.com
"So while having Texas' full wind-generating capacity online would help, the problems with meeting demand appear to lie elsewhere. An ERCOT director told Bloomberg that problems were widespread across generating sources, including coal, natural gas, and even nuclear plants. In the past, severe cold has caused US supplies of natural gas to be constrained, as use in residential heating competes with its use in generating electricity. But that doesn't explain the shortfalls in coal and nuclear, and the ERCOT executive wasn't willing to speculate."
I will agree that power storage is a key component in a grid with more renewables, but again dispute that batteries are the only option. Pumped hydro and other similar gravity based options, compressed/liquid air and other kinetic, hyrdogen, and yes batteries are all options.
And I gotta throw it out there, even in south Florida we're we're largely nuclear we've had instances where FPL has used those powerpause things in the summer to even out demand.
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We’re on the verge of an energy revolution with small modular nuclear plants. They will be small enough to manufacture in a plant, then be transported to wherever they are needed. This comes at a time when Electric Vehicles will require a surge in demand.
en.m.wikipedia.org
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Oh no! Not the clean energy!
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I feel bad for everyone in texas suffering the results of bad policy and deregulation
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The electricity charts part ways down the page are interesting:
twitter.com
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I'm reading about Texas their power grid is the the only independent grid in the United States, and the board that managers their electric ERCOT, the PUC (Public Utility Commission) is made up of carpet baggers from outside of Texas the Chair of ERCOT lives in Michigan, and the Vice Chair lives in California, so they don't have to live with the mismanagement, Damn you Texans want your independence you opted out of the energy grid back in the day when Franklin Roosevelt formed the national energy grid to allow power sharing between regions so an event like this doesn't cause an energy shortage, and being in neither of the two national grids they haven't the ability to share power from another region that isnt experiencing such a severe weather eveny.
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Its almost as if Texans were as stupid as Californians who despite being on the national power grid had rolling blackouts all last summer.
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Strange reference on this focus on failures of wind farms (but I suppose everyone has an agenda). The Texas outage was a failure accross the whole fleet of production. The natural gas feeds to the plants and exposed power plant piping was inadequately winterized. Diversity of production types and diversity of interconnections is essential for reliable power. But if none of it protected adequately from extreme weather and you don't have enough interconnection capacity you are forked.
Twentyfive is correct. There is a price to pay for Texas not being fully integrated into the national grid.
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It is correct that the whole energy sector is to blame for TX....
Solar/wind batteries not holding charges because of cold
Turbines frozen
Nuke plant sensor shutdown because of cold so the plant had to shut down because of safety issues
Nat. Gas lines freezing...
etc.
But people screaming GREEN IS THE WAY TO GO... right here shows you about the batteries that is the issue. Especially when people start to use more and more power. This is a once in a generation type freeze.
Now to the people comparing it to CA.... CA every year has rolling black outs... all because of the HEAT. Every year they know it is going to be hot and people will use AC. This storm took TX and others by surprize. IT is really no comparison to CA.
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Most of you are right in your own way. The trolls are just being trolls, so it doesn't really matter either way for them. Obviously there is bad planning involved here, but what will be interesting to see is how hindsight helps (or doesn't help) the grid managers figure out how to truly have a resilient power infrastructure.
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Spoiler alert: it won't. Not unless y'all finally make Texas anything but a one party state
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Honestly, the way the country is right now, having to deal with one state government is IMO less disconcerting at the moment than putting a piece of Texas infrastructure with the whole nation. If something goes wrong, trying to find a solution would be even more bleak with federal-level squabbling and bureaucracy. Maybe one day that will get better but it won’t be any time soon.
Texas will find a way to work things out I’m sure.
(And to throw a bone on the opposite side of the spectrum, I had the same opinion about Portland when people not from there put all their opinions in with the necessity of the national guard needing to deal with the zoo animals several months ago)
That’s just my opinion and I’m sticking with it. Unless mikeym comes in with one of his awesome rants. Then I’ll agree with whatever he says.
