Put the editors of the Wall Street Journal firmly in the camp of “too dependent on wind power” cf. my previous post this morning:
The problem is Texas’s overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%. Power prices in the wholesale market spiked, and grid regulators on Friday warned of rolling blackouts. Natural gas and coal generators ramped up to cover the supply gap but couldn’t meet the surging demand for electricity—which half of households rely on for heating—even as many families powered up their gas furnaces. Then some gas wells and pipelines froze.
In short, there wasn’t sufficient baseload power from coal and nuclear to support the grid. Baseload power is needed to stabilize grid frequency amid changes in demand and supply. When there’s not enough baseload power, the grid gets unbalanced and power sources can fail. The more the grid relies on intermittent renewables like wind and solar, the more baseload power is needed to back them up.
But politicians don’t care about grid reliability until the power goes out. And for three decades politicians from both parties have pushed subsidies for renewables that have made the grid less stable.
If they’d change that to “too dependent on government subsidies, generally”, I’d be inclined to agree with them. Leaning on subsidies is a way of life in Texas, cf. the oil industry, the agricultural sector, the financial sector, and on down the list.
For those who see hypocrisy in such an attitude, that sort of hypocrisy is very much in keeping with the Jacksonian temperament. If you see a twenty left on a table, it would be immoral to leave it there wouldn’t it? Taking it is a valuable lesson for the careless person leaving that twenty.
Even at the best ocean sites, wind capacity factors do not exceed 40%. In Texas, the system average capacity factor is less than 9%. That means that 91% of the stated turbine generation capacity must be met by some sort of backup. The usual choice is natural gas-fueled gas turbines, because they spin up quickly. However to do that they must idle when off-line producing carbon dioxide continuously.
Evidently, the Texas authorities forgot the backup. You can do that without penalty when wind/solar is only a few percent of the total generation capacity, because excess, unused capacity in the system can make up the short falls in wind/solar. But at 42% of total generator capacity, backups are mandatory.
Backups can be anything that comes on line quickly. Denmark buys surplus hydropower from Sweden. But coal and nuclear are too slow to come on line to provide backups.
From the quote:
… power sources can fail.
This means that power plants disconnect from the grid to protect the generating turbine. (This is what my comment was about.)
I think that they were relying on purchasing agreements to augment their power needs with excess from other regions. As we have learned over this past year, this is not such a great plan when nobody has any excess.
I haven’t mentioned it recently but, contrary to popular opinion, hydropower is not carbon-free at least not if the hydropower is generated by damming a river. There is methane emitted from the reservoirs behind the dams.
TastyBits:
There are three grids in the U. S.: the eastern grid, the western grid, and the Texas grid.
Lots of articles on this out of Texas. Their gas plants failed, nuclear failed and even oil failed. They anticipate having less power available from wind in the winter and the numbers I have seen suggest that they are actually getting about what was expected or maybe a bit more from wind. However, up north turbines run in the cold since they heat them so it is not so much renewables as building cheap renewables that they knew would fail if it got cold. Gas plants dont fail up north since they are built to handle cold weather. They saved lots of money by not building for a predictable but uncommon event. Now they pay for it.
Steve
They could begin today building a parallel series of deep canals on dry land leading to the Gulf.
Tidal hydropower generators could be built and installed 20-30 miles inland.
By 2050, when the poles are assured to be ice free, the tidal generators could be put online and seaside communities developed around them.
If we have the vision, and faith in climate science, we have a rare chance to get in on the ground floor.
“…politicians from both parties have pushed subsidies for renewables..”
Governor Abbott of Texas is guilty of this, and speaking as a person who had no lights from 8 AM Monday to 6:30 PM tonight I hope someone hangs his support for wind and solar energy around his neck.
The temp early yesterday in Austin was 7 degrees. My home was uncomfortable. Yes, I am keenly interested in seeing Governor Abbott absorb his share of the blame for what’s happening right about now. Plenty of blame to go around, but Abbott has earned his share. He’s been trying for three days to throw ERCOT under the bus, but many Texans know better. Blame needs to be spread to Governor Abbott and the Texas legislature for enabling the renewable debacle, ERCOT for mismanagement of the power grid and a complete lack of preparation, and the power companies and energy distributors; it’s coming to light that winterization of infrastructure, which was recommended in 1989 and again in 2011, just didn’t happen because it cost too much. Yes, a huge mess for many different players on the energy scene in Texas. Lots of blame to go around.
What is happening in Texas is, to use a hackneyed cliche, a perfect storm. What’s tragic is that it didn’t have to happen. Poor public policy and lack of foresight on the part of nearly all the players caused this.
Just curious. You folks in Texas going to be willing to pay for the changes? The engineering for cold weather power has already been figured out, you just need to pay for it.
