Posted on 02/27/2008 5:19:12 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:11pm EST
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday.
Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state.
The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement.
System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave 1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers are generally large industrial customers who are paid to reduce power use when emergencies occur.
No other customers lost power during the emergency, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers were restored in about 90 minutes and the emergency was over in three hours.
ERCOT said the grid's frequency dropped suddenly when wind production fell from more than 1,700 megawatts, before the event, to 300 MW when the emergency was declared.
In addition, ERCOT said multiple power suppliers fell below the amount of power they were scheduled to produce on Tuesday. That, coupled with the loss of wind generated in West Texas, created problems moving power to the west from North Texas.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Ooops!
Did this coincide with the end of the debate last night?
Maybe Mother Nature is just catching her breath...
Here in Texas we break wind quite often.
Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
Maybe they should change their name?
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
We need to figure out how to re-route this energy. It’s been very gusty in S Texas.
I was looking all over for the “/sarc” or “parody site” disclaimer, but alas.
First of all, I’ve never heard of West Texas being without wind EVER and second, I cannot imagine this being a source of electric power for anybody. Kinda like solar panels that don’t work on cloudy days in Seattle or something?
Shh. Don’t tell em the wind doesn’t blow all the time. Don’t let em in on the secret, nukes run 24/7/365. We’ll keep it to ourselves and those boneheads will never figure it out.
But all the turbines keep going to west Texas.
What is really funny is the bewildering looks on the board members faces when they are faced with a big ‘ol dollop of wind reality.
Which is ok with me. Those things are spooky.
Too bad the wind stopped blowing. This is probly tied to global warming some how.
Luddites are smiling
ROFL
They’ve been coming into the Port of CC for quite a while now. HUGE pieces, all heading northwest.
If we could paint them red/white and blue or draw pics on them or something..
As we return to global cooling the winds will be less energetic — less energy for the windmills to extract. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be!
Numerous nuclear power plants are great for massive base load power.
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