EIA data showing the collapse of wind power generation in Texas’ winter storm.
Posted on 02/18/2021 8:00:09 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Wednesday morning more than 1.3 million electric power customers across Texas remain without power during the coldest winter storm in decades. Gov. Greg Abbott put all of Texas’ 254 counties under a disaster declaration as the state has been hammered with a series of major and historic winter storms. The reasons for the collapse of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid are still being debated, and it’s certain that there is more than one cause and more information will come out.
But one of the most contested issues is the role wind generation has played. Prior to the onset of the storm last week, Texas led the nation in wind power generation and depended on the wind turbines in West-Central and Western Texas, along with a smaller number of turbines along the Gulf Coast, for about 25% of its electricity. As wind power has increased, coal-powered generation plants have been taken offline around the state. Texas has abundant coal, oil, and natural gas, and also has nuclear plants near Dallas and near Houston.
Real-time data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that wind power collapsed as the winter storm swept across the state.
EIA data showing the collapse of wind power generation in Texas’ winter storm.
To understand the graph, the very top line, beige, is natural gas power generation. Hydroelectric is the barely perceptible blue line at the bottom. Wind is the green line; coal is brown. Nuclear power is purple.
The graph clearly shows all forms of power generation dipped, with wind power collapsing from Monday to Tuesday before recovering somewhat. Meanwhile, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power generation also dipped but continued generating power.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
This is fascinating to me. I would simply not allow a source of supply so disruptive as wind in my energy mix. Look at how the other producers, mostly gas, must react to the uncertainties of wind BY THE HOUR!
In my company wind is nothing but a problem. It keeps systems that should be running at steady state on a yo-yo.
Can you imagine a system based entirely on this and how batteries would have to perform and how many there would have to be?
In normal times gas is having to make 100% swings in output.
Wind is not much more than an novelty and nuisance to power producers.
Use the EIA data. Look around the nation and see that wind is horribly variable in almost every region it is available.
Any objective assessment would see wind as nothing but a problem and generally unreliable.
I simply don’t see how you put up with wind messing things up on an hourly basis.
See my post here for additional comment:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3935690/posts?page=61#61
They must make the grid use it on a priority available basis. Is that how it works?
Wind is no better than home power and net backs in terms of predictability and reliability. What a COS.
I guess you don't read much or pay attention to the energy industry, PDLC. Renewables, especially wind and solar have bee an unmitigated disaster in Germany.
Renewables Threaten German Economy & Energy Supply, McKinsey Warns In New Report, by Michael Shellenberger, Forbes Magazine, Sep 5, 2019
What German households pay for power, by Ellen Thalman Benjamin Wehrmann, 24 Jan 2020. They paid 30 CENTS per kWh in 2019. Half of that is taxes, but still 15 cents per kWh is 50% higher than the Texas average consumer rate. Most of that difference is their "renewable energy surcharge."
100% Renewables by 2050 -- Germany Pays the Price for its Ambition, by Paul Gregory, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Houston, Forbes Magazine, March 31, 2017. The article talks about the disastrous economics of wind and the terrible reliability -- just like in Texas.
Why in the world would you correlate seeing "endless turbines on the North Sea" with a sane business decision? The reason you have so many wind turbines in Germany is because the government MANDATED them. Just because you have a lot of something the government forces you to build with a gun to your head doesn't mean it makes any sense. It just means you make the rational decision to not commit suicide by that government compulsive gun at your head.
Governments everywhere are telling people to build these doomed systems because the greenies keep screaming "CO2" but there is NO evidence that CO2 emissions are causing problems with the earth.
Everybody can pretend that wind and solar are economical because the government mandates them. But remember that the same governments have NOT mandated spending the hundreds of billions of dollars for the backup batteries or combustion turbines that would make those sources reliable because building that backup would expose the lie that they are economical.
Governments everywhere are pushing this gigantic, incredible lie that wind and solar are green and can compete economically.
For what it's worth, I'm a mechanical engineer / MBA who spent over 30 years in the power industry, quite a few years in R&D developing clean technologies and many years assessing the system economics of alternative energy sources.
And I doubt the ranchers are very happy with the ultra low frequency THRUMP, THRUMP, THRUMP, THRUMP these infernal machines make when they are operating. Or the constant flash of the shadows as the blades eclipse the sun.
Over twenty years ago, ranchers in California were forced to sell their ancestral lands and move because those problems were literally driving them insane.
Thanks. I didn’t know that. Extended freezing temps do raise havoc with plants not designed for the temps.
IN YOUR DREAMS.
You are ignoring the facts and you are so far behind in knowledge there is not enough time to educate you so I’ll simplify it.
YOU ARE WRONG AND LIVING A FANTASY.
You are tilting at windmills in trying to explain this to some people. What they don’t know but need to could fill an ocean.
For example, inefficient spinning reserve at low power actually increased pollution in Denmark when they dedicated so much to wind.
If this were an engineering discussion the answer would still be hard but eventually the right answer would be gotten to. It is after all, just physics. It is not though, emotional and ignorant people have been allowed to enter the decision making process.
True. I’m not from Texas. Are you?
But, does the oil industry write checks in Austin, promising unicorns, rainbows and lollipops at the altar of Green Energy and Climate Change? Do they write checks in a marketing attempt to tell the world that solar panels and wind turbines will solve all the woes of the energy producing world, which is based entirely on lies and lofty dreams? Do the folks from the oil industry tell the world how perfect they are and everyone should have solar panels and windmills to save the planet and reduce their carbon footprint, while flying around on Gulfstream’s and Lear’s.
“I simply don’t see how you put up with wind messing things up on an hourly basis”
Wind has priority and we run up and down within a workable MW range for the units.
They don't live like we do and you are talking about a country so small we could store it in Texas while it's being painted.
Germany 570 TWh
Texas 365 TWh
Which is why everyone is fleeing the US to live in any of these European utopias. /s
This is a fact.
The purpose of wind energy is to make electric power scarce, unreliable and EXPENSIVE. The goal being control of the masses by making the accumulation of wealth far more difficult. The truth is wind is a scam no matter where it's being used.
Irrelevant. You are either refusing to to your homework because you don't want to find out the truth or you are knowingly attempting to spread the lie of wind and solar power. There are no other possibilities.
Germany is a far bigger energy consumer than Texas. (fact)
It means its needs with a mix than includes 10.5% solar and 27.2% wind.
I’ve done my homework. Time for you to hit the books.
Wind has first priority then when available. They make the grid take all that is available. What a sweet deal for them. They just get all the advantages don’t they? NO matter how little sense it makes.
My experience is with diesel spinning reserve on DP3 drill ships. We learned the hard way that stand-by units slobber a lot and the stack gets full of unburned fuel that causes stack fires. Standby units can burn a lot more fuel than one thinks, they are inefficient that way.
Yeah.
Wind and solar is crappy power too, it doesn’t have to regulate voltage as tight as baseload and it doesn’t make any vars. Rotating generator baseload plants supply voltage and frequency regulation and vars.
As others have mentioned, the natural gas must first go to heating homes, then what is left over can go to electrical power generation. The cold temps required more gas to heat their homes.
Other posts say that Texas has closed some coal-fired plants over the years which would have been 100% for electrical power.
I guess you have the earlier post showing wind and solar are an unmitigated disaster and the only reason they aren’t sitting in the dark freezing to death most of the time is the fact that Sweden backs them up with the always available and reliable hydro power. Wind and Solar exist to make electric power expensive and scarce in order to consume the income of the masses and prevent the accumulation of wealth.
You’re making things up again.
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