>>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.
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>>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.
It has been known for some gas turbine installations to have a liquid or condensed petroleum backup fuel source, with the appropriate secondary fuel meter/ injection system. It could be more polluting than burning the leading clean fuel of NG.
Surely no more than MPG in hybrid cars specs.