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"Wind shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the outages"
www.statesman.com
I got similar numbers from my industry sources. But this Austin article does a reasonable job with the facts.
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Look, it's so simple a toddler could understand it. The global warming is causing all the problems. We need more wind turbines to reverse the warming so they don't freeze. Duh, ya' get it? The warming is causing the freezing. And if you don't agree then you're a racist. FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!
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Wind turbines go brrrr
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Last night the governor of Texas showed us how he was going to take responsibility for the power outages and water shortages you can watch him dancing around the issues here
www.youtube.com
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Are Fox News and the other conservative sites still shouting at the windmills or have they admitted that story was fake news? Anyone on the board still think it was the windmills’ fault?
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^ That's a rumor started by Don Quixote
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We went without power here for 14 days after an ice storm about a decade ago in this ultra blue, liberal, connected to the national grid state, but since we're run by democrats we just assume government is filled with useless fucking losers and soldier on by ourselves. National news would never mention a democratic fuck up and democrats aren't interested in learning so they never read anything they won't agree with 100%, no matter the truth.
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^ So how does that compare with Florida where I live on several different occasions after a hurricane our Republican governed state has gone without power after a hurricane the less than 5 years ago no power for 17 days,(not even the longest outage) even though they are well aware that for a fraction of what they spend annually over a 20 year period repairing the grid after a major storm, they could bury the transmission lines and not lose power during any storm no matter how severe, fortunately I have refitted my home about 20 years ago, so I don't need to deal with many of the problems and have a backup generator, which powers my home during these regular events.
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@skibum what you refer to as the truth, is Texas claiming that wind turbine failure, which generates less than 10% of Texas's power, is responsible for the failure of whom ever the governing authority is to properly weather proof the system this failure has zero to do with the governing party, but has everything to do with how poorly the people of Texas are served, by their governor and government.
BTW the last democrats to run the state of Texas were before, George W. Bush in 1995 so it's 25 years of Republican oversight.
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There is a research station in Antarctica that is powered ONLY with solar panels and wind turbines.
Gotta use appropriate lubricants, so they do.
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I don’t remember blackouts in ca. Maybe that was not near me. We do get shut down in the wind now that we have sued the utilities after every wildfire. Distribution problem no matter what tech is used for generation.
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some guy in dallas got hit with a $17000 electric bill this month, he said it wiped him out, i would stick with coal powerplants, cheaper electric bills
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Sorry 25, but Texas is filled with illegal scumbags and Democrats have been crowing about it turning blue for years. That's why they're fucked up. Just like your boy Cuomo murdering people in nursing home and covering it up.
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Really wow you really are drinking that kool-aid, explain how less than 10% of the power generation caused a greater than 90% failure rate, sorry buddy this is just delusional thinking, and now tell us how your boy Cruz is father of the year
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Ok I take back what I said earlier in this thread about working itself out. Apparently ERCOT can’t handle heat either. 🙄
www.texastribune.org
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"nearly 80% of the outages are from thermal power sources, which in Texas are largely natural-gas-fired power plants." Why would so many natural-gas-fired power plants be down due to the heat? These types of plants have been operating for a very long time without this kind of issue.
Wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be a hacker caused problem like the pipeline that was shut down last month.
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From another article: www.cbsnews.com
"We're currently seeing three to four times the number of forced thermal (steam-powered) generation outages on our system than we would typically expect to see this time of year," Sopko said in an afternoon telephone conference. "All of these thermal units are offline due to mechanical failure or the need for repairs," she said.
They could certainly be full of shit, but at least the initial reports are failures. It might make sense, at least to the uninitiated like me, if they're peak generation facilities that have been running more than normal due to the other failures/increased demand/etc.
Also kinda funny, but I was just reading some other article about how Texas is welcoming in bitcoin mining operations being kicked out of China and other places. The draw was allegedly "cheap, reliable, electricity"
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How long until Russian hackers stick ransomware all across our grid? We're so boned.
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So when do we admit Texas is a failed experiment?
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^ when people start moving from Texas to California instead of the other way around
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