Steve
Contra Steve, we Texans are not unwilling to pay for reliable power. TX power generators are designed to operate most efficiently and reliably in our extremely hot summer months, when demand actually exceeds what we have had during this historically unusual cold spell. To winterize them to the extent necessary to guard against this sort of weather event (which may not recur in our lifetimes) would make them less efficient in the summers. It is a matter of weighing cost against benefits, which we all have to do. With 20/20 hindsight, maybe the wrong trade offs were made, but it was not simply a matter of us being too stupid or too cheap.
Forgot to post the following. Texas just recently had a similar event, unfortunately they didnt yet have enough wind turbines to blame it on renewables. Anyway, they ended up doing nothing. That is what I expect to happen again.
Steve
eu.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/17/state-energy-winter-protections-lacking-reports-have-suggested/6780847002/
“Failing power plants, rolling blackouts and a spike in demand as Texas is hijacked by a harsh February winter snowstorm — this was the scenario exactly a decade ago as blackouts rolled through Texas.
A post-mortem at the time — including a key finding that state officials recommended but did not mandate winter protections for generating facilities — has renewed relevance as Texas is roiled by a record storm that has left millions without power for at least three days amid plunging temperatures.”
“A federal report issued in the summer of 2011 found that state officials back in 1989, after another cold snap caused outages, “issued a number of recommendations aimed at improving winterization on the part of the generators.”
“These recommendations were not mandatory, and over the course of time implementation lapsed,” said the August 2011 report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, titled “Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011.”
“…unfortunately they didnt yet have enough wind turbines to blame it on renewables.”
Of course they did. Wind took off in earnest in the early 2000’s.
What I find fascinating in the scapegoating and rationalizations are the elephants in the room.
Wind, they say, can’t be the culprit. You see, we took much of it off line for the winter. Hmmm. Why would they do that to our savior from floods, incineration and pestilence? Is global warming only an issue in the summer? Let me suggest they knew it could freeze, that’s why. And that brings us full circle to designing for most, but not rare events. Wind mills can be made cold-proof. Its cost benefit.
But wait! There’s more!
As I noted last night, nuclear and natgas have been steady (in energy production share) sources for years. The wind apologists are out claiming that its been natgas that really failed. Well, same design issue, for one. But stop and think, people. Why was increasing pressure placed on deriving energy from natgas, much of which failed due to inability to get its required constantly flowing fuel source through the
cold pipes. A ticking time bomb if you will.
Uh, er, because wind displaced so much coal capacity? Ever seen a coal fired power plant? (steve?) I have. There are no pipes bringing in fuel. There are mountains of coal piled on the ground; stocked well ahead of time. No matter how hot or cold or how bad the roads. Shovel it. Put it in the furnace. —> Energy. Talk about bad system design. Talk about unintended consequences. Or perhaps government mandated goals and feel good policy.
Imagine that. Green New Dealers thinking like politicians, journalists and other panderers to the left, and not engineers.
“Why would they do that to our savior from floods, incineration and pestilence?”
Uhh, because in Texas they use a lot less electricity in the winter than in the summer. Dont you live in a warm state? Arent you an engineer? They had a choice between winterizing the wind power like they do in Canada so they could keep it on line, or they could just let it go off line like they were doing. They chose the latter since it was cheaper. Worked well, until it didnt.
Coal? What do coal plants use a lot of besides coal? Water! what happens to exposed pipes full of water in very low temperatures? They freeze! Many sites, and ERCOT itself reported that pipes froze at both coal plants and the nuclear plant. So if you build bargain basement power plants and wind turbines AND you dont build in extra capacity you save lots of money, but you fail when the system is stressed. Happened in 2011. Will happen again when they have cold weather.
This is all trade offs. Didnt U Chicago teach you about those?
Steve
You seem to have missed the entire argument, Steve.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/amid-historic-texas-power-failures-data-indicate-wind-turbines-played-significant
If you read beyond the first paragraph you get the following. Also, I have never said that the turbines did not freeze. Wind turbines work in Minnesota and Canada. The problem was not with wind as a source but rather that they cut costs and put up turbines that will fail in the cold. This is like filling your radiator with water instead of anti-freeze then blaming the car when the radiator freezes. All of their power sources were inadequately winterized, the turbines were just the worst prepared.
“Virtually every other energy industry in the state also saw decreased output over the same time period amid record demand, yet none saw as steep a decrease as did wind power. Natural gas, the state’s largest source of energy, saw a 23% decline in output, as did coal, the second-largest source. Nuclear, which competes with wind for third place, dropped 26%.
Texas has come to rely increasingly on wind power in recent years. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts said last August that the state’s usage of wind power has “more than quadrupled” since 2009, with wind rising to supply 20% of the state’s total energy needs in 2019. Coal power, meanwhile, declined from 37% of the state’s electricity generation in 2009 to 20% in 2019.
‘A lot of issues with the infrastructure itself’
The overall data picture indicates that Texas’ energy infrastructure across the board struggled heavily to meet the surge in demand, an assessment shared by Leticia Gonzales, a markets contributor at the industry group Natural Gas Intelligence.
Gonzales was asked which among the state’s energy industries failed to meet the huge demand of the recent cold snap. “The short answer is, they all did,” she replied.”
Steve