So it turns out windmills don't handle icing conditions very well. Solar doesn't do well when covered in snow or in overcast conditions either.
MSN : Texas electric grid operator says frozen wind turbines are hampering state's power output: report
About half of Texas' wind power generation capacity has been put on ice amid the state's historic winter storm, according to a report.
Oops. Add to that a sudden demand for natural gas for heating instead of electricity generation and there's not enough capacity to provide power.
It's definitely a cautionary tale of over-reliance on unreliable sources of energy such as solar and wind. It's another cautionary tale of the failure to maintain and build an energy infrastructure able to keep up with the demand and have enough at the margins to handle an emergency.
Pushing for the Green New Deal and not building reliable nuclear power and clean coal plants instead of expensive and unreliable wind and solar are going to end up putting us all in the dark and cold.
6 comments:
Not the issue....THe windmills only generally put out about 10% of their output during this time of year anyway.
Greater demand due to heat, the fact that 34 GW of plants in the middle of the country are offline, limited transmission capability and record demand has led to this.
THe demand is also in pretty much all states north of Texas as well.
But yes, this is an issue caused by the enviro whackos.
Windmills in Texas apparently dropped about 12,000 megawatts in the freeze which is over 2 million homes out of the system, and almost half of the 30,000 megawatts in generating load lost so that's pretty substantial. The diversion of natural gas to heaitng also makes it even worse, but it's the lack of reliable generating plants to take the load is the problem.
My wife just read me an article this morning about the west, particularly California currently closing two coal fired plants now with five more to close over the next few years. Add a mandate for electric transportation and bans on natural gas water and space heating and many will be freezing or suffering heat stroke in the dark with out even needing an EMP to crash the grid!
"renewable" energy is just not reliable in Northern climates. Solar & wind energy work pretty well in the tropics. But it is unreliable at best in the US.
Solar-Its often too dark, too cloudy or too snowy to work
Wind Its often too windy, too icy or too calm.
Teah, that 12000 isn't real, as normally in this time of year they only generate about 1/4 of what they peak at. SO that isn't a real number.
having said that, 7MW is nothing to sneeze at.
THe big issue os that the Texas grid is an island, not well intertied with other grids...this was done to prevent some Federal Commerce Clause issues, but what it means is that Texas is essentially on it's own...can't get power from other grids. (and can't be forced to sell to other grids either). SO nonhelp form their neighbors when they needed it 'cause of peak demand. THe windmill losses were a rounding error.
B is pretty much correct. Texas isn't interconnected with the rest of the country when it comes to electricity.
Blaming the wind turbines for being alternative energy is wrong. Wind turbines operate pretty far north. I used to fly over a line of them along a mountain ridge in Searsburg, VT. They run year-round. The utilities in Texas apparently didn't buy turbines that can run when it's cold because they cost more.
Texas runs its own affairs for electricity. Coal plants aren't cheap to run, the Texans went for whatever was the cheapest to run. There apparently was no incentive for them to install backup power sources.
Bottom line is that Texas owns this catastrophe.
Post a Comment