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 ...
You have FReepmail.
Thanks. Ugly aren’t they?. We should put them out to sea far enough to not affect the view. A storm coming in could give us enough energy for a year:’)
I have two thoughts about why this happened and what can be done to fix it.
1. I guess Odessa doesn’t suck any more.
2. Maybe we can fix the problem by calling a special session of the legislature. That ought to produce enough wind.
There’s some new battery technology in the offing that will help. In fact, creating effective storage for the energy generated by wind or solar is one of the major problems they need to overcome.
LOL, talk about your early warning system! When the lights go out, it’s time to duck!
Welcome to Lib-O-Power. Reliability in our power matches reliability in our logic. Wind power is neat, but we still need good storage (buffering) ability. It ain’t here yet.
Cutting power to large industrial customers for a few hours every few years my be a reasonably trade-off for not having to build the peakers needed to archive that last .01% of reliability to such customers.
On Tuesday out here on the Texas High Plains, the wind generators probably blew over in our 60 mph winds. I needed to sweep out my shop so I just opened the front and rear doors and let ‘er rip.
The King Ranch and the Kenedy Ranch are at odds right now over a wind farm proposed on the Kenedy Ranch.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2008/2008-01-02-091.asp
Also I think I saw an article just a day or so ago about T Boone Pickens working on a large project for the Panhandle.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1975560/posts
If we could harness the hot air around Austin when the Legislature is in session we may have a viable project there.
1100 megawatts in 10 minutes! Whoa!
That’s huge, folks. A heckuva lot of load to shed/accommodate in 10 minutes. That would be an enormous amount of rolling reserve.
The wind stops and your power goes out????
Brilliant!
It’s a supplementary source. Notice it was a drop in wind plus other sources not providing the power that caused this.
The dirty little secret is that because “renewable” energy is not reliable, you still have to build back-up capacity using regular technology - i.e. fossil fuels or nukes. So you end up with double capacity.
Saw him the other morning talking up the alternatives, but by now, they should have as many turbines out there as people.
Sadly, I'd say Austin will never allow their "view" to be cluttered, a la Ted Kennedy.
Why do I find myself thinking of the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles?
Wind adds power to the grid, not capacity. You still have to build the same number of *real* power plants to add capacity to the grid. Wind is a silly little affectation that is distracting from the real issue.
We can send you Jennifer Granholm to your state.....she blows more than the wind.
They have a narrow range of peak efficiency. A big storm would be more likely to blow them down than generate useful power.
And there is no means of effectively storing the energy.
Its a sham and always has been a sham to anybody who can do the basic math.
Welcome to the rat energy future. The glorious sun and wind will supply all of our energy. When there is a failure, just blame it on global warming.
BUMP!
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