Posted on 02/17/2021 6:53:27 PM PST by karpov
While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin.
Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.
Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday ("The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage") that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.
Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.
Texas has about 30,000 MW of wind capacity, but winds aren’t constant or predictable. Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Nah! Simply double the solar panels and wind turbines. That ought do it. 😯
those texas oil fields, active or not, have a lot of natural gas in them as well
>>Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday (”The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage”) that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.
>>
>>Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.
“Capacity” is a loaded term.
An emergency order has been declared this week to permit the capacity from other sources to be raised by raising the pollution amounts that will be permitted. It’s a green regulation issue.
The order specified increasing the priority of gas supplies to ERCOT generators. ERCOT’s application also noted that the “Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has indicated that it will provide enforcement discretion to generators in the ERCOT region that may exceed state emissions requirements during emergency conditions.”
According to ERCOT, the measures taken by ERCOT and other state agencies may not prove sufficient to avoid rotating outages of as much as 4,000 MW. Moreover, 1 ERCOT, Grid Operator Requests Energy Conservation for System Reliability,
ERCOT has been alerted that numerous generation units will be unable to operate at full capacity without violating federal air quality or other permit limitations.
>>Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday (”The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage”) that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.
>>
>>Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.
“Capacity” is a loaded term.
An emergency order has been declared this week to permit the capacity from other sources to be raised by raising the pollution amounts that will be permitted. It’s a green regulation issue.
The order specified increasing the priority of gas supplies to ERCOT generators. ERCOT’s application also noted that the “Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has indicated that it will provide enforcement discretion to generators in the ERCOT region that may exceed state emissions requirements during emergency conditions.”
According to ERCOT, the measures taken by ERCOT and other state agencies may not prove sufficient to avoid rotating outages of as much as 4,000 MW. Moreover, 1 ERCOT, Grid Operator Requests Energy Conservation for System Reliability,
ERCOT has been alerted that numerous generation units will be unable to operate at full capacity without violating federal air quality or other permit limitations.
Helpful article. Media is trying so hard to defend ‘renewables’.
Saw a great explanation of renewables use in the grid and it concluded they were great for up to 15% of supply, but then failed as they approached 20%.
No idea how to find it now.
elections have consequences (as Chuck Schumer would say)
scoop up squeegee bums standing on street corners and get them to clear the solar panels.
I live in East Texas. I have a propane tank in my yard and I have a gas heater in my house. I have an electric heat pump ac unit. We have a propane water heater and stove. We also has a wood burning stove with blowers that will heat most of our 2300 sq ft home. We also have a big Diesel generator that we bought after Hurricane Katrina. As prepared as my family tries to be, as a state, we are woefully unprepared for these temperatures. Almost every water supply in our area is down. My local hometown has no more bottled water, milk or bread. I have plenty of quarantine food, but unless I get water from my hot tub or pond, it is going to get bad.
It is supposed to be 23% of the mix.
“What types of electricity are generated in Texas? Natural-gas-fired power plants generated 40% of Texas's electricity in 2020, according to Ercot, the largest single source. Wind turbines were second at 23%, followed by coal at 18% and nuclear at 11%”
Natural-gas-fired power plants generated 40%
Wind turbines were second at 23%
coal at 18%
nuclear at 11%
and 2019
Waiting for a Hawaiian judge to order a halt on the emergency diesel fuel, because it may pollute the air...[\S].
Germany freezes every year and the “renewables” don’t provide enough energy.
They cut cornets and didn’t equip their wind turbines with de-icing systems like those in northern states have. Turbines continue to operate down to -30 degrees all the time.
It’s engineering. Texas did it wrong.
“Renewables” are a complete hoax/scam!
Eventually, we’ll wise up and render them to the ash heap of history, but not until We, the Poor Suffering Taxpayer get screwed out of our kids and grandkids college funds paying for the damn things!
Hydro, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear are the wave of the future for electric generation!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with supplemental power derived from wind turbines or solar panels. However before relying on them, their short comings always should be taken into consideration and back ups such as gas, coal or nuclear power should be available if and when needed. And I have a feeling with the weather becoming more and more erratic judging by what is going on worldwide we will see more of such things happening.
Joe Bastardi
@BigJoeBastardi
i know for a fact Gov Abbot and Sen Cruz were very proactive on this. But imagine FLA staring down a cat 5 hurricane with no support from federal sources and fighting with one hand tied behind their back ( grid set up). Pres Trump had federal disaster declarations before the fact
3:32 PM · Feb 17, 2021
That varies with season.
Do you have your own well, it is it coming from town supply?
“to generate the wind and the electricity they need”
There’s enough wind to go around from Texas chili and beans.
Texas has more than enough capacity of thermal power generation to not need a single watt of wind power. Whether wind is used is not all that relevant as long as there is natural gas available to run the peaker natural gas turbines which make up 30,000+ megawatts of.capacity. what happened and I know this as an energy consultant and operations geologist who drill.daily shale gas wells is the supply crashed from 24 billion cubic feet to half that amount due to the once in a century weather event we had. Texas did not install dewater systems in the feeder and main pipelines from the gas.fields to the city gates. The lines froze it’s that simple. Without the gas to burn the grid lost 41,000 megawatts of thermal power in a few minutes and ERCOT issued a stage 3 oh crap the grid is crashing shed load and within minutes 10,000 and then another 5,000 megawatts were cut off from the grid I have access to the real time data.from ercot the grid.frequency dropped to.critical levels of 59.2 hz that.low.it should have collapse we would have been without power across the whole state for WEEKD during a blacl start. This event was a failure of multiple systems but the gas system was a critical loss wind actually keep 5600 megawatts online that was desperately needed at that time. Thw grid didn’t collapse due to wind thats ABSOLUTELY false it was the loss of HALF of Texas’s natural.gas supply that threw the.grid down. There will be an official report and it will show exacly that.
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