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.
@Miletus
10h<
"So, you think the media is screaming at the guy in the WH about NG shortages (due to his EOs) which are causing rolling blackouts in fly over country for the first time ever? Nope. What frauds they are along with the biggest fraud of them all sitting in the WH dungeon"
