20 percent of all Texas power is from so-called renewables i.e. windmills and solar panels. Frozen windmills and snow covered solar panels don’t create much energy.
https://moonbattery.com/millions-freeze-without-power-in-preview-of-green-new-deal/
Yes, presently, Texas has some 21,000 MW of wind power capacity. They are, based on real time numbers from ERCOT, generating 3317 with wind. One thing to note with wind - if it isn’t blowing, it doesn’t matter if the generators ice up.
I’m in the power industry - I’ve seen wind at another large entity go as low as 2000 MW, and a couple of days later, in excess of 15,000. Depends on whether it’s blowing or not.
Wind power is a nice little supplement, but every single watt of power from a source like wind has to be backed up by something more reliable. That’s just the way it is.
Texas isn’t the only entity that has gotten caught with a massive shortage of wind.
It sounds like that’s not the only issue though - word is, gas supplies have dwindled (low line pressure, unavailable due to so much demand).
Also, it may have priced itself to unavailability. Imagine you have a power plant and you produce power independently. Suppose you sell it to the grid for $30 per megawatt hour. Suppose the price of gas goes up way past that rate, so that you’d have to sell for $150/MWH to break even, but your contract is for $30. What would you do? I know what I’d do - either pay enough to cover my costs to generate or I’m shutting down. Not saying that is happening, but it’s a possibility. Gas is high. Last weekend, our coal fleet, even the more expensive units, were cheaper than combined cycle gas generation for the first time in a good while.
Too bad everyone is getting rid of coal as fast as possible.
How many wind farms are owned by China? You might be surprised...